“Probably not.”
The voice was deep, smooth, and threaded with something darkly amused, and it did not belong to her.
Lyssena nearly screamed, the sound climbing upward from her chest before she strangled it down into silence, her entire body going rigid as goosebumps rippled violently beneath the living fabric of her suit, the fine hairs along her arms and the nape of her neck prickling.
Who said that?
It had not been the cat—of that she was entirely certain—and yet the voice had sounded close, as though it had been spoken directly into the hollow space just behind her ear.
Her gaze darted to the left, and then to the right, where the market stretched in endless ink-dark rows, but she saw no one standing near enough to have addressed her.
Then she heard a single step behind her.
She turned quickly, heart hammering so violently she felt it in her ears, only to find nothing there at all, nothing but open space and the dense, unmoving shadows of The Void.
“I am Rolam. Nice to meet you, human.”
Lyssena spun back around so fast the motion made her slightly dizzy, and this time the scream did not even manage to form because she forgot how to breathe altogether.
A god stood directly before her.
He had not approached—she would have seen him—and yet there he was, towering and way too close.
She stumbled backward without thinking, one step and then another as her pulse roared in her ears.
And still, the cat purred.
A low, vibrating sound rolled through the space between them as the creature pressed itself affectionately against the god’s leg, carding along him, as though greeting something known and entirely safe.
This demon-god almost looked like Erevos. The same ink-black height, the same endless violet eyes that appeared to stare through rather than at her, the same sculpted darkness that gave the impression of a body formed from concentrated night.
Even the air around him felt colder, and she could not shake the unnerving sensation that he had not walked toward her at all, but had simply decided to exist in that exact space.
Though one thing distinguished this one from her own god, at that was the big, gray scar all over his chest.
Lyssena realized she was staring. Her gaze dropped instinctively as she suddenly remembered all of the rules that took over her life.
“Even when you’re not in the village, you will not meet my gaze?” Rolam asked, his voice smooth and playful, as though he found her reluctance more amusing than offensive.
“How . . . how can I . . . ?” Lyssena’s entire body trembled, as every lesson she had ever learned about reverence and divinity came rushing back into her mind all at once. “You are a god??—”
At that, Rolam laughed, and the sound startled her more than his sudden appearance had, because it was very human in its cadence, a laugh that might have belonged in a tavern or around a dinner table, not echoing from the chest of a giant ink-black being born of The Void.
“There are no gods, silly little human,” he replied. “We are demons, creatures of The Void. Nothing more, and certainly nothing like your kind invented.”
Lyssena could not dispel the dissonance curling through her thoughts, because everything about him felt wrong in a way she could not properly articulate. Not wrong in the sense of danger, though danger was certainly there, but wrong in the way his voice carried such familiar inflection, such conversational ease, as though he had spent far too long listening to human speech and had learned to wear it comfortably.
“Come now,” he continued, tilting his head ever so slightly. “Leave those foolish rules behind. Tell me, do you like honey and cinnamon?”
The question struck her with such absurd normalcy that for a moment she simply stared at him. Why would he ask her that?
What possible place did honey and cinnamon have in a market of shadowed demons?
Her throat felt dry as she swallowed, and slowly she lifted her gaze to meet his, forcing herself to endure the intensity of those endless violet eyes that did not blink.
He did not sound overtly threatening, and yet there was something about him she could not quite name. Something too observant, too aware.
“I do,” she answered at last, her voice soft but steady despite the frantic pulse still fluttering beneath her ribs, and she barely had time to wonder what explanation could possibly follow such an oddly domestic question??—
