Still, he had come for a purpose.
Dissolving into shadow once more, Erevos slipped beneath the bed and then into the adjoining rooms, searching along shelves and inside chests, examining small jars and folded cloths for any indication of a soothing balm.
He found none.
Erevos searched longer than he intended, drifting from chamber to chamber, from cupboard to crate, examining clay pots and folded linens with growing dissatisfaction, yet nowhere did he find the salve he sought, nowhere a jar clearly marked for the soothing of tender flesh. He had been gone too long.
His songbird was alone.
He withdrew from yet another tavern’s stale corridors and returned to the open air, allowing the sunlit chaos of the village to wash over him once more as he considered a more efficient approach.
If mating did not lead him to the salve, perhaps motherhood would.
He turned his attention toward the quieter edges of the market, where homes stood closer together, and the noise softened into domestic murmurs, the scrape of chairs, the murmur of lullabies, the whispers of a child being rocked.
It did not take him long to find her.
A woman stood just outside a modest dwelling, her skirts plain and her hair loosely bound, laughing as a small child clung to her leg.
Erevos watched from the shade of a nearby wall as she lifted the child into her arms and carried it inside, her voice lowering into gentle tones meant to coax sleep. He waited, listening to the gradual quieting of the child’s restless movements, to the soft cadence of breath evening out behind thin wooden walls.
Only when the house settled into true silence did he move.
Erevos no longer bothered to hide himself. He stepped from the shadow directly into her small chamber.
The woman turned at once. Her eyes widened so violently that the whites showed stark against her irises, her breath catching in a sharp, strangled sound as terror flooded her features. The scent of fear bloomed thick, prickling along Erevos’s senses as her entire body began to tremble.
She dropped to her knees just like his songbird did when she first saw him.
Her palms struck the floorboards, her head bowing so quickly that her hair fell forward to shield her face, and she averted her gaze as though even the act of looking upon him might condemn her.
“G-Greatest god,” she stammered, her voice shaking so hard the words nearly fractured, “forgive me??—”
Erevos stood there, tall and unmoving, his presence filling the small room. He did not have time for all these human customs. His Lyssena was hurting, and he was losing time.
“I require a salve,” he said, his tone neither cruel nor kind. “One used after mating.”
Her trembling intensified.
For a fleeting moment, shame flickered through her fear, coloring it with mortification, but she did not dare question him. With shaking hands, she rose just enough to crawl toward a low shelf near the bed, her fingers fumbling among small jars and cloth-wrapped bundles before retrieving a modest clay container sealed with wax.
She held it out to him without lifting her gaze.
“This . . . this is what we use, Greatest,” she whispered, her voice barely more than breath. “For soreness. For . . . for comfort.”
Erevos stepped closer, and she flinched despite herself, her shoulders curling inward as though bracing for impact.
He took the jar between his fingers and examined it, turning it, noting the scent of herbs and oil.
“This is the correct substance?” he asked.
“Yes, Greatest god,” she answered at once.
“Where may I obtain more of it?”
The question seemed to surprise her more than his presence had.
Silence stretched thin before she swallowed hard and pressed her forehead fully to the floor.
