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"You're lost?"
I spin so fast my boots skid on the marble. Leon's right there, close enough that I catch the wine on his breath, close enough that I have to tip my chin up to look at him.
"Get out of my way."
"Wrong floor for the infirmary." He doesn't move. "East tower. You're headed for the archives."
My palm is on fire. Not real fire—I checked, no blister, no mark anyone else can see—but it burns like someone pressed a coal into my skin and held it there. I press my hand flat against my thigh so he won't notice me flinching.
"There was a body," I say, before I can stop myself. "At the high table. A first year. He died."
Leon blinks. Then he laughs—short, confused, not cruel. "What?"
"You were sitting three seats down from him. You watched him drink from that cup."
"Nobody died at dinner." He says it slow, like he's talking to someone who might be drunk. "I'd remember that."
That's the problem. Nobody remembers.
Six hours ago the banquet hall went dead silent and a boy hit the floor with black liquid pouring out of his mouth. I watched it happen. Then I blinked and he was laughing two tables over like nothing touched him. Same conversations. Same wine. The clock on the wall hadn't moved a single minute.
"Forget it," I say, and shove past him.
He doesn't follow. I don't look back to check.
The basement smells like preservative herbs and something colder underneath—the same smell that used to hang on my master's coat after he came back from the cemetery with a sack of bones. I follow it down two flights until I hit a door with no handle, just a ward humming across the wood like heat off a stove.
I press my palm flat against it.
The mark under my skin flares white-hot and the ward shatters—not loud, just a crack like ice giving way, then nothing. The door swings in on its own.
Four slabs. Stone, cold, empty—except one.
I cross the room before my brain catches up with my legs. My hands are shaking so bad it takes two tries to get the sheet off his face.
It's him. Same face from the banquet. Same black veins crawling up from his collar like something's rotting him from the inside.
He's not supposed to be here. He's upstairs right now, alive, laughing at some girl's joke.
So who is this?
I grab his wrist to check for a pulse I already know isn't there, and that's when I see it. A mark on his palm. Circle, lines radiating out like a broken clock face.
Same as mine.
Footsteps on the stairs.
"—don't care what Verne says, we seal this floor until we know what we're dealing with."
Two voices. Prefects. Getting closer.
I drop his hand and duck behind the far slab, back against cold stone, breath held so tight my chest aches.
"Poison doesn't leave marks like that," one of them says, right outside the door now.
"Then what is it?"
"That's why we seal the—wait. The ward's broken."
Boots on stone. Closer.
"Someone's been in here. Check the corners."
There's nowhere to go. No window. No second door. Just me, two corpses, and about four seconds before they find me crouched behind a dead body in a restricted morgue on my first night at this school.
The door bangs open again.
"Gentlemen."
Leon's voice.
I don't breathe.
"Wald, this area's restricted," one prefect snaps.
"I know. Looking for Selina. Kael said she'd be down here cataloging reagents."
"She's not."
"You sure? He seemed pretty insistent."
A pause. Someone shifts their weight.
"We haven't seen her," the other one says. "Try the east lab."
Leon doesn't leave. I hear him step further in, slow, casual, like he's got all night. "That the kid from orientation? Thought he got sick."
"None of your business."
"Sure it is. He's in my house. I'll have to write his family."
Longer pause this time.
"Fine. Yes. It's him. Now get out before we report you."
"Fair enough." A beat. "One thing, though—if he got sick at dinner, why's he already down here instead of the infirmary?"
Nobody answers that.
"Anyway." Footsteps retreating. "I'll get out of your hair."
The prefects grumble about entitled nobles and boundary wards and finally follow him out. I count to sixty after the last footstep fades before my legs will hold me up.
Leon's waiting at the top of the stairs, hands in his pockets, looking way too pleased with himself.
"You're welcome."
"I didn't ask for help."
"You broke into a morgue. That's an automatic suspension. You're welcome anyway."
I keep walking. He falls into step beside me, easy, like we do this every day.
"How did you even know I was down there?"
"Followed you. You're not exactly subtle, new girl."
I want to hit him. I settle for walking faster, which does nothing because his legs are longer than mine.
"You want to tell me what you're actually doing?" he says. "Because breaking wards isn't a scholarship-kid hobby."
I stop dead in the corridor. He stops too, close enough that I can see the torchlight catching gold in his eyes, close enough that neither of us steps back first.
"You really don't remember him dying," I say. "Any of you."
"Remember what?"
I almost tell him everything—the reset, the mark, the six hours that didn't happen for anyone but me. The words are right there in my throat. But what if I say it out loud and I'm the only one this is happening to? What if that makes it real in a way I can't take back?
"Forget it," I say again, and this time I mean it enough that he doesn't follow.
I'm three steps from the main hall when the scream hits.
High. Sharp. Cut off way too fast.
It's coming from the east tower.
I run toward it instead of away, which is probably the stupidest thing I've done tonight, and tonight the bar is already pretty high.
A crowd's already formed at the base of the stairs by the time I get there. Prefects shoving people back, someone sobbing, someone else shouting for a professor. I push through elbows and shoulders until I'm at the front.
A girl's on the landing. First year, same as me. Her neck's bent at an angle necks don't bend. Her eyes are still open.
And on her palm, glowing faint under the torchlight, is the same broken-clock symbol burning into my skin right now.
I back out of the crowd on legs that don't feel like mine. My chest's so tight I can't get a full breath in.
Two bodies. Two marks. And nobody but me seems to remember either one dying.
I look down at my palm. The symbol's brighter now than it's ever been, and underneath the light there's something I didn't notice before.
Numbers.
A countdown, ticking down in real time.
05:43:12.
05:43:11.
A hand closes around my wrist from behind—cold, tight, not Leon's.
"You shouldn't be able to see that," a voice says low against my ear. "Which means you're already marked to die next."