Page 145 of The Alchemists

Lily screamed.

SEB

He was surprised by how surprised he was at how much it hurt to get hit with Fateful Lightning. He’d been hit by it before, of course, but never outside of Cantrèa, and Cantrèa uniforms were enchanted to dampen the physical effects of attacks. They dampened the effects by quite a lot, it turned out.

Seb didn’t really understand what had happened. He had summoned a shield, except that once again, he hadn’t. Then he was flying out a priceless window—defenestrated, he thought numbly, as his back shattered glass and bent iron—and falling. He was too shocked, all of it happening too fast, to try to grab anything as he hit, then slid down the copper-green peak of the roof. Not that there was anything for him to grab. He cast out for Magic, but it was silent inside him.

What a shitty way to die, he thought, as he watched the glass rain down, following him out of the sky.

He didn’t die.

He slammed very, very hard into the stone crenellations that hid the roof’s gutter. Something, maybe multiple somethings, broke inside his skin. He wanted to get up, but he couldn’t, so he lay in the gutter, rain washing blood into his eyes, cold seeping straight into his core, and waited to die.

He closed his eyes.

LILY

Time had already gone sideways, but as she watched Seb crash through a window, hurled by Fateful Lightning, it folded in on itself completely, and so did her mind. She slammed her arms together, the same way she had at the equinox bonfire, but with unmetered rage behind it. Her wall of cheap mirrors shattered outward, hurling glass over Hawleyhurst and Braithwhite.

And then she was vaulting, somehow, out of a broken window, the glass slicing deeper lacerations in her palm, and tumbling down the roof. She landed against the crenellations with slightly more grace than Seb had, and she crawled to him, pulling his head into her lap. He was breathing shallowly, but his eyes were closed. Blood mingled with the gutter water below him, sliding away to be spit out by gargoyles over the edge of the roof.

“Seb,” she whispered. “Sebastian.”

He groaned in response, and then she shook him, in case she needed to keep him awake, because she didn’t know what else to do.

Braithwhite and Hawleyhurst slid down the roof toward them.

Lightning—terrifying and real—flashed overhead.

SEB

Let me die, he thought, uncharitably, at whoever was shaking him.

Every millimeter of movement was agony. His spine was a shattered highway of pain. They called him again, and he realized, dimly, it was Lily.

Lily.

Lily.

She was the only thing that could have called him back from the underworld. He’d longed for oblivion before, and it was here, even without him asking, except now he didn’t want it. The irony.

Seb clung to the thread of her voice and clawed his way back to the edge of consciousness. He tried to sit up, and the pain radiated, excruciating, all the way to his toes and his skull. Dimly, he realized this meant he probably wasn’t paralyzed.

He opened his eyes. Lily’s face swam above his. Even in the rain he could tell she was crying, because one of the raindrops that hit his face and rolled into the corner of his mouth was hot and tasted like the sea.

LILY

He couldn’t sit up, so she pulled him into her arms, against her chest, even though she could tell it was agony for him, from the way his breath stoppered with a scream he didn’t have the energy for.

Braithwhite and Hawleyhurst flanked them. Sitting, bleeding in the rain, this was a fight she couldn’t win. Somehow, all of Seb’s golden magic was gone, and her attacks had used most of her reserves. The night swam before her. She couldn’t see straight. Even if she could have attacked, she’d have to leave Seb lying in the gutter, so it wasn’t much of a choice at all. She would shield them as long as she could, but it was over.

As Hawleyhurst raised his hands, prepping another attack, she closed her eyes.

She bent her lips to Sebastian’s ear and offered him the only comfort she could.

SEB

Afunny thing happened to him as Lily whispered the lyrics to their song in his ear. Her voice was ragged with anguish, but it didn’t matter. As her lips moved against his hair, warmth seeped slowly through him. He blinked, drowsily, and the night brightened, outlined in whorls of amber.