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She tries to focus of the feel of his hands, his mouth, to divine some meaning in the patterns they map onto her skin. There is not much to see, nothing visible to analyze. But over his shoulder, there is movement.

“What is that?” Treila whispers, gaze skipping up to shadows that seem to move, to dance. Past the buzzing in her ears, she hears breathing, too many dissonant tempos to belong to just her or the beast against her.

“The rest of my kind,” that beast murmurs. “Drawn to the feast.”

“There are more?”

“So many more, little things that like to eat my leavings. We’ve made a path for them to come and play. Are you afraid?”

Bravado wins her nothing here, but honesty doesn’t, either. Instead, she tries to study them.

He takes her silence as nerves all the same. “If you’re afraid of other teeth, I could stake my claim on you. If you asked nicely.”

“Hasn’t somebody already done that?” She tilts her head to one side, bares her missing ear once more.

From the corner of her eye, she watches as his beautiful lips ripple into a snarl, then recompose into a pleasant smile. “Oh no, you didn’t let them. You negotiated well.” Yes, he is a jealous monster; if he wants to lay claim to her, she can use that.

It’s still hard to look away from the unknown threat and focus on him instead, but she does it smoothly. She arches up so that their bodies press together. Maneuvers them onto their sides so her back is to the wall once more.

“And you think I’ll negotiate poorly with you?”

“I think you have less to lose now.” His eyes are heavy-lidded. He thinks he’s winning.

She kisses him to help that thought along. It’s light. Teasing. Barely a breath.

“You made a mistake, last time we spoke,” she murmurs against his mouth. “You told me I was worth something.”

“Did I?” He kisses her again. She adjusts her posture little by little, so that she maintains enough space to move, to retreat, even as she lets him tip her chin back, nurse at her lower lip.

“You’ll have to promise me something more than a good time.”

“What if I let Ser Voyne see you?” He nips, swallows down her small, shocked gasp.

“You can’t offer that. What would your Lady say?” There is a hierarchy here, one she thinks she can exploit. And better not to think of the possibility of Voyne seeing her again. She only needs to stay here a little longer, figure out what else she can learn.

“She doesn’t have to know,” the Loving Saint purrs.

He presses on her shoulders, and she has no choice but to slide partway down the length of his body, until her mouth is close to his hips. He means it to be seductive, but the angle makes her bristle. He thinks she is weak.

She must put them back on equal footing.

Her hand finds her knife. She slides it from her boot as she trails her lips along the line of his hip. His hands slide into her hair, and his eyes narrow to pleased slits.

She presses the flat of the blade to the inside of his thigh.

He goes still as death.

“Surely you’re not afraid of a little danger,” Treila says with a coy smile, leaning back for a better view of his face. “Surely you trust me. What say we mark each other?”

She trails the point of it up his body, up his throat, until it touches the underside of his chin. Now it’s him who’s afraid. Cornered-animal afraid. Even though he could take another form in an instant, or even simply back away. It’s like the steel of it holds him fixed upon its point.

Only the third knife he’s seen since he arrived, hm? Yes, she supposes with the Priory’s requisitions, there aren’t many blades left. Strange, though, for him to be so frightened.

A whisper of sensation on her hand: a bee, alighting, wings shivering in the air. Treila flinches.

For one second, the blade no longer touches the Loving Saint at all.

That’s all it takes, and then she’s falling back, the Loving Saint rising up to his full height. His beautiful face doesn’t shift, but the tension that dances between them has a different edge, now. He, like all the rest, ishungry, and he watches her with the eyes of a shrike, prepared to impale her on barbed thorns to keep her all to himself as he tears her to pieces.