He had memorized the way her fingers lingered on the rim of a cup, the movement of her throat when she swallowed. He had counted each bite she took, noted which foods made hereyes close in pleasure, which textures made her flinch. He had learned what she needed to survive—bread, water, warmth—and he had committed to memory the names of every object her hands had ever cherished. He had done so to rebuild them, to offer them back.
Human devotion was never the same from one soul to the next.
Buthers, hers was woven with longing and light, fragile and searing. It was the most exquisite devotion he had ever hungered for.
She hesitated, and he waited, because he had all the time in the world.
“Come with me, Lyssena, and I shall become your god.”
Chapter Five
The Meaning of Devotion
Lyssena
She sat on nothing.
There was no floor beneath her, only the suggestion of one. A flat impression drawn in shadow, as if the world had been dipped in ink and left to dry wrong. Her palm rested against that void, sinking slightly, but there was no texture, no grain, only the eerie sensation of pressing against a thought, something that wasn’t truly there and yet insisted on being felt.
Everything was wrong.
The walls, the bed, the very air had been dipped in shadow. Shapes remained: the outline of the dresser, the sharp angle of the door frame, the familiar rise of her bed, but they were now hollow sketches and painted in pitch. And at the center of it all: him.
A living mass of black, shifting and pulsing, the suggestion of form where no form should exist. He had no true edges,only movement like smoke that understood how to hold itself together.
Then, his eyes opened.
Two perfect purple orbs that stretched backward, and her mind, despite everything, longed toward prayer. But she did not move.
Because something was changing again.
The darkness that was Erevos began to draw inward, folding and condensing, and time seemed to slow to match the rhythm of his becoming. His height—too vast to belong within the narrow confines of her room—compressed until it could fit. Shoulders took shape, broad and thick, as if chiseled from the dark before light had ever been born. His chest followed, muscles like slabs of stone wrapped in something that pretended to be skin. Lyssena wasn’t sure whether to be scared or fascinated.
Erevos was massive.
Every muscle looked like it had been forged before softness had entered the world, each tendon flexing with restrained violence. His thighs stretched wide, thick and solid and entirely without mercy, carved from the kind of strength men could only dream of. This was not a man. This was the thing men imagined when they wished to be feared.
And last came his face. The head of a man, but featureless. No mouth, no nose, only those eyes, those endless, watching purple eyes.
Her family’s voices, still clawing from the other side of the shadow-walls, began to fade, swallowed slowly as the room darkened further—if such a thing were even possible.
He watched her, and she watched him.
He waited, and Lyssena could not comprehend what was happening before her. She has already forgotten the horridknight named Kaan. She didn’t notice the screams outside the new door. She only thought of what had just happened.
She had prayed. She had called for a god, and now he had come, asking her to go with him. But what did that mean? What did it mean to go with a god like this?
Was she going to die?
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, and she finally realized she was speaking to a real god.
She should kneel. Her body knew that, even if her heart did not. Had she forgotten how to show respect so quickly?
She moved slowly, folding her legs beneath her, pressing her weight onto her arms as she righted herself into a posture of obedience. She placed her palms gently on her thighs and lowered her gaze.
Besides being a god, he was a male, and she could not meet his eyes now, not now that she had seen that he had them. He was a god, and she must show respect.
Lyssena was afraid, and yet she was not.
