Page 69 of The Starving Saints

“Yes,” the Absolving Saint says. “Yes, I can smell the propolis beneath her nails still.”

“She’s dying,” the Loving Saint adds.

Phosyne’s heart beats triple time in her chest. They have not crossed the threshold yet, not even toed the edge of it, and Phosyne could just shut the door. Could hide. Letting them in won’t help Voyne return safely, and she should not risk herself for Jacynde.

But they haven’t brought food with them. Phosyne has her water. Perhaps it is safe. Perhaps...

“No,” she makes herself say.

They do not leave.

“There is so much power in you,” the Lady sighs, instead, closing Her eyes and parting Her lips as if She is tasting the air. “And I do not think you even notice it, most of the time. Tell me, little mouse, how it feels to speak.”

Phosyne blinks. “I... to speak?”

“Can you feel the urgency in your own words? The press of muscle that is not muscle, the slide of conjuration? When you purify your waters, what does it taste like, the notes that you sing into being?” The Lady’s eyes are still closed as She recites this litany, lips curling, pleased and pleasing. “Do you even know what it is you do to the world?”

There is nothing for Phosyne to do but swallow thickly, mind spinning, touching lightly upon every way she has nudged the fabric of reality and felt it shift.

“You don’t know what it is you do,” the Warding Saint murmurs. “You’ve only just begun to see.”

“Let us teach you, sweetling,” the Absolving Saint says, orsighs, really, as he gazes at her with calm focus.

Phosyne shivers.

“You know?” she asks, unable, in the end, to resist. She wants context too badly. Wants to understand what it is she’s reaching for. Wants to know what it means when she sinks into stone.

Voyne can’t give her that.

This is how they getyou, she tells herself, letting the words sound like Treila’s because Treila, Phosyne knows, will not let herself be so easily tricked. Hunger is not so hard to resist. Phosyne has done it before.

“We know you’ve done things your kind are not meant to do,” the Loving Saint says.

That causes a ripple of reaction. The Lady does not lookangry, per se, but She does go very still, and the Warding Saint takes one step back and turns to face the white-haired one.

The Loving Saint only smiles.

“And what do you get, for teaching me?” Phosyne asks, because it can’t be this easy.

“Entrance,” the Lady says.

“No,” Phosyne says again.

The Lady’s smile, at last, turns brittle.

Teaching is ongoing. If she lets the Lady in, she doesn’t want to let Her in for all time. To accept would be to form a relationship, but Phosyne only hungers for the knowledge, not the attachment. She needs to draw a boundary.

Phosyne considers a moment longer, and then steps into the hall.

The Lady regards her with something that looks like pleasure. “A novel solution,” the Lady admits. “But that doesn’t tell me what we will get instead in exchange for teaching you.”

Phosyne turns away, puts her back to them. “Teaching me is the reward,” she ventures. “For not harming me.”

She thinks she hears the Absolving Saint gasp in delight.

“Very well,” the Lady agrees.

Phosyne shivers with triumph.

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