Archive of Our Own

“Starflowers,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ll help you plant starflowers. They’re hardy. Even you would have trouble killing them.”
I huffed out a broken laugh. “That sounds nice.”
Oh, how I loved him. So much so that it was like a living thing, growing through every crack in me. Too hardy to kill.
—Sorcery and Small Magics, chapter 30

 

The oddest thing about returning to the Fount was how nothing had changed. The Fount itself, its students and faculty—utterly the same, barring the not-very-well stifled elation of a handful of fifth tiers who had secured a Coterie offer after the trials. The grounds were changing, but only as the seasons do, leaves turning vibrant colors and dropping from the trees, frost gracing the ground in the mornings. Sebastian’s life was continuing on, almost without him, heedless of everything he’d gone through in the Unquiet Wood. Uncaring that he had fundamentally changed in a way that he hadn’t completely come to terms with, in a way he couldn’t quite make fit into his previous routine.

This was, of course, because he was not alone in having changed. If he had been, perhaps he could have forced himself back into the narrow box he’d always occupied. Perhaps he could have forgotten the Wood, and all of its monsters and all of its uncomfortable revelations, and simply returned to the flow of his old life as if he’d never stepped out of the stream. But for Leovander Loveage, perhaps he could have pretended that he was the same person he’d always been.

But for Leovander Loveage— That, at least, was a familiar refrain. Even if nothing else about their relationship was the same in the slightest.

Sebastian used to look at Leovander Loveage, and his pranks, and his antagonism, and his irresponsibility, and think, what did I do to deserve this? Now, he looked at Leovander Loveage, and his sharp wit, and his selflessness, and his courage, and thought, what did I do to deserve this? 

Because they’d come back from the Unquiet Wood as friends, unlikely as it might have seemed, and it turned out that being friends with Leovander Loveage was sort of like adopting a needy cat. Suddenly, he was always around, demanding attention, metaphorically twisting himself around Sebastian’s legs, falling asleep in his lap.

The last one wasn’t a metaphor. Leo’s predisposition for nodding off, lingering as a result of his magical overexertion, meant that he frequently ended up slumped against any convenient surface. Walls. Bookcases. Sebastian. At the moment, he was leaning heavily against Sebastian’s shoulder, a book he was supposed to be reading open on his lap as he snored softly.

Sebastian found himself like this with distressing frequency, far more often than he would have ever thought possible. Leo had joyfully declared them “free of each other” in that attic months ago, and yet sometimes it was as if the curse had never been lifted. Sebastian would complain—did complain, sometimes, though Leo seemed to see right through his protests—but it was… nice. Even if it was also excruciatingly painful.

They’d come out here to the garden to study, Leo dragging him along despite the chill in the air and the fresh snow on the ground. It was beautiful, he’d said (true enough), and he was going stir crazy inside the Fount’s stone walls (when was he not?). He’d given Sebastian a spell for a warming bubble to cast over a bench hidden among the hedges, promising to read his book and not be a pest, and Sebastian had sighed long-sufferingly but hadn’t refused him, even though he should have.

With Leo’s head resting on his shoulder, Sebastian could count every one of Leo’s long eyelashes as they fanned over his cheeks. Could smell the spicy-floral note of his cologne, which would linger on Sebastian’s coat for the rest of the day, driving him slowly mad as he caught faint whiffs of it. Could feel the weight and warmth of his body, every point of contact making Sebastian’s skin ache with the desire for more. Taken together, it was enough to make him believe he’d been cursed, except there was no magic in these feelings. No counterspell that would free him from this torture.

Somehow, after everything, Leo had been the lucky one on that account. Because they had come back from the Unquiet Wood as friends, but Sebastian’s heart hadn’t gotten the message.

It was fine. He could handle it, uncomfortable though it might be. In the end, loving Leo was far easier than hating him ever had been, even if he knew his feelings would never truly be returned.

As he sat there—not watching Leo sleep, that would be creepy, he was just… briefly distracted—some irritant twinged in his lungs, and he stifled the urge to cough. He’d blame Leo’s cologne, except this had started last week. A tickle in his throat. An odd tightness in his chest. The occasional unproductive cough. No doubt it was just a winter cold, though he hadn’t yet found the time to visit the infirmary for spells to soothe his symptoms. Now, though, the more he tried to suppress the impulse to keep from disturbing Leo, the more it flared in his chest.

He cleared his throat quietly to no avail. Huffed out a forceful but nearly silent exhale. Drew in a breath of winter air, crisp even in the warming bubble, and held it, forcing it into the irritated corners of his lungs in the hopes of calming them.

Nothing worked. The itch intensified, until he couldn’t suppress it any longer.

The cough that burst out of him jostled Leo off his shoulder, who frowned and blinked sleepily at Sebastian in a way that was not adorable at all. Not that Sebastian was in a position to even appreciate it. Once there was no reason to hold it in, he gave himself over to the impulse, letting the coughs wrack his body, gasping ragged breaths between the hacking. Involuntary tears sprang into his eyes as pain lanced through his chest, but despite the concern he could practically feel radiating off of Leo, he couldn’t make himself stop.

Then, finally, something shook loose. There was a soft splatter against his palm, and the irritation in his chest began to ease.

In the silence that followed, he stared down into his palm and found it contained a smattering of what seemed to be flower petals. Little white diamonds, long and thin. They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t place it. That was hardly the point when he had no clue how they got into his lungs in the first place. It was winter; there weren’t even any flowers blooming now. None of this made sense.

“What’s wrong? Is it blood?” Leo asked, abruptly reminding him that he wasn’t alone.

Sebastian closed his fist around the petals automatically, pulling his hand away before Leo could do something like prize his fingers open. “Nothing,” he snapped, though there was no logical reason to hide this from him. No reason other than Leo’s insatiable curiosity would take over and Sebastian didn’t fancy becoming his excuse to ignore his studies, nor being subject to his meddling. There was already something sparkling in Leo’s eyes, all trace of his earlier fatigue gone. “Just a cough.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot,” Leo said as his frown deepened, and Sebastian tried to feel nothing about the fact that he’d noticed. It was simple proximity. “Do you need me to scrive you some suppressant charms?”

“No. I will visit the infirmary.”

Something like hurt flashed in Leo’s eyes. “I assure you, it’s well within my capabilities.”

Sebastian’s stubborn resolve nearly faltered at that. As if he was not extremely well versed in Leo’s capabilities. Of course he could write the charm, even if it would be a bit nonstandard, and no doubt it would work. But Sebastian couldn’t afford to encourage that kind of caretaking from Leo. Couldn’t afford to let himself get used to it. Leo might have cared for him as a friend, but Sebastian wasn’t stupid. At the end of the year they would both graduate, and Sebastian would hopefully find a position in a Coterie troop, and Leo would mostly like go on to Sahnt, and that would be that.

“I am aware,” Sebastian said flatly, his voice still rough. He cleared his throat. “It’s fine. You don’t need to worry.”

Leo frowned at him, worrying. “But—”

“Don’t you have class soon?” Yes, Sebastian now knew Leo’s schedule. Regrettably. “You’re going to be late, and you know how Harvig feels about tardiness.”

“Don’t remind me,” Leo said with a theatrical shudder. This, thankfully, seemed to be enough to distract him. “Fine, I’ll leave. But you have to promise me you’ll actually go to the infirmary. That sounded bad.”

“I will,” Sebastian assured him. “But I am sure it is nothing.”

Once he was certain Leo had left, he opened his fist again and stared down at the soggy petals, now crushed and wilting. As odd as the whole thing was, perhaps there was nothing more to it—somehow he’d inhaled some flower petals, and now they were out, and that would be it.

The tightness that still lingered in his chest made that hope seem faint indeed.

Sebastian did, in fact, go to the infirmary, where the nurse on duty tutted at him before handing him a stack of cough suppressant charms and some herbal lozenges that tasted terrible but soothed his aching throat. The petals he kept to himself, even though he couldn’t say why. It was possible that the nurse would have known exactly what was wrong with him and sent him off with more useful spells, but something held him back. It seemed unlikely that something could be lingering since the Unquiet Wood, given that they had been back for months, but if it was some magic that had followed him, trying to explain anything about it would only be an exercise in frustration.

