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And yet—

It all falls away as she nears Phosyne’s door.

Something is different about it. The proportions are the same, the strange repurposing of the defensive slit beside the door. There is nothing, at first, that marks it as changed. Except the torches by her door are long-since burned down, yet they flash and shine now, driving back the shadows. Even as she staggers closer, they grow, brighten. They pulse, as if with a heartbeat—one much quieter than her own.

Progress. Phosyne has made some progress. This is like her strange everburning candle, and her head swims with relief.

Phosyne is safe. Phosyne is safety.

Her hand hovers above the door, preparing to open it. Or should she knock?

(Knock? This woman is her charge. This woman is insane. This woman is—)

She doesn’t open it or knock.

Behind her, there is the sound of paper rustling. Dried curls of bark, one against the other. They are waiting. Waiting for her to retreat. Waiting for her to go begging to Phosyne for some order.

But Leodegardis has given her direction, something solid, something old and familiar and true. She must take the throne room. Her sword is there. Retrieve the sword; protect the people from this new, worse threat.

She casts one last, longing look at Phosyne’s door and dives back down the stairs.

Voyne’s training, all her experience, is nothing against a foe that seems to be at once a single heaving organism and tens of individuals. She has no weapon but her fists, and finds herself grappling and tearing more than striking. They part like wool rovings, then coalesce once more. Long fingers pluck at her, seize her elbow, haul back on her ankle. There is nothing to parry, only jaws to kick at, and those jaws dissipate between one sunbeam and the next.

While the Lady and Her saints are so terribly close to human, these things are smoke and scent. They echo with the same salivating lust, but lack their betters’ table manners. Flashes of color, flashes of light, there and gone again, flat in one moment, fulsome in the next as claws rake over her back.

She howls in outrage.

But for all the blows that land, none stay. She bleeds, but from scratches only. Not enough to even slick the floor.

If they wish to slake their hunger, there are a hundred other bodies waiting, willing, wilting in the heat outside. They are chasing her for sport.

Killing a stag for sport and trophy is the same for the beast, though. The end point is still death. They will tear her apart. She changes tack; she cannot fight back, but she can endure. Every time she tries to engage, tries to bite back as they rip at her arms, her legs, she loses time.

She drags herself the last few steps down to the throne room door.

And like sun spilling over the horizon, the Constant Lady stands just beyond it.

No—Voyne cannot allow Her that name. The name alone makes her head spin, makes her stagger up to her feet, yearning in that sunlight’s direction. Toward the memory of how good it had felt to serve. How pure. How simple.

Simplicity is a lie. Service is never easy, not when done right.

Her sword is beyond that sun. But its light has driven back the biting shadows; nothing grabs at her as she steps into the throne room. No more scratches, no more testing bites. Blessed relief.

“Hello, pet,” says the False Lady. “You’ve gone journeying.” Her eyes drop to Voyne’s hands a moment, then trail over her body.Voyne longs for armor, feels exposed, too naked, in her gambeson and leggings. “Journeying, and brought me nothing home. How thoughtless.”

Voyne refuses to answer. There is blood on the air, fresh, stinking. Not hers, too strong to be hers. The hungry things in the shadows only tasted small droplets. She cannot see her sword, or anything she can turn into a weapon.

Turn back.It sounds like Phosyne’s voice in her head, or maybe even Leodegardis’s, advising some final measure of caution. But there is no way back, and only one way forward.

She lunges.

And then the air shimmers, and she is on the ground. The monster’s foot is on her shoulder, pressing lightly. Her skirts are soft, whispering over Voyne’s ruddy, sweat-slick cheek. “No, I don’t think so,” the creature says. “You do keep a civil tongue in that head somewhere. Use it.”

Voyne’s heart beats double time, and her mind is swamped beneath a tidal surge, up and over. She can barely breathe.

“I will kill you,” she makes herself say. “I will kill you for what you’ve done to this place.”

The world is hazy. Her muscles burn with frustrated impetus, a hunting dog kept penned in.