40. Seb
SEB
Last spring, his world had started inverting itself, and now it finished its insane trajectory in a handful of swollen minutes.
He glanced over his shoulder. There was Lily Perkins, swallowed in his coat, its hem dragging on the grass, her hand clutched tightly in his own.
He marveled at the emotions sparring in his chest—rage at Conrad, a sort of kiting looseness at uncoupling himself from Gemma, and subsuming everything: a supernova of elation.
Lily was real, soft, touchable. She was smart and talented, and her smile was a private sun.
He’d kissed her, and she’d kissed him back.
She seemed to understand him, the truest version of him, without even trying.
He wanted, he realized, to make her smile every day. He wanted to kiss her every second.
He indulged in this last thought, spinning her into him for something that was quick and sloppy, mostly teeth, because he couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot.
Already his mind was going too far, too fast. As they retraced Lily’s flight, he was doing math, counting years, trying to make their separate futures converge in a tidy line.
Slow down, he ordered himself. Maybe Lily doesn’t want to move to England. Maybe you won’t get into the program. Maybe you’ll say something insane like everything you’re thinking right now, and she’ll break up with you tomorrow.
Maybe this isn’t even a relationship.
That last thing, at least, he knew must be false.
“Casual” was not a word in Lily’s vernacular, and him?
There was a reason he kept a certain distance, often mistaken for aloofness—or, as Lily put it, “assholery”—between him and the rest of the world.
When Seb threw himself into something, whether it was the Collected Works of Shelley or love, he did it one way—hard, fast, completely.
He couldn’t help it, no matter how badly it wrecked him later.
They paused outside the still-dark Metaphysics building. Seb stuffed their entwined fingers into the pocket of his coat.
“You don’t have to come in,” he said quietly.
“You can’t go in there alone.” She almost kept the fear out of her voice.
Seb fished his phone from the jacket pocket and thumbed the flashlight on, handing it to her. He ran through his Words silently, gathering power for potential combat evocations. He could almost smell the AEther as he inhaled, and the night glowed subtly brighter.
They walked in shoulder to shoulder. Seb’s pulse was buckshot, ricocheting inside his neck.
He was terrified, not just that Conrad was still here, but of what he would do to Conrad if he were.
Reckless energy surged through him, and he didn’t trust himself to control his worst impulses. He was so sick of control.
The phone lit everything with harsh, ghostly light, and Seb thought he saw them just outside its beam, over and over. Lily tensed as she swept the light across the table where she’d been. He hissed in a breath. Her things were scattered everywhere, and several chairs were knocked over.
“Careful,” he said, reaching for her as she moved toward the table.
“They’re not here,” she said flatly.
“How do you know?” He heaved a quiet sigh of relief.
“My laptop is gone.”
Seb frowned. “But you didn’t take any notes on it.”
She stared at him, waiting for him to get it. He didn’t.
He tried again. “Do you back up to the cloud?”
Lily pressed her eyes closed, still as a piece of statuary. “Sebastian,” she said through gritted teeth, fixing him with an icy stare. “That laptop is the most expensive thing I own. I need it. For school.”
Asshole.
He stopped himself, at least, from immediately offering to buy her a new one.
She probably didn’t want him to buy her a new one, would probably be furious if he did.
He would do it anyway, and she could be furious, but she’d probably be a lot less furious than if she had to draft her final paper for Environmental Aegistics on one of the college center desktops.
“We’ll find it,” he promised, even though he was certain its hard drive was already in pieces.
She nodded, but there were still tears, just unspilled, glistening on her lashes.
“Hey.” He wiped her cheeks with his thumb. He wanted to tell her it would be fine, but he wasn’t sure it would be. “Let’s get your stuff and get out of here.” He found her coat and threw it over his arm.
He let Lily do the breaking and entering into the alchemy lab, feeling useless and cowardly with her book bag slung over his shoulder.
She’d explained, briefly, what she’d learned about the symbols and her conversation with Chant.
He wondered if Chant knew what it was for, and if he had, whether it would count as faculty help, which was forbidden for the Elumnara.
“And then we melt it down. All together.”
“You want to melt the ring. Cornelius Windermere’s ring.”
“You literally pulled it out of the fire. It literally depicts a chalice flanked by Sol and Luna with sublimated cinnabar and calcinated white arsenic. It could not be more obvious.” Her haughty sigh reminded him of Tori.
