Almost sentient. A building thatknewus.
Well enough to cave floors to get us away from those Timekeepers?
How curious,I thought.How absolutely, ridiculously curious.
Yet there was a part of me that believed it.
Then we reached the top of the stairs and spilled into a hallway.
I stopped as if my strings had been pulled. My lungs burned now, and my legs shook, but my eyes…
My eyes knew exactly where I was.
Wide corridor. Twelve doors. Six on each side.
“Time’s Teeth, I know this place,” someone whispered—could have been Cook. His voice broke like he was on the verge of tears.
My mouth opened. March’s mouth opened. A lot of mouths opened and a lot of eyes filled with tears, but nobody else said a single word. We all just…walked ahead.
I couldn’t tell you when I let go of March’s hand—I didn’t really feel it. I couldn’t tell you how I knew to walk all the way to the end of the hallway and go for the last door on the right.
Everyone was opening doors at that point. Nobody asked questions or wondered.
My hand knew the handle before my fingers closed around it—the weight, the slight resistance, the way the door swung inward with a whisper instead of a creak. All of it stored somewhere beneath whatever veil covered the part of my mind I couldn’t reach.
Then I stood on the threshold of a room.
A wide room with a bed and a wardrobe, a vanity table and three windows that showed me the dark sky with its twinkling stars, the moon nowhere in sight.
A long, loud sigh escaped my lips. It wasn’t…homeexactly, but it was…coming back. I didn’t have the words to properly explain the feeling yet, but I had hope.
Then I looked to the side—to March, who stood there next door, the handle still in his hand. I don’t know whathesaw when he looked ahead of him, but the expression on his face matched my feelings perfectly.Coming back.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway. Doors closed. March looked at me, and I looked at him. Smiled and nodded.
Then I walked into the room and closed the door behind me.
11
Islept like the dead.
No dreams, no tossing, no waking up in the middle of the night like I was sure I would when I lay on that bed. Just pure, heavy, dreamless sleep that pulled me under the moment my head touched the pillow and didn't let go until sunlight fell on my face.
When I opened my eyes, it took me a full three seconds to remember where I was.
The ceiling was too high. The bed was too soft. The air smelled of dust and something faintly sweet beneath it, like the ghost of flowers.Rosesspecifically.
But then it all came back. The tunnels and the fence and the palace. The floor caving underneath us that Mimi thought was thepalace’sdoing.
The hallway with the twelve doors.Twelve,not nine.
Twelve rooms for twelve Hands of the Turning Trials.
And the same question loomed right there over my head—what happened to the other three?
The thought weighed heavy on my mind when I slipped off the bed and began to inspect the room without reallyknowing what I was doing. I opened the drawers on the nightstands—empty—and the wardrobe—empty—and the bathroom—empty. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, but the room still felt…lived in.
Lastly, I went to the window, opened one, and breathed in the fresh air, looked out at the trees and the pointy tips of the fence bars beyond—and at March, whose eyes were on me.
