81. Lily
LILY
She was going to be sick. She was going to be sick in the suite bathroom, or she was going to be sick in Seb’s car, or most probably, she was going to be sick on her grandparents’ shoes. Tori had given Lily one of her anxiety pills, but it had only blunted her senses and slowed her brain.
Desperately, she’d hoped that there was some sort of proximal curse keeping her from setting foot on the Bellarius grounds, but all she needed was the invitation and her society mark, and she had both. They knew she was coming. She wouldn’t even have the element of surprise.
“Stop twitching.” Tori gripped Lily’s chin with viselike fingers so that she could blend her eyeshadow.
In preparation for the party, Tori had subjected her to pampering, which she normally would have relished.
Lily was used to doing her makeup for performances, but that was a different skill, and one she executed passably at best. She worried that Tori was overdoing it, but when she saw the results, the anxiety melted away, and a flutter of excitement joined the squiggling nerves in her stomach.
It was still her face in the mirror, but she was smoky-eyed and glossy-lipped, Lily-plus; Lily wrought in Tori’s image.
“Wow.” She licked her lips, and her winter-berry red lipstick didn’t smudge.
“Indeed.” Tori glanced in the mirror to check her work.
“Anyone who thinks makeup isn’t an art form can get fucked.
Here.” She nestled a golden pin, shaped like branching leaves and set with diamonds, into Lily’s hair, sweeping the curls on one side of her face away from her ear.
Lily had long ago given up on trying to get her hair to curl, but with skill, and magic, and half a can of hairspray, Tori had accomplished the impossible.
A few minutes later, Lily was in nothing but her underwear, arms up like a diver, as Tori carefully guided a dress over her head.
The dress was dusty golden silk, so light and insubstantial that Lily could have packed it down into a walnut shell.
Suspended on her shoulders by thin straps, the bodice billowed down in a V and cut low enough under her armpits that if she had a chest to speak of, she’d be looking at a disastrous evening.
The back plunged, and the bias-cut skirt clung to her hips before sweeping into a flare.
She looked like she belonged with someone like Sebastian Allsaires, which meant she didn’t really look like herself.
For all its lack of substance, the dress felt like armor. She felt sleek and unstoppable; her stilettos could put a hole through someone’s foot.
When the boys returned from the bathroom down the hall where they’d been getting ready, Seb had barely any time to properly gape at her before Tori dragged them downstairs to take pictures.
“You okay?”
They sat in the circular drive, in front of the imperial, stone staircase that would lead them up the terraced walk to the house. A valet in white gloves studiously pretended not to notice them not getting out of the car.
“Not really,” Lily said, picking at her fingers.
He reached over, stilling her hands. “You don’t owe them anything. All you need to do is walk in there and have a good time with me. Anytime you feel like you’re imploding, just look at me, and I’ll be there.”
“Okay.”
“If you need to leave, we will.”
“Okay.”
He squeezed her hand, then slid out of the car and opened her door. The bare spring breeze flowed around her legs, pulling the silk of her dress with it, fanning it out like a wave. Seb offered his arm, and she took it, her fingers digging into the seam of his sleeve.
She counted the steps as they ascended, wishing that Zeno’s paradox also applied to the number of stairs between you and your evil grandparents, but all at once the golden, gaping maw of Hemlock Hall was before her.
A butler opened the door, and they swept into the grand foyer, their shoes clicking on marble.
Their coats were whisked away, and they were pressed into a receiving line, at the end of which stood Hawthorn and Helena Bellarius.
Lily’s stomach dropped all the way into their wine cellar. Her hand was sweaty in Sebastian’s and he twined their fingers together, clutching hers so hard that no one would have been able to pull them apart without breaking fingers.
“You don’t need to say anything,” Seb said, ducking his head close, and she nodded stiffly.
Then they were in front of her. Both of them had silver hair, sleek and full, but her grandmother was brown-eyed, where her grandfather’s eyes were pale as ice.
He was dapper; he still looked fit and powerful.
