Page 127 of The Starving Saints

Treila keeps casting wary looks back at them, and Voyne keeps her expression closed off.

She hopes they will reach the throne room. She has a suspicion this will only work in that space.

Voyne has learned a thing or two about negotiations, about oaths, about intent. Everything within these walls is an exchange; their horrible guests had only made it more literal. Power bargained for sustenance. Obligations forming the warp and weft of the world, reciprocal and definitional. She was, perhaps, the first to feel the truth of it, eating at the False Lady’s table, falling at Her feet. She’d come very close, she knows now, to freeing them all that first night. If she’d only kept her head, struck the False Lady instead of the Warding Saint, they could all still be slowly starving, waiting for the end.

That—that is all that waits for them on the other end, though. Voyne stops on the stairs, mere feet from the closed door to the throne room. Treila makes it a few more steps, then pauses with her hand on the wood. Glances over her shoulder.

“If I do this,” Voyne says, “if I break the siege, then what next?”

Treila quirks a brow. “Then we walk out of here.”

“Etrebia—”

“Is gone. I have seen it. We exist, in here, in a bubble. Beyond the gates is freedom, Voyne.”

Her mouth goes dry.

“The refugees,” she murmurs.

“Those that live,” Treila agrees, slowly, with a fine smile, so very much like a pleased cat’s, “have survived the worst siege in history, and will walk out with us. A fine trick, hm?”

A few nights’ horrors for salvation.

Voyne only prays they will not remember.

“Come,” Treila says. “Whatever you have planned, let’s do it quick. There’s one saint left in the keep, and while I am eager to tear his throat out too, I’m a little woozy.”

Voyne nods, and cradles Phosyne a little closer.

Phosyne whimpers, and presses her face to Voyne’s throat. Outside, lightning splits the sky, and one of the guard posts spins lazily in the air, shedding tables and chairs and, Voyne imagines, playing cards. A whole keep, rent apart.

They don’t have much time to save the rest.

Treila pushes open the door, and Voyne carries Phosyne over the red and white and yellow paint that has dried tacky on the stone. The hive behind the throne has collapsed in upon itself, black now, blighted, bloated from too much weight, too unnatural an energy. There is no hum of bees as Voyne kneels and deposits Phosyne, gently, on the floor. Rises and steps over her, goes to the throne.

Sits.

Feels the echo of hands upon her scalp, a circlet of iron, a promise fulfilled.

Treila looks at her above Phosyne’s shivering form, then skirts around her, comes to the side of the throne. Behind it. Her feet crush foulness, break it open, spill Jacynde’s defiance back out into the world.

When Treila settles one hand on Voyne’s shoulder, leaning the rest of her weight against the back of the throne, it feels right and good. Voyne tips her head back. Smiles.

Treila’s lips quirk in response.

“You had better know what you’re doing,” she warns.

She is magnificent. Tested and honed and entirely herself. That the False Lady ever stole her from Voyne’s eyes is a travesty that can only be rectified by another decade’s fond appraisals.

“Do you trust me?” Voyne asks, voice catching, hopeful. “Because I trust you, to the ends of the earth.”

“You killed my father,” Treila reminds her. “Sentenced me to starve. And taught me how to fight, and made me hope for better things. Yes, I trust you.”

Voyne nods. Looks back at Phosyne.

Watches as her spine arches against the stone.

“Come here,” Voyne says. “Please, Phosyne. Just a little more.”

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