“Are you enjoying the feast?” he asks, leaning one elbow into the masses of discarded bone and fruit skin on the table, pillowing his chin upon his fist. The silk he’s draped in wicks up juices, staining fast, then blanching white again as quick as breathing. His nails are clean. No trace of dirt from the gardens.

“I am,” she agrees.

“But you’re not eating.” His gaze flicks to the metatarsals littering her plate, the pile of meat beside it. “Just playing with your food.”

He, then, is not so bewitched. And why would he be? She files that detail away. “Would you believe me if I told you I’m not hungry?” Her hand below the table shifts on the knife.

“I’d believe you more if you said this was unappetizing,” he says. His voice is sweet, his tone delighted. He is fascinated. He is measuring just how lucid she is.

She wants to know what will happen if she acknowledges that lucidity. She says, “No, you’ve cooked it well.”

And he blossoms.

“This isn’t the first time,” he says, and there is something like glee in his voice.

Treila considers the pile. Feels the ghost of tendon between her molars. It’s a private memory, but she looks back up at him through her lashes. “Dark things happen in winter woods.”

His smile spreads. “They do indeed. But what of the fruit? The honey?” He trails one finger along a bit of thick comb, lifts it to his lips. Suckles it off.

“I told you,” she says. “I’m not hungry. But I appreciate the ambience.”

“Fine words for a stitching girl.” He looks her over, measuring, appraising. “But not always a stitching girl, I think. Where did you come from?”

There’s a hint of a threat in his voice, all wrapped up in delight. Any trace of gentleness is gone from him now. He’s sharp, wickedly so, and Treila is certain now that this is no Loving Saint.

“Come closer,” she says, gaze raking over his body as she takes his measure in turn, “and I might tell you.”

She thinks Phosyne might be able to learn something from his gutted corpse, and she thinks she can get it out of the hall without anybody noticing, if she’s quick. If she’s good.

He rounds the table and places one knee on the bench beside her, caging her in with his broad shoulders. The curtain of his hair falls around them both. Her smile twists into wicked glee, and she rises fast, knife flashing.

He catches her by the wrist, the point less than an inch from his gut.

“Do you know,” he murmurs, voice silken and low, so quiet she shouldn’t be able to hear it through the din, and yet it winds around her ear, “that is perhaps only the third knife I’ve seen in this entire castle?”