Page 111 of The Starving Saints

Without a knife, she is in danger.

The feast will only last so long, and is no guarantee of safety even as it rages. Treila leans hard against the stone wall, centering herself, preparing for one last dash.

And then she feels a tickle. The slightest brush of eyes over her shadowed form.

She turns.

The Loving Saint leans in the doorway.

He is not trying to hide his monstrousness anymore. His long white hair is stained red where it has trailed through blood, and beneath his nails is filth. His clothing is in tatters. His muscles lie wrong for him to be anything but unnatural.

“Where has your knife got to?” he murmurs. “Your closest companion, your dearest love.”

“You saw it,” she says, taking a step back along the wall, only to hear a rustling, a hissing. It’s not only him that’s found her. A glance over her shoulder reveals flat, white faces. The shift of limbs in the dark. She is surrounded by the saints’ creatures. Her mouth is dry, her throat sandpaper. But she lifts her chin up, meets the Loving Saint’s eyes once more. “It’s in Ser Voyne’s throat.”

“But Ser Voyne isn’t in the chapel anymore.”

“Only Phosyne could remove the blade. Your Lady said so.”

His eyes spark. He’s pleased she was there—or pleased that heknewshe was there, without seeing her. “No, no,” he purrs, taking a step closer, and this time she falls back. She will not meet him now. She knows better. “Not only Phosyne. Don’t you remember, foolish girl, that there is something in the core of you that the Lady did notpredict? I think you could take the blade from Ser Voyne’s flesh as easy as breathing. But where did you leave it, I wonder?”

His nostrils flare, even as they change in shape, melting into Voyne’s.

“Did you think you were killing me, when you slaughtered her?” he asks with her voice. “How long, until you realized you were wrong?”

“Don’t,” she bites out. “Don’t wear that face.”

“She died very prettily,” he continues. “Her lips were kiss-swollen. Was it from you? Did she know that you were there, or did she think the sun was merely shining upon her face?”

She vibrates with disgust, thinking of the real Voyne, loyal and strong. Thinking of the Voyne this creature could have offered her, wicked and cruel and vulnerable, too. Everything Treila had imagined her to be.

Treila cannot stop from licking her lips.

The Loving Saint laughs softly. Treila wants to hear Voyne laugh like that.

“Without that knife of yours,” he murmurs with Voyne’s lips, “we can have so much fun.” He is close enough to kiss her now. Treila has forgotten to retreat. She doesn’t know when she became incapable of striking Voyne again, even in effigy.

“But as sweet as it would be to eat you with your dead knight’s face,” he sighs, and Voyne’s colors begin to bleed from him, his hair begins to lengthen, “I find I’m sick of playing to your fancies.” His teeth sharpen. His eyes gleam in the dark, catching the moonlight.

Treila reaches for his throat, but he’s faster. He catches her wrist, hauls her close. His mouth descends, and she snarls, slamming the heel of her other hand into his jaw. His head snaps back and then isn’t there at all, and she’s falling through him. His hair whispers over her skin as she slams into the wall, bounces off it, falls sprawling in front of a hundred dripping jaws. The first one snaps, and Treila staggers to her feet and runs.

She knows Aymar better than possibly anybody else alive, but they are faster than she, and they do not obey the same laws. They sprint along the walls, prowl the sky above as if it is a ceiling, dropdown in front of her and reach for her ankles. Her screams break upon the stone and fracture, and she goes down once, twice—

But they let her up each time.

They play with her, letting her gain a few desperate feet of lead only to cut her off and send her down the stairs into the lower yard, hound her around the rims of the cisterns, close to falling. They carve gashes in her arms, tear at her skirts, knock her down, but only far enough that she is rattled, not that she is broken. The detritus of Aymar, shredded tents and abandoned clothing, tangle beneath her feet. The monsters’ laughter is everywhere.

And behind them, riding the wave of their bloodlust, is the Loving Saint, grinning, scenting the air, drinking in her terror. Her missing ear surges with the roaring buzz of a thousand bees, loud enough to deafen.

Without a knife, she has no way to fight back. But there are other sources of iron. The chapel—the chapel must contain something, some astronomical measure that has a steel pin at its core. Or the garden, where Voyne’s hammer lies somewhere in the botanical riot. But they have hounded her to the other end of the keep, close to the gates, and she can see no clear path around them. Her muscles burn. Her bones ache. She stumbles as she scrambles up one of the staircases to the walls, then goes down hard as fingers close around her ankle and tug her back.

She is so close. She is so close to the edge of the wall. To the long drop on the other side. To some kind of freedom, if only—if only—

If only it were not the Loving Saint who falls upon her now, his hair shrouding them like a curtain.

She twists to face him, teeth bared, but there are tears in her eyes, helpless tears.

“I told you I would make it good,” he murmurs, prowling up her body. She jerks her knee up into his gut, but her leg passes right through him. He is at her side, then, hauling her up. His hands are in her hair. She screams.

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