It was there. The Labyrinth was right there, barely any lights flickering inside it—but even so, I felt the presence of it as if it had eyes and it was watching me.
On its other side, just outside the golden fence, was the Great Clock in all its glory, its face shiny, lit from within in the dark, a constant presence over our heads, too.
Shivers ran down my arms, raising my skin in goose bumps. The others all came through the hole in the ground, which was identical to the one where Kohen and Damon had led us much farther away, much closer to the Labyrinth that night.
Which made me wonder, how many more of these things were on this hill, hidden in plain sight?
No sign of other people, though. The crescent moon in the sky was alone, barely any stars twinkling in the dark fabric of the night, and it reminded me so much of a sharp-toothed grin my stomach turned. For a second there I thought the Cheshire was going to simply materialize in the darkness and claim the moon as his grin.
Of course, he didn’t.
We sat near Silas and Cook, close together, near the leaves and the thin, soft branches of the willow tree that was slightly to the side of the hill, which was why I hadn’t seen it till then.
But from here, Neverwhen looked like a sky of its own with a million warm, golden lights winking at us every second.
We didn’t feel as alone as before. All of us were here now. Ten instead of twelve, but we were together.
“If they find us, tell them I made you,” Silas said, his eyes glazed over as he looked at the city lights in the distance.
“If they find us, they find us. We don’t need to explain ourselves,” Levana said. “We’ll be doomed, anyhour—who cares about what we say?”
True.
“Nobody’s going to find us,” Mimi said. “The hatch is right there. We hear movement, we leave, and that’s that.”
The grass was only a couple inches long, but it hid the hole in the ground through which we’d come perfectly. Yes, nobody was going to be able to spot us here. We’d disappear underground as soon as we heard or saw something.
“I keep thinking,” I suddenly said. “I keep…wonderingwhy she only hid them.” Just a thought that had been spinning in my head while I talked to March.
“You mean our memories?” asked Cook, the same time Anika said, “You mean the Red Queen?”
I nodded to both. “She could have extracted all the memories. I wonder why she didn’t.”
“She could have destroyed them all for good, too,” Levana muttered.
“Would that require more magic?” I asked March.
“Not necessarily. It would most likely takelessenergy,” he said.
“It would,” said Silas. “I’ve studied memories. Extracting and erasing them would have been easier—heartlocks are easy to destroy. But veiling them,hidingthem from their owner would most certainly take a whole lot more effort and Sparetime andtalentto do.”
“So…why didn’t she just wipe our minds clean orextracteverything—however that works?” Mimi.
Nobody had an answer.
For a while, we just sat there and looked out at the city, at the night sky. I leaned my head on March’s shoulder as the light winked at me from ahead, and a soft breeze pushed my hair back just a little.
Yes, the world was in chaos all around us, and I wasn’t entirelymeright now, but I was…calm. I was at peace. I felt like I belonged, no matter how little sense that made while sitting among strangers.
“It’s hard to predict where we’re going to end up next,” Russ said all of a sudden.
“Yeah, tell me about it. I, for one, never dreamed I’d be sittinghereat any point on my life,” said Erith.
“Me, neither, but we’ll go wherever we need to go to figure this out,” I said.
“But we’ve already been everywhere—we’ve been forward and backward in time, too. We’ve beeneverywhereand look at us now. Where could one possibly go from here?” Levana.
“Onward,” Cook said, his voice as soft as the breeze.