Instead, he took himself to the library, where he pulled a stack of medical reference volumes from the shelf, found a quiet corner, and started reading.

Unfortunately, there was little to be found. Under the section titled Respiratory Ailments, he found descriptions of coughing caused by breathing in magical dust, and lung irritation following the casting of certain spells, but nothing that involved flowers. He then looked up Flora-related Maladies, which was mostly full of descriptions of the effects of various botanical toxins. It was there that he came across a description of masquerade flower poisoning, stilling his hand. He had not forgotten that a flower had taken Leo’s mother’s life, but the reminder hardened his resolve not to let Leo know anything about whatever was affecting him. 

Book after book, the story was the same. Nothing that seemed remotely relevant to his situation. The idea that he could be suffering from some completely new disease was absurd, however. Perhaps it was just exceedingly rare. That would be just his luck.

Eventually he exhausted all of the library’s obvious sources, and anyway he had to go to class. Whatever this was, it would have to wait.

Putting off doing anything about it became easier with the suppressant charms. They didn’t take away the cough entirely, but they made it more manageable, letting him go hours without much disturbance. On that first day he almost let himself hope that getting rid of the petals really had been the end of it—until, at the end of the day, alone in his room, he’d been overcome with a fit again and hacked up a few more.

It was in this manner that he passed nearly a week. He burnt through suppressant charms at an alarming rate, keeping his cough to a minimum throughout the day, then finally let them lapse in the evening and allowed his body to expel the foreign plant matter that seemed to be, for lack of a better description, growing in his lungs. He had to have inhaled something in the Unquiet Wood—some seed, perhaps, that had taken root in his chest—though he could find no reference to such a thing existing, no matter how many botanical tomes he poured through. Even so, it was the only thing that made any sense.

By the end of the week, though, he knew he couldn’t keep it up for much longer. The strain of the illness was wearing on him, and his breathing was labored even when he wasn’t coughing. He thought he hid the worst of it fairly well, though people still occasionally looked at him askance, or stared at him concernedly. Just a lingering cold, He’d say to any questions. It’s not contagious. He didn’t know that for sure, though. What if it was? What if he was spreading some kind of virulent form of parasitic plant around the Fount without knowing it?

He considered, and dismissed, telling Phade. After everything that happened over the harvest break and all the latitude he’d already been given, he couldn’t imagine going to them with this unless he had no other choice. Leo was right out, of course. He’d already scrived Sebastian more charms when he couldn’t bring himself to go back to the nurse, and though he tried to keep it in check, it was obvious his worry was only increasing. Agnes was a possibility—they weren’t close, by any means, but they were friendly enough, and she had access to sections of the library he didn’t. The chance that she wouldn’t tell Leo was practically zero, though.

In the end, the decision was taken out of his hands. One evening, after one of his ever-lengthening coughing sessions, he turned around to find Cassius standing in the open door to his room, his eyes wide and panicked.

“I’m sorry,” Cassius blurted. “I didn’t mean to burst in on you. It’s only— I came by because I scrived a new spell, something with a little more oomph for your cough, and I thought you might want to try it. But I heard you coughing, and it sounded like you were dying, Sebastian. What is going on?”

“It’s—” nothing, Sebastian started to say, but Cassius wasn’t looking at him any longer. He was staring at the floor of Sebastian’s room, which was scattered with a rather considerable collection of soggy starflower blossoms. During the last week, he’d progressed from expelling individual petals to entire flowers; when the first one appeared, he’d finally realized what was so familiar about them.

“Are those— Did you— Did those come out of your lungs?” Cassius finally managed, boggling at him.

Sebastian hushed him and hurried to the door, glancing into the hallway to make sure no one was nearby before he firmly shut it. Then, realizing that he couldn’t hide it any longer, he slumped against the door and closed his eyes, like he might be able to hide from this confession.

“Yes,” he said, his voice ragged. “It’s some—infection. I don’t know what kind. Starflowers aren’t normally dangerous. But these…”

He trailed off, unsure of what else to say.

Cassius was silent for a long moment, long enough for Sebastian to open his eyes and find his shock replaced by a frown, concern creasing his brow. “The Fount’s physicians don’t know what it is?”

“I… haven’t told them,” Sebastian admitted.

“What? Why not?”

Even explaining that he could not tell them because he’d almost certainly have to talk about going into the Unquiet Wood was too much; he could feel his throat closing up in a way that had nothing to do with the starflowers. “I just can’t. Anyway, I doubt they’d be able to help. It’s not in any medical book. I’ve looked in every volume the library has.”

“But you can’t just do nothing,” Cassius protested.

Sebastian sighed, and even that was a reminder of the petals still fluttering in his lungs. “I know. Maybe… you can help?”

The dubious expression on Cassius’ face quite clearly said what he thought of this idea. “I don’t see how. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of thing I can write a counterspell for.”

“No, but you have access to books that I don’t, and you’re very good at research. You might find something I missed.”

Despite this blatant attempt at buttering him up, Cassius still seemed reluctant. But Sebastian must have looked exceptionally pitiful, because it wasn’t long before he relented. “Fine. But if I don’t find anything, you have to tell Phade.”

“Fine,” Sebastian agreed, even though Phade was the last person he wanted to bother with this. If this went on much longer, he might not have a choice, though.

Clearly unhappy but resigned, Cassius pulled a few pieces of paper out of his pocket and laid them on the neat surface of Sebastian’s desk. The spells he came to deliver in the first place. “In the meantime, these might help. I hope.”

“Thank you.”

He paused, staring down at the wood of the desk before finally looking up to meet Sebastian’s eyes. “I assume you haven’t told Leo. Seeing as how I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t have left you alone if he knew.”

Cassius wasn’t wrong, but it was uncomfortable to be confronted with how transparent they might be to other people. Of course it had been obvious, and baffling to most everyone at the Fount, that their relationship had fundamentally changed. Where once people had stared at their fights, now they were just as likely to stare at them merely walking around together, gaping in disbelief when Leo laughed at something Sebastian had said. Sebastian tried to ignore it, but the whispers were still infuriating, even if their tone had changed. Cassius might have known them both better than most, especially after he’d tried to help with the curse, but that didn’t make it easier to bear.

“No,” Sebastian said curtly. “And you won’t tell him.”

Cassius’ eyes widened at Sebastian’s tone, but all he said was, “Of course not. Goodnight, Sebastian. I hope you can get some rest tonight.”

In the days that followed, there seemed to be an easing in Sebastian’s lungs. Whether it was Cassius’ new suppressant charms or just the disease finally relenting was unclear, but either way it seemed to be a good sign. Sebastian’s desire for answers was superseded by his desire for his breathing to return to normal; if the starflowers wanted to disappear on their own, without any explanation, he wouldn’t be complaining. It wasn’t like Cassius was having any better luck with his research so far.

Sebastian’s lungs were feeling relatively clear as he made his way across the snowy grounds of the Fount, and he relished the ability to breathe in the crisp winter air. His comparatively good mood must have been showing because, when Leo caught up to him on the main quad, the look he gave Sebastian was downright suspicious.

“You must be feeling better,” Leo said, his eyes narrowing as he looked Sebastian up and down. “I haven’t seen you smile like this since Mathias got eaten by the monster.”

“I don’t think I was smiling then,” Sebastian countered as he schooled his expression.

“You’re right. You were too busy dying. But you are? Feeling better?”

It seemed a little premature to say he was recovering, but Sebastian would happily let Leo think that he was if it meant he’d stop worrying. “Yes. It’s not so bad today. Cassius’ charms are helping, I think,” he added without thinking.

“Cassius’ charms?” Leo echoed incredulously, his eyebrows knitting together in a frown. “You know, if you don’t like my charms, you can just say so.”

“When have I ever given the impression that I would not tell you my opinions about your spells,” Sebastian answered flatly, not bothering to make it into a question. “Yours worked perfectly well. And I didn’t ask Cassius for them, he just scrived them because he thought they might be helpful. Because he is a friend.”

“Oh,” Leo said, looking slightly mollified, though his frown didn’t fully disappear.

“Besides, you’ve been so busy I haven’t seen you in days. How did your Composition exam go?” Sebastian asked, eager to change the subject.

