“No—but the proof that would hold the queens accountable for what they’ve done is there,” said Silas slowly. “And…correct me if I’m wrong, but with the proof, you can force the Red Queen to do anything. If she’s in prison, she will have no choice but to give you back your memories.”
Why,yes,that was exactly what I was thinking, too. If the Red Queen was caught, if we had proof of what she and hersister were doing, they’d lose their power. They’d be thrown in prison. They’d have no choice but to give us the memories they stole.
After all, this wastheirdoing. It was the White Queen who’d risked the entire realm by pulling time to move backward, just so Silas’s curse to reveal her true nature didn’t come full circle. She’d riskedeverything,every single person in the realm. The people would want to know about that. They would want to know who their queens were.
Silence in the room.
Nobody moved or blinked too often or even breathed loudly. We were all suspended in the same second, with the same thought.
To go into the tower below the Great Clock—what madness.
To steal records and to accuse queens—madness, I tell you.
Except…weren’t we living in something even worse already? Hadn’t we gone through the impossible, and come out the other sidehalf?
We were the ones who’d paid the ultimate price. We’d lost two of our own, too. Our memories. We’d lost ourselves in those four weeks.
It was only fair that we’d get to be the ones todo somethingabout it, wouldn’t it?
“It’s dangerous,” Cook whispered.
“It’sdoable,” said Silas. “It’s what the Underclock has been trying to do for decades. What my father?—”
“Your father paid the ultimate price for trying to make changes,” Master Talik cut him off. “Do you think it was worth it? Losing his son—hislife?Was it worth it?!”
My hands squeezed in fists and I closed my eyes, and I hurt together with Silas. That wasnota fair question at all. That was?—
“Yes.” Silas didn’t hesitate. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t stutter. “Yes, it was. He knew this was bigger than himself and his son. It’s bigger than all of us here.” He leaned in closer on the table. “And I willnotlet his death be in vain.”
I wanted to be impressed. I wanted to besad.I wanted to scream and shout at Time for being so unjust, but in the end, the one feeling I settled on wasinspired.
Silas was right. This was indeed bigger than even our memories. Two queens who stole from the land, from their people…
“Tell me, Master Talik,” I whispered. “What are the signs? What has their theft done to the world? Tell me the truth.”
The old Timekeeper was quiet for so long that I thought he wouldn’t answer at all—but he did.
He said, “How much do you know about the Spill?”
The Spill—the edge of the realm. The place where the Clockrealm ended.
There was nothing there butfalling.That’s what we were taught since we were kids. The things that go off the Spill fall forever.
“It’s the edge,” I said, trying to think of anything else I might have learned about the spill before.
“Yes, it is. And there’s nothing near it,” said Master Talik.
Most of us nodded.
His lips stretched, but it wasn’t exactly a smile. “There used to be, though.” The room went very still. “Decades ago, when my mother was a girl, there were villages near the Spill. Small ones. Farming communities, mostly. People who liked the quiet, not the chaos of Neverwhen and the courts. Every court had them—little settlements at the very edge of their territory, where the land met the nothing.”
He stood up, stretched his neck, and started pacing slowly in a circle in front of the table, like he couldn’t bear to sit still while he spoke about this.
“They’re gone now. Every single one.”
“Gone how?” March asked, though I feared we knew. We all knew.
“The Great Clock distributes time outward from the center. Like a drop of water hitting a flat surface—strongest at the point of impact, weakest at the edges. Under normal allocation, even the farthest villages receive enough temporal energy to sustain life. The magic is thinner out there, yes. The days feel slightly shorter. The crops grow a little slower. But it’s more than enough.
