Eydis stood knee-deep in lavender slick with rain. Petals lay shredded into the mud, though a few stubborn stalks still held their colour. Odd, wasn’t it, that plants changed with the season, that the cycle of life and death could be so predictably unpredictable?

  It never worked like that in Mythshollow. Seasons there were a deck left unshuffled, the same cards on top each time.

  Clouds moved. The moon hunted gaps it almost found. Poetic, she thought. Most would call it weather and go indoors. She tried to feel their shrug, failed, and tasted salt instead.

  Once, she had chased this kind of uncertainty. She had dreamt of hills where the leaves changed and light cast mesmerising shadows, as if peace were congenital rather than earned. Tonight, as the thunderheads loosened their grip and slid away, that old hunger lay dead.

  In its place coiled rage.

  Memory had slipped, then slammed back. Did facing Greed bring them back? Or was it because it felt fresh, like it had happened yesterday? But she hadn’t remembered it feeling this raw. She didn’t remember it smelling like wet soil and prophecy.

  Raven.

  They had escaped once, forcing a choice she had never wanted to make. This time, she would be the one to set the cost and count the coins.

  “How… dare… you…bind…us,” rasped what remained of Noah, two voices grinding each other in one throat.

  Eydis turned. “Welcome back, Raven.” She let her gaze travel over the corpse they wore. “Strange. I didn’t realise carrion birds needed consent before a cage.”

  Noah’s neck popped. Veins marbled the grey skin. In the ruins of his face, eyes like twin ravens of black fire circled and circled, hungry things that had picked empires clean and whispered, All this, and still… not… enough.

  “Raven? Carrion fowl?” Greed spoke with both of its halves, once Noah and once Thomas, their words overlapping and out of time. “Do not pretend to bind us with such paltry names.”

  “I wouldn’t bother naming you at all. Raven wasn’t an insult. I fought him on it, actually. But now…”

  The thing tasted the air. “Bitterness. Anger. Fear. We carved deep scars, did we not?”

  “Fear? Please. You slipped my mind until you started squawking. Memory, you see, is tiresomely selective.” Her eyes glinted. “Then again, you wouldn’t know what you’ve forgotten, would you? Anything you share with a bearer dies the moment that bond snaps.”

  “A bearer,” it snarled, cocking its head too far. “Mortals from the shadow realms. Always pretending they matter. Ash playing at permanence. Still… You saw us for what we are. You could’ve bound us. But you didn’t. Was it weakness?”

  Eydis eyed the talons sprouting from Noah’s fingers. “You confuse disdain with limitation. But if you want an answer that badly…”

  She opened her hand.

  A shadow-serpent answered her silent summons, scales swallowing all light as it moved. Its jaws parted wide to reveal fangs forged from the deepest night. The field dipped with the weight of it, as if bowing.

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  "Let me show you, what becomes of those who cross the Queen of Shadows.”

  Wings exploded from his back and killed what little moonlight remained. “Fool! We devour gods and will savour your hubris.”

  “How unoriginal. Think you can swallow Pride? I would enjoy the choke.”

  Shadows met shadows, pressure warping sound. He lunged. She raised her hand and a second serpent slid from the void, venom tracing molten lines across decaying flesh.

  “This pathetic shell.” Greed smeared the venom like war paint as black water frothed at their feet, tentacles spinning from sewage and spite.

  Eydis conjured a violet shield. The tentacles smashed against it and boiled into soot-dark steam. “Sewage? Really? No gold, no gemstones spectacle? Has the budget gone entirely to plumbing?”

  “Wealth moves nations. It doesn’t squander itself on gnats.”

  “And here I thought fear moved nations, silly me.” She stepped aside as a foul splash missed her boots.

  "Bold words, Queen of Ashes,” the Sin purred, reading the tremor at her wrist. “Your mana’s failing faster than your wit. How much longer can you keep that shield up?”

  “Not long,” she said, and let it go. The violet light thinned to mist and went to ground.

  Greed surged to fill the opening.

  The tentacles never reached her. Her first serpent swept back across the field and split along its spine, then split again. They wove through the crushed lavender, frost trailing behind. The serpents cut the limbs to ribbons. The spill scorched the earth where it fell.

  Greed staggered, wings ragged. “Envy! Pedestrian Sin.”

  “Funny, I could say the same about Greed.” Eydis lifted two fingers. The three serpents poured together into one colossal coil that cinched Noah tight. “And a small note. Envy is mine alone to insult.”

  “How reassuring, Your Majesty,” Envy said dryly in her ear.

  Eydis rolled her eyes without looking away from Greed, as it thrashed and beat its wings.

  “Clever girl,” Greed said, sending fresh waves of limbs forward. “You were right about one thing. I turned the Senate race into a jackpot and fed on every wager. Do you think you can call my hand?”

  She slipped past a reaching limb and closed her fist. The coil answered with pressure. Noah spasmed. His scream tore apart on the wind and blew away across the fields.

  As the gale faded, the field lay flattened, lavender crushed, petals rimed with frost and scattered like ash.

  Silence held for a breath before Noah’s mouth wrenched open. Tainted water burst out.

  Eydis threw up a barrier on reflex. The shock hammered it, shattered it, and hurled her backwards anyway. She hit the mud hard enough to see the world go white.

  Something cracked. Bones, perhaps. The corpse moved again. Joints reversed and then found worse places to sit. A smile opened too wide and showed too many teeth

  “Is that all, Shadow Queen? Every blow you land only fattens the flood.”

  Blood marked her lip. She steadied, golden eyes narrowing under their laughter.

  “You wondered why sewage,” Greed continued, delighted now. “It never runs dry. Ever filling, ever overflowing. Like this realm: abundant, bloated, wasteful.”

  “It was rhetorical. But fine. I was hoping you’d put up a fight.” Eydis wiped her mouth.

  “Two of us, one of you. Did you think we come in pairs by accident?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Ah, you knew.” Skin tore as their grin spread. “Someone you cherished traded a soul to call us, a soul rich enough to birth another me.”

  Eydis’s gaze hardened. “Cherish? There is no such person.”

  “Oh, we both know that is a lie.” Their tone turned silken. “Tell me, Shadow Queen. How sweet was their sacrifice? How much of it still lingers on your tongue?”

  She moved. Envy struck. Ribs splintered. The serpent tightened until marrow popped wetly. Yet the corpse twitched and jerked and kept its miserable life. Again. Again.

  She almost felt sorry for Noah.

  Sewage bubbled through split flesh, weaving through bones and knitting mangled tissue.

  Noah’s empty eyes fixed on her. “Rude. Where was I? Ah. No sacrifice comes without a price. Exquisite, even. One I almost wish I remembered.”

  They spread their arms. Black veins crawled. “Greed cannot be destroyed. We do not end.”

  “We are the game.” A smile split Noah’s stolen face once more. Behind it, the shadow swelled, wings unfurling like dark mouths that drank the night. “So tell me, foolish queen, are you ready to pay?”