Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
He Was Already There
Erevos
Erevos felt a flicker of sweetness, particularly between Lyssena’s legs.
Now that her entire body was covered in him, he realized that human females likely possessed what female hertas did—a hole meant to receive.
For some reason, that thought had never crossed his mind before.
His songbird could probably feel pleasure just as he could. That realization filled him with joy.
“What if I stay here for ten years?” Lyssena asked, and Erevos answered by baring his impressive rows of sharp teeth. He had already decided she would remain here forever.
Not ten years, not a hundred, not a thousand.
Forever.
Erevos intended to keep his songbird at his side for eternity.
“I have known you for twenty years,” he said, and after remaining still for a long moment, he finally took a step toward her. “I was never bored knowing you.”
Now they stood face to face.
It amused him that she only reached beneath his chest, that he had to bend his head in order to look into her eyes, eyes that searched him so openly.
“Twenty?”
“Since the day you learned to pray.”
When Lyssena celebrated her third year in the human realm, her parents brought her to the temple where their people prayed each day without fail. She could not yet speak as they did, but she already knew fragments of the prayers.
That day, in the fifth month of the year, when the blooms opened brightest, and the air carried the heavy sweetness of nectar, Lyssena prayed to the god with no name.
Perhaps she did not understand that she was forbidden from doing so. Or perhaps she already understood mischief.
At the end of her prayer, after her parents had bowed their heads, Lyssena leaned closer to the altar and whispered that the god with no name should try honey.
And he did.
Erevos tried honey from a honeycomb he found in the far meadow near her village, tearing it open and letting the golden substance spill slowly over his tongue. He did not like the taste. It was bitter, thick, and clinging, coating his tongue in a way that lingered longer than it should have.
Unsatisfied, he went farther to other villages, to distant cities, to countries and continents across the world.
He sought out every variety of honey he could find—pale and translucent, dark as amber, nearly black and slow as sap—and tasted each one.
They were all the same.
So he returned to the little human.
He found her sitting in the soft grass outside her family’s dwelling, legs folded beneath her, eating the very same honey he had tried—but spread generously over warm bread, the crust still dusted with flour.
It glistened in the light as she lifted it to her mouth, and when she bit into it, her small face brightened as though she were tasting something delicious.
Erevos was a curious demon, and he could not understand why she would enjoy something he found bitter. Yet she did.
And that alone made it worthy of further study—at first. His curiosity grew stronger as he tried to understand not only why Lyssena enjoyed honey but also the reason for her bravery.
No human has ever spoken to him. No human has ever mentioned his name.
From that day onward, he watched Lyssena grow. He watched her limbs lengthen and her voice steady. He watched the softness of childhood become awareness. He listened as her prayers deepened, no longer mere imitation of her parents’ words, but richer and warmer.
Her devotion changed as she grew. It became stronger. Sweeter.
She never prayed to him again after that first forbidden whisper until the day he revealed himself to her.
And when she finally did, lifting her voice to the god with no name once more, he was already there.
He had always been there.
Lyssena was quieter than usual when they began the walk back home.
She kept her gaze fixed ahead, focusing on a single direction, placing one foot in front of the other as though the act of walking required all of her attention.
When they entered the cave again, with its endless twists and slow, curving turns, Lyssena still had not spoken a word.
Erevos did not enjoy that.
It was not the comfortable silence they shared before. This silence felt different. Tighter.
He tried to determine whether something he had said had unsettled her. Had she not wished to stay? The possibility held unpleasantly against his thoughts.
He searched for any other reason his songbird would withhold her voice from him. He did not sense anger radiating from her, and he knew well how anger appeared upon her.
Lyssena rarely became upset. But when she did, it was . . . unpleasant.
He remembered the day the neighbor’s chicken had leaped over the low fence and devoured the wheat Lyssena had planted, wheat she had prayed over for a good harvest, offering devotion to her nonexistent god.
She had stood very still when she noticed the damage; her jaw was tight, her silence sharp as his claws.
Later that afternoon, Erevos had killed the chicken and placed its limp body upon her family’s porch.
And later that night, Lyssena had eaten it before going to bed.
That memory made Erevos thoughtful.
But before he could reach any conclusion, he noticed that his Lyssena had begun walking faster.
Because her steps were far smaller than his, the quickening of her pace was almost a run.
She moved ahead of him without hesitation and nearly turned down the wrong passage within the cavern’s winding maze.
Erevos corrected her gently by stepping into the path she was about to take, his body blocking the narrow turn without force and without a word.
At that, she pouted for the briefest moment before continuing forward in the right direction.
When they arrived at the double doors, Lyssena reached for the handles and attempted to pull them open, but they did not yield.
Erevos did not move to assist her. He wanted his songbird to grow accustomed to wielding his shadows, to remember that what belonged to him now bent toward her as well. So he waited for her to recall that she no longer needed to rely on human strength alone.
Lyssena turned to look at him, her masked green eyes staying on his for a breath as though searching for instruction, then faced the doors once more.
This time, she leaned her beak lightly against the cool surface and whispered for them to open.
And they did.
The doors parted without resistance, shadows slipping between the seams, and Erevos felt a slow bloom of pride unfurl within him as he watched her step forward. His songbird was learning. She was growing accustomed to the world that had always been his. But was now, in part, hers as well.
He still did not enjoy the unhappiness he sensed around her. Yet perhaps, he reasoned, after he fed her something warm and rich, something that would settle comfortably in her human body, she would tell him what troubled her.
Lyssena stepped inside, and Erevos followed.
“Lyssena?” he called as she turned toward her chamber.
“Yes?” She paused mid-step and half-turned to face him.
“Would you like roasted deer?”
“Yes . . . please,” she murmured. When she reached her door, she opened it slowly, hesitating just slightly on the threshold, and added in a quieter voice, “Thank you,” before slipping inside and closing it behind her.
Erevos remained where he stood for a moment longer, staring at the closed door.
Was it about him knowing her for so long? He could not understand why that would be a bad thing. He did not even know whether that was the reason for her silence at all.
Food, he decided. Food will make it easier.
And with that thought, Erevos went to work.
He moved toward the kitchen, which he had mimicked from Lyssena’s home, a home that was no longer hers, but had become a place of grieving, where her parents and brothers wept day and night after he had taken her away.
He knew this because the restored door in her room had been made of his own shadows, and Lyssena’s family had never once questioned why the wood had darkened to black.
They simply accepted it.
Erevos knew what they had done every moment Lyssena had been with him and not there.
He had considered retrieving the belongings she had left behind in her room—the small objects her hands had touched daily, the fabrics that still carried her scent—but he was uncertain.
He did not know whether surrounding her with fragments of her former life would comfort her or awaken a desire to return.
And that, he could not allow.
So for now, he let his songbird grow accustomed to the world that was new to her. He wanted her to like him.
To choose to stay with him.
Erevos passed the long counters and the tall pantry shelves, the large wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, and made his way to the concealed chamber beyond, the hidden room where he kept a deer alive for the sole purpose of slaughtering it fresh for Lyssena.
He had claws to tear through flesh and sinew.
And he had shadows he knew how to coax into flame.
When he passed through the wall to where the deer lay sleeping, he felt something shift.
His songbird was removing the shadows from herself.
She lifted the mask first, peeling it away from her face, and then asked the suit to loosen and reshape itself into a dress once more. Erevos felt all of it.
As he wrapped his hand around the deer’s neck, preparing to snap it cleanly, he felt something else, a gentle caress along the threads of his shadows.
Lyssena was touching the feathers of her mask.
She stroked them lightly, and he felt every movement.