His reply was a kiss on the top of my head.
I tried to hold onto the world for a little longer, just to memorize the feel of him, the sounds of him, the way his breathing slowed, and his body softened underneath me.Because I wanted to carry this memory with me, too, to the Everstill, if we died tomorrow. I prayed and prayed like I hadn’t since Jinx, that somehow, in some way, I got to keep this forever.
And somewhere along the prayers, I slept.
31
Everything still felt like a dream when March woke me a few hours later. Especially when all of us left the Hollow at two fifteen sharp.
There were no conduits involved this time, just old tunnels, almost identical to the ones we’d used to get to the Labyrinth. Master Talik led the way with a bright hand-lantern, his tools jingling softly on his belt, and Kohen walked beside him. The rest of us followed in single file, silent, our chronobanks (though mine was empty of Sparetime; not sure why I still carried it with me) in our pockets and our hearts in our throats, even if we didn’t want to admit it. For one another’s sake, I thought.
Master Kohen was kind enough to put a spell on my rose when I asked him, some sort of preservation spell he said would keep it in excellent condition for years. I left it right there in March’s bedroom, and the Timekeeper promised me that that’s where I find it. I only needed to come back to get it.
I planned to. I would do everything in my power to come back.
Silas walked on his own. He no longer needed his cane to keep his balance. He look more…alivethan ever, but I did catch him grabbing the wall twice as we went, and it worried me. Whatever the Timekeepers had done to heal him, it was definitely holding—but for how long?
The tunnels branched and twisted beneath Neverwhen. The pipes hummed and the air grew warmer the farther we went, and the amber glow in the walls brightened until it was almost like walking in daylight.
Nobody said a single word. March was right behind me, his hand in mine, reassuring me that he was there.
Then Master Talik suddenly stopped.
“Above us is the eastern plaza,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “The tower entrance is sixty feet to the north. There are two guards on the main door at all times—crown soldiers, not Timekeepers. They rotate every three hours. The current pair started their shift at midnight.”
“But that’s only two hours,” said Russ. “They’ll be tired but most likelynotasleep.” And he sounded a little panicked, too.
“Correct.” But Master Talik only looked at Kohen. “You’re sure about Damon?”
Kohen nodded, opened his mouth to speak, when I found myself speaking first. “What about Damon?” They hadn’t told us anything about Damon. We’d only seen that he’d remained behind in the Hollow, and that was that.
Kohen looked at me over the heads of a few others like he was surprised to find me there. “He and Fenn will cause a distraction to give us a bit of time,” the Timekeeper said. I imagined Fenn was one of the others we hadn’t been introduced to. “They’re already in position. They’ll trigger it at two forty-five exactly, which gives you a twelve-minute window between it and the three m.b. burst.”
“What kind of distraction?” March asked, and he sounded just as suspicious as I felt.
Kohen looked almost irritated. “Just a conduit malfunction. They will manually trigger a pressure spike in the eastern distribution pipe—close enough to the tower that the guards will feel the vibration, hear the alarms, and see steam venting from the street grates. Standard emergency protocol requires all nearby personnel to evacuate the immediate area and report to the maintenance hub for assessment.”
Clever, I thought.
“And if theydon’tevacuate?” Levana asked.
“They will. A conduit malfunction near the Great Clock is every soldier’s worst nightmare. The last real one was thirty years ago and blew a crater in the plaza the size of a house.” Kohen pressed his lips into a smile that wasn’t entirely pleasant. “Nobody stands around when the pipes start screaming, young lady.”
Levana rolled her eyes as she mutteredyoung ladyunder her breath,and made sure he saw it, but Kohen turned to Master Talik again, who was checking his tools—probably for the seventh time. He pulled each one from his belt, inspected it, put it back in place. Almost like aritual—like how I sharpened my pencils obsessively before a drawing I found particularly difficult.
“The timeline,” he then said, his voice thick and heavy. You could just see how much he didn’t want to be here, doing this—and I suspected it wasn’t because ofhimselfat all, but because ofus. “Two forty-five is the distraction. The guards evacuate. We have approximately two minutes to cross the plaza and enter the tower through the maintenance door on the eastern wall. I have the key.” He held up a brass key, tarnished and old.
“Our first goal is to climb to the seventh floor,” he said, and it didn’t sound that high.
“How long to climb?” Mimi said.
“Ten minutes if we move fast. Twelve if we don’t.”
“We’d get there in seven if you were all Clubs,” Seth muttered, but we ignored him.
“That puts us on the seventh floor by two fifty-seven,” Silas calculated. “Three minutes before the burst fires and resets the cycle.”
Master Talik nodded without looking at him. The pressure in the air when they exchanged words grew.
