It doesn’t hurt, not anymore. Like her finger, the pain subsided more quickly than it should have. But next time it will be worse. She knows it will. Her creature of the gap in the stone let her back in for a pittance, because he is confident she will need to flee through his embrace again soon. When the time comes, he might ask for a hand. A leg. Something more.

He is confident she will pay it. If she’s indebted her future self, she’s going to make it worth it. First, she needs to find Phosyne, tell her what she’s learned about the world outside. Use that strange mind of hers to calculate their next move. See if, perhaps, they can’t turn Ser Voyne into a weapon for their own ends.

She leaves her candle burning and climbs up to the tunnel.

She hesitates.

This darkness doesn’t have hands or teeth within it, she knows that, but she feels a phantom pain in her bones all the same. She has been here before, oversensitized, ready for another blow. It will just take a little patience and a lot more force.

Treila strips, makes her bundle. Feels the edge of the tunnel and leans in, listening for whispers.

There are none. She flattens herself out and crawls forward.

Like before, the tunnel makes her way easy. It’s definitely larger now; several times, she has to grope around unseeing to find where the path hooks around to next. The dimensions are stretched so much that it doesn’t feel like the same tunnel, and her heart pounds in her chest. She wants to stop, to retreat, to flee.

She pushes forward instead.

It is nighttime once more when she emerges into her workroom, shivering uncontrollably. The ringing in her head has subsided, one small mercy. Her hands are clumsy as she dresses, sets her blade back into her boot. She keeps her gaze fixed on the doorway, taking deep breaths, trying to discern the scent of turning leaves. But instead she smells baking stone, baking skin. Vital, urgent scents. And she can hear singing.

It’s still the height of summer here, and at least some of the castle’s occupants are still alive.

She slips up into the keep proper, moving low, slow, quiet. The ringing creeps in once more, but she listens past it with her remaining ear, head cocked, eyes lowered. The singing continues, coming in through the windows, echoing across the stone. She recognizes hymns, but the singers keep falling into hysterical laughter that sounds half-pained.

In the main room on the ground floor, she sees guards, sitting at a table as if to play dice. As if nothing at all has changed. But they do not wear armor, and they do not play dice. They stare at nothing, fingers twitching on the tabletop.

There’s no good way past them out to the yard, so she climbs higher instead.