Page 107 of The Alchemists

Chant answered the door in jeans and a heathered quarter-zip. He held an open bottle of red wine by the neck.

“Sebastian?” His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Seb took in the wine, grimacing. “Sorry to bother you; are you expecting company?”

“Oh? This?” Chant glanced at the bottle, shrugging. “I suppose I am now. Come in.”

Seb kicked off his shoes and unwound his scarf. Chant’s apartment was warmly minimalist, all soft whites and old-fashioned bulbs. His fireplace was filled with books. It was one of the faculty apartments scattered near campus in renovated Victorians that the college owned.

“Take a seat,” Chant said from the kitchen peninsula, pulling down a second glass.

Seb sat in a surprisingly comfortable modernist armchair.

“What are you doing on campus over break? I assumed you’d be throwing yourself down a mountain like the rest of your classmates.” He handed Seb a glass.

He took a sip. “What do you know about curses?”

Chant adjusted his glasses. “Sebastian, I…”

“I know you’re not supposed to talk about them, that no one’s supposed to know anything, but it’s too important.”

“This is about Lily, I take it?”

Seb stared into his wine, trying not to cry. The aftertaste turned sharply acidic in his mouth. He nodded.

Chant sighed, leaning back in his chair and taking a contemplative sip of wine. “I only know a little, and much of that is unconfirmed. But I do know that the only person who can modify a curse is the caster. Do you know who that is?”

Seb’s heart dropped. “No.”

“It would have been someone on the Tribunal. I’d look at the records from twenty years ago. There’s at least one other thing you should know.” He fixed Seb with a look that was all pity around the edges. “Once the energy of a curse is released into the world, it cannot be erased.”

“What do you mean? They can’t actually be broken?”

“Not in the way you’re imagining. Energy can never be unmade; it can only be transferred or transmuted.”

If it were possible for his heart to break further, it would have then. “Oh.”

“But Sebastian—don’t forget, Magic is mutable. There’s always a loophole somewhere.”

They talked, emptily, for a few minutes longer, while Seb finished the wine he didn’t really want. He turned at the door as he shrugged into his coat.

“One more question, if you don’t mind.”

Chant held up his empty palms.

“What do you know about the Elumnara this year? It’s not an Elumnara at all—not really, is it?”

“I know nothing about it,” Chant said, his face passively cryptic.

Seb narrowed his eyes. “Are you lying?”

“Perhaps. Good night, Sebastian.”

He stood trembling on Lily’s doorstep for the second time in as many days. Once he’d sobered up, staring out the steam-blurred window of the train as the Hudson slid by in icy placidity, once he’d cried so much that his head pounded and his face was a puffy ruin and there were no more tears left in him, he’d realized how right everyone else was.

Standing in Lily’s backyard, he’d confirmed her worst fear. She’d flayed herself open in front of him, after seeing all his own rawness, and he’d walked away. He was an asshole, the worst sort, because he’d worked so very hard to make her believe that the opposite was true.

Hands in his pockets, he felt conspicuously empty-handed. He thought he should have brought something, but flowers were banal, and nothing else seemed remotely appropriate. Lily didn’t want gestures; she wanted truth, absolutes.