HEART OF GOLD | CORIOLANUS SNOW

𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙀𝙍 110

And he didn't come back.

Her best friends swooped down on her the moment he was gone. Apparently, they'd been informed by their mentors—both Cora and Hector—that she had collapsed at the afterparty.

Then her father and Criseida arrived, and Dr. Hawthorne made his reappearance. After a heated argument, or as heated as arguments got in the Gold family, they came to a compromise:

Since her tumour was benign and not exactly fatal, it was agreed that Lilith would be entered as a candidate for the drug trial for a period of six months. Should there be no improvement, or should she encounter a recurrence of today's events, she would have to be put on radiation therapy immediately.

Lilith could only hope that the odds would be in her favour.

Hope was the only thing stronger than fear.

That night, when she was made to stay for observation, he didn't show up. The next day, when Tigris dropped in, she blurted something about Strabo and dialysis and how yesterday had been such an unlucky day. She also offered Lilith a later starting date at TGRS if she needed, but Lilith declined.

Despite yearning to ask about her cousin, Lilith couldn't muster the courage. She didn't even dare to investigate how Tigris knew she had been admitted. Instead, Lilith let herself assume he had been involved, let herself be consoled that he wasn't giving his company to her because he was giving it to his family.

Numerous uneventful tests later, Lilith was discharged on Sunday evening. Her father was there to fetch her. Back at the lake house, it seemed like she had come back from the dead rather than the hospital. Everyone was there: Criseida and Val and Aurora, Grandma Odette and Uncle Merc and Aunt Dora, even little Vega and Cygnus.

The rest of the week was spent alternately on her own beach and Regulus's yacht, all of them trying to get in a good tan before graduation. The whole gang knew about the lump in her head—they'd visited her Sunday morning—but no one talked about it. They didn't have to.

They just refilled her iced tea before she could get up and ask for one herself, came up with every excuse under the sun to avoid swimming in the lake and water sports, since Lilith was supposed to refrain from strenuous activities—and never left her alone. Even when she went to the bathroom, someone would always be coincidentally headed in the same direction.

All the tip-toeing irked Lilith. She didn't have cancer, but she might as well be terminal with the constant "Are you alright?" looks being cast her way. But she also knew her friends were just concerned, as was her family, because they loved her, and she endured it for them, because she loved them, too.

When graduation came, Lilith put on a smart dress—tweed, sleeved, ending a few inches above her knee—and a broad smile. It was there as she collected her certificate of high honours, the culmination of her academic career, and the new provost moved the golden tassel of her mortarboard to the left. It was there as she was hustled into a million photographs in the same gaudy graduation gown was everyone else. It was there as she feasted alongside her peers and all the proud parents, even though she hadn't tasted anything since Saturday evening.

Toward the end of the commencement luncheon, Lilith overheard Tatiana Cox complaining about her skirt being too tight and blaming it on "that Plinth woman's pies." Intrigued, Lilith stopped short and tried to be discreet about lingering. Luckily, Tatiana's voice was always at that easily distinguishable pitch that Lilith didn't deem herself eavesdropping.

Ma Plinth seemed to go into a baking frenzy whenever she was upset, with the resultant treats distributed throughout the building, including to the Coxes, who lived on the second floor. Delicious and irresistible as her pastries went, it was certainly a bad week for Tatiana to be receiving them every day. But it was worse for Lilith to hear that there was so much extra to go around because there was no one home to eat them.