I pull out the chair on her left. “I’m still trying to understand it,” I say, seating myself.
“Well, once you figure it out, promise me you won’t do it again,”she says, smiling. “I’d like to keep as many people as possible onthisside of the veil. You included.”
Pushing the book aside, she clasps her hands upon the table and leans forward. For a moment she studies me, the intensity of her stare becoming too much for me to meet.
“How are you feeling?” she asks. “I was with Ryc before…” she pauses, her lips flattening. “When he had to find you.”
“I’m fine. Thank you,” I answer with little hesitation.
I might be a devilish creature with a fractured soul and my little world might be falling apart, but it’s fine.
I’m fine.
“You’re allowed to benotfine, Ves,” Lilith says softly.
“I don’t need your permission, Lilith,” I counter, lifting my chin. I fold my hands in my lap. “What I need is to figure this out and to mend my soul.”
Lilith straightens herself, nodding as she pulls her hands back. She lets them fall into her lap.
“You’re right,” she replies. “You don’t. But it harms nothing to hear it.”
“Fair enough,” I relent with a small sigh.
“This is the second time you’ve been drawn into the veil. Right?” she asks and I nod. “Could it be the fractured half of your soul calling to you? Asking for help?”
“I’m not sure how such a thing would be possible.”
Lilith lifts a slender shoulder in a shrug. “How is it possible you sit here?”
Alright.
Point taken.
“You have no recollection of when this happened?”
I meet her hazel eyes briefly. “No. But that doesn’t mean anything. Netharis tampered with my memories.”
I steel myself against the quick to rise darkness of my time locked away in obsidian.
“Do you think it was him?” she asks. “He was the one who did this to you?”
Again, I shake my head. “I don’t know. It’s hard to believe it could have been anyone else. A fractured soul is easier to control.”
Lilith laughs. “If that’s the case, I might be scared to see who you’ll be once you’ve mended yours.”
I pause.
That’s not something I've stopped to consider.
I have no idea who I’ll become.
Lilith’s brows crease. “Oh, Ves, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” I interject, brushing off her words with a wave of a hand.
She raises a point I’d be foolish to ignore.
“I simply meant if you were capable of taking on agodwhen you wereeasierto control…” she shakes her head ruefully. “The entire pantheonuniteddoesn’t stand a chance incontrollingyou once you’ve mended things,” she explains anyway.
