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“Baz…” she whispers, as if to herself, and looks away. Then she gets up.

I reach out and grab her hand.

“Where are you going?”

“To the chair. I need to sleep.”

“Sleep in the bed,” I tell her.

“What?”

“Sleep in the bed. Not the chair. You look worse than I do.”

She laughs. “You haven’t even seen yourself. I’m fine in the chair.”

“You are not fine in the chair. Please.”

Her eyes dart from the chair, to the bed, to me.

“If I’m in the bed, I’m not touching you. You need to heal and⁠—”

“I won’t lay a hand on you,” I tell her, showing her my palms. “What makes you think I would?”

She stares right into my eyes for a second, a look that’s both unreadable and makes me flinch. Interesting.

“Please,” I say. “This is your room and if you don’t take the bed, I’m going to sleep in the chair.”

She lets out an exasperated sigh and looks up at the ceiling, as if looking for support.

Then she comes over to the bed. She doesn’t get under the quilt, though, she lies on top of it on her side, facing me, close enough that there’s only a couple of inches between us—the bed isn’t very big. Her face on the pillow is close to mine and she’s staring at me, her face still unreadable.

“I’ll put the candle out in a minute,” she says through a yawn.

“I won’t wake you,” I promise.

She reaches up and tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, and the gesture is so ordinary, so gentle, it makes me feel like my heart was stabbed too. I close my eyes because looking at her is too much and I’m being pulled under by whatever witchy potion she put on my back and the last thing I think is that I need to find three things: what I did in the month I lost, what she did to herself tonight, and who I’m going to make answer for both.

Or maybe four things.

When I died, where did I go?

Chapter

Twenty-Three

SATURNA

It’s early, just enough of that first light, that murky grey coming in through the window, to let me know I survived the night.

I take stock of my body, slowly. I feel like death, which is ironic. My neck is sore from not properly being on the pillow the whole night, and my feet are two cold stones at the end of my legs. Inside, I’m exhausted to the very core of me, heart and soul, as if the cost of my necromancy is slowly catching up, as if bringing him back to life meant I lost just a little bit of mine.

I don’t move for a bit as I think that over. My grandmother never told me the cost of true necromancy. The grimoire doesn’t explain it. I’ve never come across it in any of the books I’ve read, though I’m sure the information is out there somewhere, at least in speculation. Perhaps if I were a better witch I would know this. I would know exactly the price I’d pay for his resurrection. But all I can do is watch for signs. Maybe it shaved off ten years of my life. Twenty? Fifty? Is there a ticking clock set in motion now, counting down?

I turn over carefully and see Baz is on his side, facing me, deep asleep. His head is fully on the pillow, which explains why mine wasn’t. His color is better. Not good, since he looks like someone who has lost a great deal of blood and is still catching up to the fact, but better. The scar at his throat in the pre-dawn is a thin pale line, nothing like the raw ridge from last night, and he is breathing evenly. I’d never seen him asleep before and despite all he’s gone through, he’s absolutely beautiful. There’s a youthfulness to him now that smooths out all his hard lines, his features softly sculpted. He looks at peace.

And he’s alive and in my bed.

It’s all I could have asked for.