Cordie noticed he was up and was instantly at his side. “How are you feeling?” she rasped.
Baz winced as he sat up. “Like I should be dead.”
His mind raced back to what had happened. The magic of the door barring him entry into the sleepscape, whispering about his work not being done. “How did I get here?”
His right wrist was bandaged. He lifted his good hand to his head—still fuzzy from when he’d landed in the Belly of the Beast—but found he was bound to the bed, a damper cuff around his wrist. “What—”
“A precaution,” Cordie said. “You were found on Dovermere Cove, half-drowned and barely breathing.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “Cornelius is gone, isn’t he?”
Baz nodded. Clover was gone. Kai and Luce too. And Baz was left here stranded in the past, with not the faintest clue if he would ever see Kai again.
Polina shuffled uncomfortably by the bed, hunched as if she were trying to make herself smaller or disappear entirely. She too wore a damper cuff, though hers wasn’t keeping her tied to a bed. Baz noticed the stares from injured students around them. They were glaring at them—athimspecifically.
“What happened?”
“There was a blast,” Polina explained. “It ripped through the Vault and the Decrescens library and the whole quad, and, well…” She gave a furtive glance at the glaring students, lowering her voice. “They assume the blast was from Thames’s Collapsing. That he cheated his way past the wards. And that you must have helped him, even though you were found on the cove, not in the Vault. They thought you’d Collapsed too, but don’t worry, they tested your blood. Red, not silver.”
Equal parts anger and sadness rushed through Baz. All the progress he’d made with these students, all the animosity that had started to fade around him… it had all been for nothing. He was Eclipse-born, and so they would find a reason to blame him for this.
“What happened to Thames’s body?” Baz asked.
Cordie suddenly plopped down at the foot of Baz’s bed, her shoulders racked with sobs. “I’m sorry. I just—I can’t believe he’s gone. I don’t understand how he ended up down there. After I thought he’d left for Trevel? Why was he there at all?”
Polina threw her arm over Cordie’s shoulders as she broke down, whispering to her in soothing tones. She met Baz’s confused gaze. “They found another body down in the Treasury. It was Louka.”
Baz’s stomach fell.Louka?It made no sense. How in the Tides’ name would he have found a way past the wards? And how had they not seen the body? “Cordie, I’m so sorry.”
His heart broke for her as she cried in Polina’s arms. A Healer brought Cordie to an empty bed to calm her down.
“None of this makes sense,” Baz muttered.
Polina looked at him, worrying her lip. “I may have done something.” She fished out two silver lockets from her pocket, laying them on the bed. “I took both Thames’s and Louka’s memories and imbued them in these. The pertinent ones, at least. I haven’t shown Cordie yet, but… I needed someone else to know.”
Baz’s heart raced as he reached for the lockets. He’d nearly forgotten about Polina’s Enshriner magic—the ability to extract memories from the dead. He hesitated before touching the lockets. “What did you see?”
Polina shook her head. “I can’t say. You have to see for yourself.”
Baz wasn’t sure hewantedto, given the sickly tint to Polina’s face. But he had to. “How does it work?”
“Put the necklace on and open the locket. It’ll pull you into the memories it contains. You won’t be…yourselfwhen you’re there. You’ll experience the memories through the bearer’s eyes, with their thoughts, their feelings.” She handed him the bigger of the two lockets. “Start with this one.”
Haltingly, Baz slipped the chain over his head. With fingers that were surprisingly steady, he opened the locket—and gasped as the infirmary and everyone in it disappeared. As Baz himself disappeared, his mind replaced with another’s.
“This isn’t working.”
Cornelius’s frustration was evident as he shoved his journal aside, nearly knocking over an ink pot. Thames looked up from where he sat reading on Cornelius’s bed. The sheets were undone from theirearlier tumble, and Thames luxuriated in the silky feel of them on his skin.
Cornelius ran a hand through his hair, mouth set in a petulant line as he leaned back in his desk chair. It always fascinated Thames, how close to the surface Cornelius’s emotions were when he wasn’t out in public—when he wasn’t being the unflappable scholar everyone saw him as, but the passionate idealist Thames knew.
“What are you thinking?” Thames pried.
Cornelius rubbed pensively at his lip. “For the experiment to truly be successful, I would have to not interfere. Let them fight for their lives on their own, without my healing magic to fall back on.”
“And if they don’t survive?” Thames asked. “Surely people will notice if Aldryn’s best and brightest start dropping like flies.”
Cornelius gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re right.”
Pride soared in Thames’s chest at this small recognition of his worth. “You could keep it outside of the Selenic Order,” he suggested. “The Bicentennial would provide the perfect cover-up.”
