Erevos adored Lyssena.
With her fingers still wrapped around him and that thick, intoxicating sweetness pouring from her in waves, he leaned his torso toward her, drawn by instinct alone, and slid his right arm around her waist, pulling her closer until their bodies met fully, and the sudden shift in balance sent them both tumbling onto the soft bed beneath them.
Lyssena gasped in surprise.
The sound vibrated through him, and her hand tightened reflexively around his cock, squeezing just as Erevos lost whatever fragile restraint he had left and collapsed over her, his weight braced carefully so as not to crush her, though every part of him burned with heat and pressure and the overwhelming need to be closer still.
The sensation crested too quickly.
His body seized, arching into hers as something dark and warm spilled from him in thick pulses, smeared across her new dress, staining her with him, and Erevos groaned low in his chest as the force of it tore through him, leaving him trembling and utterly undone atop his songbird.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Shape of a God
Lyssena
On one hand, Erevos had killed another god and Kaan.
On the other, he had saved her—twice.
Lyssena knew death well. She had seen it often enough throughout her life that, at some point, there was no longer a place for tears to go, no reason left to cry when the inevitable came to pass. She did not wish death upon herself, ever, but when it came for someone she did not know, it troubled her less than she believed it should.
In her village, executions were common enough to become part of the rhythm of life, spoken of in low, solemn tones and accepted without question. People could be beheaded for so many reasons— for infidelity, when a wife failed to commit herself properly to her husband; for looking a man in the eyes without permission; for avoiding marriage without a justification deemed acceptable, such as a calling to work withherbs; or for bearing too many children who were, for reasons no one ever explained, too beautiful to be trusted.
There were so many reasons women were killed.
Women.
How was it that Lyssena had never noticed before—truly noticed— that it was only women who were punished this way? How was it that no man was ever burned at the stake for being unfaithful, no husband ever dragged into the square and judged for wandering hands or broken vows?
The realization settled slowly, quietly, like dust finally visible in a beam of light.
Lyssena understood then that it was not something she had been blind to by accident, but something she had never thought to question, because it had always been this way. It was normal. It was expected. It was woven so deeply into the fabric of her world that she had accepted it without ever wondering why.
She had realized so much since coming to this place, so much since meeting her god.
The thought made her smile.
How could Erevos insist that he was not a god when everything about him suggested otherwise? He was a creator—and a clever one at that—compassionate, merciful, powerful, and protective in all the ways she had been taught a god should be. Erevos was everything she believed a god to be, and she could not understand why he denied it so firmly, why he chose to call himself a demon instead.
Perhaps that was simply what gods called themselves.
There had been stories, once, whispered warnings that demons hunted the sinful, dragged them away into darkness to be punished for their transgressions. Lyssena had never paid them much mind before, but now the thought returned to her, curious rather than frightening.
Was she sinful?
She had stroked her god’s cock, after all. And she was not even married to him.
Perhaps that was her first sin.
Maybe the second. She was, after all, a woman.
After lying in bed with Erevos, her skin still coated in his dark semen, he led Lyssena to wash, guiding her to the hot spring bathing room before leaving her there alone so he could finish crafting her oxygen mask.
The cave-like chamber, carved from stone and shadow, was warm and damp against her skin. The last time she had stood here—yesterday, she assumed—Erevos had washed her himself, using a bar of shadowy soap that smelled of almost nothing at all, save for the faintest trace of cinnamon, one of the spices he kept inside that eggshell-colored box full of strange, wonderful things from her world.
She found the soap exactly where they had left it, resting on one of the smooth rocks beside the inky, steaming water, and her gaze drifted briefly to the entrance as she wondered whether her white gown and undergarments were waiting for her in the new closet he had made for her, freshly cleaned by hands that could shape shadows but also, apparently, care for such small, human necessities.
