CHAPTER 374: SMALL STITCHES

The quiet in Ethan’s room didn’t loosen its hold. It stayed, warm and steady, threaded through the soft weight of blankets and the low thrum of wards under the floorboards.

The scent of him lingered in the way it always did here—clean, a little salt from training, a note of tea he sometimes forgot to finish.

It felt like a hand on the door could turn, and he might walk in with that tired half-smile he wore when he didn’t want to admit he needed rest.

The room carried that promise even when everyone knew he wouldn’t be crossing the threshold today.

Lilith had pushed herself upright against the headboard, hair spilling over one shoulder in a loose river, the silver catch of it dulling to pale with the low light.

Seraphina stayed at the foot of the bed, knees drawn up, arms loose over them like she was ready to move if she had to and also ready to sit for hours.

Liliana had claimed the carpet beside the bed, cross-legged with her back straight, fingers tapping now and then against the woven edge of the rug.

Isabella had taken the wall by the window, one shoulder pressed to wood, one ankle hooked behind the other.

Their stillness wasn’t empty. It had the quiet of listening before a song begins.

"You’ve all felt it," Lilith said at last, voice low enough that it felt like it belonged to the room.

"That pressure that sits on your skin. The prickle that starts at your neck and runs along your arms before your mind catches up."

She didn’t need to look at them to know they understood. "That’s a god paying attention. Not power unleashed. Attention. You know if they ever choose to look and keep looking."

Seraphina tipped her head, eyes steady. "It’s heavy. Like the air has weight."

"It does," Lilith said. "What you feel is the world bracing a little. It knows what could happen."

Liliana’s mouth pulled tight. "What could happen is simple. They could crush a city like they’re putting out a candle."

"They could," Lilith answered. "And that’s exactly why they don’t." She didn’t soften it. She didn’t need to.

"If they burn a city to ash, if they shatter a world outright, they leave scars in the fabric that holds their realm together.

That scar pulls. It gnaws back. Their divine ground thins." She let a breath out. "Some have done it anyway. Once.

Twice. The ones who didn’t hold what they used to. The price follows them home."

Isabella slid down the wall until she was sitting, knees up, chin on them. "So they hold back. Not because they care about anyone here. Because they care about themselves."

Lilith nodded. "Self‑preservation is the most honest restraint in heaven." She let her eyes move from face to face.

"There are rare ones who remember kindness. There are rarer ones who can afford it. Most shape rather than strike.

They cultivate belief. They set their weight on a lever and let their hands down here pull it."

Seraphina rubbed at the edge of the bed frame with her thumb. "Believers."

"Believers," Lilith echoed. "Devotees. Bound priests. Sometimes, useful monsters are dressed in beautiful words. A god whispers doctrine, and a city changes its laws.

A god gives one relic to a hungry man, and a neighborhood turns a certain way for a hundred years. Pressure without a footprint. That is power that doesn’t boomerang."

Liliana’s eyes went to the ceiling, like she could see through it. "So every god is playing against the others. Quiet, patient, waiting for the right year."

"They have always been playing," Lilith said. "Sometimes they hide from each other inside the world.

Sometimes they pretend to ally. Sometimes they make pacts that look like peace and feel like a knife under silk." She cut her gaze to Seraphina.

"And sometimes they bet on a line of people. One bloodline. One spark. One student at a university thinks it is safe."

No one had to say Ethan’s name. It was in the walls already.

Seraphina’s breath slipped out slowly. "He is the line they bet against and the one they didn’t account for," she said, not as a question, but like she was setting the words down to see if they held their shape.

Lilith’s answer was simple. "Yes."

Isabella’s fingers toyed with the hem of the curtain by her knee. "And we can’t call him back. We decided that." She made herself say it. "We decided to wait."

"We chose to wait," Lilith said. "There’s a difference. Waiting when you have no choice is one thing. Choosing it because you know the ground he needs right now is not under this house is another."

Liliana’s hand stilled on the rug. "I know." Her voice was steady, though the words came out thinner than she liked. "I want to be the one who chooses. I just wish choosing hurt less."

"It doesn’t," Lilith said. "Not when it matters."

Silence held them. The lamp on the nightstand put a soft circle of gold on the wall. Dust drifted through it, slow and lazy, like ash.

The wards under the floor hummed the same note they always did. If you listened long enough, you could almost hear a second, softer layer beneath it, the old promise in the house to keep those who belonged here safe.

Seraphina broke the stillness with a memory so small it almost didn’t belong in a conversation about gods.

"He burned the soup the first week he stayed here," she said, mouth tilting up at the corner. "Wouldn’t admit it was smoke. Said it was a new spice."

Liliana huffed a laugh. She tried to swallow. "He ate it anyway."

"He did," Isabella said, the curtain edge twisting in her fingers. "He ate it and told me the next time he cooked, I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen because I was ’making the pot nervous.’"

Seraphina’s eyes warmed the way they only did when she forgot to keep them sharp. "He said that to me, too.

To all of us, I think. The pot was nervous. The knives were proud. The tea kettle was judgmental."

"The kettle is judgmental," Lilith said. "It hisses when you pick the wrong leaves." She let the joke sit just long enough to soften their faces again and then set it aside.

Her gaze shifted to the door, then back.

"We can miss him and still hold the line. Those two things can stand in the same room without fighting."

Liliana sighed and leaned sideways until her shoulder touched the bed, head resting by Lilith’s knee.

She didn’t ask for a hand in her hair, but Lilith’s fingers slid into it anyway, slow and absentminded, the way she used to do when Liliana couldn’t fall asleep.

"It would be easier to hold the line," Liliana said to the quilt, "if the line didn’t run through his empty pillow."

Isabella let her head drop back against the wall. "Say your piece, Lilith. The part you weren’t going to say because you were being kind."

Lilith’s hand paused in Liliana’s hair, then moved again. "All right. The god watching this world will want to test him before it tries to claim anything near him.

Not because it fears him yet, but because it fears what he might become. Tests come disguised as accidents.

As challenges. As opportunities to be brave when no one is watching." She glanced at Seraphina. "Some come dressed as chances to be kind when it costs you."

Seraphina’s mouth tugged. "You think they’ll use mercy as a snare."

"They always do," Lilith said. "Because mercy looks so much like weakness to the ones who have never learned how to hold it without dropping their blade."

She lifted her chin at Isabella. "And pride will be the other trap. Pride in your aim. Pride in your restraint.

Pride in your refusal to bend. They will look for the seam where pride and love meet and try to pry it open."

Isabella didn’t look away. "Then we’ll stitch the seam shut."

Liliana’s voice was sleepy and soft now, not from tiredness but from the way being held, which can loosen a throat. "How?"

"Small stitches," Lilith said. "Daily ones. We don’t tug hard. We show up. We send what we can send that doesn’t pull him back."

She slid her hand from Liliana’s hair to the side of her neck, thumb brushing once along her jaw. "A letter that doesn’t ask when he’s coming home.

A parcel with tea he likes and not a single word about missing him. A charm slipped to the dean with no return address." She let the smallest smile show. "A kettle that is less judgmental."

Seraphina’s mouth did something that was almost a smile, then stilled. "We could send him the old training wraps," she said quietly.

"The ones from the second-floor hall. He used them for a week and then said they felt like wearing another person’s story."

She remembered the exact words, the way he’d said them with a smile that said he meant no offense to whoever that story belonged to.

"We could send him cloth that has only his story on it."

"Good," Lilith said. "Do that."