Lilith's Arc

Chapter 34 of 40

Lilith had saved Selene, and the god of day had noticed. She felt it the next dawn. The light over the water burned too hot, too long. It did not soften at noon. Selene had warned her: he remembers her only to hate. Now he had followed the fading back to its source, and the source was Lilith. Her binding held her family to eternity. It did not shield them from a god's wrath. She swam up fast, thinking of Gabe, Novalee, and the baby asleep at the cottage. She found him waiting on the shore. Apollo Helios stood where the tide could not reach, tall and gold, his beard bright as struck metal. Heat rolled off him and dried the sand to dust. He did not shout. He counted. "You lit her again," he said. "Three nights now. I've lost an hour of dusk to it." His voice was flat. "I'll take it back. From you, or from the ones you keep in that house." Lilith stepped between him and the path to the cottage. "They have no part in this." "They have you," Apollo said. "That's the part." He raised one hand. The air above the dunes shimmered white. Lilith felt the heat aim past her, toward the cottage where her children slept. She could not outrun light. She would not let it touch them. So she sang. Her goddess side held the thread. Her mermaid and siren voices poured into the water at her back, and the sea answered, rising in a wall of gray. The enchanted seahorse spun from the foam, runes flaring, and the pale unicorn broke from the treeline behind her, horn lit, hooves striking sparks. They anchored her the way they had against the thread. She did not sing to bind Apollo. She sang to make him listen. "Selene pulled your tides for a thousand years," she sang into his light. "You called her enemy. She only stayed." Apollo's hand faltered. The white heat bent, curled, and did not fall on the cottage. It struck the sea instead and hissed to steam. "I don't hate the moon," he said slowly. "I hate what climbs while I sleep." He meant Nyx. He had aimed at the wrong house. "Then aim at her," Lilith said. "Not at children who never took an hour from you." Apollo lowered his arm. The light over the water eased. Noon finally softened. He studied Lilith, then the unicorn, then the risen sea holding steady behind her. "You're not the night," he said. "You're just her kin." He turned his back to the tide. "Keep singing your dead goddess. I'll settle my hours with the one who stole them." He walked into the light and was gone. Lilith let the sea fall. Her family was safe. But Apollo had named his true enemy, and Nyx was her family too. She had turned a god's wrath from her children and pointed it at the goddess who first taught her to sacrifice.