It’s not tentative, not at all. One moment, her quaking knight is nuzzling her palm, and the next Ser Voyne rises up, covers Phosyne with her body, presses her to the seat. Her knee remains bent—she still offers just the slightest capitulation, or perhaps she expects Phosyne to push her back.

Phosyne doesn’t. She grins as Voyne’s hand fits itself around Phosyne’s throat, the way they’ve practiced, and she arches her spine. She lifts one foot, hooks it around Voyne’s leg, wishes there was armor there.

She wishes for a lot of things.

She asks for only one: “Talk to me. I know you’re in there, Ser Voyne.”

Voyne answers with a moan, her hand tightening. But the bond between them compels. “You’re like Her,” she gasps out.

She sounds as angry as she is adoring. Ser Voyne didn’t speak to the Lady that way. No, this is just for Phosyne.

“But you remember that you hate me,” Phosyne says, voice reedy from the weight of Voyne’s fist.

Ser Voyne grimaces, relents just a little. Just enough to draw so close to her that Phosyne could kiss her lips.

“I don’t hate you,” Ser Voyne whispers.

“Because I haven’t told you to?”

Voyne convulses, then, halfway to a seizure. Her hand tightens, then drops to Phosyne’s shoulder. To the throne beneath. She is panting. “Because this isn’t you. Phosyne—”

She doesn’t want to hear it, and so she stoppers her knight’s lips with a kiss. It’s better than fighting her. Better than feeling shame, too, or hesitation, and the important thing is that Ser Voyne doesn’t hate her. She’s groaning into Phosyne’s mouth, her hands sliding down along her body. All the world beyond the two of them is gone, and Phosyne is so eager to tip into the abyss.

And then the flavor of cumin blossoms between her teeth, fills her mouth, overwhelms the taste of Ser Voyne’s skin and brings with it the certainty that they are not alone. Phosyne pulls back, looks up, and sees a waiting audience of eyes, a hundred of them, more, all watching, all set above grinning, hungry mouths.

38

38

Phosyne goes rigid and cold beneath her hands.

Voyne tamps down the twin surges of rage and relief, jams her knee into the hard wood of the throne to still her swirling thoughts. Whatever bewitchment Phosyne is under, she is under it just as deeply, and it takes all her willpower and her anger to pant out, “Seen them at last, have you?”

“They aren’t moving.” Phosyne’s voice has shifted tones, from thick with want to nervous curiosity. Her hand is still on Voyne’s shoulder, though, stroking, possessive.

Voyne shudders. “That doesn’t mean they won’t. They were likely waiting for us to be—”

Distracted.