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But time is inexorable, as is the human stomach.
Now they stare each other down across a vast gulf that grew when they weren’t looking.
It isn’t the balm it used to be, back when she was young and idealistic and fervent in her belief that the world could ever be orderly, could ever make sense, but it still soothes her jagged edges.
She can trade one escort for another. A king is not so different from a madwoman.
They cry themselves to sleep each night, now that they know the truth: victory does not mean freedom, and they are all still starving.
No benediction, no offer of salvation—just silent judgment, and then She’d turned and walked away.
Which leaves one decision only: Can she go forward in blackness—or will she die if she tries?
Certainty feels safe. But certainty is also limiting.
How can the Priory reject understanding the world, just because it follows an unfamiliar order?
“Death is the natural result of life,”
Death does not come all at once; it leaves many of us in the sunlight behind, to grapple with a loss that comes seemingly out of order. Our own rhythms distract us from the procession.”
master yourself.
“You are mine to care for,”
She really needs her armor, Phosyne thinks. She doesn’t know how to exist without it.
“I have never in all my years,” the prioress says at last, voice grudging, pained, “seen any indication that the Lady or Her attendants give a single shit what happens to Her worshippers. And I can’t believe She would choose to start here, now, with us.”
And then she thinks she will weep again, pinned by old mistakes, fierce regrets, confusion, desperation.
Perhaps it is only natural, in the presence of divinity. Weakness as holy offering, radical devotion.
A miracle so profound may be indistinguishable from horror. Phosyne certainly feels horrified.
Maybe faith, when brought to life, is too much when you are drowned in it your whole life. The sustaining liquor of it suddenly made solid.
There’s anger there. Good. She should be angry. If she could see the mess they’re in, she would be raging, and she would be beautiful in her rage.
Her heart is breaking, her whole world close to shattering into a thousand pieces she will never be able to put back together.
Her eyes close in decadent pain.
“Sometimes,” Treila says, slowly, carefully, enunciating every word, “you just have to leave it all behind and start over.”
Phosyne hopes she is seeing reason, not madness.
“Dark things happen in winter woods.”
Run, the animal part of her says. Run, now. This is nothing good.
“You are no saint,” she ventures. His brows lift, pleased. “I am to them,”
“If you stay,” he says, eyes shining in the evening light, “it is eat or be eaten. But I promise I’ll make it good.”
“If somebody hears you,” she says, haltingly, stumbling over each syllable, “then She can hear you, too.”
She can’t smell the feast here, her only blessing, but the memory of it, divorced from the evidence of how wrong it is, is enough to make her ache.
There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to leave, not yet, but that part is curiosity, and her curiosity has taken her nowhere good.
either Voyne is going to bear down on her again (and she’ll probably like it again), or Phosyne’s going to tug on the leash,
“I’ve already had all the rules of my life turned upside down before,” Treila says, finally. “It’s easier to keep your head when you know it’s all you can rely on.”
though it’s not true in the slightest. The lie is sweet on her tongue.
“Do you even know what it is you do to the world?”
She doesn’t notice how she is gentler with the girls with golden hair.
It’s like she fell asleep below the earth and woke up only to find the future is now the present.
Treila makes for it as quickly as she can, desperate for the world to make sense again.
He also has that honey on his tongue, and that is as persuasive as a kiss.
They twist those things to suit their purposes, but they can’t ignore them.
the sun was at its zenith only a little while ago.
Desire is a strange, unfamiliar beast.
Treila de Batrolin, fierce and broken, kisses like she is dying.
Her desires have grown teeth.
and they have teeth, they have so many teeth, and she has teeth too, she could tear them all to pieces—
Did she know that you were there, or did she think the sun was merely shining upon her face?”
His hair whispers over her skin
“Scared little girl, always hiding in the dark. Do you think that makes your teeth as sharp as mine?”
She is the dark thing in the forest, feral and fierce, feeding herself in his misery.
She isn’t here to play their games. She is here to win them.
