Terrified of punishment. Terrified of judgment. Terrified that she, a girl who had tried so hard to follow every rule she was ever given, had sinned in the one place she had longed to be safe.
She was sure that she was about to sink into the floor, fall into some pit, andburn.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, voice choked and desperate, “I beg you—please, please, do not take my life. I apologize??—”
She cried and begged and shook in fear, her voice raw and her body going numb across her torso, and her fingertips ran cold. But still she didn’t stop.
Shecouldn’tstop.
Lyssena wept like the lost, pleaded like the condemned, and begged her god to spare her life.
Chapter Ten
The Language of Warmth
Erevos
His little songbird was shaking so violently that Erevos thought for a moment she must be ill.
Her cries were loud and fractured, rising and falling in waves so intense that he could barely make out the words, and the fact that he couldn’t understand what she was saying did not please him. He had always listened closely and paid attention, and now, in the moment when she needed him most, her meaning was lost in the noise of her pain.
Since he couldn’t ask her, Erevos concluded that he did not understand humans as well as he thought he did. For all his watching, for all his listening, there were still pieces missing.
And so, he decided not to speak.
He acted.
Erevos wrapped his arms around Lyssena gently, careful not to startle her further, and drew her into his embrace. At first,he lifted her too high—her feet dangled, and she flinched—so he lowered her, perhaps too much. But after a moment, he found the balance, and she was nestled perfectly between his chest and arms, her head resting just beneath the hollow of his throat. As the seconds passed, her cries began to fade.
He did not understand why she wouldn’t look at him.
She had looked before, when they first met. He had given her permission again. And yet, instead of meeting his gaze, she had burst into tears.
That reaction troubled him. Erevos felt . . . uneasy.
He didn’t know the name for the feeling, didn’t know if demons were even meant to feel it, but he recognized that something within him was different, and he knew that it wasn’t right. Demons didn’t feel much, after all. Nothing truly happened in their lives. There was only hunger, and the feeding of it. They were never bored, never entertained, never curious in the way mortals were. There had never been anything that stirred the quiet in him.
Until Lyssena.
And now, for the first time in all his years of watching her from the edges of her world, for all the time he had spent memorizing her movements and expressions and habits, he realized he was still far from understanding her.
He wanted to understand her. So much so, he had defied the norms of his own realm, bent the stillness of The Void into something livable and breathable for her. He had created a home where she would not die.
And now he saw that this, too, was only the beginning.
There was only one solution to the problem before him.
“Little songbird,” he murmured, his voice as soft as shadow, as he pulled her closer, tucking her fully into the safety of his hold. He found he liked this more than he expected. He liked thefeel of her heartbeat against his chest. He liked how small she was in his arms, how alive she felt.
She looked nothing like him, and that did not matter.
She was not like him in any way, and that mattered even less.
He found her . . . fascinating.
And the more he realized how much he didn’t know, the more he felt something new take root inside him.Eagerness.
Erevos was eager to . . .
