Page 101 of The Starving Saints

She is in the doorway when the Lady’s next words strike.

“You will not find your knight out there, little mouse.”

Phosyne halts. The skin along her spine crawls. Her throat aches. “What have you done with her?” she asks, fighting to keep her tone even.

“Nothing at all. But your Ser Voyne is dead.”

The pain in her throat intensifies. It is like a blade cutting through flesh and gristle. Phosyne sways on her feet from it, from the horror in her gut and the answering anger that flares to life beneath it.

Treila is gone. Voyne is gone.

Phosyne is here, alone among the wolves.

“No,” she whispers. “No, I refuse.”

The Lady draws even with her once more. Holds out a hand.

“Come and look upon her yourself,” the Lady says.

Phosyne, lost, takes it.

44

They take Ser Voyne to the chapel. Treila follows, head down, ducking out of sight when she is able. When she realizes where they are headed, she takes another route, and finds herself unseen, as if when Voyne at last looked upon her and saw her once more, Treila disappeared to all the rest of the world.

Or maybe she is so grief-stricken that she doesn’t notice when others are close, as long as they don’t reach for her.

Either way, she approaches the chapel alone. But just outside, she stops. The space, usually bright and open, is crowded and shadowed. Everything, every hive box and pew and abandoned icon of the saints is covered in honeycomb. What was once so meticulously maintained is now all but buried, encrusted and sealed shut with wax. In the gloom, flames dance atop what Treila realizes with a lurch are timekeeping candles—but made tall and monstrous, winding and uneven. No wonder night and day seem to blur together, if that is how each hour is being measured.

The room hums with the beating of a thousand wings, the air darkened by a roiling swarm of bees.

She has arrived before Voyne’s body, but not by much. She sees them approaching, the bearers with their shuffling feet and unseeing eyes. For all their bewitched sleepwalking, though, they look strong. Well-fed. Cheeks are flushed with life, and nobody trembles or stumbles beneath the weight they carry.

The knife in Voyne’s throat is barely noticeable, past the bright gleam of her strange armor.

And then she is gone, inside the chapel, down a walkway that Treila cannot see from her current vantage. She circles around to another entrance.

She hesitates, flinches as a bee circles her and makes as if to land. Feels again that desperate winter, her body swollen and stung, cast out. They could do it again. Descend upon her, drive her away. Are they not the Lady’s?No.The Lady is not the Priory’s Lady. She is something else, something worse; the Loving Saint made that very clear.

She forces herself to edge into the chapel. There is nowhere Treila can step that will not break and spill a surge of honey, and so she doesn’t try to be careful. With each step, she waits for the bees to come to her. But they don’t. They mass in great undulations farther in, or crawl upon the fresh comb, but none come close to her.

She finds herself a little gap, a cradle of wax that guards her on three sides, with barely an opening wide enough for her to enter. From within, she can see most angles, with a little stretching. She is careful, as she settles in, not to step on any bees.

Her heart slowing, she notices, finally, that the sharp-toothed watchers of the yard are all but absent.

The only creatures in this chapel, aside from the bees, are human. The pallbearers kneel before the plinth where Ser Voyne has been laid out, as if for a funeral.

Her father, Treila thinks with a pang, had no funeral. So many of her father’s servants were buried in a poorly marked grave in a winter wood. But perhaps she should take joy that Voyne’s funeral will be more perverse by far.

The knife still protrudes from Voyne’s neck. Treila doesn’t know why. It’s garish, gleaming in the harsh sun that filters in, almost as bright as the shine of her breastplate.

No, not hers. The Warding Saint’s.

Treila finally realizes that she hasn’t seen him anywhere.

It’s only the Absolving and the Loving Saints who appear at the chapel’s entrance. They take up posts by the doorway, but aside from their positioning, they look quite at their leisure. The Loving Saint sips from a chalice. It is gold. It is likely the king’s.

When he lowers it, his lips are red. He is drinking blood like it is wine.

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