One by one, they all made it inside the fence, while the Timekeepers watched intently, and sometimes looked about at the dark trees on the other side and sometimes pulled their clocks out from under the cloaks to look at the time. I couldn’t see if they were chronobanks or just ordinary clocks, but they did say Timekeepers always kept more than two on their person at all times.
We’d had different clocks on us, too, that day when we woke up here. The Timekeeper Elida had pulled a golden clock, bigger than any chronobank I’d seen, right out of my suit pocket, before she’d given me the silver one.
I wondered why. I wondered what the golden clock had been—I’d been too distracted to even look at its face then.
When all the others had gone through, it was my turn. The missing bar gave me plenty of space to crawl quickly. Behind me, March kneeled in front of the opening, and Time’s Teeth, he was sobig.All those shoulders—how was he going to fit?
I was worried for a second, but he didn’t seem to be. He was perfectly at ease as he held my eyes, then lay on the ground all the way on his back, and slowly inched one arm through first, then his head and neck, then the other.
“I think the Heart boy likes you,” whispered a voice in my ear from behind as Seth helped March get to his feet.
I turned to find Mimi with a strange smile on her face, looking at me like she didn’t know whether I was going to smile or attack her.
Meanwhile, I was completely paralyzed. Just…something about those words. Something foreign and familiar all at once.
“All right, everyone. You’re all in now. Start with the main palace—it’s the biggest building in here and very easy to find.Just head straight through the wood. However long it takes, we will be waiting,” Kohen said from the other side of the fence. “I wish you good-timing.”
Without waiting for any of us to speak, he turned around and walked back where we’d come from.
My stomach twisted—we were going to be alone now. All alone in a foreign place.
Did we have questions?
Because it felt like we should have had questions. It felt like we should have been toldmorebefore being left alone like this, but I didn’t have the slightest cluewhatto ask.
“Do try not to die,” the other Timekeeper said with a mischievous grin on his face that he wasn’t trying to hide for once.
“Damon—keep moving,” Kohen called, and the young Timekeeper turned on his heels, pulling the ends of his cloak dramatically so it floated around him like a shadow.
“I’ll wipe that grin off his face when we get out of here. You’ll see,” Levana muttered.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Cook said, and we all turned one by one. There was nothing to see onthisside, anyway.
9
The Labyrinth grounds were darker than I’d expected. There were a few lanterns on lampposts here and there, but the light was dim, as if it had almost run out. No soldiers patrolled the perimeter—at least none that I could see. From here, it was like the whole place had been abandoned, the grass too long, the lights too dim, the buildings in the distance too dark.
But the deeper we went, the more the world changed.
It was subtle at first. The air was different here—heavier, warmer, laced with something I couldn’t quite name. There was thispresencehere, as if the air itself had weight and texture and intention here that was different from out there. From the rest of the world.
“Do you feel that?” Mimi whispered from ahead.
We all nodded because we all felt it—it was in the way we’d slowed our steps, had started looking around more carefully, had stopped talking completely.
For a moment there, I was eleven-hours certain that this was what the Timekeeper meant when he saidthe Labyrinth knew us.
My body knewit,too.
“Keep moving,” March then said, and we did. Part of me considered asking him if I could hold his hand, but I thought better of it in the end. My fear and panic weremyproblem. I’d deal with it myself, just like everyone else was doing.
Soon, we reached the first trees and went through a pathway made of square cobbles between them. It almost felt like the old oaks and cedars with their thick branches and heavy leaves were watching us.
Or maybe it wasn’t the trees at all.
The moon shone in the sky, half-hidden behind thin clouds, and the light that slipped through painted everything with a million shades of silver and gray.
Then the trees thinned, and we saw it—all at the same time. I knew because we all stopped walking as if by the press of a button.
