49. Lily
LILY
She didn’t move.
She didn’t want him to think she was getting impatient.
Even though she trembled from cold, from sitting so long, and her knees were so stiff they were going to crack when she shifted, and her neck ached, and her nose was running or bleeding again, she stayed.
Unmoving. She could do that, at least, for him.
Lily knew.
No, she didn’t know. But she was pretty sure.
She wanted him to say anything else.
She’d never wanted to be so wrong in her whole, short life.
Every second she watched him watching the drive-thru, trying to summon courage that no one should need, her heart broke a little more. It was throbbing raw in her chest, bleeding for him. She’d never understood that idiom before, but she did now.
His phone rang from its place in the cup holder. He didn’t seem to notice. She reached for it. A picture of Asher accompanied the buzzing.
“Asher?”
“Lily? Where’s Seb?”
She glanced at him, a bare thing. He was still counting cars.
“He’s here. We…ran into trouble.”
Asher swore on the other end of the line. “Is he okay? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, sidestepping the first question. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone trashed the suite. Seb’s room, mostly.” Her stomach entered free fall. The disc was in Seb’s room. Had been. So that’s where Braithwhite was.
“We were at that lecture with the visiting phytophiltrology* researcher. We just got back.”
Lily stayed quiet for a long time, trying to collect any words that weren’t desperate curses or the wail that was building inside her. “We’re on our way. See you soon.”
She hung up and looked over at Seb. His lips were moving too fast to be counting cars.
His Words.
Sebastian Allsaires had a deeper connection with his Words than any Magician she’d ever met.
It was why he was so good at everything, at least partly, anyway.
Being able to commune with Magic like that—constantly—was a rare talent, a rarer discipline.
Lily was powerful, but she’d also circumvented a lot of the system.
But watching him, she could see. His Words were so much more than power.
They were his foundation. He’d built himself, every agonizingly beautiful inch, on top of them, on top of Magic.
“Did you hear?”
He nodded.
“Do you want to go back?” She wanted to touch him. She was terrified to touch him. “We can do whatever you want. We can go, we can stay here. We can…whatever. Whatever you need.”
An SUV passed through the drive-thru. There were no other cars behind it.
He opened his mouth. No words came out.
You can do this, she willed him. This is the worst part. It gets better.
She didn’t say any of it.
“He raped me.”
His voice came out flat and distorted. She wouldn’t have known it was his over the phone.
There were high fences on the Mid-Hudson Bridge to stop jumpers. Lily’s whole being felt like it had clambered over, thrown itself into the foggy dark emptiness, to get pulverized on the river below. That’s what happened if you jumped at that height. You shattered inside your skin.
Say something.
But she didn’t. She just sat there.
Memory strangled Sebastian’s voice as it clawed its way out of him.
“It was the Midsummer Bonfire. We’d just broken up, like a week before.
” His face was slack, staring at the drive-thru.
There was nothing to look at. “I wanted to come out—he didn’t.
But I told you that already.” His voice hitched, cracked.
Lily worked her fingers off the steering wheel, moved her hand slowly, laying it alongside his so that only their pinkies touched. She held her breath, because it wasn’t fair of her to sob when he was so stoic. If she opened her mouth, she would explode.
“I was drunk. Blacked out, mostly. I only remember pieces. I remember running into him, then being in his dorm.”
He paused, breathing hard, and in the burnt-orange and purple world of the car, she saw he was crying, convulsing silently, tears washing down his face.
She exhaled a sigh that held the shape of his name, and he covered her hand with his, clutching it until her knuckles blanched. She rooted herself in the pain.
“It was my fault.” His voice broke. “I shouldn’t have drunk so much, I shouldn’t have shared my Words, shouldn’t—”
“No.” The violence in her voice surprised her. “If it were anyone else, you wouldn’t say that. The rules…reality doesn’t change just because it’s you.” She clutched his hand back. “Sebastian.”
He looked at her then, and she’d never seen anyone more lost in her life.
“It was not your fault. Whatever happened, whatever you think you should have done, you could not consent.”
A strange expression settled on his face, something like freedom, if freedom weighed a thousand pounds. “I know.” There was almost wonder in his voice. “I told him I had to go. I told him to stop.”
She was going to kill Conrad Hawleyhurst, if she hadn’t already. She’d never known anything with the pure conviction that accompanied the thought.
“Sebastian,” she whispered, because that was the closest she could get to pouring herself into his lap, holding him, kissing him until he forgot everything that had happened to him.
“Oh, god,” he said, dropping his face into his hands, weeping.
The sobs shook his whole body.
Lily rubbed his back.
* Phytophiltrology: The study and creation of reagents, tinctures, and other AEtheric decoctions from botanical sources. From the Greek phyton, plant; philtron, love-charm; logia, speak/tell.