“For you,” he said. “It will bend to your fingers. Twist it, shape it, fold it until it becomes something that matters to you. It will not break unless you ask it to.”
She reached out hesitantly, and as her fingers curled around it, the shadow moved in answer. Erevos nearly groaned from the pleasure of her touching him, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to frighten her.
“A distraction,” he added. “Because silence, when left alone, becomes too loud.”
And he watched her cradle the gift, watched her stare at it as it shifted in her palms, already beginning to become something else—what, he did not know.
But it was hers now, and it was a part of him.
And that, too, pleased him dearly.
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.
