Page 30

LILLITH

T he moon rose red that night.

Not crimson with eclipse or the burnt hue of summer’s ash, but blood-red—angry, watching. And Lillith swore she could hear it whisper her name.

They stood in the glade where the ley lines bent, a bend not found on any map, but known to witches by instinct and blood memory. She felt them trembling beneath her boots, those ancient arteries of magic, humming low like a storm trying not to scream.

She glanced over her shoulder.

Dominic stood beside her, still and broad, like a mountain holding back the tide.

His eyes were fierce beneath the fall of wind-mussed hair, his shoulders squared, coat open to the cold night as though daring the forest to test him.

Around his wrist, the rune-sigil bracelet she’d given him glowed faintly, pulsing with her magic. Her promise.

Behind them, the council gathered like a storm front.

Hazel stood with her staff in hand, hair braided tight down her back, mouth a grim line.

Jace Montgomery flanked her, storm-grey eyes narrowed as he gave orders to the wolf-shifter guard.

Rowan and Markus circled the perimeter, quietly linking spells.

Even Bea was there, her sleeves rolled and herbs tucked behind her ears.

Everyone was ready.

Except Lillith.

Her fingers gripped the heart-sigil hanging around her neck—a carved pendant of twisted bone and silver thread. She had poured her magic into it for days. It wasn’t just a weapon. It was the key to undoing the tether between Thaloryn and the Moonlit Pact. A lockpick carved from soul and sacrifice.

“Hey.” Dominic’s voice cut through the wind.

She turned to him. She still wasn’t used to how her chest softened just at the sight of him.

“You with me?” he asked.

She nodded, swallowing the fear hard. “I am now.”

The trees fell silent. Then came the first howl.

It wasn’t wolf. It wasn’t anything natural.

The sky opened as Thaloryn’s shadow beasts emerged. Dozens of them, gliding like smoke, eyes gleaming with sickly blue fire. Their limbs bent wrong. Their mouths stretched too wide. Echoes of pain given form.

The clearing pulsed with alarm. The guards shifted mid-step while fur and claws and war-cries beckoned while magic snapped like a whip through the air.

Thaloryn emerged last.

He didn’t walk. He unfolded wreathed in glamour, clad in silver-threaded robes, his hair shimmering like moonlight oil, Thaloryn glided across the battlefield with a slow, deliberate grace. His expression was carved serenity, but his eyes burned. Not hot, but glacial—deadly.

“Lillith,” he greeted, voice the curl of a winter breeze through a cracked window. “So dramatic. Was a letter too civil for you?”

She stepped forward, magic already prickling along her skin. “Cut the theatrics. This ends tonight.”

“Oh,” he said, smile not quite touching his lips. “But we’re just getting started.”

The beasts lunged.

Dominic moved like fire—his shift rolling over him in a blur of tawny gold and muscle.

His lion form slammed into one of the shadow-creatures mid-air, teeth ripping through corrupted magic.

Hazel shouted a command, and wards burst to life across the field.

Shields flared. Spells flew like lightning bolts.

Jace and his pack shifted as well, earth-boiund wolf tangling with shadows and darkness.

But Lillith didn’t flinch. Her bones ached with fatigue, her fingertips buzzed with too much magic, too much adrenaline—but she stepped forward anyway, the sigil pulsing in her grip like a second heartbeat.

Each footfall felt heavier than the last, as if the earth itself resisted her path.

The battlefield had gone quiet save for the distant roars of beasts and the whisper of burned leaves skittering across scorched ground.

All eyes followed her now—council, allies, monsters alike—as though the air held its breath.

The sigil in her hand burned hotter. Not physically, but soul-deep, like it was pulling threads from inside her ribcage to keep itself lit.

Thaloryn watched her approach, brow raised. He tilted his head with a sneer carved in obsidian. “What is that?” he said, voice silk-wrapped venom. “A trinket? A charm? Or are you going to cry into it and hope I melt?”

She stopped three feet from him. Her heart pounded so loud it muffled the wind. But her voice? Clear. Cold.

“It’s a doorstop,” she snapped. “And you’re standing on the wrong side of it.”

His smile faded.

The sigil flared, reacting to the convergence point underfoot—the ley lines pulsing just beneath the surface. Lillith inhaled, once. Then she screamed—a raw, primal sound torn from somewhere deep—and slammed the sigil into the earth.

The ground didn’t just quake. It convulsed .

A shockwave of power erupted outward in concentric circles. Stones lifted, trees bowed away, and a crack ripped through the battlefield like lightning splitting a sky in half. The ley lines roared as if finally freed from a cage.

Magic howled. Not wind. Not weather. Magic. Old, waking, furious .

Runes spilled from the ground in blinding flashes—ancient, burning silver and red and violet. They spiraled toward Thaloryn, seeking him, binding him. The first one lashed around his ankle like a chain. He tried to move.

He couldn’t.

“What have you done?” he hissed, the sneer falling away as panic rose in his voice.

Another rune wrapped around his thigh. Then his torso. The glamour cracked across his skin like shattered porcelain. His true form flickered—too sharp, too inhuman, beauty turned to blade.

“You dare ?—”

“I severed you,” Lillith said, her voice low but thunderous, her hair whipping around her face like a crown of fire. “You and the Moonlit Pact are no longer one. No longer tethered. You’re not its shadow. You’re just another monster who thought chaos made him a king.”

He roared, eyes blazing with pure hatred, but he couldn’t move. Not forward. Not back. The sigil’s power, fueled by her blood and will, held.

The moment stretched.

And then the sigil detonated.

Light burst from the earth like a geyser of stars.

The scream of it wasn’t just sound—it was vibration, memory, history being rewritten in a second.

The shadow beasts shrieked in unison. They collapsed inward, their forms unraveling like smoke caught in reverse wind.

They didn’t die. They were sucked —drawn screaming into the rift that tore open at Thaloryn’s back.

The tether snapped.

The air shattered.

Thaloryn staggered backward, one hand outstretched in disbelief as the pulse of power rippled through his chest and broke whatever hold he’d had.

Lillith fell to one knee, sweat beading at her brow, her vision swimming with afterimages.

But she didn’t drop the second sigil she’d hidden in her other palm.

She wasn’t finished. Not yet.

Dominic was at her side instantly, shifting back, wrapping his arms around her. “You did it,” he breathed. “You actually?—”

The wind shifted.

Lillith’s eyes shot up in warning too late.

Thaloryn, snarling, half-scorched and stripped of glamour, lunged.

He didn’t go for her. He went for Dominic.

Everything slowed.

His blade—bone and shadow—pierced the space between them. Dominic shoved her back. Lillith screamed. The world tilted. And Dominic fell.

Thaloryn vanished in a crack of ice-cold air.

Dominic hit the ground, eyes wide, blood blooming too fast, too red across his shirt.

“DOMINIC!”

She dropped beside him, hands fumbling, pressing against the wound, her magic screaming inside her to do something—anything—but nothing held. Nothing stuck.

His hand curled weakly around hers.

“Still with me,” he rasped, lips pale.

She shook her head, tears falling freely now. “No, no, no, don’t you dare. I just found you again. You don’t get to leave.”

He smiled. Faint. Brave. “You did good, Lillith. Real good.”

“You’re not saying goodbye.”

“Just… saying I’m proud of you.” Then his eyes fluttered closed.