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She shakes her head slowly. “It’s still very complex, but it’s mostly a matter of warding. The coven will need to maintain it carefully, but it’s possible.”

My mind whirs over the implications of closing off the connection between the two realms. “But won’t that cut the demons off completely from our magick, or from reaping their own?”

“It will also keep every soul in this realm safe from being reaped.”

She’s not wrong. It’s just… horrendous. Unthinkable. To cut off an entire realm, leaving everyone in it to suffer…

“You can’t,” I whisper. “That’s not… meddling like that can’t be what the Goddess would want.”

My mother’s mouth sets into a hard line. “I doubt She wants souls reaped, either.”

Her conviction is clear enough on her face, and we both sit in silence for a long seconds, neither willing to give another inch.

“What about me?” I ask finally.

“What do you mean?”

“When you seal the Veil, I’ll be stuck behind it.”

Her eyes go wide and her stoic determination breaks. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Allie.”

“I don’t see how it doesn’t.”

“You’re out, you’re here,” she says, pleading with me now. “Stay here while we take care of the Veil. You don’t have to go back.”

I’m standing before I’m even aware I’ve moved, anger coursing through me. “And abandon Eren?”

“Darling,” she pleads, standing as well, but I’m having none of it.

“He’s my husband,” I tell her, shaking.

“You just met him—”

“Stop. You don’t get to say a single word about my relationship with Eren. Not after you left me completely ignorant about what it might mean to be chosen at the Tithe. And Iwaschosen, mom, by the Goddess. Even if you’re willing to believe you have the right to circumvent Her will, I’m not. And I’m not leaving him. Even if it means being stuck in that realm when you seal it off.”

She comes out from behind her desk and takes me by the shoulders. “Please see reason, Allie. There’s no sense in keeping yourself trapped in an unstable realm, Tithe or not.”

I hardly recognize the woman in front of me. Desperate, undone, pleading with me. My mother has never taken this tone with me, or with anyone else that I can remember. Her eyes are shining with tears and she gives me a little shake as she speaks, as if she could force me to agree with her.

“We can’t stop this,” she continues. “Not for you, not for anyone. We’re going to seal the Veil, and I want you on this side of it when we do.”

What she’s asking is sacrilege. Ignoring one of the few direct commands the Goddess ever makes of us, asking me to turn my back on the male She’s chosen for me.

Something slots into place in my mind, some recognition that’s been hovering at the edge of my consciousness since the moment Eren first stepped through the Veil.

I won’t leave him. Ican’tleave him. Not for my mother’s pleading, or for the risk of being trapped in a collapsing realm, or for anything else. My mother continues to study me, and I don’t have to say anything else for her to understand my answer.

Her face settles again into firm, unyielding lines, all of that pleading vulnerability disappearing. “The next full moon is in a week and a half. That’s when we’ll attempt to seal it.”

I nod. There’s no point in arguing with her, no point in asking if she’d let me go for the benefit of the rest of the coven, the benefit of the rest of thisrealm. I already know what her answer would be, and a part of me can’t even fault her for it.

What’s one witch in exchange for all that? Even if that one witch is her daughter?

“Fine,” I say, stepping back from her.

Her hands fall to her sides in limp acceptance, or defeat. Standing across from her, I’m struck by the fact that it may be the last time I ever see her. Angry as I am, as righteous as I feel, I can’t help the weight of sickening grief that settles in my stomach at the idea.

Esme Hawthorn has felt more like an abstract in my mind than a mother these last few years. The High Priestess, the stilted, slightly awkward voice on the other end of our occasional phone calls, the quiet presence in the back of my head reminding me I’ll never quite be good enough.