Her grandmother looked like an expensive husk, hollowed out by everything she’d denied herself.
Both of them wore black, eating all the light in a sea of jewel tones.
Her grandfather grinned cliquishly at Seb as he grasped him by the elbow and pumped his arm with both hands. Seb grinned back convincingly.
“Mr. Allsaires! A pleasure to have you at Hemlock Hall again. It’s almost a shame your odds are so high for the tournament this year—it’s made a mockery of the betting.”
“Ah.” Seb leaned in conspiratorially. “But we all know betting is off limits, Mr. Bellarius.”
Lily hadn’t really met this Sebastian yet, the one who slid through the highest social strata like an eel, and she was trying very hard not to hate him.
“Of course, of course.” Her grandfather chucked him on the shoulder like they were old prep school pals. “And you remember my wife, Helena?”
“How could I forget?” He took her drooping hand and, thankfully, did not kiss it.
“And who is your charming companion this evening?”
Lily started. She’d been staring at the waiting ballroom, her armpits prickling with sweat that couldn’t leave her body, thanks to one of Tori’s enchantments, and found herself jerked back into her skin. Accidentally, she met her grandfather’s eyes. They were nothing like hers or like her mother’s.
Who is your charming companion?
Really?
Charming, of course, when she was mute. Could they really not know, or was this a game, a test? Seb cut in before she had to open her mouth and risk implosion.
“How rude of me,” Seb demurred. “This is Lily; she’s a sophomore.”
“Wonderful to make your acquaintance. Enjoy all that Hemlock Hall has to offer, my dear.”
Her grandfather took her hand, kissed it. Her grandmother stared at her like a bug she wanted to crush under her age-appropriate heels. A game, then.
And then they were free. Seb guided her into the sparkling ballroom, topped with a giant glass and iron dome.
Six very long tables flanked the dance floor, set for dinner, each of them with a runner in the schools’ colors.
The longest table, directly across from the entrance, was grander than the others, festooned in Windermere’s navy and gold.
Currently, the dance floor was taken up by an array of bodies enjoying cocktails, champagne, and canapés.
They stilled and pretended—poorly—not to swivel and stare as Sebastian entered the hall with Lily on his arm.
Sebastian soaked up the attention; if he were a sunflower, you’d have been able to see his petals unfold. Lily tried not to wilt.
He swiped two flutes of champagne and handed one to her, gazing intently.
“What?” Lily asked grumpily, trying not to flush.
“I…” She watched the red creep up his neck. “I know I said it before, but you look…radiant.”
“Seb—”
“I used to have dreams about you—”
“Sebastian—”
He shushed her. “In them, you were the moon. And I was drowning. But now…”
Lily swallowed, trying not to think of Cornelius Windermere and his Argent Lune. “Now what?”
He laughed, a single breath. “It’s so obvious now. You’re the sun.”
“Seb—” He didn’t cut her off, but she didn’t know what else to say. She knew what she should say—that she couldn’t be the sun, because the sun wasn’t scheduled to die for another billion billion years or so.
“We can’t both be the sun,” she said instead, taking his hand. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
It was true. In a rich navy tuxedo with a spray of gold at his breast pocket, his hair waving softly over his forehead, he was stunning. More improbable for being real and being hers.
He pressed his forehead and nose to hers; far too intimate a gesture for the moment, but instead of embarrassment, pride flushed through her.
“I love you, Sebastian.”
His eyes fluttered closed, his lashes brushing her cheeks. “And I love you, Lily Perkins.” They pulled apart. “Come on, let’s find our people.”
They found Tori and Asher with their respective dates near the Windermere table, bothering—or entertaining—Professor Chant; Lily wasn’t sure which.
Tori had finally accomplished an apparently long-standing goal of getting Liesl Edinger to go out with her, and Liesl was dashing in a forest-green tuxedo and glittering stilettos.
On her arm, Tori was sleeker than ever, in a long-sleeved burgundy wrap dress with a V that went almost to her navel and a skirt whose epic slit seemed to find every occasion to reveal her legs.
