23. Lily
LILY
She found her mom folding laundry and watching TV in the sitting room. Slinging her bag to the ground, she collapsed next to her on the striped loveseat. Magnolia glanced at her and wrinkled her nose before picking a leaf out of her daughter’s hair.
“Sorry. Woods.” She picked up the remote and paused the show, pulling a pile of towels into her lap to fold.
“I would have gone hiking with you if you wanted to get outside. Gran too. I feel like we’ve barely seen you since the semester started.”
It was true, Lily realized, with a pang of guilt. She’d been so caught up in classes and alchemy and—a snide voice in her mind noted—Allsaires. No, Sebastian. This was perfect hiking weather, some of the last she’d have with her mom.
“Let’s go tomorrow. Hike and lunch across the river?”
“It’s a date.”
Lily warmed inwardly as she saw the pleasure run through her mother. Magnolia took the towels from her lap.
“So, what do you want?”
“What?” Lily said, faux-innocent.
“You only ever help with laundry when you want something.”
“Only information.”
“Only information,” her mom mimicked. “At least you’ve stopped asking for a pony.”
Allsaires probably has a horse. Several. Falconstone, the Allsaires estate, was farther upstate, though she knew he’d gone to prep school in the City.
“Did you go to school with anyone from House Allsaires?”
Her mother froze. Lily’s brow puckered in surprise.
“Why do you ask?”
“Uh, Allsaires—Sebastian—is my lab partner for alchemy. I was just wondering.”
“You should get a new partner then.” Her mom’s voice was carefully even, too even.
“Why? What happened?”
“Wasn’t he the one who pushed you and broke your laptop?”
“Oh, yeah.” Somehow, impossibly, Lily had forgotten. She wondered if she needed to entirely reevaluate that interaction. Probably.
“That family is rotten. Growing up, I was actually betrothed to Reginald Allsaires.”
“What! His brother?”
“Uncle.”
“Huh?” She’d thought that Sebastian’s father had been an only child.
“You know how sometimes the Houses will make matches? Well, your grandfather and that boy’s grandfather thought to join their houses.
The two oldest Great Houses in America coming together had been something they’d been angling at for ages, and when I was born, they could finally make it happen, so they entered Reg and me into a betrothal. ”
“And then you met Dad?”
“And then Reginald died.”
Lily gaped. “What? How?”
“No one is quite sure, but Fabian Allsaires claimed that Reg fell from one of the towers, either by accident or on purpose.”
“He committed suicide?”
Her mother leveled her with a cutting gaze. “I knew Reginald my whole life—he was one of the happiest people I ever met.”
“But still, just because someone looks happy—”
“Spare me the Psych 101, daughter. Fabian Allsaires killed his brother; I’m certain.”
Lily sank back into the sofa’s embrace. “Wow.” She imagined Sebastian, growing up in a mansion with blood soaked into its marble floors, with a father who’d kill for an inheritance.
“Would you have married him? Reginald?”
“I don’t know,” her mother said, honestly. “Probably. We were friends, though he was older, more like a cousin or a brother, and…anyway, it’s impossible to say.”
She tried to imagine that world. Would she still exist? Would she be full-blooded and un-cursed? Would she be an Allsaires? She shuddered. Then she imagined her mom at roughly Lily’s age, losing her friend, finding love in a diner, everything else. Fuck.
“Why would you raise me in society? After everything that’s happened? With everything you know?”
Her mom set down her folding. “It’s the last thing I wanted.
I hoped you’d be…I hoped you’d be like your father, but you came out bursting with power.
The Covenant—I had no choice.” She pulled Lily against her and pressed her chin into the top of her head.
“All I could do was raise you with open eyes and dream that maybe you could change things for the better.”
Lily’s throat thickened. “I’m not doing a very good job, then.”
“You don’t have to. It was too much to put on you. ” Her mother’s tears wet her hair.
Sebastian was alone in the library of the Metaphysics building when she arrived. It was small, as far as collections went, and the books were tucked behind glass cases lining the wall, but it was cozy, untrafficked, and open all night, making it one of her favorite non-hidden study spots.
He looked up as she arrived, and she couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at him, squinting as she drew closer.
“Are you wearing makeup?”
He blushed beneath his contouring. “Full face. Apparently part of making up with Tori included her cashing in on some favors. She made me model for her blog.”
