I drew you,I thought, but this time the words couldn’t be bothered to come out. Instead, I was reaching out my hand before I realized it, for that curl that fell over his left brow in such a perfect shape, and it looked so smooth. I needed to touch it, or I thought I might lose myself all over again. I needed to touchhim.
So, I did.
I ran my fingers over his hair and pushed the curl back, and my skin rejoiced on the smooth feel of it, and my insides sang a happy tune—like suddenly all was just simplyright.Which was a silly thing to feel over touching hair, but it wasn’t just that.
It was also that my handsknewthe feel of it. That he didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t make any kind of a face when I leaned in, didn’t stop me. He just held still and watched me like he was in awe while I smoothed his hair back a couple of times, and?—
“Hey! You two. Coming?” Mimi said, and we both leaned back at the same time.
“Yeah. Yes, we are,” March muttered and stood up from his chair, waited for me to do the same.
He never once moved without me moving first, and that did things to me. Maybe it was the reason why I was smilingwhen there really wasn’t anything to smile about.
Then there were the Timekeepers.
They both had their eyes on me, watching me from the doorway, and they weren’t smiling. In fact, they seemed genuinely concernedthere for a minute, especially when they looked up at March.
The old Timekeeper shivered visibly before he moved his eyes to the floor.
And I was no longer smiling when I reached for the bags to find something to wear, thinking,this night is becoming curiouser and curiouser.
I founda pair of black pants and a dark red shirt to replace my pajamas. Mimi and Anika held up my jacket while I changed in the corner, just like I did for them. I also found a pair of worn sneakers my size—they weren’t the most comfortable, but my foot was small, and all the leather boots were bigger sizes. Still, I had my mother’s coat over my shoulders, and I wasn’t cold at all, so I took it.
And finally, we followed the Timekeepers through the doorway and into the darkness.
It wasn’t real—which explained so much the second I stepped through it. It was an illusion, Kohen said—simple magic to keep prying eyes and ears away.And it worked flawlessly. Just a screen of darkness that hadn’t let us see or hear anything at all beyond it, yet stepping through it felt light asair, with only a slight buzz to it from the magic. Definitely a useful trick.
The tunnels beyond werenothinglike the room we left behind.
These corridors werealive. Pipes ran along the walls on both sides, some as thin as my wrist, others wide enough to crawl through. They hummed, too—a low, constant vibration I felt in my teeth more than heard with my ears. Even the air was different here—warmer and damp, almost like copper against my tongue, and there was plenty of light, too, much more than in that room. It was coming from the pipes themselves—an amber glow that pulsed every few seconds in perfect sync with my heartbeat.
None of it was scary, though.
Except the floor beneath our feet that was made of metal grating with only darkness below.
Ice-cold shivers rushed down my back.
“Whatisthis place?” asked Anika as we followed the Timekeepers, passing closed doors of all sizes and shapes. The deeper we went, the louder the hum became, until it was almost a pressure against my body. I felt iteverywhere.
“Old tunnels that Timekeepers used a long time ago to travel through courts,” Kohen said.
“You traveledthrough courtsunderground?” Levana said.
“Our ancestors did all the time, yes.”
“But…why?” Mimi wondered, just like I did.
A quick look back—and Kohen lookedbiggerin the soft shadow that the amber light cast everywhere in this tunnel. “Because it was safer,” was his answer.
I looked up at March walking beside me, resisted the urge to grab his hand. I kept wanting to—like it wasnatural,like I was supposed to be doing just that, but luckily, I held myself back.
“Safer…from what?” asked Russ from behind us.
“From the Clockfolk, young man. From the Clockfolk,” said Kohen, and his friend the younger Timekeeper threw us a look back before he continued ahead.
We’d always heard about how Timekeepers were…sort ofseparatefrom us. That’s what we learned growing up—that they werethey,and we werewe,and we weren’t the same.
Except, we kind ofwere.There even were Clockfolk with ginger-ish hair in the Court of Spades, and maybe the Timekeepers accessed magic a different way, but we all lived in the same world. Father said we weren’t different on the inside, where it mattered, and I tended to agree.
