Heartling, Heartling, Heartling,went the beats of my heart, settling on the name, like they knew it. Like it wasmine.
But the Red Queen had said it.
“I’m giving her my most precious memory, YourHighness.” March looked at her for a second. “It’s my birthright, and you can’t erase it when it’s in her.”
A memory.
A memory of his inmymind.
And his hand was already on his chest, right over his heart. And mine was already beating in rhythm with it.
The White Queen was talking, laughing—I could hear her voice, but it was distant now. She was laughing at March, I was sure of it, but I didn’t care. Her words didn’t reach me. Nothing did—only him.
“I don’t remember falling in love with you,” he whispered. “I don’t remember the trials or the junkyard or anything we said. I don’t remember any of it…”
His voice trailed off. His hand pressed harder against his chest, and beneath his palm, I saw it.
Light,but not a usual light. Something rising from inside him, traveling from his chest to his hand, like a thread—aglowingthread.
With a sharp intake of breath, March closed his eyes and said, “But I rememberthis.”
His hand moved from his chest to mine before I could blink.
The thread of light stayed close to his palm like it was attached to it. It wasn’t thick, or longer than my middle finger, but it was bright. It was pure white.
While I watched, breath held and heart suspended in my ribcage, he pressed it right onto my chest, and the warmth that poured over me was unlike anything else I’d ever felt…that I remembered.
In a single beat, I felteverythingthat wasn’t mine, that was completely, purely March: his certainty, his terror, his absolute, bone-deep refusal to let me go.
And when the world fell away, I was looking at…me.
Suddenly, the sound of the White Queen’s voice nolonger reached me. I was somewhere else, in a place where the sun shone but barely slipped through the thick canopy created by the most beautiful trees I’d ever seen. So big. So green. Full of glass hearts hanging onto their branches like fruit.
I was sitting there on a bench, and I was smiling. My eyes were wide, impossibly blue, my freckles almost gone because of the flush on my cheeks, my hair shiny, my soul served in the smile that stretched my lips.
That’s it. That’s all I was doing—sitting there on a bench in the Garden of Memories, smiling.
Thatwas the whole memory. His most precious memory.
Then it was gone.
Then the world was dark again, terrifying, and the ground underneath my knees was scorched, and the sky was bright with the new sun but to me it made no difference.
The Red Queen was right there. Her veil had shifted, revealing more of her face, more of the curls in her hair, so dark and twisted. Her lips were parted now, her brows slightly raised.
Meanwhile, the White was still laughing, just behind her.
“There,” March said, turning back to the Red Queen as he gripped my hand in his again. “That’s a memory forever out of your reach.”
Tears.
There were tears in the Red Queen’s eyes. I saw them, even if she closed them the very next second and gathered herself. Isawthem.
“What are you waiting for? Who cares about abinding—do it now!”
The Red Queen’s jaw locked so tightly I heard her teeth popping in my head. She didn’t look at her sister, didn’t tear her eyes off March’s face at all.
Meanwhile, he looked atme,squeezed my hand, smiled at me.
