Page 34 of The Starving Saints

Cleaning the rest of the room is barely the work of breathing.

Pneio and Ornuo even help, their bodies drying out the stone once she’s cleared it. Everything is back in its place so quickly

it’s as if it never left, as if she never fell apart into the frazzled shell of a woman. It should feel unfamiliar, this care

and order. But she slips into this new skin of hers gently. It feels like coming home.

Phosyne prowls her entire room and, finding nothing else amiss and no sign of Ser Voyne’s return, she turns to herself. She

is filthy. She is skinny and weak, barely more than a particularly cantankerous corpse, refusing to succumb. And, most importantly,

she can still taste honey, just a little. Can still feel the hands of saints upon her flesh.

She needs a bath.

There’s no tub in this room, of course, nothing but her bucket of water, but there is the cistern below. Through the hole

she created, she drops a few dried lavender sprigs, followed by another sprinkling of her clever purifying powder. They disappear

into the dark pool of water below her feet. Next, she lowers in her steaming bucket; as it overflows, she sees the candle

inside light up the whole cistern gold, sees the water begin to heat. And then Phosyne widens the gap in the floor and lowers

herself down.

She sinks into the water, robes and all.

Two dark heads peek over the rim and stare down at her, but Pneio and Ornuo make no move to join her. She beckons, and they

just sit down, sniffing the air. Only creatures of fire, then, not water. She shouldn’t try to force their nature.

They’re also undoubtedly hers , more even than she is herself. No need to purify them. But Phosyne can still feel the lingering traces of the Lady’s influence

on her, and she ducks under the surface of the water, letting her clothes weigh her down as she scrubs her face, her hair,

her hands.

She opens her eyes and gazes up, even as the water stings her corneas.

She opens her lips, and lets the water scour away the last of the honey.

When she hauls herself up from the cistern, a minute or an hour or a day later, she is clad not in roughspun, poorly cared

for robes, but in silk. Her skin glows faintly. Her body feels whole and healthy for the first time in years.

What a trick.

She glances down at the candle still burning in the cistern, then decides to leave it there. The gap, though, she closes.

It only takes a few touches to pull the stone back into place, leaving a few latticed gaps to allow fragrant steam to perfume

the room.

“That’s nicer, isn’t it? It does get so dry.” She smiles at Pneio, who gazes fondly at her, then rolls onto his back, proffering

his belly. She pets it. It is lightly furred, small tufts of fleece wedged below the edges of scales.

She wonders how well it would burn, and plucks a pinch of it.