Chapter 33 · Thirteen Minutes from Tomorrow

The core clock had stopped breathing.

Eve could still feel its last pulse in her bones—a deep, metallic thud that rolled through the chamber and left every tooth in her mouth aching. Then silence rushed in to fill the space it had abandoned.

Not ordinary silence. The kind that pressed against the skin. The kind that made the darkness seem crowded.

Fragments of memory drifted through the air like ash suspended underwater. A boy laughing beneath a red awning. Kieran’s hand closing around hers on a rain-slick bridge. The taste of blood and winter mint. A kiss she knew had happened because her body remembered the shape of it, though her mind reached for the moment and found only a locked door.

The hourglass lay between them on the black iron dais.

Its silver sand had stopped halfway through the neck.

Sora Bell stood on the opposite side of the dais, one hand clamped around the brass release lever. Blood ran from her palm to her wrist, disappearing beneath the sleeve of her clerk’s coat. She was breathing hard, but her eyes remained fixed on the clock’s enormous face.

“Tell me that’s supposed to happen,” Sora whispered.

“No,” Kieran said.