Leo made a face, then sighed. “Fine. Whatever. It’s done, and I passed, so that’s all that matters. That, and tonight I can finally go out into Luxe and have some fun again. Hey, if you’re feeling better, you should join me.”

Sebastian knew very well what Leo’s idea of fun was. The very thought of being present for such an outing, of sitting there in a too-loud tavern while Leo drank and flirted and charmed people out of their money was enough to make his stomach turn. “I don’t think so, Loveage,” he said. Then, as if to support his refusal, his lungs twinged with irritation, sending him into a brief coughing fit that brought him to a stop on the path.

When he managed to gain control of himself again, he found that Leo had stopped with him, the worried frown that had graced his face so frequently since Sebastian had started coughing back in force.

“You liar. You’re not better at all,” Leo accused, his arms folded across his chest.

Sebastian didn’t have it in him to argue that he’d made no such assertion, which in and of itself should have been a sign he was in bad shape. “I’m fine,” he said instead, brushing off Leo’s concern. “I have to get to class.”

“Alright,” Leo said grudgingly, like he was considering not allowing such a thing. “I’ll come by later, then.”

Sebastian couldn’t keep the surprise off his face. “What about your night out?”

Leo just shrugged. “Eh, I’ll probably be too tired anyway. Plus, I shouldn’t tempt fate this close to graduation. So unless you’d rather me not come…?”

He should say no—the chance of Leo witnessing another bad coughing fit would only increase as the evening wore on—but the reminder of how little time they had left together only made the ache in Sebastian’s chest worse. “You should come,” he said, trying to feel nothing about how the words brought a brilliant grin to Leo’s face, “but only if you bring more cough suppressant charms.”

If that addition was supposed to dim Leo’s smile, it didn’t work; he just smirked as he hooked his arm around one of Sebastian’s and began walking in the direction of Sebastian’s class. Sebastian was fairly certain he saw a nearby fourth tier’s jaw drop out of the corner of his eye at the sight of them.

“Of course,” Leo said. “Now that I know I have competition, I’ll have to step up my game.”

Sebastian glanced over at him, taking in dark hair that shined with hints of chestnut in the sunlight as it pooled loose around his shoulders and the cocky tilt to his pink lips, soaking up the heat of his body where it pressed close to Sebastian’s arm, and thought hopelessly, what did I do to deserve this?

Miraculously, he managed to get through the evening without coughing up any flowers,  but not without Leo commenting on how many suppressant charms he was using to keep it that way. It was the kind of quiet night in that had become almost common for them over the months since returning to the Fount—they’d work on their coursework, but more often get distracted by some discussion or argument that would last them well into the night. Sometimes Leo asked him questions about Dwull and Sebastian’s childhood, and sometimes he told stories about his own.

Often he brought his violin along and cajoled a semi-reluctant Sebastian into experimenting with more spellsongs. It wasn’t that Sebastian didn’t want to discover more about them—he found them fascinating and awe-inspiring, in fact—but he had to buckle down if he was going to impress any Coterie troops after missing the trials. Plus, singing Leo’s spellsongs felt dangerous, not because of the grandmagic he was writing into them, but because of how close to him the process made Sebastian feel. Whenever he would cast with Leo’s accompaniment, the feeling of the music and magic flowing through and between them seemed to bind them more tightly together, stitching their souls into one like two halves of the same whole.

Sebastian couldn’t afford to be stitched to anyone, least of all Leovander Loveage. No matter how much he craved it, in his heart of hearts.

That evening, Leo had come prepared with a spellsong to help Sebastian’s lungs. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” he said. “You could hum it whenever you needed, rather than relying on the paper charms.”

Sebastian was skeptical, seeing as how when he was in the middle of a fit one of the last things he could imagine doing was having the wherewithal to hum a tune, but the simple melody did seem to soothe the truculent flora inside his chest. Of course, when Sebastian was forced to admit this, Leo’s preening was nearly intolerable (except in all the ways Sebastian didn’t find it intolerable at all, anymore), and he wouldn’t shut up about it until he passed out in Sebastian’s bed, exhausted from his exertion.

This happened not uncommonly, too. Leo had the audacity to claim that Sebastian’s mattress was softer than his, even though they were all the same, especially when Sebastian was trying to oust him so he could get some sleep himself. It took every bit of Sebastian’s willpower not to give in and curl up next to him in the bed—as he’d done a few of those terrifying nights in the attic before Leo had woken up again. Since they’d returned, it had nonetheless accidentally happened once and, after waking up (thankfully before Leo) with his hands twined in Leo’s hair and their bodies pressed together, Sebastian had silently sworn he would never let it happen again.

This time, exhausted himself and worn down by his illness, Sebastian went to rouse Leo and found himself climbing into the other side of the narrow bed instead. He lay on his side, curled slightly in on himself with one hand wedged under the pillow, and watched Leo’s chest rise and fall. His easy breathing was almost a mockery of Sebastian’s, who wheezed softly in the silence of the room.

There was a tickle in his lungs that signaled an imminent coughing fit, and he hummed Leo’s charm under his breath. The irritation eased, but his chest felt tighter than ever. He knew he’d gone too long without letting his body try to expel the flowers, which he’d no doubt pay for later, but in that moment, it felt like he needed to be by Leo’s side more than he needed to breathe.

Sebastian was grumpy after a night of hardly any sleep when Cassius found him the next morning after breakfast. He almost hadn’t gone, but he’d dragged himself to the refectory to at least get some coffee. This drew stares, like so much of his recent behavior, because he was well known for eschewing stimulants, considering them a crutch for the weak (no, it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Leo consumed buckets of the stuff, particularly after a late night out).

Well, he was weak now. And he wasn’t going to stay awake in lecture without some assistance.

“I found something,” Cassius said to him in a rush, pausing only briefly in his hurry to get to his own class, “in one of the restricted texts in the library’s basement.” He bit his lower lip, oddly hesitant. “You’re not going to like it, though.”

“What? Why?” Sebastian demanded. He was already miserable, but the idea that there might be something he would like even less about the situation was unnerving.

“Sorry, it’s a lot to explain and I have to run,” Cassius said, wincing. “But I’ll come to your room immediately after class, promise!”

Then he took off again, leaving Sebastian to stew in uncertainty and frustration. Sebastian might as well have not even gone to lecture after that, given how little he was able to pay attention. Cassius’ class ran longer than his, and Sebastian was pacing restlessly in his too-small room when a knock finally sounded on his door.

“Sorry I’m late, Harvig was on a tear today and was having us— What am I doing, you don’t care,” Cassius huffed, breaking off with a shake of his head as he came in.

He was right; Sebastian didn’t. “What did you find?” he asked, trying not to sound too forceful about it, even if the anticipation nearly had him climbing the walls.

“Let me—” Cassius said, and held up a hand as he dug around in his bag. Finally, he pulled out a slim blue notebook. “I couldn’t check out the book, so I took notes on the relevant section. There wasn’t a lot, and it’s a little, well, unexpected, but I really think it’s your condition.”

“Please, Cassius,” Sebastian nearly sighed, apparently no longer above begging, “just tell me what’s wrong with me.”

“Well, er, you see—” Cassius stammered. For some reason, his cheeks were turning pink. “It’s because you’re in love with someone?”

For some reason, it sounded like a question, but Sebastian certainly didn’t have any answers. “What?” he managed, strangled.

Cassius held up his hands as if trying to soothe a wild animal, carefully taking Sebastian by the arm and leading him toward the bed. “I think it’ll be better if you sit down. Maybe.” Once Sebastian had sat, almost automatically, Cassius grabbed the desk chair and took a seat, balancing the notebook on his lap. “I’m doing this all wrong. Let me go back to the beginning. The book described a condition where a flower grows in the lungs. The kind of flower varies depending on the person, and usually has some kind of meaning. Why they’re growing is a little harder to explain, but it seems to happen in cases of unrequited love.”

None of this was making it any easier to understand. Sebastian blinked at him. His ears were ringing, and his chest felt tighter than ever. “Unrequited…?”

“The person, er, afflicted is in love with someone who they believe doesn’t love them back,” Cassius explained. “The love, without a true outlet, triggers the growth. Apparently.”

“That’s… not possible,” Sebastian argued. Not that it didn’t describe him, because it absolutely did, but it just couldn’t actually be happening. “People fall in love with people who don’t love them back all the time.”