Lily was vaguely aware that Beaumont had a fashion blog and a large social media following. She’d never looked into it, but now she was curious.
“That explains the ascot then.”
“Cravat, actually.” His flush deepened. “I didn’t have time to change.” Tori had done an exquisite job on his makeup. His hazel eyes were as bright as spring moss after rain.
“It’s a good look; modern Byronic.”
Seb laughed as he shrugged out of his black coat, and she found herself smiling along. “She’d be very pleased to hear that.”
“Where’d you shoot? Library?” She imagined him standing like this, with his riding boots, long coat, and high collar, the evening light splitting him into golden diamonds, and had to catch herself.
“Sibelius. Asher has access for his music major.”
Lily slid into the seat next to him as he pulled out sheaves of paper and spread them on the table. She pulled one, on which he had sketched the symbols from the ring in unsteady black lines, over to her.
“I swear I know these,” she said again, feeling once more that only a thin veil parted her from understanding.
“Me too,” he sighed.
“Has the ring done anything?”
Sebastian examined his hand. “Nothing.”
“So, the Words, then.”
“I think they’re instructions, a guideline, more than a clue—a reminder to go back to fundamentals.”
“That’s not bad.” She shuffled through facsimiles of Windermere’s letters, then stopped. “Wait, what’s this?”
His knee knocked hers, hard, as he jolted. “Is it the symbols?”
“No, it’s a letter. I think it mentions alchemy, but his handwriting is terrible. Almost—” She stopped short of insulting him to his face and pushed it toward him.
“Almost as bad as mine,” he agreed, even though she hadn’t said it.
He squinted, then cast an illuminating cantrip.
“It’s definitely alchemy. Windermere says, ‘The Noble Art, that which brings order through the instructions laid out in the Emerald Tablet: “What is below is like that which is above, and what is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracle of the one thing.”’”
“Holy Vexiliar.”* Lily gasped. “Think about the Words:
From the AEther all is made
Through water, wind, and heat and clay
Find truth in unknown; death in doubt
Still the mind and cast fear out
Be as a channel, still as a stream
Let all that’s mystic flow through me.”
They stared at each other. “Do you think it’s alchemical? Are the Words alchemical? Where did they come from?” Lily’s mind spun off in a dozen different directions.
“I have no idea,” he said quietly, his eyes unfocused on a middle distance. “It sounds like it though. It’s terrifically elemental.”
“Who’s that letter to?” Lily pulled it gently out of his hands. “‘My Argent Lune?’” She frowned at him.
“Silver moon?”
“Well, that’s definitely alchemic. Silver is the metal that corresponds to the moon.” Her heart picked up speed. “We should try to figure out who this is, and any other letters he wrote to them.”
Sebastian folded forward and thunked his head lightly on the table.
“What?”
When he raised his head, it was to prop it up in his hands. “Windermere wrote thousands of letters. And we can’t just go to the reference librarian with this. I’m positive that Violet Bellarius has already bribed them.”
“Could we write a spell?”
“Actually, yes. Actually.” He shot up again, this time slamming his knee into the tabletop, and swore. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” She watched him stuff papers back into his book bag in no discernible order. She gritted her teeth and resolved to get him a binder.
“As above, so below? I know exactly where to find that on campus.”
She followed him to the lake, just down the hill from the Metaphysics building. His black coat billowed in a truly Byronic fashion as he jogged. He stopped on the bridge over the small dam that kept the creek from overflowing.
“You think there’s a clue here?”
“No, but it’s one of my favorite places to think, and it seems apropos given the topic. Come on.” He shrugged off the coat and spread it flat on the bridge.
He lay down on his back, head toward the lake and feet toward the woods, then wiggled so that his head hung over the edge of the bridge.
“Like this,” he said, his voice nasal from the awkward position.
Skeptical, Lily joined him, trying to ignore the pressure of his shoulder against hers. He twisted to look at her. “No, farther.”
She obeyed, and suddenly the world was upside down. Surprise bubbled in her chest. “Oh!”
“See?”
From this angle, on this perfectly calm night, it was impossible to distinguish the reflection of the sky on the glass-still surface of the pond from the sky itself.
