Page 53
Story: 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.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53 (Reading here)
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131