Chapter 4 Baz
ONE SECOND, BAZ WAS IN the god’s workshop, and the next, he was once again standing on the windswept cove of Dovermere, half-hidden behind a rocky outcrop as he watched himself emerge from the sea.
It was the oddest thing in the world to see himself not as a reflection in a mirror or a face in someone’s memories, but the real him as he had been the night he and Kai appeared in the past. Glasses askew, drenched and shivering from the cold, so pale as he fought for breath.
From his vantage point, Baz couldn’t hear the words his past self and Kai exchanged, holding on to each other so tightly as the rising tide rolled in around them, but he remembered in vivid detail how Kai had calmed him. He ached to have that now—Kai’s soothing, solid presence at his side.
But he was alone, and he had no Tides-damned idea what he was doing.
As he watched them retreat down the beach toward Cadence, Baz thought to follow them. Maybe he could stop them before they even set foot at Aldryn.
Just don’t let past Baz see you.
Maybe not, then.
Finally tearing his eyes away from the boy he’d been and the boy he was trying to save, Baz made his way up the secret stairs to the Eclipse commons. He needed a plan, and he needed to be smart about it.
Things he did not wish to change: his relationship with Kai.
All the tiny, beautiful moments that had made butterflies flutter against his ribs, that had sent his heart into a racing gait, that had set all his nerves aflame.
He could not bear a reality in which they never kissed.
A reality in which Kai never peeled off his armor to lay bare his feelings for Baz.
A reality in which Baz never realized that what he felt for Kai had been there all along, slowly evolving into something undeniable.
Things he must change: Kai going through the door with the murderer that was Clover.
One way or another, he had to prevent this one thing.
The Eclipse commons were thankfully empty, Thames and Polina probably at the Bicentennial’s opening ceremony. Baz paced in front of the fireplace, trying to come up with a plan.
He could start small. Leave Kai a note telling him not to go through the door, not to trust Clover—which Kai never really did to begin with, come to think of it.
But would Kai be confused by this so early on?
Be even more suspicious of some ominous note telling him not to do something?
That would probably only entice him to do it more.
Baz could set crumbs. Pave the way for Kai deciding not to follow Clover. Or he could outright expose Clover for what he was. That would solve it. It would solve everything.
But Clover was cunning. He’d left no evidence of what he’d been doing.
Even his journal, which Baz had studied at length, gave nothing away, or was too obscure to make sense of.
Baz would have to catch him in the act. He knew from Thames’s memories about the atrocities Clover had committed: the four students he had killed the night of the velleity party.
Louka, Cordie’s boyfriend, whom he had killed not long after.
If he could make past-Kai and past-Baz see the kind of monster Clover was…
All his pacing made him lose track of time.
Voices outside the commons had Baz scrambling to hide behind the curtains just as Polina came in with his past self and Kai.
Heart pounding wildly in his chest, he stared at the pocket watch in his hand, forgetting which dial would make him invisible.
Was it the one on the left? Or was that the dial that sped up time?
He looked up to see Polina had gone to bed, leaving his past self alone with Kai in front of the fireplace, with Kai staring at him so longingly that it was a wonder past-Baz had ever questioned Kai’s feelings for him.
Baz’s heart swelled to see that look. But it plummeted as he thought of everything the god had said. Maybe he was right, and the past couldn’t be changed, and Baz would never see Kai look at him like this again.
And if this time was all they had together, who was he to change it?
No. I have to try.
Baz turned the knob on the right of the pocket watch—and the scene before him sped up, night bleeding into day, over and over again, until he glimpsed a flash of navy and copper.
He abruptly let go of the knob, and time returned to normal.
In the middle of the commons, his past self stood in a copper suit, and Kai in a navy one.
He recognized these outfits, the trepidation on his own face.
This was the night of the velleity party.
The first of Clover’s murders.
The invisibility worked. It let him pass by Kai and Baz, still getting ready to leave for the party, without them even blinking his way. Brushing past his own face, seeing how nervous he’d been… Tides, this was strange. But he couldn’t linger, had no time to waste.