“There was something about that,” Cassius said, flipping to another page and tapping it with his finger. “It’s so rare because of the depth of the feelings in combination with the certainty that it won’t be requited. As I interpret it, most people might fall a little in love with someone, but it’s more like a crush, and it fades fairly easily when the object of their affections doesn’t return their feelings. But when you love someone as much as you apparently do, it takes root. Quite literally.”

Sebastian only narrowly held back a hysterical laugh. As it was, he was unable to keep himself from admitting more than he actually should. “You’re telling me that it’s not just that my love for him feels like it’s choking me, it’s quite literally choking me?”

“In short, yes,” Cassius said, his expression an awful miasma of pity. “It said the flowers were meaningful. The starflowers…?”

“They’re hardy,” Sebastian said hollowly, finishing his unasked question. Nearly impossible to kill. He should have known what this was, just from that. He couldn’t say more, even if he’d wanted to (which he didn’t); his and Leo’s conversation about starflowers had happened in the monster’s cave. He put a hand up to his chest, as if he could feel the flowers moving inside his ribcage. “How do I fix it?”

“Ah, well,” Cassius hedged, refusing to meet his eyes. “The book wasn’t very clear on that. Best case scenario is that you confess to the person you love, and they actually love you back, or grow to love you. In those cases, the flowers can recede entirely.”

“And if they won’t ever love you back?”

Cassius looked up, frowning. “How can you be sure if you don’t tell him? At least give him a chance?”

Sebastian dug his fingertips into his chest, grounding himself in the little points of pain. “The chance to what? You cannot make someone love you.” Except, of course, by a spell, he couldn’t help but think. But that was not real love, only mindless devotion. “Besides, how could anyone possibly go to the person they love and admit that it’s actually killing them? Pathetic.”

Because that was what was happening, he realized even as he said it. The starflowers, too hardy to kill, would choke the life out of him.

Cassius eyed him warily. “I won’t ask who he is—”

“Good, because I won’t tell you,” Sebastian snapped, but he immediately regretted it when Cassius flinched. He closed his eyes and let his hand fall from his chest. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. This is… a lot.”

“That’s ok, I get it. Well, I don’t, but you know what I mean,” Cassius said awkwardly.

“There’s really nothing that can help?” he pressed. Cassius made an apologetic expression and shook his head. “What if you stay away from them? Surely it will fade over time?”

“It can,” Cassius allowed. “But most people don’t make it that long. Especially when it’s as bad as yours seems to have gotten.” He stared unhappily at his notebook for a beat. “I’m sorry, Sebastian, but you really do have to tell him. If you love him this much, I’m sure he isn’t the kind of person who will think you’re pathetic. And, for what it’s worth… he’d be a fool not to love you back.”

Sebastian’s head, hanging heavy between his shoulders, jerked up at that, but Cassius’ expression was inscrutable. “I can’t,” he finally said. “It’s not… what he will think of me. I can’t place something like this on his conscience. I just can’t. Not after…”

But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, finish.

“I’ll keep looking,” Cassius said quietly, after a stretch of silence so long that the sudden breaking of it was almost startling. “I have to go now, but— Sebastian, I’ll try to find something, ok? There must be more information somewhere. A cure. You’re right, there has to be.”

Sebastian only nodded, too numb to form any words. He should thank Cassius—now he knew what was killing him, at least. But his tongue was too thick in his mouth, his throat too tight. Cassius rose from the chair and put a sympathetic hand on Sebastian’s shoulder, and then he let himself out, closing the door softly behind him.

And then, finally, Sebastian put his head in his hands and let out the surge of overwhelming emotions in a rush.

Somehow after that, his condition improved for a while. It was as if, having acknowledged what it was, he gained some measure of control over it. The growth of the flowers seemed to slow. Cassius’ further searches never bore fruit, but Sebastian decided it didn’t matter. At one point, he wondered if he could convince himself that his feelings were fading and rid himself of the trouble entirely. But he could no more fall out of love with Leovander Loveage as he could stop his heart from beating.

He could never predict whether spending time with Leo would soothe or exacerbate his symptoms; it seemed almost random to him. A quiet evening studying together was just as likely to cause a flare up as one spent in music and laughter. His cough lingered, but it was manageable, especially by humming Leo’s spellsong. It became almost background noise, even if it also added a substantial amount of gravel to his already deep voice.

The seasons changed again, the snows giving way to spring blossoms, and the end of their fifth tier began looming forbiddingly in the near distance. This caused a bit of a resurgence in his symptoms, but Sebastian was too busy with the preparation for their final examinations to pay them much attention. Maybe this was killing him, but perhaps it wasn’t so imminent as it previously seemed. In his most hopeful moments, he thought that he might go years like this before it proved fatal.

Before he knew it, they were sitting down for their last Duality class. His chest had been aching all morning at the thought of it. It seemed unnervingly final, even though he knew it wouldn’t mean seeing any less of Leo. Duality class had started out as their excuse to continue spending time together after their return to the Fount, but it had hardly stayed that way for long.

Leo was chattering about everything and nothing as they took their seats, barely stopping when Phade called the class into session. They would be showing off the spells they’d been developing over the entire year, and Sebastian had to admit he was insatiably curious. You’d think, given their new closeness, that he’d have a good idea what Leo had been working on, but Leo had guarded his secrets like a dragon, saying it was supposed to be a surprise.

Sebastian had reminded him that he didn’t like surprises, which just made Leo grin more wickedly.

As Sebastian unpacked his caster’s kit, Leo withdrew a few sheets of paper from the pockets of his coat and set them on the desk in front of him. When Sebastian indicated he was ready, Leo picked up the top one and held it out to him.

“This one first. For old time’s sake,” he said, amusement flickering in his eyes.

Sebastian hesitated, suddenly sure that he was about to turn his own hair pink again. Somehow, that idea wasn’t nearly as infuriating as it should have been. He still gave Leo his most unimpressed, skeptical look before he started to slowly read the words. As a caster, he often couldn’t tell exactly what a spell was supposed to do, but as someone who memorized a lot of spells, he did have a reasonably good library in his head. This one, he didn’t recognize at all.

Once he was sure he had the words memorized, he concentrated on ‘speaking them aloud’ in his own head, and the paper began to smoke. A few seconds later, the magic had consumed it, leaving nothing more than a smudge of ash on his fingertips.

When nothing obviously changed, he looked over at Leo to find him batting his eyelashes coquettishly. “What color?”

“Blue,” Sebastian lied, though he was unable to keep a straight face at Leo’s crestfallen expression.

“You asshole!” Leo cried, shoving him on the shoulder, and drawing more attention their way than was probably wise during class. He grabbed Sebastian by the collar and hauled him close, until their noses were almost touching. “What color are my eyes, actually?”

Sebastian’s breath caught in his throat. Leo’s lips were achingly near to his own, and the warmth of his breath washing over Sebastian’s skin kindled another kind of heat low in Sebastian’s gut. But the worst part was the eyes in question—those pale blue depths, rendered nearly colorless after the healing spell he’d cast, a constant reminder of what he’d given up to save Sebastian’s life. They were now a brilliant violet, sparkling like amethysts. Arresting, certainly, but Sebastian couldn’t help but think that he preferred the blue.

He let this position pass a beat too long before carefully extricating himself from Leo’s grasp. “They are violet,” he said. “Pretty. Is that what you were so secretive about? Another vanity?”

“Well at least I can prove it works now,” Leo huffed testily. “But no, that was just for fun. Here,” he said, sliding the other paper across the table.

Sebastian carefully picked it up, noting with some surprise how short the spell was. Despite his seeming preference for flowery language, after they’d returned the spells Leo scrived for him had skewed shorter. In fact, he’d all but become obsessed with efficiency, frequently complaining about how unnecessarily convoluted a lot of standard spells were. Sebastian could never tell if this was Leo’s actual preference, or whether he’d started doing so for Sebastian’s sake—a possibility he couldn’t let himself think too hard about.

Even given all of that, the spell he now held was impressively brief. As he read over it, slowly sounding out the words in his head, Sebastian realized another surprising thing about this spell.

“Is this grandmagic?”

