42. Seb
SEB
Almost overnight, the entire Windermere bubble morphed.
At ten o’clock on Sunday the second clue arrived, ringing out in dorms and lounges across campus.
In their suite, sprawled across the couch, Asher started a voice memo and Seb scrawled frantically in his journal.
Tori narrowed her eyes, listening keenly.
Unlike after the Revelation, which had left ninety-nine percent of the student body scoffing and cursing, this clue roused them to frantic action on account of resembling an actual lead.
“I don’t understand what they’re all up in arms about already!” Tori had said, slamming her book shut as yet another clash began on their floor. “There’s not even anything to fight over yet.”
“Well, there is,” Seb had replied slyly. “They just don’t have it.”
He’d won his bout earlier that afternoon.
It hadn’t been pretty, but he’d gotten the job done.
A sort of disappointed ache had ebbed through him all day, after he’d texted Lily when he woke up and she’d said she couldn’t make his match.
All he’d wanted was to see her, touch her, fit her to his side, and the world was denying him.
It was probably for the best. No Lily meant time for homework, going to bed at a reasonable hour even if he just stared at the ceiling for ages, and to bring Asher and Tori up to speed. He told them everything about the night before.
Now, over a week later, his Sunday pining seemed silly because here he was, on the couch with Lily curled up against him, doing her psychology homework while he tried to write a paper and thought about her naked instead and tried to ignore texts from Adriana as he stared at his blinking cursor.
“Now that we’re friends, will you tell me what your curse is?” Tori asked from the window seat.
Lily assessed her coolly. “Are we friends?”
Tori flapped the question away. “Friends in the making,” she amended.
“Well, then.” Tori waited, eyebrows lifted. “Oh. No,” Lily said shortly and went back to her textbook.
“Speaking of, I can barely see your…” Asher gestured vaguely from the kitchen.
“Curse aura?” she offered.
“That,” he agreed, placing four mugs of tea on a tray.
Lily shrugged. “I don’t know how it works.” She turned to Seb, tipping her head at his blank screen. “Can you see it?”
“Not in weeks.” He couldn’t stop from flushing.
Lily made a minute noise of satisfaction and snuggled closer. He flipped his laptop closed.
“How much more reading do you have left?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I could be done.”
“Do you have the disc?”
She produced it from her pocket and dropped it into his palm. It was warm from her body heat. He turned it etched-side up and sighed. If there was an obvious meaning he was supposed to take from it, and the second clue, he wasn’t nearly as clever as he’d thought.
“Where did this hole come from? Did we do something wrong?” Lily rested her chin on his shoulder.
“I don’t think so. It’s too perfect.”
Tori looked up from her book. Seb tossed her the disc and she snatched it from the air easily with one hand. Lily stared. She didn’t know Tori had once played Cantrèa, had once had a different name on her license.
“Nice weight to this thing. No clue what it is.” She tossed it idly, then threw it back to Lily.
Seb peered over Lily’s shoulder. “Shit,” he sighed. “I think we only have part of it.”
“What?” Lily slumped.
“It feels…incomplete. What’s this design on it? Why the hole?”
Lily hefted the disc and held it up, squinting through the center at the foggy night, and made a noise of surprise. “What if it shows us something? Like a hag stone? Those are real, right?”
The suite went quiet. Lily’s face froze in the frown that Seb was learning meant her brain was working furiously.
“What if,” she said quietly, “what if we are missing a second piece? Either it has a missing half that fits this hole, or looking through it in the right place—or with the right object—will reveal something otherwise hidden?”
She looked around the room as if she were worried about them mocking her. The smile crept onto Seb’s face slowly, starting in the corner of his mouth before spreading widely.
“No wonder you got her help on this instead of ours.” Asher pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned deeper into his nest of pillows.
Tori turned to Seb. “You’re lucky she’s not in our year.”
“Why?” Lily asked.
“Because then he wouldn’t be valedictorian.”
Asher blew on his mug of tea, catching Seb’s eye in that slow, knowing way he often did when he was about to say something horribly obvious that Seb hadn’t considered yet.
“You know only one of you can win, right?”
“I was thinking,” he said later, tugging the collar of Lily’s coat snug around her neck and leaving his hands there as she tipped her gaze up to him, bangs parting on her forehead. “If we find it—when we find it—it’s yours. The prize. Whatever it is.”
Lily didn’t react like he’d expected; in fact, she didn’t react at all.
“No,” she said simply.
He sighed, his breath turning to mist between them. He wasn’t surprised she’d turned him down but hadn’t expected such bluntness.
“You’ve done most of the work, you’ve earned it more already. Besides, I’ve already won twice. I don’t need it.”
“Nobody needs it,” she scoffed. “I already told you I don’t want it. You do.”
“How can you know you don’t want something when you don’t even know what it is?” He pressed his forehead to hers, exasperated, pulling her toward him by the collar.
“How can you know you do?”
“Simple.” He laughed. “I have a compulsion to prove myself. I don’t want everything handed to me. I don’t want to be an asshole.”
“But everything has been handed to you!” She looked suddenly very tired. “I’m not saying that you don’t work hard, but you haven’t just made good choices—you had good choices.”
He released her then, let his arms fall to his sides, and stared over her shoulder. He could almost be angry if she weren’t right. Her words didn’t shock him; they emptied him. He felt her eyes on his face, but he couldn’t meet them. Inside her words he could feel the opposing truth, about herself.
“Then how am I supposed to do it? Earn my life?”
She laughed bitterly. “You don’t. You just have to deal with your privilege.”
He bit his tongue as he looked down at her shoes, well-worn canvas high-tops.
“Take the Elumnara,” he said, filled with desperate conviction. “When we win. Take it.”
She pressed her eyes closed. “I can’t.”
“Why?” But he knew why, as soon as he said it.
“It would be wasted on me.”
“Because of your curse?”
She shifted uncomfortably, her face agonized in the parking lot light.
“Because of my curse.” Her confirmation was an echo.