Page 105 of The Alchemists

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you wasting even a day you could be spending with her?”

“I can’t lose her, Ash.”

“It doesn’t seem like you get to make that choice. You only get to choose how. When.”

He wiped his face with his scarf. “It hurts too much already.”

“I’m so sorry, I really am. But Seb.” Asher fixed him with his deep gaze. “If you let it end like this, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

All the fight, all the anger, seeped out of him. “I know,” he whispered.

“Stay here tonight, sleep it off, and get on the first train back tomorrow.” He refilled Seb’s water. “Be the person you made her think you are.”

LILY

She didn’t hear from him the rest of the day, or the next day, but she checked her phone compulsively anyway. At one point, she turned it off but only made it five minutes before giving up. She prayed for any distraction, but her heart and mind conspired against her, fixating on it with single-minded devotion. Her mom and Gran dragged her snowshoeing. They went to the movies. Lily just wanted to scream or throw herself into the Hudson.

A text came in, finally, and she dove frantically for her phone, only to see a message from Tori: You don’t have any plans, do you?

Frowning, Lily confirmed.

Then: Be outside at noon. Bring a weekender.

Lily had to look up what a weekender was. She did not have one. She packed a duffel bag and told her mom she was going to the City. A car arrived at noon, and she got in it. Just over two hours later, she emerged outside the Midtown Duelists Club, where Tori waited, swathed in black wool. They stood studying each other for too long in the cold, and then Tori pulled her into a hug.

“He told me,” she said. “Try not to hold it against him.”

“What are we doing here?” Lily asked, caught in an almost-déjà vu, as they walked past the doorman through the wrought-iron gates. She hadn’t been here since the first time she’d seen Sebastian, five years ago. Tori didn’t know, did she? She couldn’t possibly. Even Seb didn’t know.

Tori just shrugged off her coat and offered it to the concierge, motioning Lily to do the same. The great hall was practically empty, echoing in a way so unlike the way it had before. Lily followed the massive green marble columns up and up to the domed ceiling. Tori led her down a hallway filled with portraits, some painted, some not. She stopped in front of a very large black-and-white photograph.

In it, two teenage boys stood shoulder to shoulder, decked in full tournament regalia. They had their helmets tucked under their arms and their foils extended downward, crossing at the tips. Both of them smiled widely. One of them was Sebastian. The other was…familiar.

Lily leaned in to study closer, squinting at their faces. Sebastian looked almost identical to how he appeared in her memory from that first time—radiant, unshakeable. Next to her, Tori stood incredibly still, even her breath silent, as Lily read the descriptive plaque. Twice. Four times.

North American Eastern Conference Champions: Sebastian Allsaires – 16, André Beaumont – 16.

Lily glanced at Tori. “Is that…your⁠—”

“It’s me.” Tori’s voice was tight and anxious.

Suddenly she could see it—the same sharp bone structure, the same eyes. But other things were different. Tori’s jaw was rounder now, she had no Adam’s apple, her nose and forehead were softer.

“I’m trans,” Tori said, and Lily realized she stood with her back to the photo. “I’ve had a lot of surgeries. I use a lot of enchantments, every day, to help me pass.” She started walking back down the hallway, and Lily followed her, silently. “I’m very fortunate,” she said mechanically.

Lily was shocked but not surprised.

Tori seated them in the mezzanine club restaurant and ordered high tea. It came out on a cart with a million little fancy sandwiches and pastries that Lily would have loved under any other circumstance. She perched on the edge of an overstuffed leather chair that wanted nothing more for her to lean back so it could swallow her whole.

“Are you…out? Is that how it works? I don’t know, sorry.”

“In some places. Normal places. Not Windermere. I mean a few people know, and administrators, obviously.”

“Why’d you stop playing Cantrèa? Is there a rule?”

Tori cast her gaze around the near-empty room, taking it in, and sighed. “Not technically, though I’m sure they would have been happy to make one. I…I don’t know how to explain what it’s like to live most of your life in the wrong body, and I’m one of the very, very lucky ones. Everything that he was, that I was…I needed to leave it all behind, to become myself.” She poured herself some more tea. “Maybe it would have been different if my parents had accepted it, but…the minute I could run, I did. That’s why I’m at Windermere instead of Savarelle.”