20. Seb
SEB
As he walked home through the hushed and lamp-lit gloom of after-hours campus, Seb thought about Lily Perkins, fascinated both by his curiosity and by the glimpse of what he’d seen behind the iron gates of her persona.
Never before had he felt so completely that he knew nothing about someone, even as they sat next to each other, conversing over the course of an evening.
He’d ended the conversation realizing that nothing he offered would be accepted, though he didn’t understand why. He could make half-educated guesses, some of which might even be accurate, but even that felt like it would just be scratching the surface.
He wanted to know what her curse was.
Past midnight, on that Thursday at the waning of September, he wanted to know what her curse was nearly as much as he wanted to win the Elumnara.
The two things burned with a similar intensity and significance in his chest. The accomplishment of both felt like it held the weight of change, and Seb desperately wanted things to change.
Being trapped by your own persona was still being trapped.
He wanted to know what life felt like when you had earned things that came hard.
It was why, even as it would be a life he loved, he had told Asher and Tori that he couldn’t play Cantrèa professionally.
Cantrèa came easy, even when it wasn’t. He wanted to build a life that no one could say he hadn’t earned.
In some ways, he was glad Reg was the firstborn, the inheritor.
He had long given up on trying to find the thing that would impress his parents, and now he was desperate to impress himself.
His mind circled back again to Lily and the impenetrable wall behind her warm eyes.
He’d never really looked at her before last week, and he was surprised to find that she was nice-looking.
Not extraordinary, exactly, but certainly leagues and leagues from leprous.
He’d always made himself scarce when Conrad was in one of his moods, so he’d only really ever seen the darkness of her aura out of the corner of his eye.
To know Lily, to really understand anything about her, he thought you would have to understand her curse.
He wasn’t going to ask her what it was again, but curses were something of a black hole—knowledge-wise—in the community, and Seb loved knowledge above most else besides Magic.
Information about curses was hugely restricted.
For anyone to display an undue interest in them raised as many red flags as searching the internet on how to construct a pipe bomb.
Chant probably knew something about curses, though, and might not turn Seb over for asking.
What did he really know at all about his lab partner?
He knew she was cursed, that her father had been normal, and her mother had been from one of the Great Houses—though not which one—before her spectacular fall from grace.
He knew he’d heard her name growing up, especially around younger kids, as something of a cautionary tale.
He knew that watching her dance was the closest he’d gotten to seeing who she really was.
He knew that somehow, at least some of the time, she was bursting with magic.
He should have made arrangements for them to get together again.
Even as he knew when he woke up tomorrow his whole body would be one big soreness, he itched to dance again.
He thought about texting her and realized, as he shouldered open the door of the apartment, that he still hadn’t gotten her number.
“Oh good, it lives.”
His roommates sat on the couch, coffee table covered in books and snacks. Tori wore a pissy face to go with her greeting.
Seb frowned at them. “Am I missing something?”
“Try checking your phone?” Asher suggested, taking a sip of his beer, waiting while Seb fished it out of his bag.
Notifications covered the screen. He’d put it on silent and tossed it in his duffel when he’d gotten to Studio C, and he’d completely forgotten about it.
“We were going to wait for you to do the homework, but we gave up.”
“What homework?”
His roommates exchanged a glance that indicated a modicum of concern.
“Alchemy, Sebastian. Alchemy,” Tori said.
He rubbed his eyes, still confused. “I did the homework.”
Asher turned to Tori, now sighing at her. “I told you he was going to do it alone, but no—”
Tori cut him off. “Then where have you been all night? Why are you dressed like you’re on the way to a farmer’s market in Silver Lake?”
Asher laughed. Seb looked down at his pants.
“I didn’t do the homework alone.”
“What do you mean?” Tori looked genuinely confused.
“I did it with…” He had trouble saying her name out loud.
The last few hours felt terrifically private.
He hadn’t thought about who he was, or what he was supposed to be, all night.
He hadn’t even cared that he was wearing sweatpants in the library, even if it was a part of the library where no one would find him.
“You met up with Lily Perkins?” Asher choked on his beer.
“She’s my lab partner.”
“She’s cursed.”
“It’s not contagious,” he said to Tori.
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Asher and Tori exchanged another glance.
“How was it?” Asher said, and it felt like he was asking a very different question.
“It was fine. She’s…” He’d been about to say “normal,” but that wasn’t true either. “Smart,” he finished.
“Well thank heavens for that. Jesus, Sebastian.” Tori threw up her hands.
“I don’t get what the big deal is.” He really didn’t. Whatever Lily’s curse ended up being, it wasn’t because of something she had done.
“The big deal is that she shouldn’t exist!” Tori’s wine-dark nails flashed and her accent flared. “She shouldn’t have been born, and she definitely shouldn’t be at Windermere. She’s an insult to our entire culture. That’s what the problem is.”
The words were out of Seb’s mouth before he could stop them. “And here I thought you were going to school in America because back home that’s what people were saying about you.”
The suite fell perfectly silent. Down the hall, a door slammed and someone shrieked out late-night laughter. Tori’s normally pale face drained of color and she sat frozen with rage. She stood up slowly, and when she spoke her voice shook. “Fuck you.”
Seb opened his mouth to call her back, to apologize, as she stormed to her room, but he didn’t know how to apologize for something true, even if it had hurt. He looked to Asher, but Asher looked away, taking his beer to his room, leaving Seb standing alone.
The sound of Asher’s keyboard slid under the door. Chopin—music to get buried to. Suddenly, Seb wasn’t hungry. He didn’t feel like the evening had been the beginning of anything anymore; he just felt like he was drowning.