“Of course,” Phosyne murmurs, considering. “It makes sense, that your creature beneath the castle would charge for safe passage through its territory.” Her hands haven’t left Treila. They map out her boundaries, find her ankle, her missing sock.

Treila flinches but can’t argue, but she also knows she’s missing something, with this talk of territory. With Phosyne’s new possessiveness.

“The king gave them Aymar,” Phosyne attempts to explain. “They stole in via the Priory’s honeybees, but he could have stopped them. He could have turned them away. Instead, he ate their food, and now Aymar is theirs.”

Yes, they do act like they own the place. But she owes them no fealty.

“We can’t win,” Treila says. “You know that, don’t you? These things—they’re so hungry, and there are more of them now. In the shadows.”

Phosyne rises from the cushions, hands washing over one another again and again. “Have you seen Ser Voyne? She can be our bulwark.”

Treila looks around the room, as if seeing it anew. It is changed—and empty of any other living creature. Her heart falls at a rate she doesn’t want to examine. “She’s not here?”

“No,” Phosyne says. “I sent her to help the people down below. To take the measure of the enemy. You haven’t seen her?”

Treila shakes her head.

Phosyne’s hands clasp tight together.

“Right. Forget her. We have other options,” Treila says. None a winning move, but trying to find Voyne in the chaos of the castle will only leave her vulnerable. The Loving Saint made that clear, and she suppresses a shudder as she remembers his teeth.

She’s too late for her preferred prize; she must make her peace with that. “I can take you to the tunnel again. Perhaps, if you speak to the thing beneath the castle . . .”

Her plan ends there. All she knows is she cannot leave alone again.

Phosyne isn’t looking at her.

She makes herself stand. She is unsteady on her feet, too tired, but she knows better than to ask Phosyne for food; there will be none, or none that will be safe to eat. “There’s no time left. Come with me,” she says.

“No,” Phosyne replies, calmly.

And Treila realizes that the shivering mess of a woman she found nearly starved those few nights ago is not just unrecognizable, but gone entirely.

“Stay here,” Phosyne says. “Or leave. Whichever you prefer. I only ask that you decide now, because once you do, I can’t let you take it back. But I am going to get back what is mine.” And Phosyne looks down at her hands for just a moment. “She needs me,” she murmurs, and Treila thinks she wasn’t meant to hear.

Treila stares.

Phosyne glances up at her, and for a second, there is both the disjointed mess of a girl and the frightening lick of a flame.