Page 97 of A House of Gold
"That's not a small ask, Croesus. Binding a human to an angelic domain? That's permanent magic. She'll never be fully free of you, even when her contract ends." Her eyes fix on me. "Are you sure that's what you want?"
I think about the tracking crystals, about my grandmother's murder, about Heaven watching, waiting for an excuse to eliminate me. "I'm sure," I say.
"Why?" It's not a challenge. Just genuine curiosity.
"Because I'm going to finish what my grandmother started. And I can't do that if I'm dead."
Wren studies me for a long moment. Then she smiles, warm and a little sad. "You remind me of someone I used to know. Someone who thought she could change the world through sheer stubbornness." She stands. "Alright. I'll do the binding. But first, we talk price."
"I'll pay whatever, " Croesus starts.
"Not you." Wren cuts him off. "Her. This is her binding. Her choice. She pays the cost."
I set down my tea. "What's the cost?"
"A memory." Wren moves to a shelf, pulls down a glass vial. "One memory, freely given. Something precious. Something that matters. That's the price for old magic, a piece of yourself traded for protection."
"What will you do with it?"
"Keep it safe. Add it to my collection." She gestures around the cottage, and I realize some of the glass bottles on the shelves are filled with swirling light. Memories. "I've been collecting them for two hundred years. Stories, moments, pieces of lives. It's how I stay connected to the world outside these spaces between."
"Why do you live here?" I ask.
"Because the mortal world moves too fast. People I love die. Places I know disappear. Out here, in the between, time moves differently. I can exist without constantly losing everything." She sits back down. "But it's lonely. So I collect memories. Little pieces of other people's lives. It helps."
I understand that kind of loneliness. The kind that comes from being outside normal life, watching it flow past while you stay frozen.
"What memory do you want?" I ask.
"Something happy. Something real. I have enough pain and loss in my collection." She leans forward. "What's a moment when you felt completely, perfectly content?"
I close my eyes and search through my life. Not the big moments, not absorbing my first sin, or learning my grandmother died. Something small. Something pure.
"I was nineteen," I say slowly. "My mother had just died. I was living with my sister, taking care of her. One morning, I woke up and Luna, my baby sister, she was two-ish, had crawled into my bed. She was having a nightmare and came to find me. And we just...laid there. In the early morning light. She fell back asleep, and I held her, and for maybe twenty minutes, everything was okay. I wasn't scared. I wasn't alone. I was just...enough."
When I open my eyes, Wren is smiling. "That's perfect. Thank you."
She stands, opens the vial, and touches my forehead. I feel something pull, gentle, careful, and a thread of golden light flows from my temple into the glass. The memory doesn't disappear. I can still remember it. But it's...dimmer now. Less immediate. Like looking at an old photograph instead of living in the moment.
Wren seals the vial, holds it up to the light. Inside, the golden thread swirls like captured sunshine.
"Beautiful," she murmurs. Then she sets it on the shelf with the others. "Alright. Let's get you protected."
The ritual takes three hours.
Wren clears space in the center of the cottage, drawing a massive circle on the wooden floor with salt mixed with ash and crushed herbs. She places candles at seven points, white, black, red, green, blue, silver, gold. Each one carved with symbols that make my eyes ache if I look too long.
"Strip to your undergarments," she says, lighting the candles with a snap of her fingers. "The magic needs access to your skin."
I strip down to my bra and underwear without hesitation. Croesus has already seen me naked, hell, he's bathed me and changed my clothes when I was too weak to do it myself. There's no point in modesty now. The cottage is warm from the fire, but I still feel exposed. Vulnerable.
"In the circle," Wren instructs.
I step over the salt line carefully and stand in the middle of the circle. The candles flicker, and I feel power gathering like a storm about to break.
Wren walks the perimeter, chanting in a language I don't recognize. Not Latin. Something older. Each word makes the air thicker, heavier, until I can barely breathe.
She stops in front of me, holding a small knife. "Your blood and the house's essence. That's what creates the tether. Are you ready?"
