Page 72 of The Starving Saints

No need to ask about the siege directly; anybody close enough to walk here would know the details. But the castle gatesareclosed. “Has nobody come out?” she asks, gambling.

She wins. “Not a soul,” the man confesses. “The strangest thing. We’ve been here two months now, keeping watch, and nothing. Not even somebody up on the walls.”

“Have you tried to go up? Force your way in? Perhaps—perhaps they have all—”

Starved.It’s been long enough, judging by the season around them.

“Can’t get close.”

Treila frowns. Nowthatis strange. As strange as the fact that it is no longer summer. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that we have tried countless times to get near, and we have never reached the door.”

“Do they attack?” She sees visions of Ser Voyne manning thewalls, sending volleys of arrows out at any who dare approach—but no, all their arrowheads have been melted down.

“No,” the soldier says. “Nobody is there, and we cannot get close. The Priory has been unable to explain it. If it weren’t for the fact that the king is said to still be inside...”

They wouldn’t be here at all.

Treila nods, slowly, gaze fixed on the walls. She wants to ask about Etrebia, about how close this stretch of border is to failing, but she doesn’t have to. It’s obvious in how well-fed this camp is, how healthy and, ultimately, relaxed this man is beneath his boredom and frustration and concern. This is not a man at war. The enemy has been driven off.

There is a world out here to return to.

They let her curl up close enough to the fire that she could sleep, especially once she’s given a blanket (worn, a little rat-chewed, but not so bad) by the man with the twice-broken nose. She closes her eyes to slits obediently, lets her body be limp and vulnerable in the dirt. Nobody approaches her, and she is quickly forgotten, left to think. To argue with herself.

It is eat or be eaten, the Loving Saint purrs in her memory. She will not be eaten; she has won her freedom, paid for it with bone and flesh, and she will not give that up.

She’s not that sentimental.

Ser Voyne will suffer and die inside those walls. The king will. Edouart and Simmonet may already be turned into pies, for all she knows. Phosyne has at least half a chance, Treila figures, then asks herself why she cares. What have they exchanged except a little food, a little magic?

It should be easy to walk away.

She should be delighted to have escaped victorious.

She knows better than to think herself a coward for taking the smart route to safety.

And yet she does not sleep. The autumn chill descends in force,and with it, the memory of the winter after her father’s death. The memory of how the remnants of her household starved and died. Human flesh, tough and wasted, the only thing keeping her alive.

It won’t be like that, she tells herself. But she trembles beneath her blanket anyway, because her body knows better: that as kind as this camp has been to her, they won’t let her stay indefinitely. That she will be hungry again. And that if she walks away, she will carry with her the weight of everybody she left behind to die.

Does Ser Voyne carry that guilt, too?

Treila rolls onto her back and stares up at the stars, and she replays her conversation with the Loving Saint, looking for proof that she is making the right choice. Instead, she finds a bigger tangle. More questions. There had been so many little fractures: how he’d responded to her knife, how he’d spoken of the thing that wears the Constant Lady’s face, how he’d gazed at her as ifhewas unsure whether he’d prefer to eat or be eaten.

She will never know what is at the core of her that so angers a creature who can hide an entire person from the mind of another, that so delights a creature who can grow a feast from a fingernail. And she will never know if that means she could have saved the others.

Unless she goes back.

Two versions of herself begin to take shape: One, fleeing, too weak to take anybody else with her. Too smart to stay and risk herself. Willing to brave another long, dark winter, hoping she will survive more easily this time.

And the other, clever and possibly foolish, who believes she’s strong enough to fight. To get what she wants. To finally stand and refuse to be displaced.

She could die either way. But only one option provides the possibility of victory instead of just survival.

As the sun rises once more, Treila stands at a crevice in the rock face far below Aymar. She plants her hands on either side of the darkness and leans in, touches her lips to the black.

“Can you hear me?” she breathes into the crack. “I’d give you another finger to get back in.”

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