Chapter 3
Chapter Three
A Lie of a Bargain
Lyssena
The door closed behind him.
Silence stretched between every step he took.
“You can look at your new owner.”
Lyssena’s eyes remained fixed on her feet, on the hem of the white gown she had felt so proud to wear only hours before. Now it trembled in time with her fingers.
“I’m waiting, Lyssena.”
She blinked—once, twice—her mouth parting in disbelief. Surely he hadn’t meant it like that. Surely it was a mistake, a cruel joke, or some tradition she hadn’t yet learned.
But she didn’t move. She simply couldn’t.
“Go on,” the knight said, this time louder. His tone was clipped and bored. The kind of voice used for servants, not for brides. “Raise your head. Let me see what I paid for.”
Her stomach dropped like a stone tossed into still water. The taste of bile rose at the back of her throat. Sweat traced a path down the center of her spine, and another bead rolled along the curve of her temple, tickling her cheek like a tear that had come uninvited.
He paid.
The words echoed in her mind, again and again.
He paid.
A hand pressed gently to her back; it was her father’s. The same hand that had steadied her when she was small, still afraid of the dark or the deep parts of the river.
“Come now, Lyss,” he said softly. “Stand up straight. It’s a proud night.”
His voice was kind. But he had lied.
Lyssena thought both families exchanged a coin and some gifts.
She knew that this was how marriage worked.
She had hoped to bear many children to a man who would love her, and to come visit her family every few days.
Lyssena prayed to all four gods for a good man and believed her family would do the same.
She believed her family would never lie.
Tears gathered at the base of her eyes as she lifted her head.
The man before her wore armor that might once have gleamed, but it was dulled with wear and dried blood. The metal was scuffed, smeared, likely signs of battle or . . . other things. Worse things.
His eyes were the kind of pale that looked blind, but they weren’t. They were evil, unblinking, and hungry.
When he smirked, a scar stretched across his cheek like a wound pulling itself open.
“I expected more freckles,” he said, gripping the hilt of his sword. “But I like the pale look. More delicate. Easier to bruise.”
Behind her, one of her brothers let out a small, awkward laugh.
Something inside her pulled taut, too tight to breathe.
“Kaan,” her father said, stepping slightly forward, his voice tight. “Perhaps . . . a gentler tone. She’s still—”
“She’s mine now, isn’t she?” the man interrupted, never taking his eyes off her. “I paid well enough. Didn’t I?”
Her father cleared his throat and rubbed his knuckles. “Well, yes, but—”
“Then I’ll speak to her how I like. Break her in proper.” Kaan waved a dismissive hand without turning. “You got your coin. Now keep your pride out of it.”
Lyssena’s vision blurred at the edges. The sweat on her skin turned cold.
He was supposed to smile.
He was supposed to take her hand. To say her name with a kind voice, the way her family always had. Instead, he stepped closer, and Lyssena flinched.
At that, his grin stretched wider. “Scared already?”
She couldn’t breathe. Her eyes darted to her father, but he did not meet them. Her mother stared at the floor. All five of her brothers looked away.
Everyone had lied.
They had loved her, fed her, been kind to her, even as they prepared to sell her.
Those kind hands that once ruffled her hair were the same hands that handed the money and sold her like cattle.
She stepped back. Once. Then again. “You sold me,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath.
Kaan laughed. “Come now,” he said. “What good is a daughter if she can’t be turned into a bargain?”
And just like that, Lyssena understood that the gods had never listened.
The four great gods she had knelt before since childhood—Kalos, Leyeer, Jenar, Syvaar—they had turned their backs on her. Not when she shouted. Not when she sinned. But when she was quiet. When she was kind. When she begged.
When she never lied.
Who did she belong to now?
Not her parents or brothers. Just her.
She took another step back until her spine met the wall behind her. The knight’s grin widened further, that cruel gleam in his eyes rooting her to the spot.
She shifted, slipped sideways, and turned, moving down the hall that led to her room.
There was no one left to help her. No gods left to pray to.
She was alone.
“Lyssena!” the knight’s voice barked behind her, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t turn.
There was one more god she could pray to.
