Page 114 of The Starving Saints

Phosyne lifts her hand and shows the Lady the knife.

Her ringed eyes widen. Her golden lips part. She does not look at Phosyne’s face at all, just the glint of metal. There is a flicker of fear across Her brow, but it is slight, considering how much of a danger Treila has said it is to Her kind. More than that is curiosity. Wonder.

Expectation.

“From Ser Voyne’s throat,” Phosyne says. “You asked me for her body, but you have many already. Forgive me if I do not believe that was, in the end, your aim.”

To have the body, though, the knife had to be removed.

The knife is what matters.

The Lady inclines Her head in acknowledgment. “What a wonder you are, little mouse. And so you would offer me the knife instead?”

“The knife,” Phosyne agrees. “And in exchange, you will give me the castle and all the lives inside it that you hold dominion over.”

Her gaze sharpens at that. Her lips curl. “Not freedom? Not knowledge?”

“Those can come later,” Phosyne says, helpless but to smile back.

The knife, of course, is not just a knife. Phosyne knows that, even if she doesn’t know what, exactly, it represents. It is heavy in her hand, too heavy just for the metal it is made of. She lifts it an inch higher, takes a step closer.

From the outside, it is a lopsided bargain. A knife for the castle? A knife for victory? The Lady should rightfully push for more, but She doesn’t. Instead the air between them thrums with anticipation. With hunger.

Phosyne breathes shallowly, as if afraid to disturb the air between them. Her mind works. She wants to ask what the knife means, but isn’t so foolish as to tip her hand.

I go nowhere I do not please,the Lady had told her, upon their first meeting.But I do wander everywhere.

Except—not everywhere. Nearly, but not everywhere. Something changed, to allow Her to enter Aymar. It wasn’t just chance. Phosyne feels the castle spread out around her, feels its comparative lightness. Before, it was heavy. Before, the bees could come and go from the chapel, but could not carry the Lady’s touch. Alone, this castle was alone, set apart, soheavy—

The knife is heavy in the same way.

The knife is made of iron. A castle should be full of it. Aymar no longer is.

“Wait—”

“I accept,” the Lady says, rising from Her throne. She crosses the few feet between them, fine-boned hand extended. Her fingers glide across the back of Phosyne’s hands, gentling her grip until the Lady bears the weight of the blade.

The iron does not burn Her, does not hurt Her, does notstopHer from gripping the hilt and bringing the edge to Her lips.

The tangled snarl of Phosyne’s thoughts fall slack, revealing a larger tapestry. Iron, collected and melted down, forged into a one-time weapon, launched over their walls in a fruitless bid for freedom. It bought them time against their mortal enemies, but also time enough for bees to return from far-off fields. They brought something with them that tainted the honey. Something from the unseen world, something of the creature who came in the guise of the Lady, spreading a thin sheen of ownership across every person who knelt to take the blessing on their tongues. The False Lady arrived soon after, into a world all but free of iron, iron that girds towns and castles everywhere, protecting, enfolding, hiding.

Without iron, She is free to come and go as She pleases.

Without iron, there is nothing to stop Her hunger.

The Lady holds in Her hand a blade of iron, one of just a few left in Aymar, and it does not hurt Her.

“Oh,” Phosyne whispers.

The Lady smiles.

It is a kindly smile. An indulgent one. She draws close to Phosyne,close enough to lean in, to press Her lips to Phosyne’s forehead. “The castle,” She murmurs against Phosyne’s quivering brow, “and all the lives within it I hold dominion over.”

Her world goes white.

Awareness staggers after, pinpoints of color resolving behind her eyelids. A hundred lives, a thousand, so many creatures and not all of them mortal, not all of them finite. Dominion is not just control; it is power over, it is powerwithin. She can hear them all, feel them all. They clamor at her, screaming, shouting, and she wants to touch each and every one of them.

The refugees, ecstatic in their feasting. The lesser beasts that came to the Lady’s table, now sated on honeyed flesh, waiting for command. The Absolving Saint, standing in the heat of the kitchen, watching Phosyne through layer and layer of stone, eyes cool and assessing. Ser Leodegardis set like a trophy at his side, heedless of what has happened but knowing, instinctively, to be afraid.

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