Lysandra awoke to the scent of damp earth and smoke. Her body felt like it had been wrung dry, every limb aching, her head throbbing with exhaustion.
She wasn't sure how long she had been unconscious. The last thing she remembered was the god taking—the shadows swallowing Jael and the hunters whole.
She blinked, her vision slowly adjusting to the flickering firelight.
The prince sat nearby, his golden eyes fixed on the flames. He looked different. Haunted.
"You shouldn't have done that," he murmured without looking at her.
Lysandra pushed herself up on shaking arms. "You mean saving us?"
He finally turned to her, and she saw it—the tension in his jaw, the restrained anger beneath his usually controlled exterior. "You made a deal with him, didn't you?"
The god.
The mark on her skin still pulsed faintly, like an ember refusing to die out.
Lysandra hesitated. She hadn't spoken the words of a bargain—not exactly. But in that moment, when she had called upon him, she had offered. And he had taken.
She exhaled. "I had no choice."
The prince scoffed, running a hand through his hair. "There's always a choice."
Silence stretched between them.
Lysandra swallowed. "The hunters... where are they?"
The prince shook his head. "Gone. And I don't think they're coming back."
A chill ran down her spine. She hadn't meant to banish them forever. Had she?
The god's presence stirred in her mind, a whisper of amusement.
They are precisely where they belong.
Lysandra clenched her fists. "What did I give him?"
The prince's expression darkened. "We'll find out soon enough."
The God Calls
That night, Lysandra dreamed.
She stood in a vast, endless void, shadows twisting like living things around her feet.
And then he appeared.
A figure of shifting darkness and glinting gold, his form neither fully solid nor entirely real. He did not walk—he drifted, closing the space between them without sound.
"You called me, little one. And so, I answered."
Lysandra swallowed hard. "I didn't ask for a bargain."
The god chuckled.
"But you gave me something all the same."
His fingers lifted, grazing the mark on her skin. It burned.
"A piece of yourself. A tether. A link between you and I."
Her stomach twisted.
"You didn't say what you wanted in return," she forced out.
The god tilted his head, regarding her like she was a puzzle yet to be solved.
"Not yet."
Her breath hitched.
"But when the time comes, Lysandra... you will give me what is mine."
The void shattered.
A Reckoning Approaches
Lysandra jolted awake, her heart hammering.
The prince was already watching her, as if he had known. As if he had felt it.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
Because they both knew one thing for certain.
The god was not finished with her yet.