Page 151 of The Alchemists

They would do it, and the rest of their schoolwork, anyway. Neither of them were idle creatures. Once Seb had gotten off painkillers, he’d spent his time in the health center finishing his English thesis on Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound and started working on another project that he wouldn’t share with her, but that had him typing madly.

He stopped his swing.

“Wait here.” He jumped up and jogged toward the gate in the tall-paneled fence that led to the driveway, betraying only the barest trace of a limp. Earlier that week they’d finally gotten back in the studio and had left it sweaty and torn between how much ground they’d lost and how grateful they were just to be back.

“Where would I go?” she called after him.

While she waited, she swung properly, pumping her legs hard, leaning far on the backswing until she felt the brush of weightlessness. She tipped her head back, taking in the magnolia, the soft scent of the night, and the stars above her, coming closer and closer with each swing.

SEB

He thought his heart might actually explode as he reached into the back seat of the car for the box that Chant had left him. With shaking hands, he checked once more to make sure it was still there, to make sure it had worked.

Seb reentered the backyard through the house, pausing in the kitchen to change the music, closing his eyes briefly as Asher’s finished version of their song quietly warmed the night. Every time he heard it, it was like nectar pumping through his veins. Magic washed over him, through him, whispering soundless reassurance in his ears.

He stood for a moment in the doorway, watching Lily cut blithely through the night, swinging higher and higher. She looked unreal—Ætheric—and pure. He felt unstuck from time, watching her, as if this had happened a hundred times before, and what he saw now was only a memory.

She slowed the swing, dragging her heels and spraying dirt as she noticed him approach. Her grin was wild and fierce. He had never seen her smile like this before, and he would bottle it if he could. If he drank this smile of hers before a match, he would be unstoppable.

“Did you do this?” She pointed at the sky, indicating the music.

“Maybe.”

“Very sentimental of you.” She took his hand as he rejoined her on the swings.

“I think you know me well enough by now to know…”

“It’s one of my favorite things about you,” she said, no longer teasing. Then: “I said no presents. Why does no one ever listen to me?”

“Because you’re loved,” he said simply.

God, he grimaced internally, flushing. Asher’s cocktail had stripped away his every defense, and he didn’t have very many of them left to start with. Lily looked at her lap, the wild smile gone. Very suddenly, she looked like she might cry.

“Lily,” his voice throbbed unintentionally.

This had been a mistake once before, but the moment in front of him wouldn’t be possible without it. He thought he might vomit from the nerves twisting up in his stomach, cinching around liquor and cake. He half-collapsed into the swing with a thump, his hands protective around the box in his lap.

“That night⁠—”

She cut in quickly. “We don’t need to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Lily.”

She looked at him then, first at his fingers, and then at his face. His hand was fisted in her sweater; his heart racing as fast as in any match.

“That night, my magic. I thought I lost it again.”

He watched her blink through the memory, recognition filtering into her eyes.

“Do you know what brought it back?” It was a rhetorical question, and she knew it, shaking her head warily. “You did.”

“I didn’t,” she said, half confused, half defensive, not wanting to take credit. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even know what was happening.”

“You did,” he said again, “When I saw you hurt like that, I lost my Words.”

She stared at him.

“Not lost, maybe, but they weren’t good enough anymore. They weren’t strong enough for what I feel. They weren’t right.”