Asher, clad in an aubergine velvet suit that only he could possibly pull off, was drinking cocktails with his date for the evening, Daphne.
She wore a romantic sweep of soft lavender tulle and chiffon.
When Asher’s girlfriend had failed to claim one of the coveted, lottery-based, non-participant slots for Dunmoody, Lily had suggested that he bring Daphne, and the two of them, along with Chant, were deep in a spell-assisted signing conversation about a painter, which Lily could only half-follow.
“Ah, here’s the man of the hour!” Asher said loudly, punching Sebastian’s shoulder with jovial, prep-school mockery. It was meant to embarrass him. It worked.
Seb, blushing, ducked his head. “Shut up, Asher.”
“Certainly, old chap!”
For the first time that evening, Lily exhaled, and it became laughter. She took another sip of champagne. The bubbles lifted her mood. Seb’s hand no longer felt like a lifeline, just warmth. Something at the entrance of the ballroom caught his eye, and he raised his chin in greeting.
Lily followed his gaze to a young man and woman standing shoulder to shoulder in the entrance. They matched, in a dusky teal that brought out the rich warmth of their ocher-brown skin. Both of them had the same glossy dark hair, the same sparkling eyes.
“The Twins,” Seb said, almost breathlessly. “I’ll be right back,” he said, already threading toward them through the crowd.
Lily knew the names vaguely, and now she tried to remember more as she put them to the exquisite faces in the distance.
“They’re the number two and three seeds, after Seb,” Asher was saying to Daphne. “Adriana and Rafael Mérida. If anyone is going to beat him, it’s one of them.”
She watched Seb warmly embrace them, then begin a conversation in animated Spanish.
Lily knew he could speak Spanish, but she hadn’t realized he was fluent.
Something unpleasantly like jealousy kindled in her guts and she turned to Tori and Liesl, half paying attention to their conversation.
Eventually, as dinner started, Seb made his way back to her.
Lily picked at her food, back to feeling out of place, now on an entirely different level from how she had when she’d walked in.
Cantrèa was a world within a world that she’d been shut out of her whole life and was just starting to feel at home in, but the tournament was making it clear just how far outside it she still was.
She knew Windermere Cantrèa, but that was only a part of the picture.
As dessert arrived, Sebastian turned to her, looking guilty.
“What?”
“I may have forgotten something…important.”
She stared at him, unwilling to play easy.
“There’s…a dance.”
“Is this not a ball?”
Next to her, he fidgeted in his seat. Lily had never seen him fidget before.
“Sebastian?”
“Traditionally, the dance floor is opened after the previous year’s champion and their date have the first dance.”
Lily blinked at him. “Like at a wedding?”
“Yes?” Seb swallowed.
“What if they don’t have a date,” she said flatly.
“I don’t know.”
She stared at the remains of her dessert, trying not to implode with rage and anxiety.
“I can’t go up there and let all these people stare at me,” she said quietly enough that only he could hear. “I can’t just perform for them.”
“But you are a performer. Let it be a performance.”
“I don’t want to perform myself,” she hissed.
He sighed, then leaned back in his chair. “It’s fine. Don’t worry, I’ll ask Tori.”
At the mention of her name, Tori looked up, pausing with her fork halfway to her mouth, her eyes cutting sideways. “Leave me out of it.”
“I’ll do it,” Lily said, harnessing the sudden bright surge of defiance that warmed her ribs as she caught sight, in quick succession, of her grandfather rising to stand and then the Mérida twins laughing with luminous insularity.
“You will?” He looked mildly shocked, which made Lily’s desire to give everyone in the room the finger that much more potent.
“You’re right. It’s a performance.”
As if on cue, the music swelled, and her grandfather looked over at them, his eyes searching out Sebastian, who nodded.
“You can change your mind,” he said as he offered her his hand.
“Too late now,” she said, swigging champagne and letting him lead her onto the dance floor.