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I frown, even though it sends more pain shooting through my skull. The last thing I remember is the formal dinner. Is this the same night?

Saturna opens her eyes and looks at me.

“Baz?”

She gets up and carefully approaches me, my coat still around her shoulders and now I can see the front of it close up. It smells like iron and it’s saturated, the fabric gone a brown-black that catches the candlelight. Wet. Wet with blood.

“I’m here, you’re alright,” she says soothingly and sits on the edge of the bed.

“What day is it? What date is it?” I ask. My voice is low and strange, raw at the edges, the sound of it unfamiliar. “Is this your room? Why am I in your room?”

She gingerly takes my hand in both of hers and her hands are just as cold as mine are and tells me the date.

The date is three weeks past the last one I have in my head, the formal dinner.

I give my head a shake but that sends another wave of pain through my head.

“Try not to move,” she says.

I pinch my eyes shut, my mind reeling. “I don’t understand.”

“I know. This…isn’t going to be easy for you.” She pauses. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

I tell her as it comes back to me. She’s right, it isn’t easy for me.

“I…I remember…it’s all fuzzy, like I’m seeing through a spiderweb. But I remember the formal. I remember…calling you a witch.”

Her mouth opens. Closes. Her eyes go to my throat and come back.

“That’s it?”

I swallow hard. It burns.

“Yes, I think.” The problem is, thinking hurts. It’s like my brain refuses to do it.

But then her hand grips mine tighter and that motion triggers a flash of something.

“Wait, I remember something else,” I say and she straightens up attentively. “I was…lying down and you were holding my hand. I was on the floor of the Midnight Classroom and you were holding on to me and you said…you said…”

You died.

I let out a laugh at the memory. “You said I died.”

I look at her face but she’s not laughing. I’ve never seen her so serious.

“What?” I ask warily.

She rubs her lips together for a moment then gives me a stiff smile.

“You did die, Baz.”

I blink at her. She must be joking. I don’t know why she’s joking with me when I’m already losing my memories but⁠—

“You were murdered.”

“I beg your pardon?!”

She nods. “It’s true. You died in the Midnight Classroom. I don’t know when or how long you had been there, but you were very dead when I found you. I brought you back a few hours ago.”