She pushed me through a pair of arched doors guarded by two bison demons, and I found myself in an enormous room.

And there, on his throne, was Mahishasura.

I shuddered.

“Leave us,” he said in that deep, horrible voice.

The Asura obeyed immediately. She let go of my neck, bowed, and retreated from the throne room. I didn’t watch her go. I was alone with the demon king and I didn’t dare take my eyes off him.

Mahishasura sat at ease in his beautiful golden throne, in a pose I must have drawn him in a dozen times, with his cruel amber eyes on me. In one hand, he held what looked like a collection of bones.

“They’re carved out of marble,” he told me. He opened his fierce jaws and dropped the bones into his mouth. They crunched as he chewed, swallowed, and licked his chops.

I clenched my hands tightly together to keep them from trembling. Mahishasura just watched me.

I swallowed. “Where’s Pip?”

“My Asuras tell me you think you can defeat me,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Is that true? You, who ran from me the last time we met?”

The amused tone of his voice made me feel small and cowardly. I gritted my teeth. “You took this world from me. I have to defeat you.”

“Ah yes,” he said with a deep, cold chuckle. “Of course you do.”

“My mother—”

“You and I both know this is not about your mother,” he cut me off, waving my words away. “This is about you and it is about me. You said it yourself: you have to defeat me. Is that not why you created this world?”

“Why would I have created this world just to defeat you?” I asked, confused. “I didn’t know you were real. You were just a story to me.”

Mahishasura tossed his head and snorted air out of his nostrils. It took me a second to realize he was laughing. “What an absurd, foolish child you are. Do you not see?”

“See what?”

“Do you think it was an accident that of all the stories you could have re-created, mine is the one you chose?”

I stared at him. Goose bumps spread over my skin, but I just clenched my hands tighter. “I liked your story,” I said, my voice small and unsteady. “That’s all.”

He rose from the throne, his horns glinting in the light, and towered over me. “ ‘That’s all,’ ” he repeated, his voice little more than a low, mocking growl. “Shall we remind ourselves of the story? There was once a perfect world, full of sunshine and joy. Then one day, there came a monster. And the world went dark.”

“I know the story,” I whispered.

“Then tell me why you chose it.”

My heart fluttered wildly, like a butterfly trying frantically to escape a pair of cupped hands. I couldn’t speak.

“There was a sunshine girl once, was there not?” said Mahishasura. His voice slithered into my mind, like a snake that finds its way into even the most hidden places. “And then a monster took the sun away. So what did she do? She created a world in which a monster was defeated, hoping that that would vanquish her own monster.”