“Were they Hands, too?”
“Where are they now?”
“And why wouldthatguy remember if he was stuck behind that wall?”
“Convenient, wasn’t it? To send us there, to basically take us all the way to the crazy Timekeeper who tried to kill himself by slamming against a wall…”
“Hewasn’ttrying to kill himself—he was trying to get to the boy!”
“Just because that guy was wearing that suit doesn’t mean he was a Hand?—”
“And how would one evensurvivefor that long? No, it makes no sense,” Russ was saying, shaking his head. “It makes no sense—how?—”
“Through a pocket in the Labyrinth. That’s how.”
Kohen’s voice carried through the room before he stepped through from the darkness. Behind him was the younger one—Damon was his name. Except Damon no longer seemed bored or like he was being forced to share the same room with us. Instead, he was pale everywhere, except the apples of his cheeks that were bright red.
We all straightened up where we sat, and this time it was March who closed the distance between us, came all the way to me until his shoulder pressed against mine. I thought maybe he could really read the thoughts in my head and knew just how to calm me down.
“What even is a pocket?” asked Anika.
“And where is the Timekeeper?Whois he?”
“And where is the boy? The Spade boy we found?”
“Are you going to make us go back? Because people saw us. Maids saw us and there was this Timekeeper woman who?—”
“Nobody’s going to make you go back anywhere,” said Kohen with a raised hand and a smile Seth’s way. “You’veoutdone yourselves, Hands. Exceeded all our expectations. You found the proof we were looking for in record time.”
Our mouths opened and closed as we exchanged quick looks.
Part of me said,yes, yes, I knew it!while the other dreaded what he was going to say next…
A chuckle. “No wonder the lot of you finished the trials forward and backward the way you did. You work well together, complement one another perfectly, that’s for sure.”
“It’s him, isn’t it,” I whispered. “The Timekeeper.”
Kohen smiled. “Yes,” he told me. “It’s Calren Hock. The Labyrinth wouldn’t let him out when time turned backward, and after the trials were over, the queens prohibited his release. We had reason to believe he was there when the curse was cast—but we absolutely did not expect you to bring back the other one. We genuinely thought Silas Sear was dead.”
Timekeeper, Timekeeper, Timekeeper,sang the voice of the talking cat in my head over and over, while Damon went and grabbed two chairs from the other side of the room, and dragged them all the way to the front of the three-legged table.
“What are you doing?” asked one or the other, but I couldn’t look away from Kohen’s face.
“Keeping my end of the deal, of course. You brought back the proof. Now, I tell you the truth.”
My heart beat in my chest, but I heard the echo of it as if it was in someone else’s body. My hand moved on its own, searching for March’s without looking,hidbeneath his fingers like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. We sat up straighter still, all of us, and looked at the old Timekeeper’s smiling face.
He really did look…better. In every way. His wide eyes were alive, his cheeks flushed, and even his shoulders seemed a bit wider.
“Are you ready?” he asked, but none of us could speak.
Until…
“Not quite,” said another voice I’d definitely heard before.
We all turned to the doorway just in time to see Silas with his arm over one of the Timekeepers, holding a wooden cane in the other, limping his way toward us with a smile on his pale face.
At that point we were all standing, all breathing heavily, all terribly confused about what to do—whether to go to him, whether to speak, whether torun.
