The saint stops. Holds up his hands. There’s a hammer in one of them. Not even a large one, made for war: it’s small, for small work. Treila wants to laugh, it’s so ridiculous. A hammer might do as much damage as a sword, but Voyne would never wield one. Whatever he is, he cannot get the details right of being human. “I won’t hurt you,” he says. It sounds so much like Ser Voyne, but voices must be as easy to ape as faces for him.

“You’re lying, even now?” Treila can’t help herself. Can’t keep her mouth shut. She edges farther into the clearing, circles around one side to get the bench out from in between them.

She wonders if he has a heart, and if it lives in the same place it does in her own chest.

“I have never lied to you.” Voyne’s eyes turn wary. The bafflement is gone.

“You’ve always only been playing with your food.”

Saint Voyne cocks his head at that.

“From the first time you saw me, I could tell what you were,” Treila says, grinning. “So hungry and desperate for personalized attention. Nobody else could really see you, could they? Just me.”

“Calm down. Please. Just for a moment. Think clearly, Treila,” the Loving Saint says with Ser Voyne’s mouth. I’m older than you, stronger than you, hungrier than you, he does not add.

There’s something wrong with this, but Treila doesn’t have time to sort it. One of Voyne’s ears is red and swollen. And the fingers—

No time.

“I am thinking clearly,” she returns, grinning. “I know the rules of this game as least as well as you do by now.”

That makes the beast in knight’s clothing hesitate. About to argue that Treila can’t fully comprehend, or afraid that she might?

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, and casts the hammer into the nearby brush. She gets a better look for just a moment; his fingers are swollen and red as if stung by bees. They look like hers did, five years ago. Why? Why would he do that?

To boast that he is no holy thing, either?

There’s a flicker of doubt in his eyes. He’s a better liar than that, though. Something’s wrong.

She makes another snap judgment. Should she soften under his words, his vulgar apparition, so that he’ll get closer, or stand her ground? She has so much practice pretending to be what she is not.

But she’s tired of it, and the one good thing he has given her—that this whole mess has given her—is the freedom to shrug off her disguise.

Treila takes another step closer, blade shining in the dappled light of their little world.

“Funny,” she says. “Because I’m here to hurt you.”