Page 53 of The Starving Saints

But then she realizes somebodyislooking back at her. Clear skin, shining white hair, long lashes brushing his cheeks as he tilts his head slightly in greeting from across the hall.

The Loving Saint crosses the room, and every body in the way shifts aside so he can pass.

Treila goes through her options: run, and invite a chase; look away, and pretend she is as starry-eyed as all the rest; take hold of her knife below the table, and wait to see if it is needed.

She chooses option three.

She even straightens where she sits on the bench, bold and counting every step he takes. At first, those he passes stare up at him, but as he nears, they don’t spare him a single glance. Nobody at Treila’s table reacts as he reaches it, except to shift aside as if gently nudged with an invisible hand. They clear a space across from her.

He sits.

“Are you enjoying the feast?” he asks, leaning one elbow into the masses of discarded bone and fruit skin on the table, pillowing hischin upon his fist. The silk he’s draped in wicks up juices, staining fast, then blanching white again as quick as breathing. His nails are clean. No trace of dirt from the gardens.

“I am,” she agrees.

“But you’re not eating.” His gaze flicks to the metatarsals littering her plate, the pile of meat beside it. “Just playing with your food.”

He, then, is not so bewitched. And why would he be? She files that detail away. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m not hungry?” Her hand below the table shifts on the knife.

“I’d believe you more if you said this was unappetizing,” he says. His voice is sweet, his tone delighted. He is fascinated. He is measuring just how lucid she is.

She wants to know what will happen if she acknowledges that lucidity. She says, “No, you’ve cooked it well.”

And heblossoms.

“This isn’t the first time,” he says, and there is something like glee in his voice.

Treila considers the pile. Feels the ghost of tendon between her molars. It’s a private memory, but she looks back up at him through her lashes. “Dark things happen in winter woods.”

His smile spreads. “They do indeed. But what of the fruit? The honey?” He trails one finger along a bit of thick comb, lifts it to his lips. Suckles it off.

“I told you,” she says. “I’m not hungry. But I appreciate the ambience.”

“Fine words for a stitching girl.” He looks her over, measuring, appraising. “But not always a stitching girl, I think. Wheredidyou come from?”

There’s a hint of a threat in his voice, all wrapped up in delight. Any trace of gentleness is gone from him now. He’s sharp, wickedly so, and Treila is certain now that this is no Loving Saint.

“Come closer,” she says, gaze raking over his body as she takes his measure in turn, “and I might tell you.”

She thinks Phosyne might be able to learn something from his gutted corpse, and she thinks she can get it out of the hall without anybody noticing, if she’s quick. If she’s good.

He rounds the table and places one knee on the bench beside her, caging her in with his broad shoulders. The curtain of his hair falls around them both. Her smile twists into wicked glee, and she rises fast, knife flashing.

He catches her by the wrist, the point less than an inch from his gut.

“Do you know,” he murmurs, voice silken and low, so quiet she shouldn’t be able to hear it through the din, and yet it winds around her ear, “that is perhaps only the third knife I’ve seen in this entire castle?”

She’s panting, adrenaline sick in her veins, and she jerks her hand. Forward, first, then back when he does not let her stab him. But he doesn’t let her retreat, either. She should be frightened. She should beterrified, now that she’s played her hand, but instead she’s leaning closer, as if to kiss him.

She wonders if he’ll let her.

“Ser Leodegardis ordered all iron collected a little over a fortnight ago,” she tells him, voice barely above a breath. “The Priory had need. All our knives, all our tools, even the iron banding on the doors—all went to the nuns. Only the knights kept their armaments.”

She shifts her grip on the knife, just a little, just enough to draw his eye down. “And I kept this,” she purrs.

“Because you were afraid, or because you were hunting?” He’s smiling at her, still, and if anything, his cheeks are flushed with higher color now. His thumb strokes at her pulse. Yes, he would probably let her kiss him.

“Hunting,” she says.

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