78. Seb
SEB
Lily waited a full ten minutes before knocking; longer than he probably would have.
He knew it was mostly transplacement fatigue draining the color from the world, turning annoyances into bonfire fuel, but knowing didn’t stop the seething in his chest. The regional tournaments were always grueling, but usually it was tempered with excitement, the thrill of nights spent drinking in new places with strangers who became friends through forced proximity.
That was how he and Adriana had become friends.
This year, each weekend away from Windermere was an ache, constant and implacable.
He was going through the motions in these bouts, hated that he was playing that way, couldn’t stop.
It was a curse of his—his incapability of anything but full commitment once his mind had been made up.
Trying to split his nature like this would probably destroy him, but he only had two more off-campus weeks before a brief respite and then Nationals, over break in April.
It wasn’t just the time away from campus and the portaling that had his stomach roiling—it was Conrad. He’d been at Dunmoody, and Seb had no idea why or how. The not knowing meant he was left to assume, and his assumptions were darker and darker things, sucking all the light out of him. He—
“Seb?” Lily opened the door, her voice a whisper in case he’d already passed out. “Can I come in?”
He was too far into the malcontent to admit that he wanted her there, but he managed to wiggle a few inches toward the far side of his bed. She joined him, sliding her cold toes under his thigh. She watched him not say anything for a few moments before fluffing a pillow so she could recline.
“Jean van Bergen was Windermere’s son.”
“Oh.” He wasn’t shocked, not really. Well, a little.
She waited for more of a reaction, didn’t get it.
“Selene killed herself,” she said quietly.
At this he turned over, facing her, watching the lamplight illuminate the heartache Lily was trying to tamp down.
“What?”
He got it, immediately, her betrayal. It was the worst ending to the story, especially for her.
“She had a breakdown, apparently. Freer said he’d send her husband’s letters when he found them.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry.” He pushed himself upright and snuggled against her. She was as unyielding as he’d been moments ago. “She married Van Bergen to cover it up?”
Lily nodded.
“Fuck this.” He threw himself away from the wall, suddenly furious. “What the hell does he want?” he said to Lily, who blinked at him in confusion. “What do you want?” he shouted at the ceiling.
“Who?”
“Windermere! This isn’t an Elumnara. Not anymore, if it ever was. So what the hell does he want?”
“This,” Lily said slowly. “I think he wants this. For people to know the truth.”
“No.” Seb shook his head. “That might be part of it, but that’s not it.”
Lily didn’t say anything—she just let him rage himself out until he crashed, and then she curled around his back, like the only safe thing in the world.
“Have you figured it out, then?”
A shadow fell across his face, sucking the warmth from his cantrip.
Conrad stood above him, the late afternoon sun lighting him from behind like an Olympian descending to earth.
Seb had come to his tree to think, the unseasonably warm late-February day one you could pretend was spring with the right coat and the right cantrips.
“Figured out what?” He bristled, standing.
“Don’t play coy with me.” Conrad stepped toward him.
Seb pressed his back against the tree. Conrad stopped and regarded him, head tilted with curiosity.
“Are you afraid of me?”
He was, but he stared back with all of the derision and pretension he could muster. Everything Lily had initially hated about him, he sent toward Conrad.
Dr. Metcalf had mostly stopped talking about charges.
The last time she’d brought it up she’d said she understood all the reasons he didn’t want to—that he wanted to move on and had started doing so, could even put the entire Atlantic between him and his past in September; that he was worried about his reputation, that he wanted to be remembered on campus as something winsome and winning, not as a rape victim; that he didn’t want to get tied up in hearings and maybe even a court case—she understood perfectly.
“But what,” she had asked, “if there were others?”
“Others?” He’d been genuinely confused.
“What if what he did to you was something he’s done to other people? What if it’s a pattern?”
Seb hadn’t even considered it. What if, in the most awful, skin-itching way, Sebastian was even less singular than he thought?
What if there were others?