It wasn’t that Leo didn’t scrive grandmagic, but he almost never did so on paper. Paper made him nervous, recalling too much of his previous failures; he felt most comfortable composing it into spellsongs, even if those remained mostly limited to their own private experiments.

“Of course,” Leo said flippantly, as if it were nothing, though Sebastian knew him well enough now to see the tension in his posture. As if to cover it up, he rummaged for a moment in his sorcerer’s coat and withdrew a small plant in a tiny pot. “Oh, and you’ll need this.”

It was no more than a seedling: a thin green stem with a handful of leaves, and one, tiny premature flower bud.

“To cast it on,” Leo volunteered, though Sebastian thought that was fairly obvious.

“What does it do?”

“That’s part of the surprise, Grimm. I’m certainly not going to tell you now.”

“Fine.” Sebastian returned his attention to the spell, reading over it again, until he was sure he had the words right. But then, before he could start silently casting, Leo held out a hand.

“Wait, before we do this, I have something to say.”

Sebastian sighed, as long-suffering as he could make it. “When do you not?”

Leo shot him a brief glare. “Hush, you. I know neither of us was… thrilled about this partnership at the beginning of the year. And it certainly took us to some interesting places.” He paused, letting the memories of their time in the Unquiet Wood speak for themselves. Then he cleared his throat, but even so his voice was slightly tighter when he spoke again. “Being your Duality partner challenged me in ways I never expected. But I’m glad it was you. You, ah— You’ve made me a better sorcerer.” Leo was now staring at his hands and, having made this confession, immediately grimaced. “Now please forget I’ve said any of that, it’s horribly embarrassing.”

Sebastian’s heart gave a painful thump in his chest. “Loveage—” he began unsteadily, before losing the words entirely.

“Stop staring at me like that, will you?” Leo huffed. “I take it back, you were an awful partner and I absolutely hated working with you, Grimm.”

Sebastian could feel the smile pulling on the corners of his mouth no matter how much he tried to hold it back. “You’re a terrible liar, Leovander.”

The look Leo fixed him with this time was hopelessly fond. “Only around you. Just, get on with it already.”

Pressing down on a feeling that he couldn’t afford to indulge in, Sebastian adjusted his grip on the spell paper and focused on the little plant sitting on the table before them. When he was confident that he had the spell down, he recited the words in his head and watched as the paper began to smoke, then turned to ash in his fingers.

At first, it seemed as if nothing was happening. Then the little plant shivered in its pot. Its leaves curled and moved as if it were stretching after getting out of bed in the morning and, finally, a single bud appeared next to the first.

Sebastian stared at the plant, unable to fully believe what he’d just seen. Growing spells were so tricky as to be untenable for regular use—suck up too many nutrients from the soil for one harvest, and you’d get nothing the next year. But somehow, he had the feeling that no such leeching had occurred in this one. The spell still tingled in his fingertips.

“I know it doesn’t look like much,” Leo jumped in, mistaking his silence for a lack of awe rather than an overwhelming amount of it, “but it’s really quite something, if I do say so myself. It doesn’t rely on taking, like so many spells do. Instead it’s like… a magical encouragement. A bit of a pep talk, if you will. But if I’ve calculated correctly, it could boost crop yields by five percent. I know what you’re thinking, only five? But that’s nothing, my friend.”

“No,” Sebastian said, utterly unmade by the sheer cleverness and kindheartedness it took to scrive such a spell. By the pride on Leo’s face that he was trying and failing to hide, the flush of success on his cheeks and the sparkle in his now-violet eyes. In that moment, Sebastian loved him so much that he felt completely unable to contain it. That surely the words he’d been holding back would burst out of him. Instead, he murmured, “It’s not nothing.”

Leo beamed at that, as if Sebastian had showered him with effusive praise, and that was enough. All that love surged within him, and when it found no other outlet it settled into his lungs and squeezed. The breath he tried to draw found nowhere to go, and he gasped as if drowning. His entire body shuddered as the first hacking coughs wracked his frame. No matter how much he tried to stop them, there seemed to be no end—just a desperate gasp for air and pain lancing through his chest, tearing at his throat.

He pushed back in his chair, trying to get away, to go outside where an entire classroom of people weren’t watching him, but when he tried to stand he simply collapsed onto his hands and knees instead. He spat petals, flower heads, and there would be no hiding these, everyone would know—

Dimly, he was aware of insistent hands on his shoulder and his back, of Leo calling his name hysterically, and a great shudder ran through him. Leo, who would see the foliage and draw all the wrong conclusions, who would blame himself and his spell. If nothing else, he had to stop this so he could tell Leo that it wasn’t his fault. But that was as futile a desire as the love itself; he had no control over his own body, couldn’t form words if his own life depended on it.

He coughed and retched, until the white starflowers were coming up in a spray of red, blood dribbling down his chin and dripping onto the floor, until something finally seemed to tear free in his chest. On his next hacking cough, his mouth filled with blossoms, and he spat out an entire spray of starflowers, stem and all.

Then Sebastian Grimm took one last shuddering breath, and everything went black.

Everything was wrong about the room he woke up in: wrong smell, wrong sheets, wrong sounds, even the light filtering through his closed eyelids was wrong. Then, when he did open his eyes, the walls were wrong, too. They were bare and white, the framed drawings of flowers that his parents had given him nowhere to be seen. He’d known, abstractly, that the infirmary had rooms with beds for extremely sick students, but he’d never been in one.

There was no hiding anymore that that was what he was—an extremely sick student. It took him another minute to realize that the strange wheezing sound he’d been hearing was coming from his own chest. Swallowing turned out to be a bad idea; it felt a bit like he’d attempted to gulp a large number of razor blades. He lifted a hand, which was more a laborious endeavor than he expected, and rubbed his throat.

“You are a complete idiot,” came a familiar voice from somewhere nearby.

Sebastian closed his eyes and dropped his hand. “I was nicer to you when you woke up in a sick bed,” he rasped, wincing at both the pain and the sound of his own voice. His vocal cords were trashed.

“That is a matter of opinion.” There was a rustle of fabric and a sound like liquid pouring, then the warm weight of a hand on his arm. “Can you sit up? I’m supposed to get you to drink this.”

When he opened his eyes this time, he wished he hadn’t. Despite his snark, Leo looked nearly as haggard as Sebastian felt. Dark circles carved shadows under his eyes and his long hair was tangled like it hadn’t been combed in days. Sebastian’s first impulse was to ask him what was wrong with him, but he realized very quickly that would be a stupid question. With what strength he could muster, he shoved himself more upright, letting Leo adjust his pillows. But when Leo moved like he was planning on tipping the cup he’d brought over directly into Sebastian’s mouth, Sebastian put a hand out to stop him.

“I’d rather not wear it,” he grumbled.

“It would be a fair turnabout,” Leo argued, but he handed the cup to Sebastian all the same.

Inside was a somewhat foul-looking liquid that smelled quite a bit like the lozenges he’d been previously given, which meant it would probably work well enough to soothe his throat to be worth the unpleasantness. Sebastian still couldn’t suppress a grimace when he sipped it, though.

Leo was still hovering, frowning down at him. Then, without warning, he reached out and delicately pressed a couple of fingers just over Sebastian’s throat. Sebastian was thrown so off guard that it took him a second to realize that Leo was singing something softly under his breath.

“You shouldn’t be casting—” he tried, but Leo just shook his head stubbornly.

“Too late.”

Sebastian sighed, which was admittedly a lot easier to do now that Leo had cast a soothing charm on him. “Why are you here, Loveage?”

Leo shot him a withering look as he collapsed heavily into the chair he’d apparently been occupying before. “I think you mean, ‘Why, thank you for your help, Leo. What would I do without you?’”

Sebastian hummed noncommittally and sipped his foul medicinal drink rather than contemplate the answer to that question. Wincing again at the taste, he ventured, “I suppose this makes us even now.”

To his surprise, something like anger flashed across Leo’s face. “It does not make us even. You see, Grimm, the difference is that I nearly killed myself saving your life, whereas you did so out of sheer stubbornness.”

“Same reason, really,” Sebastian grumbled under his breath, but Leo didn’t seem to hear him.

“I know you think you’re being selfless by keeping your feelings from whoever you’re in love with, but you couldn’t be more wrong.”

This accusation was so startling that Sebastian almost dropped the cup. “You know?”

