Lilith's Arc

Chapter 12 of 40

The book helped, but it did not answer the question that gnawed at Lilith. Some memories could be written and read back. Others could not. What if the spell took the day Tre first held Hadley? What if it took the words she'd said at her own wedding? A page could not hold everything. She needed to know the limit. She left her sleeping family at dawn and swam back to the drowned library. Selene sat where she always sat, her edges soft, as if the water were slowly erasing her outline. She had lost her own name to the dragon long ago. She did not look up when Lilith entered. "I need to know how far it goes," Lilith said. "Can the spell take a memory we cannot live without? Something that holds the family together?" Selene was quiet for a moment. "Yes," she said. "It can take anything." "Then tell me which ones are safe." "None are safe." Selene finally looked at her. Her blue eyes were dim. "The spell does not choose small. It does not care what breaks." Lilith's chest went tight. "So one morning it could take the reason Tre loves me. Or the reason Gabe trusts me." "It could," Selene said. Lilith gripped the stone shelf. "Then I have to know before it happens. I have to see the pattern." "There is no pattern." Selene stood. Her thin gown dragged in the water. "I traded my name. I did not choose it. I woke one day and it was gone. My friend told me to say it every night to hold on. I said it for a year. By the end it did not feel like mine." She stopped. "That is what you are asking about. It comes as it comes." Lilith wanted a wall she could build. Selene was telling her there was no wall. "Then the record means nothing," she said. "No." Selene's voice stayed flat. "The record is not a lock. It is a witness. You cannot stop the loss. You can refuse to let it be silent." Lilith understood then what she had feared. She had wanted a limit, a promise that the spell would never reach the deepest thing. There was no such promise. The spell could take the memory the family could not live without. She could not prevent it. She could only stand ready to speak it back. "Then I will write the deep ones too," Lilith said. "The wedding. The births. Every reason we love each other. If it takes them, I read them back until they feel true again." Selene watched her. "They may never feel true again." "Then I read them anyway." Lilith left the library with the question answered and worse than she'd hoped. Nothing was safe. She swam home to write the deepest memories first, before the thief could reach them.