Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Princess of Shadow
Lyssena
There was a dark room that did not move, and dark furniture that stayed still.
But there was also something dark that shifted and responded, something that took shape each time Lyssena changed it.
She wasn’t sure whether it was some kind of divine clay gifted by her god, or perhaps a living creature pretending to be still.
And because she could not tell for certain, she didn’t tear it apart to see what was inside.
Instead, she changed the shape as a whole and watched how it moved.
Lyssena shaped it into a chicken, and the small ball of shadow—of god-clay, perhaps, began to strut and cluck like one, head bobbing just like a real chicken. She molded it into a snake, and it curled around her wrist and hissed, tongue flicking out as if it knew how to threaten.
It was a sight to behold.
And in the quiet corner of her thoughts, she allowed herself a secret.
She felt, just a little, like a small god.
She was mending forms and giving breath to shadows, shaping something that should not be alive and yet was.
She did not know how it worked, but whatever it was, it held her fascination entirely.
As the god’s clay became a chicken, a snake, a pig, and even a piece of fruit beneath her curiosity, Lyssena had an idea.
She gathered the shadows into a ball and began to mold them, flattening the shape, weaving a hole through the center, then lifting the edges gently to rise.
When she finished, the god’s clay had taken the shape of a crown.
“Would you listen if I asked you to have a shining light?” she whispered to the obsidian crown resting in her palms. And to her surprise, at the tips of the dark, curved points, small stones appeared—glinting softly, faint stars set in shadow.
Lyssena didn’t think they were real diamonds or rubies, but the sight of them stole her breath, and she gasped in awe before lifting the crown and placing it upon her head.
When Lyssena was a child, she had once wanted to be a princess.
She would wrap herself in layers of curtains, fashion a cape from her mother’s old shawl, walk proudly around her room with a stick she found outside as her scepter, and a makeshift crown of folded paper perched upon her brow.
Once, her eldest brother Koren even pretended to be a horse, and she sat atop his back, laughter in her chest, feeling for that one bright afternoon like a fierce and powerful princess of her own little realm.
And that memory made her eyes wet.
They betrayed me.
The thought pained her so much, she shut her eyes so no tears would spill down her face.
She stood, moving slowly with the crown on her head, and walked to the edge of the room where the shadows thickened. One hand brushed the curved wall. It was cool, smooth, but yielded slightly under her touch.
Lyssena had believed that family meant love. She believed she was safe if she never lied—and she never did.
She saw what consequences looked like when people lied. She had seen several women in her life being dragged behind the temple. It was a horrible sight, one that she would never, ever dare to forget.
One of them was a friend of Lyssena. A girl named Nora. At that time, they were fifteen.
Nora never lied, as most people did, but there was just this one time when she simply had to.
Lyssena noticed the way Nora would sneak outside her home at night, thinking no one would see her.
She suspected that Nora had perhaps met with a suitor.
Why else would a woman her age sneak past her parents’ eyes and judgment?
The third time, Lyssena saw the execution of Nora the next morning. She cried for days and nights, thinking of the possibilities of what she could have done to prevent that.
That gloomy morning, the priest said that Nora had sinned. That Nora lied to her parents.
That Nora will never lie again.
Lyssena trailed her fingers along the wall as she circled the room, her bare feet dragging over the darkened floor.
“They had not stopped him. They had not stood between the man who reached for my throat and me. They sold me, smiled, said I would be happy . . . and then didn’t even look me in the eyes.”
Stomping her feet, Lyssena let out a low, broken groan. She couldn’t believe how her life had turned, twisted in on itself, all within the span of a few hours.
Her head snapped toward a sound, a knock. In this room, there were no doors, no windows; nothing to knock on.
At first, she thought she’d imagined it.
She took a slow step back, steadying the crown on her head with one hand, her fingers pressing gently against its side. Then it came again.
Another knock.
Her heart began to pound harder. Dread curled up her spine like a slow, reaching vine. If it were Erevos, she thought, he wouldn’t knock. He would appear just like he did before.
She still wasn’t sure where she was—this place of darkness—and she had planned to ask him when he returned. But she had not expected a knock.
She realized then just how distracted she’d been by the god’s clay, by her grief, by the sting of betrayal. She hadn’t even thought to consider the larger questions. She had forgotten, entirely, that she might no longer be in her village. That this space didn’t belong to the world she once knew.
She hadn’t wondered if gods lived in villages, as humans did, or in temples, or perhaps in the sky.
What if I’m truly in the sky?
The thought tightened something in her gut. She trusted Erevos; she had offered herself freely, but now, standing in a silent room with no doors or windows, no sky above her, and a knock coming from nowhere, Lyssena felt a flicker of doubt rise from beneath her certainty.
Not fear of him. But fear of how far from home she had come.
“Are you a human?”
The voice was muffled, echoing from somewhere beyond the shadow-woven walls, and Lyssena tried to remain calm—but she couldn’t.
Her chest tightened with fear, her breath shallowed, and dread rose beneath her skin.
She was terrified that whoever—or whatever—was speaking would tear through the still walls of her god’s sanctuary while Erevos was away, off doing whatever divine, unknowable things gods did when they vanished.
Was that another god? Or perhaps something else, something other. She was almost certain it wasn’t human; the voice lacked the warmth, the weight, the shape that human voices carried. It felt wrong, not harsh or cruel, but hollow.
She needed to think—and fast.
Her crown slipped slightly, tilting forward against her brow, and in the moment of movement, she gasped, startled, and muffled it quickly with her own palm as she slapped it over her mouth.
She thought, for half a breath, to will the crown into a weapon, but quickly realized it wouldn’t work. It was too small, and the god’s clay she was given, for all its wonder, had limits. It would not, could not, become something so large.
So she turned her gaze outward.
Around her, the bed, far too heavy to lift; the dresser, even heavier. But the chair . . . the chair seemed manageable, light enough to move, and just solid enough to serve.
With trembling hands, she adjusted her crown and walked toward the chair. She wrapped her fingers around its back and held her breath. If the crown could change, perhaps the chair could too.
She closed her eyes and prayed.
Lyssena prayed from the base of her throat, from the hollow of her ribs, from the place inside her that knew how to kneel and beg and believe. She prayed that the chair would become something more.
And again, to her astonishment, it did.
The shape began to shift under her grip, the wooden curves melting into a bat, dark and crude.
It was too heavy for her, far heavier than she had expected, but she held on with all the strength her arms could muster.
Her knuckles went white, her shoulders tensed, but still she lifted it upright and set it before her.
Her pulse pounded in her ears; she had no idea what was coming.
But at least she would not be empty-handed.