Page 94 of The Starving Saints

But the garden is not as she knew it.

It is less a garden and more a jungle now. Plants grow verdant and high, blotting out the sun. The air is thick with pollen and sap and greenery, and Treila has to force her way into the thicket, into the dark. It folds around her, welcoming. The dark of the forest, waiting for her still.

Heaving for breath, Treila squirms between the glass needle-covered vines of what looks like an enormous squash plant. At this scale, the needles drag across her skin, not piercing, not sticking. Still, she is covered in scratches on the other side. Her blood clings to the vine. She is shaking as she presses deeper, inside a yarrow plant ten times the size of any natural thing, and huddles as its perfume clogs her nose, makes her shiver.

It will hide her scent, though. It will hide her from sight. It will give her a minute, just a minute, to catch her breath and think.

The knife in her hand will protect her, if she uses it well. If she can get behind her Loving Saint, she can plunge it into his back, and even if his fear was only mortal nerves, she can kill him all the same. But she will have to be careful. He can take whatever form he pleases. She will need to derive some test, some way of knowing.

He is sentimental. He is jealous. He won’t trust her, not one bit, but if she offers him something he would like...

Perhaps the gap, below the castle? Perhaps that would be enoughto snare his attention. Then, down in the dark, she can offer him for her freedom instead of another piece of herself. A way out, when she has won the rest of the day.

Yes. Yes, that is the best option here, and she just needs to be strong enough to take it. She just needs her confidence back. Needs to remember that she isn’t prey.

She hears footsteps.

She is no longer alone.

Instinct makes her cower. It’s five years ago, and she’s huddled in the roots of a tree, a hollow that might have been an animal’s burrow, once, but is too shallow to truly conceal her. She’s being hauled out by her hair, desperate hands pawing at her, testing the meat left on her bones. No,no, she is in Aymar castle, she is hiding in the garden, and just like five years ago, she will not give in so easily.

Treila adjusts her grip on the knife. Shifts inside her hiding spot, peers through the gloom. She looks for flat white faces, those hideous paintings come to life with sharp teeth, and sees nothing. No flashes of light, no jerking limbs.

But she does see blood.

Blood on cloth and metal and skin. The other presence in the garden is keeping low to the ground, is stalking through the shadows. On the hunt. Treila shifts and makes out something gleaming and heavy in one of the hunter’s hands.

Then nothing. Rustling. Stems bending, snapping. The hunter is not coming straight toward Treila, but they are coming close enough. Treila debates staying still and quiet, or pushing farther into the green.

She is so tired of being still and quiet. Her blood is boiling in her veins. If it is another human, she can overpower them—if they’re actually a threat at all.

If it is a saint, she won’t hesitate to strike this time.

She takes the measure of the land around her, listens carefully to judge her hunter’s path. She turns to her left, eases herself from the tangle of yarrow and between stalks of some flower that looms overhead. Petals and thorns caress her cheeks as she edges forward andleft and right, weaving through the forest. The shadows are a gift. A mantle. Something to strengthen her limbs and her heart.

But when, at last, Treila reaches a small clearing, it is around a familiar stone bench.

And Ser Voyne stands across from her, bloody and beautiful in gleaming armor.

Treila’s breath seizes in her throat, and she retreats a few feet back into the shadows.

The slick sound of death in the throne room, the buzzing of bees echoing around the Loving Saint’s words, both have primed her poorly. Ser Voyne, in armor, bloody and disheveled, pitches her straight into the painful vice grip of memory. Of nightmare. Her father, out in the yard, upon a platform. On his knees. Begging, as Ser Voyne raised her blade. The audience: her family, the king, every servant of her house. She’d looked away, when the sword fell. When her father’s humiliatingly desperate noises ceased, and there was only the wetthunk, the roll of his head.

You have no time for this.She forces herself to look at Ser Voyne and remember her, weak and so reliant on Phosyne.

But is it even her? The armor she wears is all wrong, sitting strangely. This might be instead the Loving Saint, wearing the guise best suited to hurt her. To spur her to foolish decisions. To run and fall at this woman’s feet and beg for her protection.

Beg, because Ser Voyne owes her this much, doesn’t she?

Five years. It’s beenfive years, and she is being a child, wanting to still play out this drama. Wanting some apology for what is done and gone.

The Loving Saint is hunting her. And this, she is certain, is a trap. It is time to cut out her weakness, once and for all. She adjusts her grip on the knife, this time for keeps, and begins to edge around the clearing.

Treila’s halfway to her target when her foot lands on the curved shell of a snail. It cracks open before she can pull her weight back.

Ser Voyne’s head jerks up at the sound, turns in her direction.

Treila freezes. She’s in the weeds, but not so far back as to beinvisible—to anybody else. She waits for Voyne’s gaze to skip over her. Because the real Ser Voyne cannot notice her, she reminds herself. Cannot even conceive of her.

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