“I’m sorry I didn’t wait attentively at the door for you for three full days,” he countered, crossing his arms.
“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t visit sooner,” I retorted. “But I was recovering, and you would have killed me.”
“Oh look! Foliage!” Rose declared. “How fascinating. I will leave you two.”
She hurried off back toward the main house. In silence, we watched her disappear over the hill. I felt vaguely ridiculous.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” he said, almost stubbornly.
“I’m glad you are, too,” I replied. We stared out along the green of the estate, the beauty of the day creating a hazy, dreamy shimmer.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see this place again,” he murmured, staring at the stream and the edge of the woods.
“It’s beautiful here,” I begrudgingly admitted.
“When the Lodges visited, Henry, Mae, and I used to come here to play games,” Sebastian said. “We had one where we each wrote a secret of ours on a piece of paper and picked a hiding place in this area. Then the other two would ask five questions each about the hiding spot and try to find it.”
It was physically impossible to stay angry imagining a young Sebastian running about the trees with Mae and her brother. A happy, unencumbered Sebastian. A Sebastian before his power emerged.
“What were your secrets?” I asked.
“Back then, they were all the little things I felt guilty about. Like losing a toy I had received as a gift or breaking a glass. Henry’s were usually things he wanted to do. Places he wanted to visit. And Mae’s … I don’t really know.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We usually weren’t able to solve hers,” Sebastian said. “Either her clues were too difficult, or we were abysmal at guessing. The one time I do remember solving hers, the secret was a very straightforward tract explaining why she liked ants.”
“Ants?” I asked.
He smiled. “She was always a mystery.”
“Then you never found the rest of her secrets?” I asked.
“I imagine they are all still hidden here somewhere,” Sebastian said, his voice a little thick. “Maybe I will find them someday. I like thinking I might.”
“Me too,” I said, watching the water trickle by. I was glad there was still more to be learned about Mae—that kind, guileless, but somehow inscrutable girl.
“Thank you for not killing me,” Sebastian said after a moment.
“Thank you for not letting me,” I said, feeling another wave of relief run through me. “You could have given up. I was terrified you did when you fell unconscious.”
“I think I dreamed of you yelling at me,” he said.
“I have to admit, that wasn’t a dream.”
“I thought about what you said to me that night I turned myself in,” he said, lowering himself to the ground with a little wince of pain. “About the next person who would receive my power. Maybe it would be different fourteen years from now, with the powers being public knowledge. But I still couldn’t help imagining the power first emerging. How my inheritor would more likely than not hurt the people they loved first. If I could keep that from happening … or delay it until we had a system to protect them and help them control it…”
“We will. I promise,” I assured him. “We have a lot to do.”
Sebastian took my hand, gently tugging me to sit, his power meeting mine in the middle. For a long while, we sat in the grass on his estate, the brilliant sun shining on us, drying the dew even as it collected on my skirts. We might be the only ones out there with these specific powers, these wonderful and terrifying abilities, but we were not alone. We had each other. We had friends who risked their lives for us. We had the power and the past lives of our predecessors somewhere deep within our souls.
And though there was a part of me that wanted to stop thinking about the future and lie here forever, all those connections made it impossible. I had been so selfish for so long, my only real goal in life to find amusements beyond England. But I was coming to realize, there were things we had to do because we weren’t alone. There were people who needed to return home. And there were homes that needed to be returned to their people. And now that I knew that, could truly see it, I could not shrink from it.
“Before any of this happened, I wanted so badly to travel the world.” My voice was quiet, but the air was still and he was so close. “I had no thought of leaving it a better place. Of truly helping others.”
His calm gaze caught my nervous one and held tight. “I think you would have come around to that.”
“But you have always helped people,” I said, my heart suddenly beating a little faster. “I don’t know what you wish to do now; you deserve rest. I know many of our friends deserve that, too. But I … I don’t think I can right now. I think I should try and do some good with this power.”
I couldn’t look at him as I continued to voice my doubts and hopes. “I had thought, that is, I do not know where exactly to start. But I do owe Miss Rao for her help. She’s returning to India to free her country, and I know I would likely be in the way, but I could at least be there to heal her if she needed, could keep her healthy. I could be with her as she fights and, well, it just seems like a good place to start.” The words rushed out of me, and I realized I had possibly never been so nervous. I knew that Sebastian cared for me, very deeply, but I still did not know what he would say to my sudden suggestion.
“Are you certain?” he finally asked.
“I am.”
“Are you absolutely certain?” His expression was deathly serious.
“I—What do you mean?” I asked, sitting up to keep my heart from sinking. A shiver ran through me, and it almost felt like my healing was gone and I could be hurt again. He didn’t want to come. I shouldn’t have been surprised—he couldn’t be expected to drop everything and follow me across the world. But I’d assured him that I’d always stay by his side. I couldn’t break that promise.
He took my hand in both of his, in that gentle way one delivers the worst of news. “I feel I have an obligation to tell you that your suggestion reminds me of someone.”
“Who?”
“Someone who spent the last years of his life fighting for Greece’s independence.”
I blinked. “Oh lord.”
“Yes, oh lord, indeed.” A wide grin broke out on Sebastian’s face, and my lips could not resist smiling—no, no, crying, definitely crying—for he was so close and so dear and, finally, so full of light. It softened the sharp angles and his eyes were a brilliant, gold-threaded green when they caught mine. I could not think of how to respond to a Sebastian like this for a long moment.
“Fine,” I said with a deep, elegiac sigh. “There’s no avoiding it any longer. I admit it. I’m not only Byronic, I’m a Byromaniac. It’s a tragic curse.”
“It is,” he said, pulling me down next to him, cradling me gently against his shoulder. I felt his lips on my forehead as he brushed a tingling kiss there. “But I’ll help you fight it. I’ll help you control it. I’ll go with you to India, I’ll go with you anywhere. You’ll never be in danger of taking a solitary walk on the moors or writing moody poetry, because I’ll always be with you. By your side until you’re absolutely sick of me.”
“Good,” I said, my hand curling over his, our powers joining. “Then I think that gives us all the time in the world.”
Epilogue
CALCUTTA, INDIA
NOVEMBER 27, 1884
My friend,