He did that sometimes, and she had never understood why.
“Erevos?” she asked. Her fingers tightened around his hand, seeking reassurance.
“I could not shape matter and shadow as Erevos can,” Rolam said from across the fractured shop.
Lyssena’s brows drew together immediately. The words felt disconnected from her question, and she was losing patience. “Whatdo you mean?” she asked again.
Rolam’s gaze did not waver.
“You ate my shadows, Lyssena,” Erevos said before Rolam could say a word. His voice was no longer feral. “You are part of me.”
Lyssena felt her stomach drop, a hollow plunge beneath her ribs that left her lightheaded.
“You ate my shadows.”
The words replayed in her mind, rearranging themselves into a meaning she did not want to assemble. Everything she consumed in The Void had been crafted. All of it . . .
Her mouth went dry. Everything I ate was . . . Him.
She was surrounded by demons.
One of them was Erevos. The one she had trusted most.
“You lied to me.”
Chapter Forty-Three
The Last Choice
Erevos
“You said you wanted me to choose you in return,” Lyssena said, and Erevos felt her anger. Hot, bubbling anger that spread through her. Unintentionally, as she was wearing his shadows, he consumed every single drop of it.
His spikes reacted; they burned like fire as they grew heavier. Erevos growled and took a step back. He did not understand what was happening to him, what was the reason for an emotion to make him feel pain.
“Lyssen—”
“I believed you. I believed you saved me and wished me well,” she said, clenching her fists.
“I hav??—”
“You havenot!”
Torturous pain crawled along his spine; his spikes felt even heavier than before. “You deserve to hear it from me,” Erevossaid at last, ignoring the agony his body was going through. He wanted his songbird to understand. He did not betray her; he never lied.
Erevos was clueless himself.
“I felt you change the first time you consumed the bread I shaped from my shadows.”
His gaze did not leave her face. “It was not visible. Not in any way your human senses would detect. But the darkness did.” His jaw tightened. “It leaned toward you. It recognized something within you that had not existed before.”
A pause followed, and Lyssena took a step back.
“I did not know it would affect you,” he said, and he wished for his songbird to be closer.
“At first, I did not even understand why you felt . . . different. I stood in the cave and watched you. I listened to the cadence of your breathing. I measured the rhythm of your pulse. And yet there was something threaded through you, something that had not been there the day before.”
His shadows stirred faintly at his feet. “It took time to assemble the pieces. To recall the exact moment the bread dissolved against your tongue. To remember the pull I felt in my own shadows when you swallowed.” His eyes darkened further. “They answered you.”
