Trixie's Arc

Chapter 12 of 12

The cyan light pooled thicker now, spreading from her feet toward the deeper shelves where forbidden texts waited. NOTIM stood just inside the doorway, his eyes blank where the album cover memory had been. He looked at her without recognition of what he'd just lost. Christo Sophus appeared at the entrance, and the serpent doorway coiled toward him immediately. The living frame recognized something Trixie had forgotten—unconditional love required no payment. Two dragons circled the serpent's body now, one blue and one red, their scaled forms intertwining as they reached toward a glowing tree covered in colored hearts. The tree bloomed from the center of the doorway itself, roots threading through stone. Trixie clutched the memory-painting book tighter and stepped between Christo and the entrance. She could warn him like she hadn't warned NOTIM. She could tell him the doorway would take something precious. But the words caught in her throat when she saw what he carried—her old sketchbook from before the prophecy, the one she'd left at his door years ago. The serpent's coils shifted, expectant. Christo held out the sketchbook without hesitation, his expression calm. Trixie grabbed his wrist. The book in her other hand fell open, pages fluttering to reveal painted memories she'd stolen from strangers. She could rewrite his memory right now, make him forget the archive existed, send him away safe. Her fingers trembled against his skin. The cyan light beneath her feet pulsed brighter, crawling up her legs like it wanted her to choose control again. She released his wrist and stepped back. The serpent took the sketchbook and Christo walked through, his face unchanged because he'd given away her memory, not his own. The tree in the doorway bloomed brighter, hearts multiplying among its branches. Trixie watched the serpent doorway reshape itself, the dragons and tree fading as the entrance sealed behind Christo. She'd let him enter without warning, just like NOTIM. But this time she understood what she'd done—she'd stopped trying to master the forbidden magic and started using people as experiments instead. The memory-painting book lay open at her feet where she'd dropped it, techniques for rewriting minds glowing on every page. She closed it and shoved it back on the shelf. The cyan light dissolved from the floor, leaving no trace of the path she'd been following. Trixie looked at Christo and NOTIM standing among the forbidden texts, both changed by choices she'd made for them. She couldn't take back what the archive had done to them. But she could stop bringing more people here to pay its costs.