“Erevos!” Lyssena screamed.
The sound tore from her throat as she rushed forward. She nearly slipped on shattered glass, catching herself on the edge of the table as more of Rolam’s collected treasures splintered under the assault.
“Stop! Stop—please!” she cried, her hands reaching toward the writhing mass of shadow binding Rolam. “I am alright! He has done nothing!”
Erevos stepped fully into the shop, and his shadows tightened. Rolam did not cry out, but the stone behind him cracked under the pressure.
Erevos opened his mouth. Rows of jagged, shard-like teeth caught what little violet light remained in the cavern.
“Lyssena,” he said, his voice no longer restrained, but edged with something feral and ancient, “is mine.”
Lyssena’s heart slammed violently against her ribs. Rolam had been kind. He had spoken gently. He had shown her beauty. And now he was pinned against the stone because of her.
“Please,” she said again, forcing herself forward despite the violent thrashing of shadows, despite the sharp scent of broken glass and spilled preservation liquid burning in her lungs. “Erevos, look at me.”
He did not.
The shadows continued to constrict. Lyssena swallowed hard, and she turned her focus not to him, but to the darkness itself. The shadows were alive; they listened to her today and before. They had always listened.
“Leave him,” she said, her voice shaking but clear. “He is not a threat.”
For one suspended second, nothing happened. But then the shadows faltered. Not fully, but enough. They loosened slightly around Rolam, and Erevos stilled.
The cavern went unnaturally quiet, broken only by the slow drip of liquid from shattered glass and the faint clatter of a pearl rolling to a stop against stone.
Erevos turned his head slowly toward her. “Did you choose him?” he asked.
“No,” she answered immediately, stepping closer to him despite the lingering cold radiating from his body. “No, Erevos.”
She reached for him. Her fingers slid into his enormous hand, she laced her fingers between his claws and tugged gently, calming him with the only thing she had.
The shadows around Rolam dissolved completely. He slid down the cracked stone wall but remained upright, steady, though shards of glass surrounded him like fallen stars.
Slowly, heat began to return to Erevos’s skin, and he stepped closer to her.
His free hand lifted, and he traced his fingers over the smooth curve of her masked head, down along the line where her shoulder started.
Lyssena exhaled shakily. “He was telling me a story,” she murmured.
She turned her head toward Rolam. He had not moved to attack. He had not spoken in protest. Instead, he was staring at the broken remnants of his collection scattered across the floor. After a moment, he lifted his gaze to her.
“I have been collecting these,” Rolam said, though his voice had grown quieter, “for a very long time.”
His eyes drifted briefly to a cracked glass vessel leaking liquid across shadow. “My human liked to collect objects from every place we traveled. Small things. Meaningless to most.”
Lyssena felt something twist in her chest. He had recreated that ritual for centuries. “I am sorry,” she said, looking at the broken items. “I did not mean for??—”
“Why did you decide to live forever?”
The question struck her off guard. Her fingers tightened unconsciously around Erevos’s hand. “I—” She faltered, her thoughts scrambling. “If I return to my human home, I will age.”
Was she saying those words to feel the comfort of choosing? She had chosen to go with Erevos the day they met. Though now, after everything that happened, she felt the need to state that shestill had the choice. She knew Erevos wouldn’t kill her or harm her in any way.
“You speak as though that option still exists,” he said.
Lyssena blinked. “What do you mean?”
Lyssena turned slowly toward Erevos. He had gone still again, that distant, unreachable quiet he sometimes slipped into, where his gaze aligned with her yet did not seem to land upon. It was as though he were looking through her.
