Page 143 of The Alchemists

He didn’t care at all.

The crossroads presented at the lobby momentarily paralyzed him. Should he go for the catacombs or the tower room? How long had it taken him to get from the quad to the library? How long would whoever had found the Chalice tarry belowground?

He ran for the unicorn tapestry.

LILY

Lily screamed so loud that the dust in the room trembled, and she dropped the Chalice. Her wonder at the shrine evaporated and all she wanted was to get somewhere safe with overhead lights. Fumbling, she scooped the wooden box and the Chalice—every symbol now glistening crimson, the metal unnaturally warm for something that had been sitting buried under winter stone—into her backpack.

She ran through the darkness, her light bouncing crazily off the walls, but she didn’t even care. Logically, she knew the ringing had been because she had won the Elumnara, but it reminded her that she was alone, in the dark, underground, and that was where monsters lived.

As she resummoned the stairs and climbed them, dizzy, emerging into the grand vestibule, she finally let herself stop to breathe, leaning against the stone wall. She gazed up at the great chandelier, at the unicorn tapestries flanking the walls, and began to cry.

If someone had asked, she wasn’t sure she could have told them why. Relief? maybe. Joy? Possibly. Sorrow? Not unlikely. She only knew that something was over, and that meant that she was one step closer to everything being over. Windermere’s Heir. What did it mean? Could it break a curse? She wasn’t going to hold her breath.

After an indulgent length of time, she peeled herself off the wall and made her way to the tower. As she opened that door, that same skin prickle she’d felt so much recently amplified, crashing over her in a wave of anxious nausea so intense that she actually gasped.

Something moved behind her, and she turned.

“Hey, Lily,” Conrad said, right before he smashed her across the face.

SEB

“Lily!” He shouted it down the corridors of the catacombs, only for them to hurl it back at him tenfold.

He ran down the halls as fast as he dared in the darkness, following the trail of magic to the door. It was cracked open, and inside was a temple. He swept his phone around the room. Under normal circumstances he would have lingered, absorbed, loved. But now, as his weak light illuminated the empty ark, he knew he was in the wrong place. The tomb had already been raided.

As he made it back to the stacks, from somewhere that sounded very far away, he heard a shout.

LILY

Blood spilled hot and stinging into her eye as she staggered backward. Her vision oozed and doubled. She tripped over empty air behind her and collapsed to the floor, clutching one hand over her face. Several Hawleyhursts and Braithwhites wove and merged before her. Hawleyhurst had hit her with a span of metal tubing from the debris pile. The jagged edge of it was what had ripped her forehead open.

As she crumpled onto her elbow, vomiting champagne, she considered how she was lucky that he hadn’t gouged out her eye; a strange thought considering that he was clearly going to kill her. It was obvious in his expression, the cold fury that always lurked there, suddenly ignited into something black and consuming. He wore a chain with a talisman on it, the same one he’d worn at Halloween, and in her extremely fucked-up state she could see the magic pulsing out of it.

Next to him, Braithwhite, wearing a similar talisman, began to cast, and Lily yelped as biting cold whipped out from him and lashed her wrists behind her, agonizingly tight. Whatever the spell used cut into her. She felt the moment her skin parted around it, and blood slicked toward her fingers. She fell over sideways, the tips of her hair dragging in the puddle of vomit. The bindings on her wrists cut her off from her magic so deeply she couldn’t even remember her Words.

Hawleyhurst jerked his chin in her direction, and Braithwhite dragged her, throwing her back against the couch so that she was tipped upright. Hawleyhurst took a step toward her, and she couldn’t help flinching.

He laughed. “Well, well. Windermere’s heir in the flesh. Where’s Allsaires?”

Sebastian.

Relief coursed through her. At least Sebastian wasn’t here. What a clusterfuck that would be.

“He’s not here,” she said.

“What, and you went after the Chalice alone? A lover’s quarrel, is it?”

“Does it matter?”

His face clearly indicated that it did. An opening. If he was talking, he probably wasn’t killing her.

“What do you even want with him? For someone who claims to hate him, you sure do seem to spend a lot of time thinking about him.” His face twitched. She slid the knife in further, recklessly. “What, Braithwhite here is just a poor substitute?”

Braithwhite punched her in the face. The cartilage in her nose crunched as her vision burst. A fresh gout of blood sprayed into her eye.

“What was he to you, Conrad? You broke up with him, but here you are⁠—”