Lilith's Arc

Chapter 8 of 40

Lilith swam back to the drowned library at dawn. Tre's words still sat in her chest. She had paid the last memory. She should be free. But when she surfaced inside the flooded halls, the dragon was waiting on the darkened shelves. Its scales caught the light like wet stone. She had thought the price was done. It was not. The dragon lifted its horned head. Its voice moved through the water like a low tide. "One binding payment remains," it said. "The rite is finished, but it stays with me until you pay. You will not leave this library." Lilith reached for the spell in her mind. She could feel it, whole and glowing, yellow at its heart. But a wall stood between her and it. The dragon held the last thread. "I gave you everything you asked," she said. "Blood. Memories. The night I almost lost my husband. There's nothing left to take." "There is always one more," the dragon said. "A memory of your children. Give it, and the rite is yours." Selene rose from behind a broken column. She was thin as fading light, her edges already blurred. She had traded her own name to this dragon and never gotten it back. "Don't," she said. Flat. "I lost my name here. You will lose more than you think." Lilith looked at the water around her. She would not cut another piece of Gabe or Novalee or Hadley. She had come too far to hollow out the very children she meant to save. "No," she said. "I won't pay with them." The dragon's tail struck the flooded floor. "Then you stay." Shadow spread across the water. Nyx stepped out of it, standing on the surface like it was stone. She was Lilith's kin, the goddess of night, and she came without knocking, the way she always did. "There's another price," Nyx said. "You are not the only one with something the dragon wants." A low growl rolled through the hall. From the dark aisles a great wolf padded forward, marks glowing along its body in teal and gold. It had stood beside Lilith through the reading of the last rite. Now it walked to the dragon and lay down, offering itself. "It was made to guard the rite," Nyx said. "It carries the rite's own memory. Give that. Not your children." Lilith understood. She sang, low and steady. Her goddess side held the thread. Her siren voice drew the glow out of the wolf, yellow at its center, teal at its edge. The dragon opened its jaws and drank it in. The wall in her mind fell. The finished spell rushed into her, hers at last. "It's done," the dragon said. "Go." But the wolf did not rise. Its marks had gone dark. The guardian that had stood with her was empty now, a shell on the library floor. Lilith held the whole spell in her hands. She had spared her children. She had spent the one thing left to protect them with.