Page 40 of The Starving Saints

Treila de Batrolin, fierce and broken, kisses like she is dying.

Voyne returns her fervor before she can think better of it, blood high in her ears, body trembling. This is who she could

not see. This is the hole in the world. The iron she’d gripped so tightly must have pulled the scales from her eyes, and revealed

Phosyne’s co-conspirator, her way out. Treila de Batrolin.

She is the living embodiment of the moment Voyne began to doubt, before she was King Cardimir’s decorative defender, before

she was reduced to ornamentation, stolen from the field. When Lord de Batrolin plotted against her liege, Voyne had turned

without hesitation on an old friend, a mentor, and slaughtered him in front of an audience.

In front of this girl, trusting and so full of promise.

She’d meant to keep track of her, after. To keep her safe somehow. She’d failed, and Treila had been lost, thought dead. The

winter had been hard. The winter had been more than hard. Later, Voyne had read reports of what was found when the ice thawed:

bodies reduced to gnawed and pot-polished bone, the refugees of de Batrolin’s household reduced to nothing.

But Treila hadn’t died. No, she’d lived, and she is wild now in Voyne’s arms. They fall from the bench, to the ground, tangled

in each other. This is not the compulsion to throw herself on Phosyne’s mercy; this is older, darker. This is five years of

desperation, knowing that Treila had trusted her, wanted her in her adolescent fervor, awkward and so sure despite it.

It’s good that Treila is so red in tooth and claw; when Voyne saw her, meek and vulnerable in the garden for that brief moment before she fled, it had galled her to her very core. Treila de Batrolin, broken by what Voyne had done to her—if she’d been left with her mind for much longer, if the monsters had not arrived, it would have been Treila who destroyed Voyne from the inside out.

She still might.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

Treila doesn’t let her speak. She rolls them over, straddles Voyne, and she is so small, so light.

“Did you make me want you?” Treila asks, pulling back just far enough to see how her eyes flash. “Did you know from the start?

Was it always your intention to break me?”

“Never,” Voyne says, aching, clumsy hands fisting in Treila’s soft clothing. She needs armor. She needs to be protected.

Treila surges back down for another kiss, arches, stretches against her. One of her hands leaves Voyne’s side, but Voyne is

drowning, too confused, too overwhelmed. This is not how she wanted this to go, but somehow it is perfect. Treila was right,

of course; she has spent too long aching in the shadows.

But there’s no way for Voyne to come before her still serving a king. No way to make amends if the False Lady once again hides

Treila from her sight. No way to hold her if she is too tightly tangled in Phosyne’s spiraling web.

She can’t serve Treila, but she can protect her.

Treila returns to her fully, and Voyne reaches up to cradle her jaw. She kisses her tenderly, now, trying to tell her everything.

Trying to make things right.

Pain blossoms in her throat.

Voyne looks down to see Treila’s fist forced against her neck. In that fist is the hilt of her dagger. The blade is buried

deep. It has cut through her esophagus, her trachea, her veins and arteries and everything that she needs to live.

Strange.

She never thought she’d die like this.