They were a continuation of him, a part of him, as if they were always there.
They hadn’t been there before. She was sure of it.
Was this normal for him? Was it a sickness? Could gods . . . get sick?
And if Erevos trulywasn’ta god, as he claimed—and she still didn’t entirely believe that—could whatever he was grow spikes like this? Did his kind change shape when touched, when aroused, when . . . affected?
“I have scared you,” Erevos said, his hands resting calmly on his thighs, his voice heavy. “I should have asked if I could be so close to you.”
Lyssena slowly lifted herself onto her elbows, then into a sitting position, her wide eyes locked onto him.
She shook her head as if trying to wake from a dream—but this wasn’t a dream.
It couldn’t be possible for her to be lying here beside someone so powerful.
It couldn’t be possible that she had spoken the way she had, so boldly, so shamelessly.
And it wasabsolutelyimpossible for her god—her Erevos—to change his form right before her eyes.
“You have spikes . . . ” she murmured, her gaze moving slowly between each and every thorn that had grown from his body.
“Spikes?” Erevos asked, and he truly looked as surprised as she was.
Chapter Twenty-Two
What Hunger Shapes
Erevos
It was difficult to concentrate with such sweetness lingering in the air, but Erevos had to.
He rose from the bed and rolled his shoulders slowly, feeling his muscles beneath skin that no longer felt entirely his. Now that he was standing, the weight of the new spikes along his spine and head felt like a string of thorns that had grown from within.
“I know what it is,” he said to his songbird, who was still watching him with parted lips and wide eyes that flicked up and down his body. Her gaze lingered downward—longer than it lingered upward—and Erevos followed it, expecting to find another change.
And he did.
It wasn’t like the spikes on his back or the ones that fanned out from his head, which he could now feel when he lifted a handto trace them. No, this one was . . . different, not so “spiky” at the tip.
“The spikes on my back are not like this one between my legs,” he said.
He considered how best to explain the nature of demonkind, how bodies changed with emotion, and how The Void shaped its children according to what they fed on. It was not something Erevos had ever needed to explain. It was simply known.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said at last. “Not to me.” He glided his hand over one of the spikes.
“When a demon consumes too much of a particular emotion, it takes a toll on its body. Sometimes the change is visible. Sometimes it lies dormant, hidden deep beneath the skin until it awakens.”
Lyssena blinked, her lashes brushing the tops of her cheeks, and Erevos took it as a sign to continue.
“I’ve consumed rage before,” he said, lowering himself onto the bed beside her, the mattress shifting beneath his weight. “But never enough to feel it etched onto my body. Not until now.” He paused, then added, “Yesterday . . . I did. And now rage has left its mark on me.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked, her voice small, brows knitting.
Erevos felt warmth in his chest, not fire, but something gentler. Something soft. Lyssena still smelled sweet, but it was no longer the same sweetness from before. It had changed. And Erevos, for all his knowing, could not yet decipher it.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said, dropping his gaze to his hands.
What was this? This warmth inside him—so constant now, so strangely good—what did it mean? He had been warm ever since Lyssena entered his world, warm in ways that had nothing to do with the nature of his body. Had she given him emotions? Shown him how they felt?
