Page 80 of The Alchemists

“Did you hear?”

He nodded.

“Do you want to go back?” She wanted to touch him. She was terrified to touch him. “We can do whatever you want. We can go, we can stay here. We can…whatever. Whatever you need.”

An SUV passed through the drive-thru. There were no other cars behind it.

He opened his mouth. No words came out.

You can do this, she willed him. This is the worst part. It gets better.

She didn’t say any of it.

“He raped me.”

His voice came out flat and distorted. She wouldn’t have known it was his over the phone.

There were high fences on the Mid-Hudson Bridge to stop jumpers. Lily’s whole being felt like it had clambered over, thrown itself into the foggy dark emptiness, to get pulverized on the river below. That’s what happened if you jumped at that height. You shattered inside your skin.

Say something.

But she didn’t. She just sat there.

Memory strangled Sebastian’s voice as it clawed its way out of him. “It was the Midsummer Bonfire. We’d just broken up, like a week before.” His face was slack, staring at the drive-thru. There was nothing to look at. “I wanted to come out—he didn’t. But I told you that already.” His voice hitched, cracked.

Lily worked her fingers off the steering wheel, moved her hand slowly, laying it alongside his so that only their pinkies touched. She held her breath, because it wasn’t fair of her to sob when he was so stoic. If she opened her mouth, she would explode.

“I was drunk. Blacked out, mostly. I only remember pieces. I remember running into him, then being in his dorm.”

He paused, breathing hard, and in the burnt-orange and purple world of the car, she saw he was crying, convulsing silently, tears washing down his face. She exhaled a sigh that held the shape of his name, and he covered her hand with his, clutching it until her knuckles blanched. She rooted herself in the pain.

“It was my fault.” His voice broke. “I shouldn’t have drunk so much, I shouldn’t have shared my Words, shouldn’t⁠—”

“No.” The violence in her voice surprised her. “If it were anyone else, you wouldn’t say that. The rules…reality doesn’t change just because it’s you.” She clutched his hand back. “Sebastian.”

He looked at her then, and she’d never seen anyone more lost in her life.

“It was not your fault. Whatever happened, whatever you think you should have done, you could not consent.”

A strange expression settled on his face, something like freedom, if freedom weighed a thousand pounds. “I know.” There was almost wonder in his voice. “I told him I had to go. I told him to stop.”

She was going to kill Conrad Hawleyhurst, if she hadn’t already. She’d never known anything with the pure conviction that accompanied the thought.

“Sebastian,” she whispered, because that was the closest she could get to pouring herself into his lap, holding him, kissing him until he forgot everything that had happened to him.

“Oh, god,” he said, dropping his face into his hands, weeping.

The sobs shook his whole body.

Lily rubbed his back.

* Phytophiltrology: The study and creation of reagents, tinctures, and other Ætheric decoctions from botanical sources. From the Greek phyton, plant; philtron, love-charm; logia, speak/tell.

SEB

He’d told her.

Saying it aloud was…