“And where is your Warding Saint?” she asks. This is clearly the continuation of some other conversation, started far away from here.

“Dead as well,” the Lady replies.

“The armor?”

“I imagine she took it before her own death. It was her hand that killed him.”

“And who killed her?”

“I do not know.”

At the door, the Loving Saint shifts, but says nothing. Treila shrinks deeper into the shadows.

Phosyne finally moves once more. She drifts up to the plinth and lays both hands upon it, not touching Voyne’s body. Her shoulders sag. She looks very tired.

“Dead,” she says, softly. “And neither of us there to see it.”

The Lady hums, and approaches as well. She is watching Phosyne, though, not the body. Her eyes glitter in the warm half-light.

“You knew, the whole time we spoke?”

“I did. Does it change your decision?”

What decision? Treila leans closer, eyes fixed. What has Phosyne agreed to?

“It depends. Do you know of a way to reverse death?” Phosyne’s voice is acid.

Treila thinks the Lady is smiling. It’s hard to tell from here.

“I might,” She says. “Give her to me.”

Phosyne’s inhale is audible. Sharp. “No.”

“Give her to me,” the Lady says, “and you may ask for anything in return.”

Anything.

Buried in that promise is a hint of hope. Anything might include Voyne’s resurrection. But it might not. The Lady has promised everything and nothing all at once. She has not guaranteed She will even grant a request, only that Phosyne can make it.

She’d be foolish to say yes. Treila wishes she could go to her, show Phosyne her hand again, the side of her head. Make her understand that bargains are all tricks. That she must be careful what she is giving up.

And Phosyne looks like she’s about to say yes.

It is all Treila can do not to cry out, to rush to the plinth and throw herself across the body there. You did this, she reminds herself. Ser Voyne is now nothing but flesh. On that day, back in the garden before it was twisted and warped into what it has become, she had told Ser Voyne that she understood what hunger demanded.

Phosyne settles one hand on the gleaming armor that covers Voyne’s chest. Her head is bowed. Treila can’t see her face. Can’t judge what she is thinking.

Treila holds her breath.

“You can’t touch her, can you?” Phosyne says, breaking her long silence. She reaches out as she says it, trails one finger along the hilt of Treila’s blade. It’s simple. Utilitarian. “Not while this is here. Otherwise, you’d just take her. You wouldn’t need to ask.”

The Lady’s jaw tightens. “Always clever, little mouse. Always so perceptive.”

“And they can’t touch her, either.” A glance to the saints.

“No. None of my kind.”