Lilith's Arc

Chapter 28 of 40

The thread was gone. Lilith sat in her memory keep with her memories safe. But one thing still lay open. The binding spell that tied her family's lives to her own had never finished. It waited for the last thing she could not buy or steal. Her children had to trust her. And they did not. They trusted the goddess in the white gown instead. Mnemora stood among the lit alcoves. Gold light rested at her fingers, ready as always. She had taught the children to seal their own memories. She had guarded them when Lilith could not. Now the children looked to her, not their mother. Mnemora spoke plainly. "The binding needs their trust. It will not hold without it. I cannot give you that. I am the one who took it." Lilith called her three children into the keep. Gabe came first, still and watchful, hands in his jacket pockets. Novalee held Hadley on her hip and stopped near the door. She would not step closer. "You brought us to her again," Novalee said. She meant Mnemora. The girl trusted the goddess more than the woman who bore her. Lilith did not sing. She had learned that her song felt like a chain to them. Instead she took Gabe's crystal keepsake from the shelf. It caught the alcove light and threw teal across the stone. She held it out to him. "I trapped you in a cave to make you remember me. I was wrong. I kept doing wrong things to fix wrong things." She turned to Novalee. "I made her your keeper so I wouldn't have to earn you back. That was mine, not yours." Mnemora set her hands down. The gold light faded from her fingers. "I step back now," she said. "They seal their own memories. They do not need me between them and you. If you want them, stand in front of them yourself." She moved to the wall and grew quiet, no longer the shield. Lilith knelt. She did not reach for them. She waited. Hadley squirmed and reached toward the crystal, toward Lilith. Novalee let her go. The baby crawled across the floor and put both hands on her mother's knee. Novalee watched. Then she stepped in from the door. "You stopped bringing her to hold us," she said. "You just stopped." Lilith nodded. Gabe crossed last. He took the crystal from her hand and did not give it back. The three of them stood close now, of their own choice. Lilith felt the binding shift in her chest, no longer empty. The trust had come, not sung, not sealed, given. The spell drew tight around all four and held. But it was not yet cast in its final form. One more voice was missing. Tre had not come to the keep. And the last binding could not close without him.