Freedom should be tempting, but there’s no cowardice left in her, either; Treila’s blade cut that away, along with the fog inside her skull. “No.” She tries to rise again, and again her limbs are not quite strong enough. But they are getting stronger.

Treila stares down at her. “You can’t mean to die for your king still. Not—not after all of this.”

“I don’t mean to die at all. I mean to fight. There are too many people still alive up there to abandon. And Phosyne—”

“Phosyne is changing. And not into anything good.”

Voyne licks her lips, remembers how Phosyne had looked on the throne. She can’t help her shudder. “Then all the more reason to end this. Treila—the knife.”

Treila goes to it, eyeing it mistrustfully. As if she does not want to touch it again.

“These creatures can be killed by iron,” Voyne says.

“Maybe, but—there are so many. Too many.”

“Take the knife,” Voyne says again. “Get it to Phosyne. Give it to her. It cut through whatever enchantment had hold of me, it might do the same again.” She might not even need to die for it to work; when Voyne had clutched the hammer in her hand, she had been able, at last, to see Treila. “No matter what, she will know what to do with it.”

Of that much, Voyne is certain, down to her bones.

Treila is clearly struggling, though, even as she picks up the knife. She has seen something Voyne has not. She is wary. She is clever.

“Brave girl,” Voyne murmurs, and Treila looks up at her, stricken, like the blade is in her belly and not her hand. “I trust in the both of you. And I will follow as soon as I am able.”

“You’re certain?” Treila asks. “You don’t think I’ll fail?”

“I think you haven’t let yourself die so far,” Voyne says.

Treila hesitates one last time, then jerks her chin toward the candle. Voyne can see it now, glowing boldly against the dark. It’s one of Phosyne’s; there’s no melted wax around its base.

“If I don’t come back,” Treila says, “if it’s been too long, don’t come after me. Don’t let them have you again, don’t even risk it. Promise me.”

“And where would I go?”

“There is a creature, here. In the crack in the wall.” She motions with her chin to a line of deeper darkness that splits the dimly lit wall. “While Phosyne’s candle burns, it can’t hear you. But douse it, go to it, ask to leave. The thing that lives in it can get you outside the walls, just—just negotiate carefully. And don’t come back. Only one of us needs to be a fool.”

Voyne nods. “I understand. Now, go.”