Lilith's Arc

Chapter 4 of 40

Lilith read the last line of the rite and felt her voice waver. Her cut palm still stung. Thin blood curled from it into the flooded hall. The dragon lifted its horned head from the dark water and fixed her with pale eyes. Silver moons on its wings caught the dim light. It had waited through the whole lesson, and now it wanted its price. "You have opened the second rite," the dragon rumbled. "To go further, feed me again. More this time. A palm's worth is not enough for the deeper words." Lilith pressed her wounded hand to her chest. The room swayed. She had already given too much. Her legs felt weak, and she was far from the surface, far from her husband and her three children. "I can barely stand," she said. "If I bleed more, I may not swim home." The dragon did not move. It simply waited, the way a guard waits. Selene watched from the broken shelves. The pixie glowed on her chest, no longer Lilith's. The moon goddess had faded so far that her edges blurred against the dark water. She had traded her own knowledge for scraps of memory, and she knew the cost of everything. "It will take what it is owed," Selene said. "But blood is not the only price it accepts." Lilith turned. "What else?" "A memory," Selene said. "One you love. Given freely, it feeds the old speech as blood does." She met Lilith's eyes without softness. "I gave mine once. That is why I forget my own name." Lilith understood the trap. Bleed more and grow too weak to reach home. Or cut away a piece of the very family she was trying to save. Both roads took from her. She chose. She would not lose more blood in this drowned place. She swam close to the dragon and pressed her hand to its warm snout. "Take a memory," she said. "But choose one I can spare." "I do not choose," the dragon said. "You do." Lilith closed her eyes. She reached back through years and found the day her oldest son first swam beside her, small and laughing, the sun on the waves. She held it out. The dragon breathed it in. Its chest glowed silver, then dimmed. When Lilith opened her eyes, the memory was gone. She knew Gabe had learned to swim young. She could not see it anymore. A cold, empty space sat where the picture had been. The dragon lowered its head to the book. "The deeper words are yours now. Read." Lilith looked at the page. The script glowed clearer than before. She could finish the rite. But her chest ached with a loss she could not name, and she knew the next lesson would ask for another memory she loved.