Lilith's Arc

Chapter 22 of 40

The children were sealed and safe. Tre was not. Lilith found him in the temple's main hall, under the gilded columns, sitting on the cold floor. The thread was already on his page. But Lilith did not know which of his memories it had touched. If she sealed the wrong ones, the real loss would slip past while she guarded empty air. Mnemora came at Lilith's call. She stood in her white dress, gold at the hem, and looked at Tre without softening it. "The thread has bitten him. I can seal what's left. I cannot tell you which parts are already gone." "Then how do I find the wound?" Lilith asked. "Speak to him," Mnemora said. "A memory that lives, he'll finish. A memory that's cut, he'll reach for and grab nothing. The gap is the wound." Lilith knelt in front of her husband. Marina Tidecaller stood at the door, blue hair trailing, water beading on her arms. She had held Gabe still once in a sea cave while Lilith read to him. Now she only watched, quiet, in case the sealing needed her. Lilith started small. "The night Hadley was born," she said. "You held her first. What did you say?" Tre smiled. "She was loud. I said she had your lungs." The memory was whole. Lilith let it pass. She went deeper. "Our wedding. The song you sang to me." Tre opened his mouth. He stopped. His eyes moved, searching. "There was a song," he said slowly. "I know I sang. I don't—" He pressed a hand to his chest. "It's not there. The words are gone." Lilith's stomach dropped. That was the wound. The thread had taken his memory of the song he'd sung her the day they married. Not Hadley. Not the children's births. Their wedding. She had the record. She had spoken that day aloud to Mnemora long ago, sealed in gold. Now she read it back to him, plain and slow, every word of the song he could no longer hold. His face changed as she spoke, like a man finding a door in a wall. "That's it," he whispered. "That's what I sang." "Now keep it," Lilith said. "Say it back to Mnemora. Seal it yourself, so the thread can't take it twice." Tre spoke the song back, halting, then sure. Mnemora raised her palm. Gold light rose and closed around the memory. It held. But Mnemora did not lower her hand. "The thread moved while you searched," she said. "It's on your own page now, Lilith. Not his. Yours." Lilith felt it then, a cold pull behind her eyes. She had found Tre's wound and sealed it. In the searching, the thread had turned and fixed on her. And no one else could speak her memories back to her but herself.