Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lavish and Unseen
Lyssena
The feathers were soft, and for some reason, very, very warm.
But that was the least of Lyssena’s concerns.
She did not know how she felt. Whether it was anger, or violation, or something else entirely. That uncertainty was what unsettled her most.
Her god—who insisted he was not a god—had just told her that he had been watching her for nearly her entire life. She did not know how to feel about that at all.
She had been taught that gods were everywhere at once, that they saw all things without needing to choose where to look, though her god claimed those gods were not real.
Yet after standing face to face with Erevos, after seeing the impossible shape of him and feeling the weight of his presence, it was difficult to accept that he had known her specifically, intentionally, all that time.
One more thing, however, stood out to Lyssena.
Erevos had said he had known her for twenty years. He had not phrased it exactly like that, but Lyssena could do simple math, and if she was twenty-three, and he had known her for twenty years, then that meant he had first seen her when she was barely more than a toddler.
What had happened then?
She could not answer that question, of course. No one remembered anything clearly from that age, and the fact that there was a gap—a stretch of her life that belonged more to him than to her memory—made her chest tighten with frustration. Tears welled in Lyssena’s eyes.
She sat on her lavish bed, rubbing her eyes in her equally lavish gown, and stared at the equally lavish crown resting upon the matching drawer across the room.
Lavish. Everything was lavish now.
As she placed her new mask beside the crown, she wondered whether this abundance—this comfort, this indulgence—had made her blind to something she should have noticed sooner.
Lyssena considered Erevos good.
At first, that conclusion had been simple: he was a god, and gods were not meant to be bad.
But then again, the other gods had never listened to her prayers, not even when she had never lied, never sinned, never allowed herself to stray from the narrow path laid before her. They had remained silent.
Erevos had not.
She was confused but also thinking more deeply than she ever had before.
Erevos was good because . . . well, for one, he had saved her from an abusive husband.
He had shown her the true faces of those who had betrayed her.
He had given her a life filled with wonder, a world where she could finally breathe without fear pressing against her ribs.
He was gentle with her. He stopped when she felt uncomfortable. He listened.
He cared.
And yet, all that thinking led her to a conclusion forming slowly in her mind. She could add another mission to her growing list.
This one would be simple in concept, though perhaps not in execution.
She would test whether her Erevos was truly good.
Lyssena did not remember when she fell asleep.
Sleep must have taken her quietly, pulling her under without dreams, because when she opened her eyes again, the first thing she noticed was the rich, mouthwatering scent of roasted meat and warm spices drifting through the air.
Her stomach rumbled painfully, and her head felt heavy. She felt terrible.
And so very hungry.
When she pushed herself upright, she moved first toward the table where a glass of water had been left waiting for her.
She lifted it with eager fingers and drank greedily, finishing nearly the entire glass in one long swallow before she even paused to breathe.
The coolness slid down her throat and settled into her empty stomach.
She set the cup back down and turned toward the wardrobe, still half-wondering whether more gowns would be waiting inside.
There were.
When she opened the doors, she found three more gowns hanging within, and every single one of them was made of shadow.
Lyssena brushed her fingers over the material, marveling at its smoothness, at the way it yielded slightly beneath her touch, and she could not help but think that Erevos was very talented.
As far as she could tell, it might have been two days since she had left home.
Two mornings without prayer.
Two mornings without the temple.
Back in the village, every morning had begun the same way: the people gathering beneath the pale light of dawn, bowing their heads together in gratitude for whatever the gods had chosen to give them.
“What if my prayer was so strong I summoned the Greatest?” she murmured aloud, smiling at her own absurd joke before turning away and leaving the wardrobe doors open.
She still did not know how she intended to behave when she stood face to face with Erevos again.
But she knew she was hungry.
And she knew she should close the wardrobe first.
So she did, pressing the doors shut gently, and then turned toward her chamber door.
The delicious scent grew stronger with every step Lyssena took toward the kitchen, thick with roasted meat and fragrant spices that curled through the air and tickled her senses.
When she arrived, she found Erevos standing near the table, and beside him lay an entire deer, fully cooked, its body stretched across the length of the shadowy wood.
More than that, Lyssena was almost certain the table itself looked larger than it had before.
“I made you roasted deer,” Erevos said, pulling out the chair nearest to him.
“I can see that.”
Lyssena did not know how to react to the sight of a whole deer. It was not merely a carved portion of it, but the entire body, legs intact, the head still attached. At least the antlers had been removed. Well, that looked . . . something.
She moved to the chair positioned opposite the one Erevos had pulled out and sat down very slowly. For a brief moment, she thought she saw his gaze sharpen at that decision—a flicker of something darker passing through his eyes—but the expression vanished almost as quickly as it came.
After another pause, this one stretching longer than the first, Erevos moved without speaking.
Lyssena swallowed.
He walked around the deer’s legs protruding from the table’s edge and came to stand directly behind her.
She felt the warmth radiating from him immediately.
A deep, consuming heat that warmed her back through the fabric of her gown, and yet, despite that warmth, a slow shiver slid down the length of her spine, followed by the faint prickling of sweat at the nape of her neck.
Erevos extended his arms to either side of her, caging her between them without ever touching her.
Lyssena watched as his right hand reached for the knife and carved a large piece of meat from the deer’s flank, the blade gliding cleanly through tender flesh. With the tip of the knife, he pierced the portion and placed it onto her plate.
With his left hand, he summoned his shadows, guiding them toward the pantry to her left. The doors opened at his silent command, and two oranges slid along the dark tendrils and into his waiting palm as though delivered by invisible servants.
He squeezed the fruit into a cup, the juice running bright and fresh, and then returned to the chair he had intended to sit in from the beginning.
At that, Lyssena gulped once again.