Lilith's Arc

Chapter 7 of 40

Lilith swam home from the drowned library with the last rite fixed in her mind. One memory more. It had to come from her own family now. She surfaced near the shore and took her legs and walked up to the house. Her children slept inside. She sat at the kitchen table and tried to choose. Gabe learning to swim. Novalee's first word. Hadley's laugh three months old. Every memory she touched felt like cutting off her own hand. Tre came in and saw her face. He was her husband, mortal, the reason she had started all of this. He sat across from her and took her hands. "You've been gone all night again," he said. "You're shaking." "The spell needs one more memory," she said. "From us. From something I love. I can't pick." Tre was quiet. He did not soften it. "So the price is a piece of one of us." "A memory," she said. "But it never comes back." He let go of her hands. "You'd cut out a memory of your own kids to keep them forever. Do you hear that?" His voice stayed level. "I don't want to live forever if you have to lose them to buy it." Before Lilith could answer, the room went dark at the edges. Nyx stepped out of the shadow by the door. She was the goddess of night, and Lilith's own kin. She watched over the ones no one else saw. She did not knock. She never did. "You are choosing wrong," Nyx said. Flat, no cruelty. "You keep looking at the children's memories. Look at your own." Lilith stood. "Mine are the same. They're all mine." "Not the ones about you alone," Nyx said. "The night your husband was sick. You sat with him until dawn. You remember the fear. Give the dragon that." Lilith went still. That night lived in her chest like cold water. The whole reason she began. If she gave it away, she would forget why she was so afraid of losing him. Tre understood first. "Give it," he said. "I don't want you carrying that night anymore. It's eating you." Lilith closed her eyes. The memory was hers alone. It cost her family nothing. It cost only her own dread. She sang low, her goddess side holding the thread, her siren voice pulling the fear up from her chest. A yellow light rose off her skin, teal at its edge. She caught it in her cupped hands. The fear was gone. She looked at Tre and could not remember why she had ever been so frightened. She only knew she loved him. "It's done," she said. "The last rite is paid." But Tre's eyes were wet. "You forgot it," he said. "You forgot the night you almost lost me. That's what it took." He stood. "Now you don't even know why you're doing this."