Page 81 of The Alchemists

He felt lighter.

He felt like he contained the density of a supermassive black hole.

Lily drove back to campus, windshield wipers flicking against the fog and the spitting night. She stared straight ahead. She was crying.

He was crying, he was pretty sure. The seat of the car was trying to swallow him whole. He wanted to let it. He wanted to fall asleep under an ancient yew for a hundred years, a thousand, and wake up in a new world.

Lily wouldn’t be in that world, though. That was the only thing keeping him sane, her presence next to him. She held his hand the whole time, even while she shifted.

“Do they know?” she’d asked. “Asher and Tori?”

He shook his head.

“I think they would want to know. I think they would want to support you.”

Rip off the bandage. Then there would be nothing left. The ruins of whatever he was would be out there, for all of them to see.

She parked in his spot. He stayed in the passenger seat, unable to move. Eventually Lily got out and came around, opening his door for him. She crouched next to him, holding his dangling hand.

“You don’t have to tell them,” she said, all the normal edges of her voice smoothed away. “But if you do, it will get better sooner.”

He pressed his head back into the seat, gazing upward. For having cried so much, his eyes felt dry and puffy. “I thought I was.”

“You were. You are. These are all steps.”

Silently, he nodded, letting her pull him out of the car. He staggered into her arms and she wrapped them around his back. They stood there for a long time, until the cold was too much to bear.

In the elevator, he finally got a good look at her. The inside corner of her nose was raw and abraded, the rest of it swollen. Purple spread into the pocket below her eye. A long, angry scrape cut diagonally across her other cheek. There was dried blood in her hair, crusted below her nostrils. She was filthy.

You left her alone.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed hoarsely.

“Don’t be sorry.” She hugged him again, and for a second he couldn’t breathe. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Asher and Tori crowded the door immediately as Lily opened it with Seb’s keys. They’d locked it despite their open-door policy. Asher pulled them inside, Tori throwing up a quick ward, pressing the door shut with her back.

“Lily, your face—Jesus Christ.” Asher gaped as they fell into the kitchen. Lily collapsed against the island, aiming for a stool and missing. Tori pulled Lily out of her coat, revealing her ruined clothes.

Asher was already at the freezer, breaking open one of his giant spherical ice cubes and wrapping it in a clean towel. She pressed it to her eye, wincing. Only in the warmth and light could Seb see how close she’d been to breaking this whole time. She’d been running on fumes, carrying both of them. She placed her head in her hands, and he watched her fight internally to keep going, even when it was safe to collapse. Her entire body was a coiled spring.

“Lily,” Asher said, and she shook her head.

She took several deep breaths, her eyes open and unfocused on the countertop beneath her, and then she sat up, pulling her shoulders back, straightening her spine. In that moment, Seb was very certain that she was the single strongest person he’d ever met.

“I’m fine.” She looked between them, ice covering half her face. “I’m fine,” she said, willing it into reality.

“What happened?” Asher looked at Seb, taking in his relative lack of disarray, his puffy face.

“No,” Tori said with surprising force. “They need to get cleaned up first, then we’ll talk. Lily, come with me.” She took her by the wrist, and Lily, predictably, resisted.

“I’m—”

“Lily, I swear to Vexiliar, if you say ‘I’m fine’ one more time when you look like you’ve been in a back-alley bar fight, I’m going to throw you out the window.”

Lily shut her mouth and let Tori drag her to the bathroom. Seb sat with Asher in studious silence while they listened to Tori casting spells through the half-closed door.

“I’d rather just feel it all now than feel okay now and worse later.”