Lilith's Arc

Chapter 29 of 40

The binding held around Lilith and her three children, but it did not close. It hung open in her chest, waiting. Tre had not come to the keep. Without him the spell would never seal whole, and the others would stay caught in a half-cast thing. Lilith could not sing him here. She had learned that her song felt like a chain to the ones she loved. So she left the keep and went to find him herself. Tre was at the cottage, sitting on the step. He did not look up when her shadow fell across him. "You didn't come," she said. He worked a splinter from the wood with his thumbnail. "I know." His voice was flat, honest, the way it always was. "I watched you drain yourself for months. I can't stand in a circle and let you keep doing it." Lilith knelt on the step below him. Gabe, Novalee, and Hadley had trusted her without a song. But Tre had watched every cost up close. He had seen her forget things. He had seen the thread hunt her. She could not trick him and she would not. "The price is paid," she said. "The thread is gone. I'm not spending anything more. I need you to believe that, not because I sang it. Because it's true." "You've said true before," Tre said. "And then lost another piece of yourself." He met her eyes at last. "I don't want forever if it hollows you out first." "It's already done hollowing me," she said. "I gave up the one thing that started this. The night you were sick. The fear. It's gone. I don't even remember why I was so afraid." Her hand shook on his knee. "Come to the keep and I stop. If you stay away, the children hang half-bound forever. That's the cost of you not coming. Not me." He was quiet a long time. Down the path a low shape stood at the edge of the trees. The wolf that had guarded the last rite. Its markings had gone dark and dull. It watched them with empty eyes, alive and not alive, a thing her spell had cost. Tre looked at it too. "That's what your magic leaves behind," he said. "Yes," Lilith said. "And I'm done leaving things behind. You're the last, and I'm not paying for you. I'm asking you." Tre stood. He held out his hand and pulled her up. "Then I'll come," he said. "Not for the spell. For you. So you'll stop." They walked back to the keep together. The children were still there in the lit alcoves. When Tre stepped through the arch, the binding drew tight around all five of them at once. Lilith felt it close in her chest, full now, no longer hanging open. The spell held whole. But whole was not finished. The binding had sealed. It had not yet been made to last.