Chapter Twenty-Seven • Killing Time • Lillith #3
“Do... do you know how the Nightingale Pearl is made?” I ask. “How it forms and gets consecrated?”
“Theoretically,” he says. “The ‘sand’ for the pearl is usually the ashes of recently passed members of the family, right?”
I nod. “Except... the activating factor is an act of devotional pain.”
“What did you have to do to yourself?”
“Not to me,” I say, throat tightening. “I had to hurt Nan.” I swallow, trying to form the words through the haze of memories filling my head. “I didn’t want to do it at all. I refused, but she said I had to.”
The image of blood coating my hands, of the crunch of bones, the stretch of viscera—it all fills my mind’s eye as bright and real as it did the day she made me do it. I thumb the edge of my teacup.
“Lillith, you don’t have to say it,” he says reaching out for my hand. “Just let me see.”
I hesitate for a moment, not sure if I want to visit it as vividly as Bastion can retrieve it.
It’s one of the things he’s good at—regressions, memory retrievals, mind reading.
But in order for him to look at a memory, it has to play in my mind again.
I’m not sure if I want him to see how horribly I had to hurt Nan.
But maybe it’s better if he sees how fucked up it was.
Maybe he needs to see it so he understands why I made the choice I had to make.
I give him my hand and he squeezes it once before wrapping both hands around my wrist, pressing his thumbs into the soft underbelly of my forearm.
He closes his eyes, and the unsettling sensation of his rifling through my memories abruptly floods me.
He finally lands on it, cracking it out of me with brutality I’m sure he doesn’t intend.
All the same, it feels like my ribs are being separated from my spine, and the softest parts of me are being yanked out—the emotional equivalent of a blood eagle. It doesn’t feel like a memory at all. It feels like I’m back there. Like I’m going it all over again.
“I won’t do it, Nan,” I’m telling her.
“You have to,” she says, her face stern.
“What do you think happens if you don’t, Lillith?
Hmn? Do you really think it’s wise to sever the generational wards here?
Do you think that every single predecessor’s sacrifice and pain should be wasted because you couldn’t buck up and do what everyone else did? ”
My stomach drops and guilt squeezes it. “N-Nan—”
“Do it, Lillith. Goddamnit. Do not make me ask you again.”
Nan gets like this sometimes. She did it when the whole situation happened with Whitman, too. Somehow it always hurts, always makes me feel like I’m disappointing her. And there is little in the world that I hate more than disappointing Nan.
All the same. This is... It’s barbaric. Even for baneful workings, I’ve never done something so violent as this. I don’t do blood sacrifices. The most I’ve done as an act of devotional pain is a slice to my finger.
“You need to cut my chest open and snap off my floating rib.”
I lurch into the present with a gasp as Bastion releases my hand, as if my skin has burned his. There’s a spike of awful nausea, a swoon of an epileptic aura, and then I force my eyes to focus and meet Bastion’s.
“Hells, Lillith,” he hisses. “And you did it?”
I know he knows the answer to that, but I nod anyway, tears flooding my eyes.
“Bastion... I... It was fucking awful.” My voice cracks while I say it.
“And... and it was so fucking traumatic that when it was over I... I did some illusory magic so the checkup I got done at the gyno qualified me for a partial hysterectomy. It was so abhorrent. I just wanted to cleave the barbarism away at the source.”
Bastion stares at me blankly for a few long moments. Long enough that I start to squirm in my chair. I think I’ll get some relief when he speaks—I almost beg him to say something, but then he does.
“You... ended the Nightingale bloodline,” he says.
His voice carries a flat affect. Almost devoid of feeling. But his face betrays him, softening with feeling. It’s beyond crestfallen—it’s downright abysmal.
I drop my eyes from his. Shame sluices through me, colder than night.
“Lillith. I’m sorry. I—I know you have every right to make whatever choice you want with your body.
But... Th—the magic. I know you know how The Buried City works.
I know you know that even though you’re not an active participant in the magic that keeps it tucked away, the magic has to exist for The Buried City to continue. ”
“I know,” I say.
“The Nightingale line is one of the foundational threads in the web—without it the pocket realm will fold.”
I bite down onto my lower lip and nod.
Bastion leans back in his chair, a short exhale leaving him. I look up at him just in time to see him look out the window, his gaze far away. It’s almost worse that he’s not furious. It’s almost worse that he’s just... shocked and resigned.
“Lilipad, I’m sorry. Can we pick back up on this work tomorrow?” he asks. “I fear I won’t be very useful to you today.”
I nod. “Of course,” I say. “Bastion, I’m... I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
He doesn’t even look at me as he rises from his chair and leaves.