Page 79 of The Alchemists

If he’d been behind the wheel then, he might have driven right over the palisade and into the Hudson—would do anything to put a stop to the shame and guilt spouting in his stomach like a bullet wound, remorselessly consuming his insides.

He stared ahead at the drive-thru, his gaze unfixed. He wanted to scream, to break something, to break himself—hurl his body up against the brick wall in front of him until it was nothing but pulp.

“You have PTSD, Sebastian.” She could barely look at him. Her voice was low and tremulous. Seven curses, what could she possibly see in him now? “Why do you have PTSD?”

PTSD.

He knew it, had always known it, in that locked-out part of himself, shackled to a stone at the bottom of a river. You didn’t lose your Words or get packed off to Lapland to get sweated out and psychotropized with witches for the summer, if you didn’t.

He stared at the cars inching to the pay window. Give five dollars, get a coffee. Drive away.

He’d tell her when five cars went by.

He’d tell her when ten cars went by.

Fifteen.

LILY

She didn’t move.

She didn’t want him to think she was getting impatient. Even though she trembled from cold, from sitting so long, and her knees were so stiff they were going to crack when she shifted, and her neck ached, and her nose was running or bleeding again, she stayed. Unmoving. She could do that, at least, for him.

Lily knew.

No, she didn’t know. But she was pretty sure.

She wanted him to say anything else.

She’d never wanted to be so wrong in her whole, short life.

Every second she watched him watching the drive-thru, trying to summon courage that no one should need, her heart broke a little more. It was throbbing raw in her chest, bleeding for him. She’d never understood that idiom before, but she did now.

His phone rang from its place in the cup holder. He didn’t seem to notice. She reached for it. A picture of Asher accompanied the buzzing.

“Asher?”

“Lily? Where’s Seb?”

She glanced at him, a bare thing. He was still counting cars.

“He’s here. We…ran into trouble.”

Asher swore on the other end of the line. “Is he okay? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, sidestepping the first question. “What’s wrong?”

“Someone trashed the suite. Seb’s room, mostly.” Her stomach entered free fall. The disc was in Seb’s room. Had been. So that’s where Braithwhite was.

“We were at that lecture with the visiting phytophiltrology⁠* researcher. We just got back.”

Lily stayed quiet for a long time, trying to collect any words that weren’t desperate curses or the wail that was building inside her. “We’re on our way. See you soon.”

She hung up and looked over at Seb. His lips were moving too fast to be counting cars.

His Words.

Sebastian Allsaires had a deeper connection with his Words than any Magician she’d ever met. It was why he was so good at everything, at least partly, anyway. Being able to commune with Magic like that—constantly—was a rare talent, a rarer discipline. Lily was powerful, but she’d also circumvented a lot of the system. But watching him, she could see. His Words were so much more than power. They were his foundation. He’d built himself, every agonizingly beautiful inch, on top of them, on top of Magic.