Lilith Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The name hung in the air between them. Lilith watched Luna's face and felt the cold truth settle. The rabbit was dead, but the debt was not. The moment she said "Luna" aloud, the fae's claim locked onto the one soul she had crossed centuries to find. The black cat pressed against her ankle. "The lady owns her now," it said quietly. "A name is a debt paid." Luna heard it. She did not flinch. "So I belong to her." Flat. No fear in it. "Fine. Better me than you." She turned toward the trees as if she meant to walk straight to the manor and surrender. Lilith caught her wrist. The werewolf's pulse beat hard under her thumb. Two hundred years she had searched, and she would not hand this one over for a roof. "No," Lilith said. "A name pays the debt. So I bring the lady another name." The cat's ears lifted. "The debt names your true companion. You can't lie to her." "I won't lie." Lilith let go of Luna. "I'll give her someone who wants to be owned." They found Roslyn in the crypt, folded on cold stone near the carved saints. Six months dead, and still herself by sheer will. Red hair, green eyes, the stitched seam on her cheek. Lilith had meant her as bait from the start, the trade she would make to keep her love free. Roslyn looked up and read Lilith's face before anyone spoke. "You're giving me to her," she said. Not a question. "I knew when you brought me here." It still landed like a slap, and she let it show, then let it pass. "A zombie without a master dies in fae land," Lilith said. "The lady keeps what she owns. You'd be hers. Protected. You want a master. She'll be one." Roslyn stood. Her knees cracked. "You don't love me. You're trading me." She looked at Luna, then back. "But I'd rather be owned than rot in a ditch. Yes. Take me to her." The gothic manor's doors opened before Lilith knocked. The fae waited inside, tall and white-haired, her dark wings folded, her spiked tail curled on the floor. Black eyes found Luna first. "You spoke the wolf's name," she said. "The wolf is mine." "The debt names my true companion," Lilith answered. "Luna isn't bound to me yet. I never sired her. I never claimed her soul." She set her hand on Roslyn's shoulder. "This one is mine. My servant. My companion. I claim her now, out loud, before you." The words made it true. Roslyn drew a breath she did not need and stood straighter, as if a weight lifted off her. The fae's tail went still. "A dead girl." "A companion," Lilith said. "Named and given. The debt is paid in full." The fae studied the seams on Roslyn's face, the green eyes that did not beg. Then she smiled. "She craves a leash. I can use that." She held out one black-gloved hand. "Come, little corpse." Roslyn stepped forward. At the threshold she looked back. "She'll keep me whole," she said. "That's more than you offered." There was no bitterness left in it, only fact. The doors closed. The claim on Luna snapped loose like a cut thread. Lilith felt it go. Outside, Luna stood in the dark grass. The small white wolf pup she carried inside her showed in her eyes, pink and wild and quiet now. "You traded a dead girl for me," she said. "I'm not worth that." "You never believe you're worth anything." Lilith stepped close. "That changes tonight." Luna held still. "Something hunts me every full moon. It had a claim on you once. It won't forgive this." Honest, as always. She offered the worst of herself first. "Let it come," Lilith said. "I've waited two centuries for your soul. I won't share it with anything." She cupped Luna's jaw. "I want to sire you. Make you mine. Forever, and devoted, and free of every other hand that reaches for you. Say yes." Luna's guilt went quiet, the way it had the first time Lilith touched her. "Yes," she said. One word. Enough. Lilith kissed the pulse at her throat, then bit. Luna gasped and gripped her arms. The werewolf's blood turned cold and sure under Lilith's mouth, and the bond closed between them, permanent and chosen. When Luna opened her eyes they still burned pink, but something in them had finally stopped running. The fae had her corpse. The crypt had its stone walls against the coming dawn. And Lilith Nightshade, after two hundred years alone, held the one companion no debt and no hunter could ever take from her again.