Chapter 108
The Necessary Choice
Lilith refused to let me examine her.
It was a small movement, just a turn of her head but it was final. A quiet no. A line I couldn't cross. My hand hovered for a second, then dropped back to my side, useless.
That single gesture carried every moment I had missed. Every time I had been too busy surviving to notice how alone she was.
Mother froze.
For a heartbeat, she stood there watching the space open between us. Then something in her shifted. The frantic hostess disappeared. The woman counting flowers and impressions was gone. What remained was sharp and steady, the version of her that appeared only when things truly went wrong.
"She won't let me near her," I said softly.
"I can see that," Mother replied.
Her voice was stripped of its careful tone. No performance. Just exhaustion. She looked at Lilith's rigid shape turned toward the wall, her body burning with fever, her silence thick with anger.
"This is beyond us now," she said.
