“Why didn’t you?” I asked. “I was dying anyway, and you knew I would be reborn. You could have told me.”
Lilith shook her head. “I wasn’t certain if the curse would still allow you to be reborn if I told you who I was. I couldn’t risk the consequences, so I continued keeping the secret.”
That was fair, I supposed. It didn’t make it hurt any less that my mother had been by my side all along, unable to tell me who she truly was even during my darkest moments, though.
“All those times I lamented over having lost my mother,” I half-laughed, half-sobbed. “You were right there.”
Lilith sighed and reached into her blouse, withdrawing the locket that she had once given me—the locket Sophia had crushed. The locket I’d nearly died in the vault to retrieve. She unclasped it and held i
