128. Seb
SEB
“You water it with your intent. Every day.”
He had practiced this part with Chant, explanations that weren’t quite lies. Chant had even used a cantrip on him earlier that afternoon to make them come more smoothly. Lily couldn’t know, couldn’t suspect.
“And when do I wish?”
“Now, if you want. The rumors say that once it tastes your salt, it becomes attuned to you, and you can wish.”
“Salt?”
“Blood, generally, but tears should work.”
Lily fixed the plant with her gaze, studying it, eyes slightly narrowed. “Alright.”
His heart beat very, very hard. “What—”
“Sebastian,” she said quietly, cutting him off with a kiss. “You know what I wished for.”
Then she stood, pulling him up with her, and led him upstairs to bed.
He’d been in Lily’s room a handful of times now, but he’d never done anything as bold as stay over or press his body along the length of hers when her family was home. She’d asked permission for him to stay after the party—such a young-feeling thing to ask for.
It felt weirdly foreign to stand next to her in her cramped bathroom and brush his teeth.
Changing into pajamas, letting his pants drop onto her thin-planked floor, seemed both intimate and childish.
Her bed was too soft against his spine, her pillows not quite right under his neck.
As much as he wanted to slide his hands under her old T-shirt, over her warm stomach and up her ribs, he didn’t dare.
So, while Lily fell asleep, and he didn’t, from generalized insomnia, an alien homesickness, and an ache low in his stomach, he stared at the gray shape of the plant where she’d placed it on her bookshelf.
“You’re sure?” Chant asked. The skin around his eyes was tight with stress.
Seb leaned forward, aided by his cane. “I’m sure.”
That week, while Lily was out and about, shuttled from one meeting to another, Seb was in the basement of Paracelsus, breaking a curse that couldn’t be broken.
He’d unpotted the curse plant and placed it in a flask, roots and all. It had stung and scarred him, even through the gloves, and his wrists were a mess of purple-black welts that seemed to move of their own accord.
Now, with bare hands, he picked up the plant, letting Magic form a barrier between its poison and his skin. When he looked at it between his palms, it was such a small thing and so twisted. It just wanted to grow, but it had been stunted by hate.
“I know that this may seem pedantic, given…this…”
Here, Chant gestured vaguely at Seb’s whole person.
He wasn’t offended. He knew that after his bout with Danielson, he’d become something strange and alien; off-putting, the way Lily was, to those who didn’t know her.
The knowledge of that, the inverting of their circumstances, satisfied him.
It felt like just another part of the equation balancing.
That was all this was, really: balancing.
Magic craved balance, so he would help it.
He was terrified to help it, of what it would ask from him, what it would take in return.
“But humor me. Explain once more because this is it, Sebastian. You have to be sure.”
He was sure. Had never been so sure of anything in his life, but he explained it again.
“The AEtheric Laws,” he said. “What is done must be undone, what is undone must be done. From AEther, to AEther. All is circular.” He looked at the plant again. “I can’t dispel this; I can only transfer it. I’m going to transmute its intention.”