Page 37 of The Starving Saints

When the door closes behind Treila, the room settles into silence.

Phosyne gives Treila a head start. Too awkward, to meet upon the stairs. Instead, she takes a moment to breathe. Her eyes

close, and she lets herself spread. Not physically, she does not sink into the stone, but she remembers how it felt to ride

on a bee’s wings through the meadow, and she can see, all around her, a widening circle of—not light, it is not light, but

it is visible all the same. She can feel them, her little borders. They’re small but strong. They embrace the room, making

such a lovely garden for her. And then, beyond them: the whole of the main keep tower, spidering out from where she stands.

Four shining beacons, fever sweet. One walks the walls. Another is close by, hunting, blood running hot. Another beacon is

in the garden, and the last down in the great hall.

Only her bee-brought visitors. And they have nothing like Ser Voyne at their feet.

In between them, a riot of thinner color, all bleeding one into the next. She hears breathing, from below. So many bodies,

piled upon one another. Giggles, too, at the barest edge of hearing.

Still no trace of Ser Voyne.

Ser Voyne won’t look at all like them, Phosyne reasons. She will be a solid little stone, a pebble refusing erosion.

That pebble is—there, just below her feet. Near at hand. Down, bright and shining, in the throne room.

She is alive, Phosyne feels sure of that.

Phosyne opens the door.

Her hallway is empty. There’s no trace of Jacynde, but of course, Treila would have said something if there were. And there is no trace of those hungry shadows she can sense, those hushed giggles. The twin torches she kindled from Pneio’s and Ornuo’s wool burn bright and hot, keeping them far away.

She thinks to take one with her, but can’t risk breaking the boundary that is her tower. She may need it yet.

Into the darkness she steps instead. Down, down, until she reaches the door to the heart of the keep tower.

Ser Voyne kneels there before the empty throne.

(Not a throne, Phosyne corrects absently; it’s just a chair. A chair that, when Ser Leodegardis sat in it, was still just

a chair, but when King Cardimir sat in it became a throne. And King Cardimir is not here.)

Still, Ser Voyne kneels as if it does contain her liege, and Phosyne approaches obliquely so that she can get a glimpse of the knight’s face. Her brow is furrowed

(but when is it not?) and she looks... tired. The light has not gone out of her, no, but where she had looked upon Phosyne

with barely concealed adoration after she chose to remain with her in Aymar, now she has retreated into herself.

This is not how this woman is meant to be. Phosyne has never seen her in her glory, in her element, but she can imagine it

well enough. Astride a charger on a battlefield, armor gleaming, eyes flashing with certainty and precisely focused rage.

Kneeling here, at this throne (chair), adoring and ready to serve, to turn the keen edge of her focus on any enemy that dare

come.

It is a lovely picture. It is, Phosyne suspects, what the Lady sees in her as well.

She thinks to greet her, breathe her name into the midnight stillness of the room, but Voyne hasn’t noticed her. Voyne hasn’t noticed much of anything. It’s likely, even probable, that something has happened between Phosyne’s tower that morning and this room now, that she has fallen once more at the Lady’s feet in the interim—and that would be Phosyne’s fault, for not keeping her close at hand. Or perhaps she has wound down, her springs uncoiled, needing to be is sued another directive, another command. Phosyne doesn’t know the specific steps of the dance between them; maybe it’s only through the continued application of will that Voyne even exists, now.

An odd thought—it’s in her voice, but not her accent. It doesn’t taste right. Taste is important. The Lady had tasted different, honey on the tongue. Phosyne doesn’t taste honey with that thought,

but something spiced, like a cumin seed cracked between her teeth.

Interesting .

Some change, accompanying her transformation, her room’s? Some impingement of the unseen world onto her mind? Perhaps her

leaps of intuition, of recognition, have taken on a new character with her broadened appreciation of the world. And what a

leap it is, that maybe Voyne doesn’t exist without somebody to obey. Phosyne tries to follow the taste of it. She gets nowhere.

Nowhere, that is, except the throne.

It’s right in front of her now. She’s watching Voyne, so she didn’t notice when she got this close, but now her hand is on

the armrest. She hesitates, but only briefly.

She doesn’t taste cumin anymore, but the memory of it is... persuasive. It makes sense. Phosyne wants to test it.

Phosyne sits on the throne.

