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The Lady, too, for She holds dominion over Herself as well as everything else within Her world. Phosyne grabs on to that realization, clings to it, desperate, because it means that She cannot leave. She cannot leave so long as Phosyne remembers to hold Her leash, and so She cannot go out into the world and pass through its bonds of iron as if they mean nothing.

That is important. Phosyne must remember that.Hold tight to the leash, she tells herself again and again, even as the sound of her voice warps, twists, becomes unfamiliar.

She can see light refracting off water, and feel the dawning of revelation inside of her.

The taste of all these lives has opened a yawning pit inside of her. They all hold hunger in their bellies, and it is amplified, sharpened within the crucible of her skull.

What is falling through the stone as if it were water beforethis? What is seeing the boundaries of her little room compared with the whole world stretched out before her?

She wants to know all of it. She wants to touch it all, grasp it, bend it before her. The world isvast, and suddenly she is at the pinnacle of it, and she knows so little.

Tears streak down her cheeks, and she shudders at the cutting, burning reminder that shehascheeks, she has a body, she is just a woman and she is spinning out to pieces.

“Your hunger is so sharp,” the Lady says. Phosyne can barely hear Her. The world is so loud, so large, and she is drowning in it. She is ever-expanding. Something inside her has come loose, and she doesn’t know that she could tamp it down again, even if she wanted to.

And she does not want to.

No, no, she does want to, shedoeswant to.

“You’d take everything if you could,” the Lady murmurs. “And youcan. You are a black hole, little mouse. Endlessly hungry,endlessly, and all you had to do was notice it. How does it feel? Is it good?”

Phosyne sobs, and rain crashes against the stone. The sky itself is breaking. She canfeelit breaking, even if she cannot see it—but she can see it, can’t she? If she shivers out of the boundaries of her skin, if she unleashes herself.

No. No. No, she must hold on, she must—she must remember what she is.

“You need a teacher, little mouse,” the Lady says, and She is on Her knees before Phosyne, and isn’t She so pretty like this? Her face upturned, mouth and nose golden and shining, Her eyes concentric rings of endless color. She knows something of eternity.

Phosyne shudders, reaching out to touch Her. She pushes her fingers into the Lady’s golden hair. Feels every strand of it like molten fire.

“Tell me your name,” the Lady entreats, so sweetly, “and I will be your firm hand. I will steer you through this awakening. Only your name, little mouse, it is such a small thing, but without it you will collapse in on yourself, snuff out the blazing light of you.”

She can feel it. Can feel the impending collapse. A bright flare, and then nothing, and Aymar will be gone. Treila will be gone. Ser Leodegardis will be gone and, somewhere in the bowels of this rock, the body of Ser Voyne will be gone.

Wouldn’t that be for the best? All of them, gone together.

But Phosyne made a promise to remember, and she cannot remember if she disintegrates.

“Phosyne,” she gasps. “My name is Phosyne.”

48

Hello, shield bearer,” the darkness whispers.

Ser Voyne’s lips quirk for just a moment. “Shield bearer?” she asks. “Is that what I am?”

“It’s one thing you are.”

The voice flits between childish and gravelly, thin and deep, as if it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Voyne can see nothing, no hint of face or form. Only the crack in the stone, and the shine of the water below. She half expects a surge of vertigo, but the world is still and steady.

“It is,” she agrees.

She has the odd sensation of the darkness smiling at her. “Are you here to ask for safe passage, like the girl?”

“No.”

What she wants is the lay of the land, and what Treila has told her about this thing intrigues her.

Worries her.