“What in Time’s Teeth is going on?!” said a guy sitting opposite from me, with dark hair and a slit cut through one eyebrow. A Club, if my memory served me right—and it did. He was wearing green now, too.
“Who-who’s responsible for this?!” a girl with short blonde hair said, her chin quivering, tears slipping down her cheeks. I was almost envious—I was too shocked to cry, but a few tears would have released some of this pressure that had built in my chest.
“Is ityou? Who did this—show yourself!” another girl demanded, her hair long and thick, her eyes almost as red as the dress she wore—a Heart.
And then the Heart boy.
His eyes were on me.
He sat three chairs to my left, the head-bag in his tight fists, and his eyes moved lightning fast from the others and to me. They always stopped on me for a beat and two and three.
And mine always stopped on him.
I know you—but I didn’t.
Then…how had I known to draw him so perfectly? Because he was sitting there now, and I realized I’d gotten every line, every shape, every curve exactly right. His hairline, the arch of his thick brows, the width of his nostrils—I’d gotten everything so right the thought sent goose bumps down the length of me.
Howdo I know you?
“Somebody will have to answer for this!”
“Ouch—thathurt!”
“Where you hit on the head? I was—right here…”
“You just wait until my father hears about this!”
“Who would dare attack a former Hand of the Turning Trials!”
“I demand an answer, right now!”
“This is?—”
“Stop.”
Everyone did.
I had yet to look away from the Heart boy.
What a strange, beautiful pair of eyes Time had given him.
“Stop talking all at once. I-I…I’m Cook, if you remember. We’ve all met before. Let’s just…let’s just calm down for a moment and try to figure this out.”
Tearing my eyes from his was physically painful, if only for a tick—but I had to see the boy who was speaking—Cook from the Court of Spades, two chairs to my right on the very edge of his seat, looking about the room with wide, gray eyes and an open mouth.
“Calm down?!” said the girl with the bright green eyes and dark skin sitting right across from him, next to the Heart boy. Mimiwas her name—she’d spoken to all of us first thatday we woke up standing under the Neverwhen sky. “I can’tcalm down!I was—I was home, and then someone hit me, and I just woke uphere!”
Voices erupted again, everyone talking at the same time.
My eyes went back tohisas if that was my default setting, locked on his beautiful face, hungryto see more of it, if only to confirm that I alreadyknewevery detail, quite possibly as well as my own face.
He didn’t speak, he barely blinked.
I didn’t speak, I barely blinked.
It was like we were…on a different frequency, and I realized Iwasn’tas panicked as I had been a moment ago. In fact, that pressure I was so sure was going to undo me from the inside was gone—couldn’t tell you where. I was…almostcalm.
And he was, too.
