Page 157 of The Alchemists

She held up her phone so that Seb could see. 11:52 p.m.

Eight minutes until moonrise.

Seb drew her in, pressing his forehead against hers.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured.

She pressed her eyes closed. “I love you,” she whispered.

His Opus, she realized in that last moment, sat untouched on her desk. She’d been waiting to have the time to read it properly, and now she never could.

SEB

Seven minutes.

Lily gripped his hand, her back firm against his, head pressed into the curve of his neck. He pressed back. He wanted to stay in this darkness forever. Even if he never saw her again, at least he could touch her, hear her, love her. Orpheus had not realized how good he had it.

Please forgive me, one day, he begged her silently, for the deal I’m making.

“And remind me, Sebastian,” Chant said gently, in the basement of Paracelsus. “Where is this transference, this intention going?”

Seb swallowed, teeth grinding as he set his jaw. He had thought the magic—the casting of it, the steps and sigils—would be the hard part, but he was wrong, so terribly wrong.

It was the sacrifice that was unbearable. But the only thing more unbearable was losing her.

“Me. I’m taking it.”

Chant gripped his shoulder, turning him violently. His mentor’s eyes were chaotic with fear.

“Sebastian! You cannot let this curse kill you instead. I won’t allow it.”

“Don’t worry, Professor.” He laughed hollowly. “It’s not going to kill me. That wouldn’t fix anything. Besides, that wouldn’t be the worst thing. You can’t feel anything if you’re dead.”

Chant relaxed his grip slightly. He asked carefully, as if Seb were a feral thing that might attack unprovoked, “And what is the worst thing, to you?”

Seb smiled lopsidedly at him. He didn’t even care that he was crying.

“They say if you love something, let it go.”

He imagined himself without the very thing that made him what he was.

He began to cast.

LILY

They took their places on the black stage, ears straining, and gripped hands, briefly, in the darkness. They stood pressed back-to-back, waiting. She glanced out at the invisible audience. Somewhere out there were her mother and grandmother, her friends. The lights rose slowly. The music began.

At the first chord, they slid down each other’s spines, arms branching for the sky outside, and then they broke apart. Tori’s voice crashed around her from eight different directions, offering an impossible deal. In that moment, Lily would have made any bargain, signed any contract, for another few minutes. She couldn’t breathe. When she clutched her arms around her chest, arching backward, it was only partly choreography.

It doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t hurt me, she told herself, willing it into truth as she spun, as she pushed against an invisible force, looking for Seb.

And there he was, rushing to meet her. When she placed her hand on the curve between his neck and his shoulder, and their gazes finally locked, his hazel eyes sparked green and gold. Deep and wild, brimming with Magic. Together, back pressed to chest, they drew back the arrow of their love, loosed it.

This was the deal they were making in those minutes: they felt everything—the waves, the throbbing ache of love, the thunder brimming up in their hearts.

No, she thought suddenly. Her heart was thunder; in this moment, in all moments, and Sebastian was the lightning rod calling her down from the sky. When they collided again after splitting apart, she felt the moment the boundaries between them blurred into nothingness—particles too small to count or collect.

She knew everything in his heart, in that moment, and realized how stupid, how selfish she’d been to think he’d be fine. The bullet of her love had pierced him long ago, and the shrapnel was lodged intractably in every part of him. There was no getting it out. She knew it in the way that he clutched her, the way he swept her backward in the circle of his arms so deeply that her hair grazed the floor, and the audience gasped. She knew it in how hard he held on to her, trying to keep himself from breaking apart.