Whatever expression his face was making must have been stricken, because Leo’s fury deflated. “Cassius told me,” he said, holding up a hand to cut off Sebastian’s indignant reply. “He only did it because I was completely out of my mind thinking I’d killed you with my spell. Though I’m still not convinced I didn’t make it worse.” 

“Your spell didn’t make it worse,” Sebastian said, threading the narrowest loophole in the truth. “Not everything is about you, Loveage.”

Leo waved off this assertion as if it were irrelevant. “I have to say I’m a bit stung you went to Cassius and not me. After…”

After everything we’ve been through, he didn’t need to say.

“Because of this,” Sebastian returned, frowning at Leo’s general countenance. “You worry too much. You won’t leave well enough alone.”

“Well enough—!” Leo barked with a humorless laugh. “If you think this counts as well enough, I’m surprised you’re still alive, Grimm.”

Sebastian closed his eyes, sinking backwards into the pillows and wishing they might swallow him up. “I’m too tired to argue with you about this. I made my choice.”

“The least you could do is tell me who this mysterious person is who you’re apparently so deeply in love with,” Leo said, doggedly refusing to let the discussion die. “I was a little taken aback, I have to admit. You barely do anything besides study. When did you find the time to fall in love with someone?”

“You’d be surprised,” Sebastian sighed wearily.

“Is it Agnes? Or perhaps Cassius himself, and that’s why you wouldn’t tell him?”

“It is not Cassius. Or Agnes.”

“Well you don’t spend time with anyone else.”

Sebastian had been worried that, if he’d known about the condition, Leo would have figured it out immediately, but apparently Sebastian had done an even better job of hiding his feelings than he’d thought. That should have been a good thing, but he couldn’t help but feel strangely disappointed by it.

“I’m not telling you, Loveage,” he said.

By this point, the hint of a smile was playing on Leo’s lips as he narrowed his eyes at Sebastian. “I’ll figure it out. You’ll see.”

Fortunately, Sebastian wouldn’t be subjected to any more needling on the subject, because a few shuffling steps in the hallway outside signaled they weren’t alone any longer. He was expecting a nurse, or perhaps one of the chief physicians, but a moment later Phade appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily on their cane.

“Mr. Grimm,” they said with a nod. Their expression would have probably looked stony to most other people, but Sebastian knew them well enough to recognize it as distinctly pleased. “It’s good to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad,” Sebastian answered, which was only stretching the truth a little. “I apologize for disrupting class.”

Leo scoffed softly at that, no doubt rolling his eyes, but Sebastian didn’t acknowledge it. Phade, however, glanced toward him.

“Ah, Mr. Loveage, so this is where you have been hiding,” they said, their voice as even as ever. Sebastian could almost see the wheels turning in their razor sharp mind, adding this to Sebastian’s own vigil near the Unquiet Wood and coming up with answers he probably didn’t want them to have. “Would you please excuse us? There’s something we need to discuss in private.”

Sebastian half expected Leo to argue, even with Phade, but he answered, “Of course,” with a deferential incline of his head. But then, as Phade turned away to find a chair, something seemed to occur to him and he stopped, eyes going wide. “Wait, is it—?” he whispered, pointing at Phade behind their back.

“No,” Sebastian hissed back viciously, punctuating it with a vehement gesture toward the door. “Now go away.”

“Just saying—” Leo muttered, but thankfully he did as he was bid and departed.

Sebastian didn’t exactly feel better in his absence, though, especially not with Phade’s keen dark eyes watching him. He had not yet come up with a fake story to explain his illness and wondered if he could get away with playing dumb. In the end, it was irrelevant, because Phade spoke before he could try to make some excuse.

“You’ve been hiding an extremely dangerous condition, Mr. Grimm. I’m not sure you’re aware of just how dangerous it is.”

“Cassius told you,” Sebastian surmised, trying to keep his face neutral. The disappointment of being caught by his mentor, and the gloom of feeling like he’d disappointed them, warred with a small but tenacious hope that maybe Phade would be able to help. Phade was one of the most powerful sorcerers at the Fount. If anyone could do something, it would probably be them.

But Phade shook their head. “I recognized it,” they said. “When I was a young Coterie member, many years ago, my troop got called to deal with a man who was coughing up flowers. Everyone assumed it was an infection from over the border wall but, of course, it was not. The condition was magical, yes, but not borne of magic beyond the wall.”

“What… what happened to him?” Sebastian asked warily, fearing that he already knew the answer. “Was the troop able to help?”

“Temporarily,” Phade allowed. “But there was not much we could do. He was in love with a happily married woman, and he chose to die rather than tell her. He believed he was sparing her. Of course, they were close friends, and she cared for him deeply; whether it was true love, I cannot say, but his death was very difficult for her to bear.”

Sebastian stared down at his hands, unable to meet Phade’s eyes. “How long?”

“Perhaps a year. Maybe less,” Phade said. Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian saw them lean forward in the seat, resting their elbows on their knees and clasping their gnarled hands together. “Mr. Grimm, I am going to be blunt with you. You are the most talented young caster I have seen in a great many years, and it would be a travesty if you succumbed to such a condition for no reason. You must not take this secret with you to the grave, because it will be a short distance.”

The praise in Phade’s words was hard to feel good about when it was also clear he thought Sebastian was being an idiot about this. Suddenly, protesting that he couldn’t tell Leo felt shamefully selfish, even if Sebastian still believed he was right to do so. “It’s not that simple,” he tried, knowing it was a pitiful excuse. “I can’t just… How do you willingly cause someone you love that much pain?”

The words tumbled out of him without his consent, far too raw for confessing to an academic mentor and the person he looked up to most. Then again, perhaps now Phade would see this weakness for what it must be—some inherent flaw in his character, a deficiency that would make him a liability—and would leave Sebastian to his misery.

But Phade just stared back at them steadily, the disappointment Sebastian felt sure he would see in their features absent. “It is not an easy thing to ask, I grant you,” they said. “But consider that the man we tried to help did not save his love from any anguish by choosing his own death. And I think you know that yours will not save him, no matter what you have told yourself.” With that, they pushed themselves to their feet. “I will see that you get the spells that will help manage it, but they will only delay the inevitable. Please think on what I’ve said. We cannot afford to lose you so soon, Mr. Grimm.”

The nurses insisted on keeping him another two days in the infirmary to recover his strength, even though Sebastian insisted he was feeling much better. Cassius came by to see him, and Phade returned with a spell that they cast on Sebastian themself, and which immediately eased his breathing. “Like a bit of pruning,” they explained, warning that it would slow but not stop the growth, but Sebastian was too happy with the results to care. Even Agnes stopped by, half to offer her sympathies and half to see if he knew what the hell was going on with Leo.

He did not; Leo had not reappeared after his departure from the infirmary room, which Sebastian was trying and failing not to feel bad about. According to Agnes, he’d been locked away in his room working nonstop on something, refusing to come to meals and skipping classes despite his academic probation. This was concerning enough that, once he was discharged, Sebastian dragged himself to Leo’s dormitory despite the fact that it was on the opposite side of the quad from his own. It was a long enough distance to put the lie to the idea that Sebastian was quite recovered, but he did his best not to let it show.

Leo didn’t answer when he knocked, even though Sebastian knew that he must be within. This, he expected, given Agnes’ report, so he tried the handle and found it unlocked. The door swung open on magically silenced hinges to reveal that the room had become a disaster even by Leo’s standards. There were books and sheets of paper littering every available surface and, in the midst of it all, Leo hunched over a book and notepad, scribbling frantically. He didn’t even look up when the door opened, nor when Sebastian walked in.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

This finally made Leo acknowledge him, though it was no more than a brief glance. “Working on your little problem,” he said, waving a dismissive hand toward Sebastian.

It was, of course, what Sebastian had feared he was up to. Sebastian had learned that when Leo set his mind on something, he was like a dog with a bone, and this time that something was Sebastian himself.

“Agnes said you’ve been skipping meals. And classes.”

For a moment, Sebastian thought he wouldn’t answer. “I have more pressing concerns,” Leo said, not looking up from his scribbling.

