Lilith's Arc

Chapter 31 of 40

The binding held whole and willing now. But warm was not the same as forever. Lilith stood in the keep with her family glowing around her and felt the spell still loose, like a knot pulled tight but not yet tied off. Selene's old warning came back to her. Everlasting magic always takes a final price. She could not tell what this one still wanted. She had to find out before it chose for her. She left the keep at dusk and walked until she found Nyx. The goddess of night stood alone on a rise, watching a dark road below as if someone might come along it. Nyx watched over the people no one else saw after dark. Even now her eyes stayed on the empty path, not on Lilith. "The spell isn't done," Lilith said. "Selene said everlasting magic takes a last price. I can't feel what it wants." Nyx did not turn. "You already know." "I don't." "Then think. What holds it open?" Lilith closed her eyes. She reached into the binding with her goddess side and felt along the thread. Five glowing places. Tre, Gabe, Novalee, Hadley, herself. All bright. All willing. But the thread ran on past them, into the dark, to a sixth thing. She followed it and found the wolf. The dead-eyed guardian had stood by the last rite. Nyx had emptied it to buy the completed spell. Now the binding leaned on that hollow creature to stay open, waiting to be closed. "The wolf," Lilith said. "The spell wants it back. To finish, I have to give it up. For good." "Yes," Nyx said. Lilith's chest ached. She had wronged the wolf once already. "It's the last price." "It's the last one." Nyx finally looked at her. Her face held all the ones she had failed to save. "You can pay it or leave the spell open. Open means it hunts again someday." Lilith went to the wolf. It stood where it always stood, marked with dead runes, watching nothing. She knelt before it. Her seahorse drifted from her shoulder and turned slow circles above the wolf's head, its runes soft and blue. She would not steal this. She would let it go. She sang. Not to take. To release. Her goddess side held the thread while her siren and mermaid sides carried the note down into the wolf. She felt the binding's last hook come loose from the empty creature. The runes on its body dimmed one by one. Its dead eyes closed. It sank down and was still, truly gone now, no longer holding anything. The thread snapped tight and sealed. Lilith felt it lock in her chest, in Tre's, in all three children's. Permanent. Made to last. She stood. The spell was whole and closed and paid for. Behind her, Nyx was already gone. But the wolf's body did not fade. It lay there, waiting to be buried, and someone had to tell the children what it had cost.