“I’ll come back,” Treila promises. She hesitates. Voyne wants to touch her, wants to press a kiss to her brow, wants to hold her. But she doesn’t need it. What Voyne and Cardimir and the world have made her—what she has made herself—is strong enough on its own.

One last breath, and then Treila pushes herself into the earth and, in another moment, is gone.

Voyne sits, unmoving, for a long time after. She counts her breaths. She tenses and relaxes each of her muscles in turn. When she is ready, she pushes herself forward onto her hands and knees. She crawls to the candle.

She douses it in the creek, then sits back and regards the gash in the world.

“Hello,” she says. “Let’s have a chat.”

46

46

The keep is empty when Treila emerges from the tunnel.

She expects to see hungry, pale faces as she creeps up the stairs, but there are none. There are no tangles of limbs in the windows. There are not even any sleeping, sated bodies on the floor. The whole edifice is silent, and the pained chaos of Treila’s heart quiets with it, knowing that she has no room for feeling, only for caution.

If it is silent, then something has changed. Something has gone wrong.

She must get to Phosyne as quickly as possible. Carcabonne and Ser Voyne and her father can wait a little while longer; they have, after all, waited for five years.

Treila steals out into the courtyard. It is night, and the upper and lower baileys are both empty, though the dirt is stained in too many places. Still, there are no scraps, no bones or torn flesh, no abandoned tents. There is only soil, dusty and dry and barren.

But the great hall’s windows blaze with light, and a soft murmuration drifts from them as well.

Treila takes the long way to it, clinging to shadows, back against the stone. She clutches the knife in her hand, watching for any sign of saints or beasts. Ready to fight. Ready to carve a path.

There’s no need. She reaches the great hall without seeing so much as a flicker of a shadow that is not hers, and she peers inside.

The room is full of bodies. There is laughter, a hundred voices raised one atop the other, singing at the far margins. There is delight. There is happiness. It shreds at her nerves, discordant, and Treila retreats until she finds an empty window into the corridor that leads into the great hall itself. She tucks her blade in the folds of her skirt and prowls forward, the way she had the night of the feast.