Chapter 465: The Second Branch Want To Test Lilith’s Power

The courtyard went very still.

Lilith felt Sebastian shift beside her. He didn’t speak. She could feel the effort it cost him.

"No," Lilith said.

A murmur rolled through the witches.

"I’m not going to perform in a courtyard to earn your help," Lilith went on. "You came to fight Keres. You’ll see what I can do soon enough, and I’d rather you saw it aimed at him." She held Ysolde’s gaze. "And I don’t fully control it yet. If I show you, someone could get hurt. I won’t risk that for your approval."

Ysolde’s expression didn’t change. "Brave."

"Honest."

"Convenient," a voice said from the back.

A young man pushed forward through the grey cloaks. He was maybe twenty-five, lean, with a tight jaw and eyes red-rimmed from a night without sleep. His hands were already glowing.

"Torren," Ysolde said, a warning in it.

"No." He kept walking. "My sister died for this curse. She was nineteen. It came down the direct line, and the direct line couldn’t stop it, and it took her. So you’ll forgive us if we want proof before we put our lives in your hands."

He threw his hands forward.

White-hot light tore across the courtyard, a whip of raw power that cracked the air as it came.

Sebastian moved. Lucian’s claws were out before he knew he’d called them.

"Don’t," Lilith said.

They stopped. Both of them. She felt it like a held breath.

The lash was six feet from her face.

She didn’t throw her power at it. She didn’t reach for the grey. She let the green rise first, calm and steady, and the cobblestones split open at her feet. Vines surged up through the cracks and caught the light mid-strike, wrapping around it, smothering it. The vine tips blackened where they touched it, curling to ash, and the ash drifted down.

She held both currents together. Life and death, balanced. The way Victoria had taught her over days of failure.

"Easy," a voice said, so faint it was barely there. A cool pressure at her wrist. "Just like that."

The light dimmed. Died. The last vine crumbled to dust. Nothing had spread past the stones in front of her.

Silence.

Torren stood with his hands still raised, chest heaving. He stared at the ash.

"I’m sorry about your sister," Lilith said.

He flinched, as if he’d expected an attack.

"I can’t promise I can fix it," she went on. "I can promise I’ll try. And I won’t use you as a shield to do it."

Torren lowered his hands. He looked away first.

Ysolde watched him step back into the group. Then she turned to Lilith again, and something was different about the way she did it.

"One more question," Ysolde said. "And then I’ll let you go back to your fog."

"Ask."

"If breaking the curse meant it fell on us. On the second branch. If the only way to spare you was to let it pass to us. What would you do?"

Lilith felt Sebastian go rigid beside her.

"I’d look for another way," she said.

"And if there isn’t one?"

"Then I’d keep looking until there was."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It’s the only honest one I’ve got." Lilith didn’t look away. "I won’t trade your lives for mine. I won’t let anyone decide it for me, either. Not you, not Thalia, not the Moon Goddess. I don’t know how to end it yet. But I won’t end it that way."

Ysolde studied her for a long time.

Then, very slightly, she smiled.

"Agnes will show you to the east wing," Lilith said, because the rest of the witches were standing in the cold and somebody ought to remember that. "There’s hot food. Rest before we start planning."

As if she’d been summoned, Agnes appeared at the edge of the courtyard with two pack women and a tray of steaming cups. "Luna," she said, and nodded to the witches. "This way, please. Mind the stones."

The grey cloaks began to move. The pack women led them toward the house. Dorian held back a moment, caught Lilith’s eye, and let out a long breath that she suspected he had been holding since the gate.

Ysolde didn’t follow. She waited until the courtyard had half emptied. Then she moved closer, leaning for the first time on her stick, and spoke low enough that only Lilith and the two men beside her could hear.

"The rumors say you walked into the Veil and walked out carrying it. Is that true?"

"Yes."

Ysolde’s face didn’t show fear. It showed something older and more tired. A hope she hadn’t let herself have in a very long time.

"Then you aren’t only the last of the direct line," she said quietly. "You might be the only one who ever finds a way to end this." Her eyes moved to the empty space on Sebastian’s far side, where a third man should have stood. "And the one who isn’t standing here. He’s why."

Lilith didn’t answer at once.

The cool touch came back. Just for a moment. Just enough.

"He’s why," she said.

***

Elena’s POV

The war room smelled of old maps and cold coffee.

Elena stood at the end of the long table with one hand flat against her bandaged side. The wound had stopped bleeding two days ago. It hadn’t stopped pulling every time she breathed too deep. She breathed shallow, and she didn’t let anyone see.

They had all come. Sebastian at the head of the table with his sleeves shoved to the elbow. Lucian beside him, restless, one boot hooked around the leg of his chair. Victoria in the corner chair nearest the fire, her cane across her knees. Dorian by the window with his arms folded. Callum near the door. And Ysolde Vane, seated in the middle of the table as if she’d always sat there, her pale stick resting against her shoulder.

Lilith wasn’t in the room. She was in the training hall with Nicholas’s name in her mouth and both currents in her hands, working. Elena had asked for that. Whatever came next, Lilith needed to be somewhere else while it was planned.