When they entered the cave again, with its endless twists and slow, curving turns, Lyssena still had not spoken a word.
Erevos did not enjoy that.
It was not the comfortable silence they shared before. This silence felt different. Tighter.
He tried to determine whether something he had said had unsettled her. Had she not wished to stay? The possibility held unpleasantly against his thoughts.
He searched for any other reason his songbird would withhold her voice from him. He did not sense anger radiating from her, and he knew well how anger appeared upon her.
Lyssena rarely became upset. But when she did, it was . . . unpleasant.
He remembered the day the neighbor’s chicken had leaped over the low fence and devoured the wheat Lyssena had planted, wheat she had prayed over for a good harvest, offering devotion to her nonexistent god. She had stood very still when she noticed the damage; her jaw was tight, her silence sharp as his claws.
Later that afternoon, Erevos had killed the chicken and placed its limp body upon her family’s porch.
And later that night, Lyssena had eaten it before going to bed.
That memory made Erevos thoughtful.
But before he could reach any conclusion, he noticed that his Lyssena had begun walking faster. Because her steps were far smaller than his, the quickening of her pace was almost a run. She moved ahead of him without hesitation and nearly turned down the wrong passage within the cavern’s winding maze.
Erevos corrected her gently by stepping into the path she was about to take, his body blocking the narrow turn without force and without a word.
At that, she pouted for the briefest moment before continuing forward in the right direction.
When they arrived at the double doors, Lyssena reached for the handles and attempted to pull them open, but they did not yield.
Erevos did not move to assist her. He wanted his songbird to grow accustomed to wielding his shadows, to remember that what belonged to him now bent toward her as well. So he waited for her to recall that she no longer needed to rely on human strength alone.
Lyssena turned to look at him, her masked green eyes staying on his for a breath as though searching for instruction, then faced the doors once more.
This time, she leaned her beak lightly against the cool surface and whispered for them to open.
And they did.
The doors parted without resistance, shadows slipping between the seams, and Erevos felt a slow bloom of pride unfurl within him as he watched her step forward. His songbird was learning. She was growing accustomed to the world that had always been his. But was now, in part, hers as well.
He still did not enjoy the unhappiness he sensed around her. Yet perhaps, he reasoned, after he fed her something warm and rich, something that would settle comfortably in her human body, she would tell him what troubled her.
Lyssena stepped inside, and Erevos followed.
“Lyssena?” he called as she turned toward her chamber.
“Yes?” She paused mid-step and half-turned to face him.
“Would you like roasted deer?”
“Yes . . . please,” she murmured. When she reached her door, she opened it slowly, hesitating just slightly on the threshold, and added in a quieter voice, “Thank you,” before slipping inside and closing it behind her.
Erevos remained where he stood for a moment longer, staring at the closed door.
Was it about him knowing her for so long? He could not understand why that would be a bad thing. He did not even know whether that was the reason for her silence at all.
Food, he decided. Food will make it easier.
And with that thought, Erevos went to work.
He moved toward the kitchen, which he had mimicked from Lyssena’s home, a home that was no longer hers, but had become a place of grieving, where her parents and brothers wept day and night after he had taken her away. He knew this because the restored door in her room had been made of his own shadows, and Lyssena’s family had never once questioned why the wood had darkened to black.
