So, while everyone spoke over one another, our gazes remained locked and our breathing the same. I could swear that our hearts chased the same rhythm, too, and I was twelve-hours certain that I wasright.
I drew you,I said to him in my mind.
The problem was, I had no idea how he’d reply to that.
Then… “Enough!”said the girl with the green eyes. “Enough, already—we’re not going to figure anything out if we keep talking!”
She was absolutely right.
And when the Heart boy looked at her, I was momentarily released from the spell of his eyes, so I could focus once more on our surroundings.
“We’re not tied to these chairs or anything. Let’s just…let’s see if we can find a way out,” said another boy, skinny, tall, with a silver streak in his hair—a Diamond. I remembered him, too. I remembered all of them when I wasn’t so entranced by the Heart boy.
He was right—we weren’t tied to the chairs, though the red skin around my wrists and those times I’d beenalmostawake were proof that rope had been around me at one point. Possibly all the way here.
Which begged the question… “Where are we?”
The words slipped from my own lips, catching me by surprise.
“Possiblynothome,” said the Spade boy—Cook was his name, and he looked a little better than he had a moment ago. He attempted to stand—and he did. His legs held him.
The rest of us did the same.
The room tilted a little bit, and my knees buckled, but I didn’t fall. Nobody did, though we swung to the sides at first.
“Underground,” said a voice that chased every single thought in my head away instantly.
The Heart boy continued, “We’re underground.”
“How doyouknow?” asked the Club girl.
“No windows—and look there,” said the boy who’d spoken first. He was pointing somewhere behind me, at the wall of the room where pieces of concrete had broken away to reveal rocks underneath.
“And the stairs,” said the Heart boy, pointing his thumb behind him to show the narrow flight of stairs almost hiding in the corner that led to a single black door halfway up the wall. The ceiling was high, indeed, possibly over two stories.
“And that doorway…” said the Diamond girl, looking toward my left, on the other side of the table standing on three legs, where there was indeed a doorway on the wall, so dark no light from this room could penetrate it.
Shivers ran down my back, ice cold.
“Guys, do you think it’s…the trials?” said one of the boys.
“Don’t be ridiculous—the trials are over,” the Heart girl with the long hair said.
She and the boy were the only Hearts here, just like Cookand I were the only Spades, and Mimi and the other Club were the only ones from their court, too.
Yet the Diamonds were three, as it should be.There were always twelve Hands in the Turning Trials, just like there were twelve hours on a clock. But we’d woken up in a strange place twice now, and we were still only nine.
I said, deliberately this time, “What happened to the other three?”
Silence in the room.
My voice echoed in the tall ceiling. Everyone was looking at one another, counting in their heads. My eyes kept going back to the Heart boy, so I saw it when he opened his lips to speak—and I braced myself for the goose bumps.
“We’re missing a Heart, a Club…” he said, his voice trailing off for a moment as he analyzed my face like he was searching for something. “And a Spade.”
“Maybe they just haven’t gotten here yet?” someone asked.
“Don’t be silly—we were only nine when we woke up in Neverwhen.”
