59. Lily
LILY
“What time is it?” She flung herself upright, frantically looking around.
She was in the health center, propped up in a bed, her sweater gone, a blanket covering her chest. Terrified, she peeled it back. Her left arm was still there, wrapped in bandages, an IV dripping into her elbow. Dusky light pressed in against the glass.
“You’re awake!” Seb turned away from Tori. “It’s almost four.”
Lily could have cried in relief. “Thank god. Get out of here before those idiots actually manage to kill one of us.”
He stared at her. “Are you insane? Gemma threw the universal solvent on you. We can’t go now.”
She threw off the blanket, swinging her feet over the edge of the bed. “Look, I’m fine.” Her vision swam, and she clutched the railing for support.
“You. Are. Relentless.” Tori shook her head, but there was admiration in her voice.
Sebastian narrowed his eyes, inspecting her for untruths. “The doctor said the meds would make you woozy. You’re supposed to rest.”
“It’s fine, I don’t need them.” She held out her arm as proof. Above the bandages, skin was there, but tissue-thin and angry red. She definitely needed the pain meds. “I’ll get a good sleep tonight, and I’ll stay in bed all day tomorrow, which will be easier without you to distract me.”
To be left alone was the last thing she wanted.
She wanted him to crawl into this narrow bed with her; to spread the notes that they’d compiled on the third and final scheduled clue across her blanketed lap; to hold her while she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
She wanted to weep, and she wanted him gone before she broke down.
She was terrified that there was still time for something terrible to happen.
“At least let me drive you home,” Seb pleaded. Oh, how she loved him.
Lily put on her best stubborn face. It was not difficult. “I’ll have my Gran come get me.” Non-Magicians couldn’t enter campus unless cleared, but he might not know that. “Come on.” She shooed them with her hands. “Go!”
“Fine.” Tori threw up her hands. “Merry Christmas to you too, Lily.”
“Yep, bye, see you in a month.”
Seb continued to assess her. “You really want me to go now? We were supposed to get dinner.”
She held up her arm attached to the IV. “You’re coming back in a week, right? We’ll get dinner then.”
He stooped to give her a chaste kiss on the lips and one on her sweaty forehead. She sighed in relief as his footsteps faded, and then she collapsed backward into the bed.
“Care for an interruption?” Chant knocked on the open door as he peered into the ward. He hoisted a plate of leftover Christmas cookies. His coat was on.
“Actually, I was just about to leave,” she said, sitting up straighter.
“You’re suspiciously sedentary for someone on their way out the door.”
“Oh, yeah.” She looked down at her IV. “Just, uh, working up the nerve.” Nostrils flaring, she slid it out with a grimace.
“I thought they usually left that to medical professionals.”
“To walk home.”
Chant blinked at her.
“Unless you want to offer me a ride.”
Lily hobbled out to Chant’s waiting car while the nurse on duty wasn’t looking, her coat feeling too roomy without her sweater underneath it.
The temperature had dropped significantly, and night rolled in cold and clear.
The heater blasted lukewarm air as she dropped into the passenger seat.
It was a strangely intimate thing, being in her professor’s car, like she’d crossed some boundary they probably couldn’t walk back.
“That wasn’t a mistake today,” Chant said, glancing at her for confirmation as he swung around the circular drive.
“No.”
“No,” he agreed. “I didn’t think so.”
They sat in silence for a few blocks. Chant was a very cautious driver. Lily tried to think of something to talk about, but all she could think about was the Elumnara, and she couldn’t talk to him about that.
“Is it worth it?”
“Is what worth it?” She looked at him, surprised.
“Everything you’re putting yourselves through. For this…game.”
She thought about it for a few long moments, long enough to recognize the background music as belonging to an obscure Welsh band Asher kept on repeat. The warmth and the painkillers rendered her drowsy and dumb.
“I don’t think it’s really about the game. Maybe it started that way, but…”
“Ah.” A knowing half-smile graced his lips as he flicked the turn signal.
“Have you ever been in love?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she flushed, shrinking back in the seat.
Chant was quiet for a moment. “I have, yes.”
He didn’t wear a ring, had never mentioned a partner. She stayed silent, too mortified to speak.
“I was in a long relationship—seven years—before I took the posting at Windermere. We were engaged, as a matter of fact.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind.”
“I took the posting at Windermere.” He laughed sadly. “That’s only part of it, of course. They don’t tell you, when you’re young and in love, how much you’re going to change. That every day you’re becoming different people, without even knowing it.”
Lily believed it. How much had her life changed since September?
“And the thing about relationships is that, especially when you’re young, the person you fall in love with might not still be the person you fell in love with, once you start to figure out who you are. You might not still be the person they fell in love with.”
“That seems impossible.”
“It is, mostly.” He chuckled. “But change is good. Growth is good. The key, I believe, is learning how to grow together and to start sooner rather than later. It’s important to be fluid, malleable.”
“Like Prima Materia?”
She was joking, but Chant responded earnestly. “Relationships are their own sort of alchemy, I think. They require a similar process—purifying, refining, dissolving of two seemingly disparate entities, until you find a center that can hold.”
“You’re very wise, for a professor without tenure.” Lily pointed at her house. “That one, with the mixed siding.”
Chant laughed for real then as he pulled to a stop. “Well, we do learn best from our mistakes.”
Lily shifted the plate of cookies on her lap as she finagled the door handle and her bag.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Lily,” he said, making her pause. “As a rule, I don’t involve myself in the affairs of students, and I’m crossing every line here, but…
” He pressed his lips together as he searched for the words.
“What you and Sebastian have is a rare thing, a good thing. There is a chord in both of you that resonates. I can see it in your work together.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“I think you have it in you to grow beautifully together. Just remember to embrace the change whenever it happens, and you’ll have a fine future.”
A fine future. She didn’t know what to say to that. She really wished it could be true.
“Anyway, happy Christmas.”
Vaguely, she nodded, wished it back, watching his taillights fade down the street.