Somewhere, deep inside her mind, she thought of the fifth candle. The one she had never dared to light. How do you pray to a god you do not know?
Please, she thought. You are my only chance. I beg you—
Tears slipped down her cheeks, falling freely as her trembling fingers closed around the door handle.
Why did they do this to her? Had she done anything wrong?
She always listened and always obeyed. She never lied . . .
But they did.
“Lyssena, come back here,” snarled the voice of that horrid-looking knight, his words snapping through the hallway like a whip that promised to find her skin the moment she belonged to him.
But she didn’t belong to him; she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, and no voice, no threat, no man’s coin could ever make that right in her soul.
She rounded the door and slammed it shut, the sound cracking like thunder through her bones, and with every breath she threw herself against the bed, her entire weight driving it inch by inch across the wooden floor, though it was heavy and she was so tired and her stomach was empty, and her body shook with grief and fury and terror, and still the tears would not stop falling.
Who are you, fifth god? Let me pray to you. Please, let me pray.
A thunderous knock shook the door in its frame, and the bed creaked in protest beneath her straining limbs as she braced against it with her knees, her lower back aching, her breath a frantic rush between sobs.
“Go away!” she screamed, and she didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice, raw and animal, something she had never heard from herself before, never in all her life.
Please help me, great fifth god, she pleaded in silence. I don’t know your name, I don’t know how to speak to you, I don’t even know if you listen, but if you do, if you’ve ever listened to anyone, listen to me now.
“I will break that door if you don’t open it!”
His voice crashed through the air like thunder, closer, louder, vicious and unrelenting, and Lyssena’s eyes darted wildly around the room in search of anything to block the door, anything heavy to save her, to protect her.
Her gaze snagged on the prayer desk, on the candles and the books she had cherished, and she knew she couldn’t move it in time.
So she turned to the bookshelf, hands trembling uncontrollably as she grabbed every thick volume she could reach and tossed them onto the bed, stacking them high, as if the weight of stories and parchment and prayer could somehow shield her from the fury breaking toward her.
Please, fifth god, she begged. If you are real, hear me now. I am begging. I am pleading. I am sorry I never lit your flame. I am sorry I never asked your name. But I ask now. Please. Please help me.
A scream ripped from her throat as the door splintered, wood cracking like bones, and the knight crashed into the room with a monstrous force that knocked the air from her lungs as she fell hard on her back and hands, pain blooming sharp in her wrists as she scrambled to crawl backward across the floor.
Please let me know your name.
He strode toward her slowly, his face twisted in rage, his eyes burning wild and unhinged, and there was such hatred in his expression that it made her feel like she might come undone entirely, as if she could vanish into her own fear.
Her head struck the edge of the prayer desk, and she winced, blinking back the sharp pain, but her gaze locked instantly on the candle she had never lit—the fifth flame.
I have to light it. I have to do it now.
“You little bitch,” the knight snarled, his voice thick with venom and gravel, “HOW DARE YOU!”
Her fingers fumbled across the surface of the desk, slick with sweat and trembling so violently she could hardly grip the flint, but she struck it once—nothing—again—sparks—and on the third strike, finally, a flame.
It caught slowly, reluctantly, the wick resisting the fire as if unsure it wanted to burn at all, but then it did.
And the fire was not gold.
It was dark like ink and blood and shadow, a flame that swallowed light instead of offering it.
The knight let out a cruel, barked laugh. “The gods won’t help you,” he spat, stepping closer with the certainty of a man who believed the world owed him its obedience. “They never do.”
Lyssena pressed her palms together, breath ragged, limbs trembling, but she closed her eyes and whispered anyway.
Please . . . I don’t know your name, but I offer myself, I offer my voice, I offer my soul if you want it—just save me. Save me from him.
She pleaded so hard she couldn’t hear the man standing before her. She pleaded so hard she couldn’t even notice how the knight was already standing right in front of her face.
Erevos.
Her eyes snapped open. “What?” she whispered aloud, blinking as if the name had struck her from within.
The knight paused, his hand hanging above his chest, his brows furrowing. “What did you say?”
“I . . . I didn’t . . . ”
They stared at each other, both of them confused.
My name is Erevos.