“Your most pressing concern should be finishing your fifth tier,” Sebastian argued, casting a look around the room for the most likely seating option. All this standing was wearing on him, but nearly every surface was covered. Including the bed. Nudging some books out of the way, he lowered himself carefully to sit on the edge of the mattress, trying not to look like he was about to fall over. “There’s only a week left. What are you thinking, Loveage?”

Leo let out a huff and set his quill down. “I was thinking that your life is worth more than a few classes.”

“Well, stop it,” Sebastian growled back. Leo opened his mouth to argue, but he continued, “Phade was able to cast a… maintenance spell. It will delay the worst.”

That was enough to give Leo pause. “How long?”

“A year or so. Which means you really don’t need to be doing this now.” Or at all, Sebastian didn’t add. There was nothing to be done, and though Leo was an incredibly gifted scriver, not even he could achieve the impossible. Not that Leo would respond well to that assertion.

“How do I know you’re not just saying that to get me to stop?” Leo countered, narrowing his eyes. Damn him, he knew Sebastian too well.

“I’ll help you work on it,” Sebastian offered, even though that was the last thing he wanted to do with Leo. “After our exams. But you have to promise that you’ll leave it now.”

Leo hummed skeptically, but after another beat he nodded. “Fine. After exams. But then you’re telling me everything.”

He stuck out his hand to shake on it—no magical contract, but a gentleman’s agreement nonetheless. Everything was rather all-encompassing, by definition, and Sebastian assumed he meant it. All the same, that was a problem for Future Sebastian, and no doubt he’d figure out a way to fulfill his promise without putting too much on Leo’s shoulders. He grasped Leo’s hand, ignoring the little zip of pleasure that fizzled beneath his skin every time they touched, and shook it.

As he made this deal, he hadn’t really counted on how little time it actually granted him. The majority of the tier was done, and between final projects and exams, the days flew past. Having missed the first set of trials, Sebastian also had to prepare for the second iteration, which would happen in a few weeks and would likely make or break his ability to get a position in the Coterie. It was stressful despite the fact that he’d already had a few troop captains reach out to him privately about potential positions, pending his upcoming performance. He wondered if that was Phade’s doing, but the fake story of his and Leo’s adventures over the harvest break had also spread.

By the time their fifth tier, and his time at the Fount, was finally finished, he still hadn’t drummed up the courage to ask Leo what his plans were. As far as he knew, Leo would be packing up his belongings and moving to Sahnt, which was a distressing distance away from anywhere Sebastian was likely to be. He wondered if, in Leo’s absence, the growth in his lungs would get better or worse, and found he didn’t like either option. All too soon, Sebastian was pulling out his traveling cases and facing the daunting task of packing up his room at the Fount, this time with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be returning.

He hadn’t brought much besides his clothes and a few texts, but somehow enough had accumulated that it necessitated sorting through it. He’d acquired, much to his dismay, a not-insignificant amount of Leo’s stuff, left behind on his many visits, which Sebastian was now faced with either returning or shamefully secreting away, just to have something to remember him by. As if the growth in his lungs wasn’t enough. Amongst the quills and notebooks and a rather high quality scarf, though, it was a very different object that brought him up short.

Sebastian had shoved it somewhere out of the way after they’d returned, in a safe place where it wouldn’t be accidentally found and he wouldn’t be reminded of what it meant. Now, when his fingers closed around the cool metal, far too many memories came flooding back. He probably should have gotten rid of it, but Sebastian didn’t know the first thing about selling such an item. Leo might have, with his myriad connections in Lux, but asking him was out of the question. The griffon feather was as shiny and perfect as the day Leo had handed it to him for safekeeping, and the bronze of it briefly mesmerized him as it glinted softly in the lamplight of his room.

He was still caught up in his contemplation when the quiet of his room was interrupted by a knock on his door. Fortunately, Sebastian was now in the habit of locking it.

“One moment,” he called, stashing the feather in the drawer of his bedside table before he crossed to open the door. It was hardly a surprise to find Leo on the other side of it.

“Even your packing is more orderly than mine,” he said as he swept through the doorway. After a brief glance around, he moved a neat stack of books from a chair and sat, making himself at home.

“Wouldn’t take much. You can’t tell me you’re finished.”

“Of course not,” Leo confirmed, grinning. “But I convinced my father to let me have a few more days here to get my affairs in order before he sends the carriage. I’ve been thinking about the spell for your condition, and I have some decent candidates—”

“You promised you wouldn’t work on it,” Sebastian interrupted, pressing his mouth into a thin, disapproving line.

“And I didn’t!” Leo protested. “I mean, I couldn’t help if my thoughts wandered there now and again, could I? But I wasn’t working. And now exams are over.”

“Barely.”

“Grimm—”

“Loveage.”

Leo let out a huff of frustration, and even his annoyance was beautiful. “You’re going to run off with a Coterie troop soon, and there’s hardly a guarantee that I’m going to get a position in the same one, so if we don’t fix this now, when is it going to happen?”

“It’s not,” Sebastian said wearily, lowering himself to sit on the edge of the bed, “because there is no fix.”

“You haven’t even heard my ideas,” Leo accused. He popped out of the seat like he couldn’t force himself to sit still any longer and started pacing the narrow room, his sorcerer’s coat billowing behind him. “My guess is that the healing spells fail because they try to extract the growth directly. Kind of like when Sybilla’s counterspell tried to pry the love spell out of me. It doesn’t work, it’s too damaging. But what if we encouraged the flowers to leave? I know, I know, it can’t work for everything, but we could at least try—”

“No,” Sebastian interrupted, the word bursting out of him without his leave.

Leo stopped mid-stride, staring at him. “What do you mean, ‘no’? You can’t know it won’t work unless we try—”

“I don’t want to get rid of it.”

That was apparently enough to steal all of Leo’s words away. Frankly, even Sebastian couldn’t believe he’d said it. He’d spent months hoping for a cure, a way out of this, but just then, confronted with one that might actually work, his entire being rejected the idea. Soon, this strangling love would be the only thing he had left of Leo, and the thought of purging it from his body felt like an anathema. He pressed his hand flat over his chest, feeling his heart thudding heavily against his ribcage within.

“I don’t understand,” Leo finally managed. The stricken expression on his face was devastating. “You’re saying you want this?”

“I don’t have a death wish,” Sebastian said carefully. “But this isn’t just some flowers that can be removed. It’s… love. It’s too much a part of who I am now. Maybe it’s better to leave it be. No matter what the outcome.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Sebastian shook his head. “You don’t understand. This isn’t the same as the curse, these feelings are real—”

“Don’t you dare,” Leo cut him off, his voice hard and dangerous like Sebastian had never heard before. “Don’t you dare say I don’t know what it’s like. I had to watch my mother die despite—because of—everything I did to save her, and it nearly destroyed me. So I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose another person I love to a fucking plant.”

Sebastian closed his eyes, trying to fight back the maelstrom of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. Leo’s growled declaration didn’t do much to ease the pain in his chest; he’d known Leo cared about him, perhaps had even grown to love him, but in the way he loved his family, the way he loved Agnes. It wasn’t the same, no matter what Leo said, and it wouldn’t help his condition. Still, Phade’s warning seemed to echo inside his skull. Your death will not save him.

If hurting Leo was as inevitable as it seemed to be, Sebastian at least owed him the truth.

After everything, it was surprisingly easy to pull open the drawer of his bedside table and pluck the feather out of it. It felt suddenly delicate in his large hands, despite its metallic nature and the razor sharp edge of the vane. He turned it over once in his palm, then held it up in the lamplight, staring at its bronze glow rather than meet Leo’s eyes.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A griffon feather,” Leo answered, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

“Not just a griffon feather,” Sebastian corrected. “The one Jayne gave us.”

There was a beat of silence.

“You said it was destroyed.”

Sebastian lowered the feather. “I lied.”

“So… what?” Leo ventured as he moved slowly into Sebastian’s line of sight. “You never cast the counterspell? The curse is still in there?”

“No,” Sebastian said, shaking his head. “I never had to cast anything. The curse was already broken before you cast the healing spell. Before I was shot by the arrow.” He forced himself to meet Leo’s eyes—they’d returned to their pale blue color, and now they were huge with confusion and disbelief. “Do you understand?”

He could tell by the wash of realization over Leo’s expression that he did. He’d laughed at the idea that Sebastian could fall in love with him when Sybilla had explained that it would break the curse. It was impossible to tell what he thought now.