Ser Voyne’s head jerks up, immediately, as if on a tether. She meets Phosyne’s eyes and her lips part. She is... she is

beautiful , radiant, kneeling there. She belongs there. There is purpose in her eyes, in her limbs, and if Phosyne could taste her skin,

she would taste...

Competence. Loyalty. Devotion. What do those taste like?

Ser Voyne is going to protest. Phosyne knows her well enough now; Voyne will be angry that Phosyne is sitting where her liege

should sit, where Leodegardis should sit if not. Phosyne doesn’t belong here.

But Voyne isn’t protesting. She’s looking at Phosyne with something that looks very much like longing.

Phosyne rests her head against the back of the chair and decides to pretend. Just a little. Maybe it’s the high of defending her room, carving out a little square of territory in this benighted castle; maybe it’s just perversity, for she has so much of it even in just her little finger. She remembers the cistern, Voyne on her knees. She remembers the smithy, Voyne’s body flush up against hers, angry, raging, but still so tightly leashed to her duty: protect Phosyne, make her produce a miracle.

“Come closer, Ser Voyne,” she whispers into the thick heat enveloping the room.

And though Ser Voyne shudders, she does not resist or protest. She shuffles forward on bended knee, close enough for Phosyne

to touch.

This is not the time or place. They exist in a small circle within a larger, infiltrated world. The Lady and Her saints prowl

these halls, and at any moment, eyes might blink at them from out of the darkness. Out here, Phosyne has no ready defense

against them. If she were a rational woman, she would tell Voyne, now, to get up. To follow her, back to her rooms. They could

cross that threshold, collapse into safety, and perhaps even play this game a little longer, if this impulse hasn’t fizzled

out by then.

But Phosyne is not rational. She is powerful. She has cleansed her land and her body, and she sits now wearing fine silk robes

where once they were roughspun wool, and she has done all of this herself.

Phosyne reaches out and cups Voyne’s cheek.

“I have made a place for us,” she murmurs.

Ser Voyne presses her cheek into Phosyne’s palm and closes her eyes, tight. She shivers. She is full of barely restrained

energy.

She wants to be led. Commanded. Phosyne can’t taste it yet, but she knows it.

Desire is a strange, unfamiliar beast. Phosyne isn’t sure when last she truly let herself feel it, but it’s kindling in her

now.

“Touch me,” Phosyne tells her.

And Ser Voyne does.

It’s not tentative, not at all. One moment, her quaking knight is nuzzling her palm, and the next Ser Voyne rises up, covers

Phosyne with her body, presses her to the seat. Her knee remains bent—she still offers just the slightest capitulation, or

perhaps she expects Phosyne to push her back.

Phosyne doesn’t. She grins as Voyne’s hand fits itself around Phosyne’s throat, the way they’ve practiced, and she arches her spine. She lifts one foot, hooks it around Voyne’s leg, wishes there was armor there.

She wishes for a lot of things.

She asks for only one: “Talk to me. I know you’re in there, Ser Voyne.”

Voyne answers with a moan, her hand tightening. But the bond between them compels. “You’re like Her,” she gasps out.

She sounds as angry as she is adoring. Ser Voyne didn’t speak to the Lady that way. No, this is just for Phosyne.

“But you remember that you hate me,” Phosyne says, voice reedy from the weight of Voyne’s fist.

Ser Voyne grimaces, relents just a little. Just enough to draw so close to her that Phosyne could kiss her lips.

“I don’t hate you,” Ser Voyne whispers.

“Because I haven’t told you to?”

Voyne convulses, then, halfway to a seizure. Her hand tightens, then drops to Phosyne’s shoulder. To the throne beneath. She

is panting. “Because this isn’t you. Phosyne—”

She doesn’t want to hear it, and so she stoppers her knight’s lips with a kiss. It’s better than fighting her. Better than

feeling shame, too, or hesitation, and the important thing is that Ser Voyne doesn’t hate her. She’s groaning into Phosyne’s

mouth, her hands sliding down along her body. All the world beyond the two of them is gone, and Phosyne is so eager to tip

into the abyss.

And then the flavor of cumin blossoms between her teeth, fills her mouth, overwhelms the taste of Ser Voyne’s skin and brings

with it the certainty that they are not alone. Phosyne pulls back, looks up, and sees a waiting audience of eyes, a hundred

of them, more , all watching, all set above grinning, hungry mouths.