Lyssena had always been a curious person.
As she stepped closer to the water, she found herself wondering whether her god had ever needed to clean this place at all, whether dust could exist in The Void, whether time left residue here the way it did in the human world, gathering quietly in corners when no one was looking.
But those questions would have to wait.
Since arriving in this strange new home, she had not relieved herself even once—not since the moment Erevos had taken her from her world—and the pressure had grown steadily more noticeable.
Erevos had explained to her that he had created a system in which her waste would break down into particles and be carried forward through time itself, scattered into space, because he understood how atoms worked, how time moved and bent and folded in ways humans could not yet comprehend.
Of course, Lyssena understood none of that.
“Humans didn’t get to it yet,” she murmured aloud, repeating his words with a smile as her voice echoed around the chamber, “and probably never will.”
When Lyssena finished bathing, her thoughts settled stubbornly on two things, circling them again and again as though unable to decide which deserved her attention more.
The first was her Erevos’s dark semen. She knew, at least in theory, what it was meant to look like, as her mother had spent the past few months instructing her, speaking in hushed, serious tones about a husband’s body and the signs of his pleasure. And yet none of those lessons had prepared her for how strange and intimate it had felt to be coated in it.
The second was the oxygen mask.
Not just that Erevos was making one for her, but that he was shaping it like a songbird.
Her god could make her bodily waste disappear into nothingness, could bend matter and time in ways she could barely begin to imagine, could create air itself so that her fragile lungs might continue to draw breath, and the thought settled heavily in her chest as understanding slowly took shape.
Lyssena realized, perhaps for the first time, how deeply dependent she truly was.
How easily Erevos could take her life if he wished.
The knowledge did not arrive as fear so much as clarity, and as she stepped out of the bathing chamber, she noticed that the once-terrifying hallway beyond was now lit by the same gray orbs she had seen in her rooms.
It was not as frightening as it had been before, but it was still . . . unsettling.
She knew the demon-god who had called to her earlier was gone now. She had proof of that etched directly into Erevos’s body, in the dangerous spikes that marked what he had done to protect her.
Still, walking alone through a dark corridor lit only by a handful of floating lights felt strange, too quiet, too hollow.
So Lyssena did what she had always done when the world felt uncertain.
She hummed a simple tune beneath her breath and kept walking.
To her left, Lyssena noticed that the space widened. The narrow passage opened into a broader stretch of shadow stone where the walls curved outward, forming what looked like the perfect place for a living room. At its center stood a door.
Not the kind of door she had ever seen in a home, but one that was heavy, tall, and looked like the great double doors of the temple. To be exact, it lookedidenticalto them, from the angular shape of the wood to the familiar curve of the handles.
“You saw the door.”
Erevos’s voice echoed through the corridor, and Lyssena’s heart began to beat faster, each thud loud in her ears as she turned toward the sound.
He stood at the far end of the hallway, partially framed by shadow, holding the face of a songbird. Her oxygen mask.
“Yes,” she said quietly, unable to stop herself from staring at him.
In the dim light, Erevos’s eyes glowed a deep purple, like twin stars falling through a darkened sky, and when his mouth curved upward in response, he revealed every row and set of his sharp teeth in a smile that was far too wide to be anything but his.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Between Breath and Death
Lyssena