He’d assumed—even though Dr. Metcalf had explained numerous times that it wasn’t, it was about power—that what happened to him was about him. His shame, when he’d stopped looking at the spot where the carpet was wearing thin between his shoes, was white.
“Do you think he did?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.” She’d taken off her glasses then. “But what if there are others, and what if those others can’t move on the way you’ve been able to?”
He was thankful to her then for not saying “privileged,” even though they both knew what she meant.
“What if they don’t have the resources to seek help? What if they can’t see a future to look forward to?”’
“You think if there are others, they might come forward if I did?”
She’d given him something approximating a smile. Her eyes stayed serious.
“I know it’s not a fair thing to put on your shoulders.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because you’ve shown me that you’re strong enough to bear it.”
“Will you be disappointed in me if I don’t?”
She laughed her therapist’s laugh.
“I thought we already discussed your need for external validation. Who gives a hoot what I think, Sebastian? The question is—will you be disappointed in yourself?”
He’d known the answer before she was done asking the question, and he thought of it now, his back pressed into the divoted bark, the sun suddenly slipping through the trees. Above him, his oak’s enchanted leaves were skipping winter, marbling straight from scarlet fall to spring green.
“What do you want with me, Conrad?” He kept his voice even, his weight in his toes. “Are you trying to intimidate me? Get me to stop working on the Elumnara? What? What the fuck were you doing at Dunmoody?”
Conrad actually looked dumbfounded. “I want what I’ve always wanted.”
“Which is what? Exactly?”
Dismay cut a river through his face, making Seb temporarily question his own sanity. “You, Seb. I miss you. I’ve missed you all fucking year.”
He reached for his arm and Seb pulled away. Conrad had the gall to act hurt.
“You’ve missed me.” His voice was flat.
“We were going to be friends—at least, I thought. That’s what you said. But instead you’ve spent all year avoiding me. And then it’s like you’re doing it on purpose, to throw it in my face.” Unbelievably, Conrad’s voice cracked.
Reality flipped. Seb was too lost in it, too desperate for answers to questions he hadn’t realized he had, to walk away now.
“Throwing what in your face?”
“Her!” And just like that, he was afraid again. “Hooking up with Leper Lily! What the fuck is wrong with you? I know you wanted me to come out and I wasn’t ready, but Jesus. How twisted can you get? You made your point months ago.”
What.
What.
What.
Seb couldn’t believe it. Actually couldn’t. He stood for what felt like an eternity in a second, trying to understand what he must have misheard. Where was the truth, the beating heart of it? Where was the night of the bonfire? Where was Conrad pinning him down with his Words?
“Lily has nothing to do with you,” he said coldly, the best he could muster. Her name was the only port in this squall that had kicked up. “And if you think she does, or that attacking us, assaulting her, would change my mind, you’re a bigger sociopath than I thought.”
“Assaulting her?” Conrad laughed, then his face fell as he found his amusement unreflected in Sebastian’s face. “Seven curses, you’re serious. I was just trying to get her to give it up. She shouldn’t even be at this school. Are you insane, Sebastian? What would your father say?”
A cold knot formed in his stomach. He knew exactly what his father would say, but in a few months it wouldn’t matter.
“Are you insane, Conrad?” He echoed the words back, his heart jackhammering. “Because we stopped being friends when you raped me.”
“Rape?”
“I told you my Words. You used them against me.”
“I wasn’t—”
He turned to go, couldn’t possibly look at Conrad’s face, but he caught Seb’s sleeve.
Reflexively, he turned, rage pumping through his arteries.
He punched Conrad in his Grecian nose. The adrenaline had him so much by the throat that he didn’t even wince at the cracking throb in his knuckles or the crunch of cartilage beneath his fist.
“You’re dead, Allsaires. You’re fucking dead. And your fucking bitch too.”
Which was how he ended up knocking on the doorframe of Dr. Metcalf’s office with his unbloodied hand five minutes later as she looked up in surprise from her armchair.
“I’m ready,” he said, his voice stable even as his shoulders shook. “I want to press charges.”