Two sets of stars, two waning moons, two strands of vaporous clouds, all backed by the hypnotic rush of water tumbling over a stone wall.
“As above, so below,” she mused.
“As above, so below,” he echoed. “I used to come here a lot, when I needed to get outside my head.”
“It’s a good place to forget yourself,” she agreed. “It kind of feels like you’re drowning, but…”
Even though the water was loud, this close together, they didn’t need to raise their voices.
“I’ve never shown this to anyone.” It sounded less like a confession and more like a realization. “Not even…”
“Hawleyhurst?”
“Yeah.”
Lily wriggled back toward the dam, her brain pulsing with blood.
“Watch your head,” he said, putting his hand up to block her from smacking her forehead on the railing.
They sat on his coat, leaning against the railing, Sebastian with one leg stretched out, Lily’s knees drawn into her chin. She rested her head on her arms, looking at him sideways under her bangs. In the dark he was mostly the suggestion of a boy, except for his white shirt.
“He wasn’t just your friend, was he?”
Sebastian took a long time to respond, and for a horrible moment she thought she’d crossed a line. She was about to apologize when he finally answered.
“No, he wasn’t just a friend.” He tipped his head back, eyelids pressing closed. His whole body sagged.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though she had no idea what it was like to lose a lover, having never had one. She wondered how long they’d been together—years, maybe. Their friendship had been notorious before she’d even started at Windermere, a “legendary bromance.” So much for that.
“Thanks.”
“So, you’re not out?”
He laughed bitterly. “That’s why we broke up.
I wanted to be together, publicly, and he...
didn’t.” His sigh could have leveled civilizations.
“I get it, of course. Obviously. My parents probably would have disinherited me, especially since they’re banking hard on me marrying someone with ovaries—not that it matters since they already have the heir in Reg, but… ”
She remembered her conversation with her mom about Fabian Allsaires maybe, probably, pushing his older brother out of a tower window and shuddered. Sebastian turned to her.
“Are you cold?”
“No,” she said quickly, quickly enough that a few seconds later she realized she wanted to say “yes.” “Anyway,” she said. “But.”
“Yeah.”
“You were in love.”
“Yeah.” He laughed lightly, a laugh to break your heart. “Really, really in love. Have you ever?”
“Been in love?” It was hard not to laugh. “No. Who would fall in love with Leper Lily?”
“I wasn’t sure if maybe there was someone normal—” He caught his mistake too late. “Shit. I didn’t mean, of course you wouldn’t—”
“It’s fine.” She cast blindly for something else to say, to keep the conversation going. She wanted it to keep going. Interesting. “It’s hard to imagine you with him. Hawleyhurst.”
This time his silence seemed more like the silence of trying to find a way around something.
“He’s not the person I thought he was.”
She chewed on that for a moment. “People seldom are, I guess. Case in point.” She gestured between them. “I would not have bet on this.”
“Me either,” he chuckled. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. You’re just…easy to talk to.”
No one had ever told her she was easy to talk to.
“It’s because no one talks to me. You don’t have to worry about gossip,” she said bluntly, offering the out.
He considered, gazing at the moon. “I don’t think that’s it. I think you might actually just be secretly cool, Lily Perkins.”
Her insides did a wild dance, all full of leaps and spins.
“How kind of you, Sebastian Allsaires. I think you might actually be secretly not-an-asshole.”
Washed in white moonlight, he pouted. Byronically. “That’s not a secret.”
“It was to me.”
“Touché.” She liked his chuckle, liked coaxing it out of his serious jawline. “Do you want to get together tomorrow? Dance? Alchemy?”
She smiled into the dark as she repeated, “Dance and alchemy.”
“Hard to beat.”
“I’m going hiking with my mom and Gran in the afternoon.”
“Oh,” he said a little too quickly, hiding disappointment that turned to effervescence in her ears. “Well, that’s—”
“I’m free in the evening.” She was glad he couldn’t really see her face, for the stupid grin on it. “I’ll text you.”
“It’s a date.”
He didn’t mean it like that, she knew, but as he walked her back to her bike, she kind of wished he did.
* Vexiliar (1436–1509) was an AEtheric polymath whose work spanned numerous disciplines, but he is best known as the father of modern aegistics. His ideas and inventions are so influential and widely used that he has reached near-mythic proportions in AEtheric Society.