Page 131 of The Alchemists

“Looks bad.”

“Feels worse.”

“You should go to the health center. It’s probably broken.”

“I don’t have time; I need to finish my next spells. Besides, if it’s a fracture, there’s nothing they can do.”

He was right. The only mundane cure for broken ribs was time. “I can fix you well enough for the next bout.”

He sighed, “As long as the double back doesn’t hit in the next five hours⁠—”

“I’ll take it.”

The muscles on his side shivered, thoroughbred-like, as he looked down at her with his moss-flecked eyes.

“This is my⁠—”

“I’ll. Take. It.”

It was an order, not an offer. Seb needed to make it to the finals. He needed to win. She needed it for him. However bad the hit hurt doubled was worth it. His face was a war zone of internal struggle.

“Please. Let me do this for you.”

He closed his eyes, his expression tight with pain. “People keep saying that,” he whispered. “And I don’t deserve it.”

She frowned at him. “What people?”

“Nothing,” he stuttered. “Just…Just enough for me to play. Nothing more.”

“Sure.”

This time he was the one ordering, his gaze steely. “Lily. Nothing more.”

She nodded. “Nothing more.”

The pain debit hit four hours later, a half hour before Seb’s second match. Lily was walking back to the stadium with Daphne and Asher, golden hour washing the quad in magic, and then she was doubled over. She clutched Asher’s arm with one hand and her side with the other, her ribs a nebula of pain, each breath sharp agony.

Lily was no stranger to pain. The flu-y ache of muscles pushed past their limit was an old friend. She knew muscle pulls and strains. She’d had sprains and breaks of her own. At nineteen, her whole body cracked and popped in a small symphony of joints regularly used for things that pushed its limits.

Seb’s ribs were definitely broken. Her doubled facsimile of his pain felt like one of her ribs was stabbing straight into her lungs. She could barely stand. Lily couldn’t even begin to imagine how much of this pain was only half. As she gasped out an explanation, Asher and Daphne slung her arms over their shoulders and half-carried her the rest of the way. They slipped in a side entrance and took the little-used elevator to the top of the stands, depositing her as softly as they could into the nearest seat.

She’d meant to visit him before the bout, but that was an impossibility now. The locker rooms were sealed to everyone except players fifteen minutes before matches. A dull roar blanketed the stands. As she surveyed the packed seats through pain-white eyes, she saw Chant, up in the same corner as earlier. Tori and Liesl sat together with some of Liesl’s friends; the Méridas were ringed by fellow Vadoria students. Gemma was near the front with Violet and the equestrian crew, and there was Hawleyhurst, flanked by both Braithwhites and most of the lacrosse team.

Everyone was here. Everyone, including her grandfather, entering again at the last moment, his rage a palpable thing, even from this distance. He took a seat next to a man who bore a striking resemblance to Sebastian. Her brain, dulled by the pain, realized a little slowly that the man in the navy wool coat with perfect hair who looked like Seb must be his father. Next to him sat a slim, serious woman, wearing her dark hair slicked back into a surgically perfect chignon, and Seb’s nose. As Lily’s grandfather leaned into her, speaking quietly, she looked up in their direction and smiled thinly. Asher waved politely back. Lily’s stomach plummeted into the lowest of the nine hells.

She whimpered audibly.

Asher turned to her, eyebrow raised.

Her heart beat so fast, her breath came so shallowly in her panic, that it took her a full ten seconds to master her body enough to speak.

“He told them,” she whispered, but her voice was carried away in the roar as Sebastian entered the ring.

Too fast, the official stepped in, performed the formalities, and the match began.

SEB

He looked up at the knock on the doorframe to see a freshman player he vaguely knew, twitchy with nerves.