“How did you know?” Leo asked, his voice almost painfully quiet.

“If you’re asking how I knew the curse was broken, it was when the monster first appeared. I told you to draw your sword, forgetting to make it into a suggestion. You didn’t obey me,” Sebastian explained. “If you’re asking when I knew I was in love with you… it was when you mended my sash.” He took a deep breath—well, as deep as he could manage, which wasn’t very—and let it out slowly. “So, now you know.”

Leo was silent again, staring at him with his mouth hanging slightly open in an expression that would have been comical under any other circumstance. “This whole time,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a question, but Sebastian nodded. Then he added, almost accusatorially, “You never said anything.”

Sebastian scoffed. “You were thrilled that we were free of each other.”

“That’s what you got hung up on? I also said I wanted to keep working with you.”

“On spells, in Duality class.”

“Because I thought you wouldn’t want anything more to do with me!” Leo cried with a frustrated groan. Then he stomped over toward the bed and, to his great surprise, grabbed Sebastian’s face in both of his hands. “Sebastian. You said yourself the curse was broken when I cast that healing spell. I almost died to save your life, not because the curse made me, but because I wanted to. Now, what do you think that means?”

Sebastian’s heart soared despite himself—he knew what he desperately wanted it to mean, but he couldn’t afford to let himself jump to conclusions. Instead, he said, “You’re impetuous and strong-willed and can never leave well enough alone?” though the words were a little warped by the way Leo was pushing on his cheeks.

At that, Leo simply laughed. “No, you absolute idiot. It means I’m actually in love with you,” he declared, then pulled Sebastian into a kiss.

It was, in the end, far less of a surprise than their first kiss had been, and also far more welcome. When Leo had cornered him outside of Sybilla’s tower, Sebastian had still been doggedly refusing to acknowledge the slow shift in his feelings, but the kiss had changed everything. It hadn’t even been a good kiss, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Hadn’t been able to stop imagining the press of Leo’s lips against his or the brush of his fingertips against Sebastian’s neck. Hadn’t been able to stop wanting it to happen again, though that last one took him longest to admit to himself.

None of that had changed after they’d returned—if anything, his desire to feel Leo’s lips against his again seemed to grow even as the memory of it became more nebulous. He played it over and over in his mind, wondering what would have happened if he’d let himself surrender to it. If Leo had pushed just a little more. If Leo hadn’t been doing it merely to prove a point.

This kiss showed that Sebastian’s imagination needed some work. Leo kissed him with singular purpose, and maybe he was still trying to prove a point, but it was a very different one. His mouth was soft, lips moving gently but assuredly, as if determined to illustrate just how different the situation was. How much he’d been thinking about it, and how much he wanted this too. One of Leo’s hands slipped down to the nape of Sebastian’s neck while the other cradled his jaw, tipping his face upward as Leo pressed closer, nudging his way between Sebastian’s knees.

The proximity of his body made Sebastian’s skin ache with want, and it was extremely tempting to drag Leo onto the bed with him. But at the same time, there was something endlessly satisfying about just this, about learning the geography of Leo’s mouth, about the deliciousness of that ache and the promise of what the future would hold for them. Leo must have felt the same way, because he didn’t push any further, seemingly content with kissing Sebastian senseless, until he abruptly pulled away.

“Wait— What about your lungs?”

That was, Sebastian realized belatedly, a good point. Despite the fact they’d barely come up for air, his chest had never complained. Staring up at Leo, he sucked a deep breath of air in through his nose. It was the sweetest he’d ever drawn, because it smelled like Leo’s cologne and it filled every single part of his lungs. He felt so lightheaded with the extra oxygen that he let out an involuntary high-pitched laugh, and the expression on Leo’s face in response to that was so absurd that it sent him into fits of hysterical laughter, until he’d collapsed backward onto the bed and was gasping for breath again.

But this time, it felt incredible.

“It’s gone,” Sebastian finally managed. The mattress dipped as Leo climbed onto the bed to lay on his side next to him, and Sebastian smiled up at him as he propped himself up on an elbow. “I can breathe again.”

“Just like that?” Leo asked, frowning slightly. “All that growth doesn’t have to come out?”

“I told you. The flowers were never really flowers. They were just… a physical manifestation of my love. But they were always part of me. And they still are.”

Leo lifted one of Sebastian’s hands, both of them watching as he slowly laced their fingers together. Then a smile started growing on his lips, one of those brilliant ones that Sebastian sometimes couldn’t look straight at because they were too beautiful. “You really love me a lot,” he said, exceedingly smugly.

Sebastian rolled his eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

“Like, a lot a lot.”

“I’m rethinking it.”

“Nuh uh,” Leo countered, still grinning. “You literally can’t live without me.”

“Leovander,” Sebastian said, his voice low, and he did not miss the way Leo inhaled sharply, his eyes widening slightly as a little tremor shot through him. That, he filed away for later. “Do shut up.”

“Mm, I don’t think I wi—mmphf!”

Sebastian had made good use of their linked hands to pull Leo on top of him, swallowing his words with a kiss. It was, he decided, a very satisfying way to win an argument. He could imagine he’d be making plenty of use of it in the future, and that was a truly wonderful thought.

“Are you sure about this?” Sebastian asked. It was probably at least the tenth time since Leo had made the suggestion, and he probably should know the answer by now, but that didn’t make it easier to believe. “I know I am not the sort of person your father usually entertains.”

“This isn’t his invitation, it’s mine,” Leo huffed indignantly, just as he’d done every time before. “I’m the reason you missed the harvest trials. It’s only fair that you benefit from my family connections before the spring trials. Besides,” he added, jutting out his chin defiantly, “if he has a problem with me bringing my boyfriend home, he can go live in the Wilderlands.”

Boyfriend. Sebastian was still getting used to that designation. Mostly how it made a bright spark of joy burst in his chest and fizzle under his skin every time Leo said it. Which wasn’t frequently, to be fair—apart from telling a few key people, they’d kept their change in relationship status to themselves. If seeing them act like friends had been enough to cause ripples at the Fount, he didn’t want to imagine what kind of wave a public kiss would generate. Sebastian’s visit to Leo’s family manor would be the first time they would be officially open about their relationship, which wasn’t helping Sebastian’s anxiety about the trip.

“I need you there to make me look good in front of all those Coterie captains,” Leo continued blithely. “After what I pulled at the harvest party, I’m fairly certain that my only chance is convincing them that we’re a package deal.”

“I think you are greatly underselling your talents, and how interested the captains will be,” Sebastian countered. “But yes, I can do that, if that’s what you need.”

Leo came to a stop in the middle of the path, pulling Sebastian to a halt by their linked arms. They were in the Fount’s gardens, taking a final walk before the carriage was due to come to fetch them for the trip. The grounds were beautiful in the autumn and the winter, but now they were a riot of color, bursting at the seams with blossoms. Sebastian had been staring off into the foliage, but he turned to Leo to find a tiny frown creasing his forehead.

“You’re not just a ticket into the Coterie for me,” Leo said seriously. “I also need you there because I love you and I want to be around you always. You know that, right?”

Sebastian did know that, was reminded of that fact every time he took a deep breath, but it still made him want to melt into a puddle every time Leo said it. They were well and truly alone out here amongst the hedges, and he leaned in to kiss the frown off Leo’s lips.

“I know,” he said, satisfied by the smile that curled onto Leo’s face as he pulled away. “And you’re sure you don’t just want to skip all of this and go to Sahnt?”

“We’ll go after the trials,” Leo said as he began walking again. “It’s had a caretaker, but no one’s lived there for years, so it will probably need a bit of work. But it might make a good home base for us, don’t you think?” Sebastian almost tripped over nothing, but Leo didn’t seem to notice. “Not that Coterie troop members get much time off, of course. But you did promise to help me plant starflowers.”

“I did,” Sebastian managed. He wasn’t even sure Leo realized that he’d just suggested that his mother’s estate in Sahnt could be their home, but Sebastian certainly had. It was probably too much far too soon, but he didn’t care. In that moment, he wanted it more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. “They’re a good choice if we will be away a lot,” he said carefully. “Hardy. Difficult to kill.”

Leo beamed up at him. “Yes,” he agreed, “exactly so.”