Baz rushed to the Decrescens library ahead of them, desperately trying to remember where Clover and Thames had hidden the unconscious bodies of the four students they would kill in a twisted experiment once the party ended.
But Baz couldn’t find the bodies. He recalled Clover putting up a ward to shield them from unwanted eyes. If he could pull back the threads of time to before that ward was up, if he could draw past-Baz and Kai’s attention to the bodies… Surely they’d find out Clover had had a hand in this.
Except he was running out of time, knowing full well that past-Baz and Kai would show up any minute now.
He eyed the pocket watch, suddenly remembering the magnifying glass that flicked open on the side.
If it allowed him to view past events, could it show him where Clover and Thames had stashed the bodies?
He brought the magnifying glass up to his eye and peered at the library through it, focusing on the velleity painting that opened onto the secret ballroom beyond it.
It didn’t seem to do anything until he started to see students walking backward out of the secret room, the threads of time unraveling, playing out the scene in reverse for him.
Finally he saw Clover and Thames coming out of the room and followed this strange, rewinding vision of them through the library until they were huddled in a dark corner, standing over the unconscious bodies of Wulfrid and his Eclipse-hating friends.
Baz withdrew the magnifying glass and headed for that same dark corner, where he tripped over something invisible and fell face-first to the floor, the pocket watch shooting out of his hand.
He fumbled to get it back, his hands coming up against something fleshy and warm instead.
A body, most definitely. Dread sluiced through him.
He pulled back the threads of time around what he knew to be four unconscious bodies, until the ward was no longer around them, and they were plainly visible.
But without the pocket watch, Baz was also visible. And those were footsteps coming his way—and his and Kai’s voices drifting toward him.
Baz paused time. Found the pocket watch.
Activated the invisibility knob, then unpaused time and, panicking about how to get Baz and Kai’s attention, knocked a few books to the floor, wincing at the damage.
He couldn’t help himself—he felt like he was hurting the books.
But the resulting noise had the desired effect:
“What was that?”
His past self’s voice, a slight tremor of fear laced through it.
Baz could see himself through the shelves. His past self’s hand had shot out to grab Kai’s arm upon hearing the noise.
“Dark corner of a library where a party’s going on?” Kai said, a sultry note beneath the teasing in his voice. “Isn’t hard to imagine what that was.”
His midnight eyes lingered on Baz’s hand on his arm, before slowly raking up to look at him. They stood so close. Past-Baz looked flustered, cheeks burning red. He quickly removed his hand and cleared his throat.
Tides, even present Baz felt flustered, even as part of him wanted to wrest Kai’s mind out of the gutter. This was serious—and more importantly, this was new. He didn’t remember this conversation happening, which must mean he could change the past.
And yet…
“I don’t like this,” he heard his past self saying.
“The fact that you, Basil Brysden, are going to an actual party? Or the fact that said party goes against the rules?”
“Both.”
This, he remembered.
And as present-Baz watched the scene unfurl, a gutting thought occurred to him.
If he did manage to get past-Baz and Kai’s attention, if they did see the bodies, their night would be over before it could start.
Baz wouldn’t find himself dancing close with Kai, wouldn’t finally come to terms with this attraction between them.
And if not tonight, then when? Would he ever realize he had feelings for Kai or be confident enough to act on them? Would they ever kiss?
Did it matter, if he managed to save Kai in the process?
He glanced at the unconscious students beside him, rethinking his entire plan. Past-Baz and Kai seeing them here would prove nothing. Even if Wulfrid were to talk, it wasn’t enough to prove that Clover and Thames had meant to actually kill them.
This whole thing suddenly felt beyond him. Baz stood frozen with fear, the way he used to be before. Unable to act as a thousand different scenarios ran through his mind, each worse than the last.
What if he messed everything up?
It was the image of the threads of Kai’s fate severing that finally got him moving. He threw another pile of books on the floor, more forcefully this time, just as past-Baz and Kai reached the velleity painting. They looked at each other.
“Now tell me that wasn’t creepy,” past-Baz said.
Kai frowned at the shelves, taking a step toward them.
Yes, just come and have a look, you ass, present-Baz thought, face smushed between the shelves.