A white sheet covers the rest of my body, but underneath it, an intense itch crawls up, around, and over my arms. An awkward roll dislodges one limb; then panic rises. Thick layers of gauze wrap my right arm from knuckle to elbow. I yank my left shoulder back to confirm what the itching is already telling me, but the bedding catches.

“Careful,” Nick cautions. He folds the sheet back to expose my left arm, bandaged identically to the first. “You were injured.”

“Where am I?” I croak. My throat feels like sandpaper someone set on fire.

“I brought you to our healer.” Nick reaches for a glass of water on a bedside table behind him. There’s a straw crooked out of the top, and he brings the glass closer. It’s awkward, and it makes me feel like a child, but I’m too thirsty to turn him down.

He didn’t really answer my question, and I’m sure he knows that, but there are other ways to figure out where I am.

The room is comfortable in an expensive ski lodge sort of way, but the building feels old: furniture and wallpaper done in heavy fabrics and textures no one uses in updated homes. Tall ceilings, mahogany hardwood floors in wide planks. To my right, an upholstered seat below a tall window cracked open to the night—and the chirping of crickets. No lights beyond the glass pane. In the distance, the Bell Tower erupts in Westminster Quarters—the opening notes of the melody clear, but not close. Near campus, then.

I finish drinking. Nick puts the glass down and moves to the window seat to sit, his expression solemn. Nothing like the Nick I met outside Lenoir. “What do you remember?”

I frown, images coming in quick flashes: light in the sky. Running. Nick, wielding a sword. A monster. My eyes key to his in an instant. “You killed it.”

He nods. “I killed it.”

The Bell Tower chimes the hour. One. Two.

“You saved me.” Three.

He holds my gaze—four—nods again. Five.

A realization, clear and true before I even speak it aloud. “You’re Legendborn.” Six.

He inclines his head. “Yep. You must be a new Page? William said he didn’t recognize you.”

I shake my head. Seven.

He frowns, studying my face. “But you saw the hellhound—” When the tower strikes eight, Nick goes still as a statue.

I honestly don’t know who’s more stunned, him or me. We search each other’s faces, as if the next step in this conversation might be written on our skin. Nine. Ten. All I see are the hard lines of his jaw and his eyes, wide and wary. The strands of his straw-colored hair are still darkened from perspiration. Eleven. Silence.

Eleven o’clock—not quite three hours since we met. Close to campus. In an old building. Historic home, maybe. All clues, folded together.