“Fine. Fine, yes,” he conceded.
She was right. There was no other answer. If there were, they would have found it by now.
“It has all four alchemical color stages too—white, red, black, gold.”
“You already convinced me. I’m convinced.”
“Good.” She nodded. “Let’s add another barrier ring, just to be safe.” Lily eyed their setup with uncharacteristic nervousness, her gaze lingering on the four ordinary-looking minerals couched in flasks and ovens.
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Seb rolled up his sleeves. Their volume made them uncooperative. They cast together, brows furrowed. “Well, that should do it. I can’t imagine any gases getting through two layers.”
“I hope not.” Lily shifted from foot to foot. “Now we wait.” She drummed her fingers against the soapstone. “This is going to take forever. I wish I had some letters to go over or something.”
“It’s good you didn’t, or they’d be long gone,” he said darkly, leaning back against the table.
“Well, I wish I had some way to pass the time.”
“Seriously?” He looked at her, stifling his guffaw.
She was serious. “I know how we can pass the time. C’mere.
” He reached for her, tugging her by the wrist, his thumb rolling over her bracelet, rich with AEther.
“What is that?” he said, lips tracing a gentle trail down her neck.
She melted in his arms, head tipping back to expose more of her skin.
He felt her breath catch in her throat and it urged him on. “You always wear it. Them.”
“I can’t tell you.” She exhaled, and he paused, feeling her swallow beneath his lips. “Not right now.”
It was a satisfactory answer. Seb pulled her against him, hotly aware that she could feel everything the way their bodies were fitted together currently, hip to hip, leg to leg.
He laced their hands together, tracing the band of the ring on Lily’s middle finger with his own.
She leaned into him, her fingers creeping up the back of his neck, into his hair.
His breath hitched, and he groaned silently into her shoulder.
Time melted as the arsenic burned and the cinnabar threw toxic gas into the neck of the flask, as the gold bubbled.
Seb had almost forgotten what it was like to need, to want, so urgently that it drove out all sense, that it unpinned his Self and turned him into nothing more than a collection of impulses and tender nerve endings.
He would have gone all the way, blown past every barrier, in that darkness, if she’d said she wanted it.
“Look.” Lily stilled against him. He followed her gaze, wetting his chapped, swollen lips. “We should get started on the next part.”
“Mmm,” he agreed, into her hair, moving his mouth to the ellipse of her ear. “Just one. More. Minute—”
“By all means, don’t stop on my account, Sebastian.”
They froze as a light flicked on in the hallway, framing Chant from behind. He was still wearing the charcoal quarter-zip and his glasses, but he’d acquired plaid pajama pants and a rumpled look.
“Ohfuck,” Seb breathed, springing away from Lily, which meant hurling himself sidelong into the nearest lab table, smashing his hip in the process. His arousal died immediately. He winced as a rainbow of pain burst behind his eyelids. Lily, to her credit, did nothing.
God, she’s cool.
Chant stepped into the room, graciously leaving the lights off. “I have to say, if I catch you having sex in my lab, I just might have it in me to see you expelled.”
Lily shrugged, “Okay.”
Seb hissed at her. Getting caught trespassing and stealing toxic minerals was not the time to start calling bluffs.
“Might I ask exactly what you’re doing here, well past midnight on a Saturday? As we’re all aware, you certainly don’t have any outstanding assignments.”
“Extracurricular research?” Seb winced out.
“We’re working on the Elumnara,” Lily said plainly.
They stared at her—Chant with bald curiosity and Seb with horror.
“And you should let us finish because we’re incredibly close to a breakthrough, and if you come over here, you’ll be interested, and you’ll want to help, and then we’ll be disqualified due to faculty assistance.” She spoke quickly but coolly. “And I know you want us to win.”
Chant stopped.
Seb wanted to kiss her. He realized he could, once Chant was gone.
“That’s all very presumptuous of you, Miss Perkins,” Chant began slowly, looking between them.
Lily folded her arms over her chest. Chant yielded.
“Well then, I suppose I’ll leave you to it.
Two things: the fire extinguisher is just…
here.” He kicked it gently where it sat next to his desk. “And don’t have sex in my lab.”
“We’re not idiots,” Lily huffed.
Seb was definitely an idiot. Chant fixed him with a pointed stare.
“Speak for yourself, Miss Perkins. I wish you a fruitful morning.”