She vibrates with disgust, thinking of the real Voyne, loyal and strong. Thinking of the Voyne this creature could have offered her, wicked and cruel and vulnerable, too. Everything Treila had imagined her to be.

Treila cannot stop from licking her lips.

The Loving Saint laughs softly. Treila wants to hear Voyne laugh like that.

“Without that knife of yours,” he murmurs with Voyne’s lips, “we can have so much fun.” He is close enough to kiss her now. Treila has forgotten to retreat. She doesn’t know when she became incapable of striking Voyne again, even in effigy.

“But as sweet as it would be to eat you with your dead knight’s face,” he sighs, and Voyne’s colors begin to bleed from him, his hair begins to lengthen, “I find I’m sick of playing to your fancies.” His teeth sharpen. His eyes gleam in the dark, catching the moonlight.

Treila reaches for his throat, but he’s faster. He catches her wrist, hauls her close. His mouth descends, and she snarls, slamming the heel of her other hand into his jaw. His head snaps back and then isn’t there at all, and she’s falling through him. His hair whispers over her skin as she slams into the wall, bounces off it, falls sprawling in front of a hundred dripping jaws. The first one snaps, and Treila staggers to her feet and runs.

She knows Aymar better than possibly anybody else alive, but they are faster than she, and they do not obey the same laws. They sprint along the walls, prowl the sky above as if it is a ceiling, drop down in front of her and reach for her ankles. Her screams break upon the stone and fracture, and she goes down once, twice—

But they let her up each time.

They play with her, letting her gain a few desperate feet of lead only to cut her off and send her down the stairs into the lower yard, hound her around the rims of the cisterns, close to falling. They carve gashes in her arms, tear at her skirts, knock her down, but only far enough that she is rattled, not that she is broken. The detritus of Aymar, shredded tents and abandoned clothing, tangle beneath her feet. The monsters’ laughter is everywhere.

And behind them, riding the wave of their bloodlust, is the Loving Saint, grinning, scenting the air, drinking in her terror. Her missing ear surges with the roaring buzz of a thousand bees, loud enough to deafen.