The cat merely stared at her for a long moment before lowering itself gracefully onto the dark ground and rolling to expose its belly, both tails flicking lazily behind it.
“Oh, aren’t you a sweetheart!” Lyssena exclaimed as she leaned forward to scratch at the offered belly through the barrier of her gloved fingers. “So much soft fur . . . oh, I wish I could remove the suit and feel you with my bare hands.”
The creature swayed from side to side, stretching in a way that presented different angles of its plush, soft-lookingunderside, its many eyes half-lidded in what appeared to be bliss.
Lyssena laughed beneath her mask.
“Perhaps you know where the market is,” she ventured, smoothing her fingers along its fur. “If you do, could you show me the way?”
It might have been considered strange—asking directions from a random, double-eyed, double-tailed Void cat—but very little in this shadowed world operated according to the rules she once understood, and so far, curiosity had rewarded her far more often than fear.
So she decided to trust it.
After a long moment, the cat rolled back onto all fours, its tails curling upward like twin question marks before settling behind it, and without so much as a backward glance, it began to walk.
The cat led Lyssena in a very specific direction, its twin tails swaying in slow, synchronized arcs. She was not entirely certain whether this was the way to the market or somewhere else entirely, but the creature was so very confident that she found she could not bring herself to doubt it.
Whenever she paused, the cat would stop as well, turning to fix its many violet eyes upon her. It was unmistakable. Itwantedher to follow.
And so, she did.
Together, Lyssena and her strange new companion passed beneath dense trees the color of crushed, overripe pomegranate, a deep, almost blackened crimson that seemed to drink in what little ambient light existed in The Void. Not a single leaf stirred overhead. Not one. The canopy remained perfectly still, suspended in an unnatural pause, as though time itself had forgotten to move through this place.
Lyssena thought that if she were ever able to walk these lands without her mask or suit, her hair would never whip into her eyes, never cling to her lips, never tangle at the nape of her neck with sweat. She liked that very much.
It was so quiet here.
Lyssena had always believed she preferred loud places, like the overlapping chatter of neighbors, the shrieks of children racing through narrow streets, the constant noise of a home too full to ever feel empty. That was what she had known, after all, with five brothers and endless afternoons spent helping her mother’s friends rock crying infants or chase mischievous toddlers from one room to the next. Noise had meant life. Noise had meant belonging.
And yet here, in this vast and muted expanse where even her own footsteps seemed softened against the ground, she felt . . . content.
She imagined her babies walking through this quiet place. They would likely wear masks at first, until they grew strong and divine like Erevos; until they, too, became little gods of The Void. The thought filled her chest with a warmth so bright it nearly ached.
Oh, Lyssena truly wished for a small family here in the quiet heart of this endless dark.
As the cat suddenly stopped and turned left, its tails curling upward, she noticed the mouth of a cave set into a low rise of stone. It was far smaller than the cavern where she and Erevos had made their home, its entrance narrow, with no rivers weaving black paths nearby.
She found herself thinking, not for the first time, of how wisely Erevos had chosen their dwelling, how instinctively he had selected a place both grand and hidden, powerful yet private. Pride swelled in her chest at the thought of him. Her husband.
Lyssena enjoyed beyond reason calling him that, savoring the word as though it were a secret sweetness meant only for her. Husband. It was what she had always wanted, a family of her own, children to cradle and guide, to show such overwhelming kindness and love that they would never, not for a single breath of their existence, feel alone.
“Do you want me to go inside that cave?” she asked, tilting her head at the cat.
But instead of entering, the creature turned on its paws and began walking in a different direction, not sparing the cave another glance.
Without hesitation, Lyssena followed.
And when the trees began to thin, and the stillness changed, she understood.
That was the market.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Erevos’s Human
Lyssena
Lyssena saw the market long before she even considered stepping out of the forest.
