41. Lily
LILY
Somehow, she slept, snatching fitful hours after crawling into bed shortly before dawn and staring at the ceiling, feeling wired and unreal.
They’d melted the ring, and with exhausting casting, managed to hold it all together.
In the end, the crucible had bequeathed them a disc with a hole in the center the size of a penny.
It was made up of five concentric circles in a spectrum that began with gold in the center, followed by red, white, and black.
A depression in the shape of a maze or a labyrinth had etched itself into the surface of the disk, to what purpose neither of them had any clue.
Seb had insisted on driving her home in his ridiculous car, and then they’d kissed outside her house in his ridiculous car until he’d groaned about having Cantrèa later and she’d leapt out onto the sidewalk.
She’d turned the disc over in her hands, rubbing her fingers along the inscription that had appeared there, until she fell asleep with it pressed beneath her pillow. When she dreamed, she dreamt about a door in the darkness, and blood.
It took a long time for her to unearth herself from beneath her comforter.
Her limbs were leaden and her head filled with cottony static, as if she were hungover.
She replayed the night, snippets of memory already indelibly etched into her brain, trying to convince herself that it wasn’t a dream; trying to convince herself that it was, so she wouldn’t be disappointed when she came to her senses.
She tugged open her curtains and gazed down at Fountain Avenue.
The world looked exactly the same. The world looked completely different.
Zombie-like, she shuffled over to her dresser, pulled a brush through her bed head, stared at the Lily in the mirror.
With the exception of the split upper lip, she looked pretty much the same. She was completely different.
It changed her appearance subtly—or the way she saw herself, at least—being kissed.
Knowing that you were kissable. Kissable too, not just by any desperate boy, but by someone you wanted.
The faint freckles across her cheeks? They looked different after someone had counted and kissed every one.
Her mouth, split lip and all, looked a little more lush, knowing that Sebastian Allsaires had kissed that mouth until his own lips were raw.
This is not a dream.
In a daze, she made her way to the kitchen, where her mom had made cornbread and was filling up a hiking pack. Lily blinked at her. Her mom frowned back.
“Are you sleepwalking? How late were you out last night? What happened to your face?”
“Late,” Lily croaked. “I ended up going to the dance and I tripped.”
She didn’t feel great about the lie, but she didn’t feel bad about it either.
It was easier than explaining she’d spent the entire night working on the Elumnara with Sebastian Allsaires—never mind kissing him—both things her mother had told her to stay away from last time she checked.
Maybe this was what it felt like to be a teenager.
“Uh huh. Tripped.” Her mom gave her a specific look. “Are you still up for our hike? We’re supposed to leave in an hour.”
She’d forgotten. Shit.
“I told—I was going to go to the Cantrèa bouts today. They got moved because of the dance.”
Her mother fixed her with a guilt-inducing look. “Surely you can miss a single match.”
“But I—”
No. This was what it was like to be a teenager.
She didn’t want to upset her mom, wanted to go hiking, even though her legs felt like sandbags.
But she didn’t want to go hiking as much as she wanted to watch Sebastian destroy Gregory Perrault with his blazing, sun-like magic.
She definitely didn’t want to go hiking as much as she wanted to make out with Sebastian after the match, run her hands through his sweat-tacky hair, unbutton the high neck of his uniform to expose the V of his throat.
She had not been adequately prepared for the single-minded viciousness of her desire, once it was set loose.
“Lily?”
Jesus.
She snapped her eyes to her mom, accepted the coffee pot, and dragged herself over to the hutch that held the mugs.
“Today is supposed to be one of the last nice days before it starts getting really cold.”
Last nice days. She remembered then that what her mom was trying to say was that this was one of their last chances to hike together. Period. Full stop.
Somehow, impossibly, she’d forgotten.
The coffee pot almost slipped from her hand. She caught herself on the hutch.
Sebastian doesn’t know.
She should tell him. She had to tell him.
“Honey?”
“I’ll be ready, don’t worry,” she gulped out.
No. Telling him was the last thing she should do.
Whatever had happened last night, she didn’t know what it was, what it meant, if it was even anything at all.
Telling Sebastian she was due to die on the summer solstice would certainly send him running in the opposite direction.
Besides, he was graduating in the spring and was planning on going off to Oxford.
This had to be a temporary thing for him.
He’d want a clean break at the end of the year anyway.
She was sure of it.
She tried to convince herself she was sure of it.