86. Seb
SEB
He didn’t sleep.
After dropping Lily off, he’d gone straight to Paracelsus Hall, where Chant waited with the plant. He let Seb in through a side door and led him to a basement that he hadn’t previously known existed, but that Lily probably did.
They entered a warded lab that only Chant had access to.
The plant sat on the soapstone countertop, darkening the very air around it.
If he only glanced at it, it looked normal enough, albeit a bit strange.
The more he studied it, though, the more wrong it became.
Its twisting geometry was as unnatural as a perfectly triangular lake; its velvety leaves reflected the light from the bare bulb above it in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
Its dark coloring shifted like an oil slick.
Seb felt the wrongness as a prickle on his skin, slow venom creeping into the folds of his mind. Just being near it made him queasy, and he couldn’t bring himself to touch even the pot. He was equal parts shocked and impressed that Asher had managed it.
“That’s a nasty piece of work,” Chant said. “I can’t imagine what keeping it in your office does to a body.”
Seb had a few ideas.
Behind his glasses, Chant looked as exhausted as Seb felt. His anxiety, held at bay all night by the immediacy of enacting a plan, rose in his chest, unfurling to fill all the space in his body. His brain and his skin itched with a single, imperative thought: this is a mistake.
He’d thought it all the way to Lily’s house and back to campus.
Adriana had eaten the dessert on purpose.
She’d seen him floundering, seen Hawthorn Bellarius headed after him.
She’d put herself in death’s sight lines for him, not even questioning why.
So had Asher. So had Chant. All of this for one person.
But it’s Lily.
The two realities butted up against each other ceaselessly, looping in an ouroboros of unequivocal truths that he couldn’t reconcile.
It was a mistake. One life wasn’t worth many more.
But it was Lily, and she was worth everything to him.
He would give up anything to cure her—even his magic, which he loved most of all.
But it wasn’t just him anymore. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t asked any of the others to help.
They had, and now their lives were balancing in his ledger.
“What now?” he said to the AEther as much as to Chant, shivering with internal chill.
“Now you go win this tournament.”
Seb winced. In the commotion of the night, he’d forgotten the whole reason he’d been at Hawthorn Hall in the first place. In less than twelve hours, Seb faced Pavel Elkton, of British Columbia’s Mistvane Institute. He hadn’t even begun prepping spells for his foil.
He pressed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose so he wouldn’t cry. He would give anything to sleep. Even just two uninterrupted hours.
He could sleep when he was dead.
Normally, he’d be glued to the Cantrèa ring all day, for the entire week of the tournament.
Normally, he’d be studying all of his potential opponents, but not this year.
This year, Seb made a cursory appearance for the opening bout, solely for the purpose of being seen.
Lily was there, sitting with Asher and Daphne.
He waved at them from across the ring, and then he went and slept in Equipment Room D, on top of a pile of mats hidden behind a row of plastrons.
When he fought Pavel Elkton, he did it positively medieval in style—nasty, brutish, short—and without any of his usual fire. Pavel was not a worthy opponent, and Seb made no pretense that he was. Seb played like he was in a linebacker’s body, plowing through the bout.
He hated it, knew that in the upper stands, Lily hated it too, but he didn’t care.
He didn’t care that hundreds of spectators were analyzing this lapse in play style.
Let them think it was a gambit meant to throw them off in later bouts.
He didn’t care that the match was so short as to be unsportsmanlike, in the way its brevity would embarrass Pavel.
Let them think this was a new Sebastian, one thirsty not just for glory but for dominance.
He hated it, he hated it, he hated it.
He felt like the curse had made it into his bloodstream and his sweat, just from seeing it.
He took a sleeping pill at eight p.m. and slept for twelve hours.