She was so…regal. A couple of inches shorter than the White Queen, but she had a lot more presence. Her arched brows were slightly raised, her eyes a dark brown, her lips painted red, pressed together like she wanted to thin them out even more. She wore red from head to toe, her suit tight around her torso, her pants loose.
As she came, her eyes were on us, on all our faces, almost like she wasforcingherself to look.
For the longest moment, and until her eyes locked on mine, I didn’t breathe at all.
Nobody moved.
“Did you really think,” the White Queen said, and her voice was birdsong—light, musical, perfectly pitched, “that I wouldn’t notice nine Hands and a dead boy crawling through my Labyrinth like rats through a pipe?”
The way she spoke. The tone of her voice suggested she was talking about flowers or dresses or any other positive thing.
Nobody answered. Nobody could.
Laughter—and it was as sweet as it was sharp. Strings pulled inside me, my organs rioting, rebelling against the sound of her. Against the memory of her, even if I couldn’t reach it.
The Red Queen stayed back, hands folded, chin up, jaw locked.
But the White Queen walked closer. Her shoes made no sound on the scorched ground. The soldiers held their circle, spread all around us.
We were surrounded.
We were outnumbered, with an unconscious boy behind us, with half burned, stolen evidence at our feet, and nowhere to run.
“I’ve been watching you since the moment you crawled through that fence the first time,” she said, and her smilecould slice you in half. “I watched you find the rustblood and the boy he hid. You really,reallyshouldn’t have…”
She laughed again, and it was like she was peeling my skin off me.
Wrong, wrong, wrong,said the voices in my head. It was all so very wrong. She was the queen. She was the ruler of our realm—theprotector.
But…she wasn’t.
“I watched you break into my tower.”She knows, she knows, of course she knows…“Yes, I watched all of it and I must say, the performance wasoutstanding,little tickers!Bravo!”
She clapped her hands. She sounded so cheerful.
I couldn’t stand the sound of her, the sight of her—her.
“You’re a thief,” I hissed, the words coming out of me before I could stop them. “You’re a thief and a murderer and-and-and we have the proof!”
My voice shook. I hated that my voice shook and my chest shook from how fast my heart was beating, and my hands shook, too, even as I held March’s with all my strength.
The White Queen’s eyebrows rose. She looked at what was left of the bundles on the ground. Grinned.
“Isthatwhat these are,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “Broken, burned metal plaques that you stole from the Ever. Plaques that could be anything—forged, fabricated, planted by a group of confused, traumatized children who were manipulated by…a terrorist.” Her eyes landed on Master Talik. “Do you really think, dear girl, that even if you managed to get out of here,anybodywould believe you?”
My mouth opened and closed. I couldn’t find it in me to make a single sound.Over,said the voices in my head next. Everything was already over.
But then Silas stepped forward. “The Distributor’s inscriptions can’t be forged. Every Timekeeper in the realmknows that. The machine’s signature is on every plaque—date-stamped, authenticated by the Great Clock itself.”
“Yes, yes, certainly—andwhois going to verify that?” The White Queen tilted her head to the side like she really was confused. “Would that be…the Timekeepers who workfor me? The ones I’ve appointed, trained, promoted? The ones whose families live in Neverwhen, in housesIprovide, on streetsImaintain?”
The realization hit me like the blast had—sudden, total, knocking the air from my chest.
Holy Hour, I only now saw howridiculousit had all been, how patheticwewere for even trying.
She’d thought of everything. She’d had decades and decades to think of everything—and of course a bunch of barely-adults weren’t going to catch her unprepared!
Time’s Teeth, what had we done…
