82. Seb
SEB
Lily was tense in his arms. He wouldn’t have known it if he hadn’t danced with her a hundred times, if he hadn’t been used to the muscular, liquid grace of her when nobody was watching.
Under his fingers, the wings of her shoulder blades were stiff ridges instead of being softly active.
He turned her, a little goofily, to make her smile and so that the entire room could see the sublime architecture of her back.
He’d never seen a back like Lily’s—a nearly perfect topographical map of muscles and tendons.
He loved her back. The first time he’d seen it free of clothing, it had nearly taken his breath away.
Lily in this dress kept taking his breath away.
She looked so adult, so confident in it, and it was all he could do to keep himself together, knowing that if he failed tonight, it was the last time she’d look like her future self.
Asher knew the plan. Tori knew the plan. Chant knew the plan. Even Daphne knew a little. Seb had subtly nudged Lily toward subtly nudging Asher to ask her to come tonight, so that Lily could be distracted by someone she knew while Seb made a deal with the devil.
“So, the Mérida twins,” Lily said, bringing his attention back to the present.
“What about them?”
“You seem friendly.”
“We’re friends.” He looked into her eyes then and saw a twinge of green. “Are you jealous?”
“I don’t know what I am.” Lily was so, so good at controlling herself, projecting one thing while keeping the rest of her locked in a vault—it was one of their biggest similarities—but now her veneer was cracking. “I don’t know anything.”
“Lily,” he said, because her name was everything. He guided her in close, closer, so they were slotted perfectly together, abandoning the waltz step, and pressed his cheek to hers so that his lips were near her ear.
“Sebastian.” She stiffened.
Low, low enough that only she could hear, he whispered the words in her ear, words she’d first heard accompanied by Asher’s guitar and the slosh of lazy waves.
He’d thought about it a lot—switching places, trading skin, trading fate—and he knew he’d do it in a heartbeat.
He’d run up any hill, any skyscraper, for Lily Perkins.
Finally, she softened, and he let the room become a golden blur until the song ended and they swayed to a stop. Other couples joined them on the floor for the next dance, and they danced that one too, as custom dictated, before he led her back to their table, depositing her next to Daphne.
It was time.
He caught Asher’s eye. Asher turned to Daphne; Daphne turned to Lily.
“We’ll be back in a little bit,” he said, but Lily was already deep in conversation.
They met Chant in the hallway. His companions looked as nervous and twitchy as he felt. Adriana had intercepted him on his way out, and grudgingly, he’d told her to keep an eye out for their hosts.
“The conservatory is on the south side of the house,” Asher said. “Or at least that’s where I remember it from the botany field trip.”
Hemlock Hall was massive, bigger even than Falconstone, and they took several wrong turns before stumbling on it.
It loomed up out of the night, its ambient lighting sending sharp shadows of disguised foliage at them.
Seb’s heart thudded in his throat as they pulled out their phones and synced them.
“Ten minutes,” Chant said, prepping the cantrip. They cast together. “You’ll hear buzzing if someone’s headed your way. Good luck.”
Before Seb or Asher could respond, he was walking briskly back toward the party.
“We’re doing this?” Asher cut his glance to Seb.
He inhaled deeply, then pushed open the glass door. “Guess so.”
They collided with a wall of humidity. Within a minute, Seb’s forehead was damp and his breaths were sucking, sweaty things. He felt like he was breathing water.
Prowling down the first aisle, Asher shucked off his velvet jacket and slung it over his arm. He trailed his fingers through vines that longed to cling to them, along flat, furry leaves.
“Good grief, half of these plants are magical. I don’t even know what I’m looking at right now. I’m pretty sure it’s in the Voynich.”
“I think we’ll know it when we see it. It’ll feel or look different.”
Asher sighed through his teeth, “This whole greenhouse is different. It wasn’t like this when we visited.”
“Wrong. It’ll look wrong.”
Asher nodded curtly and continued searching. Seb felt useless and sweaty. His heart skipped and skipped in his chest.
“I don’t think that’s it,” he said, as Asher stopped short in front of a tall, twisting plant covered in wicked spikes.
“It’s not. It’s a Spired Thornshrike.”
“Oh?”
“It’s illegal. Super illegal.” Asher turned to him; his face twisted in a hateful grimace. “It was used during the Inquisition to test the purity of magical blood.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” He looked like he wanted to set fire to the plant, watch its leaves shrivel and shriek.
“With so many female Magicians slaughtered under the Inquisition, it made male Magicians totally paranoid about their bloodlines. There was a huge rash of suspicion that female Magicians were interbreeding with normal men.”
Seb gazed up at the towering plant, his blood shuddering in his veins. “That’s insane. I can’t believe I’ve never heard that.”
“Things they don’t want us to know,” Asher laughed bitterly.
“Anyway, they would take the infants they suspected and impale them on the Thornshrike, hence the name. If the babies managed to heal themselves and live, they were Magicians; if not, they were abominations, and it was good to let them die.”
He choked down the bile in his throat. “Let me guess, the babies died.”
“Pretty much, I—” Seb gripped his arm, stilling them both as a buzzing filled his ears.
They strained into the dim light, listening through the maddening whir.
Too late, Seb was sure of the footsteps.
Desperately, he grabbed Asher and dove with him into the darkest corner he could find, crouching below the shadow of a noxiously sweet-smelling plant whose flowers drooped nearly the size of their heads.
By the time Asher brought his hands up, Seb had already called his Words, already cast the strongest concealment cantrip he could muster.
Between the rows of tables and trailing foliage, Seb could just make out two sets of legs and Asher’s tuxedo jacket, puddled on the floor in front of the Thornshrike.
Next to him, Asher tensed, exhaling a silent curse as he noticed it.
Seb prayed desperately to the Magic he believed in to keep whoever had come into the conservatory in the front half of the glass oasis.
“You make a mockery of our name, Hawthorn, letting that abomination into our home, at our table!” Seb didn’t recognize the withered female voice, but it could only be Helena Bellarius. “You saw how she flaunts herself, her mundanity!”
“Control yourself.” Hawthorn’s voice was cold and still, full of power. “I confess that my curiosity outweighed propriety, but in mere hours you will be free of this imposition, and in mere months, we’ll be free of this shame.”
Seb’s whole body burned. Asher gripped his wrist, trying to get Seb to relax the fists he’d formed. Sweat trickled down his neck. The footsteps turned down the second row, then the third. Even in the dim golden night, Asher’s skin was pale and slick.
The door of the conservatory burst open. Seb nearly screamed, poised to attack.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s been an incident.” Chant’s voice was wild and breathy. “A student’s been poisoned.”
And just like that, the threat was gone. In unison, they collapsed backward against a bag of potting soil.