I think it would have been better if I had never been kept. If she had never been sequestered away from the real world, allowed to bend her mind to the impossible. If she had not been indulged.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered either way. What she wants, though, is to give Leodegardis some absolution of her own.

She touches his wrist. “You did well by me,” she tells him. “You did well by all of us.” That was his obligation, his duty: in return for the fealty of his household, he gave them as much care and protection as he could. And now they are no longer his to lead.

“At least we did not starve to death,” he says. He closes his eyes in grim humor.

No, they did not starve to death at all.

“Promise me something, my madwoman,” Leodegardis says after a moment’s quivering.

“Name it.”

“Do not forget my kindness. Do not let this have been in vain.”

It’s not what she expected, but she nods, curls their fingers together for a brief moment. “I will never forget,” she assures him. A part of her wishes he had made her promise to end this, but she has already promised that to Treila, to Voyne.

Remembrance is probably just as important.

“I should have let Ser Voyne leave,” Leodegardis whispers as Phosyne stands once more. His eyes close in pain. He reaches for another piece of meat. “She asked to go, to get help. I told her she was a coward.”

Phosyne’s heart twists, a flare of anger, and she leaves him there before she does something drastic for the memory of a dead woman.

Her hands are tight upon the hilt of Treila’s dagger.

She slips out of the great hall unnoticed, taking the path she did the night she fled from Ser Voyne, through the halls, up the stairs. She is not alone; the split-second images of the Lady’s lesser beasts pace her as she walks, but they keep their distance. Phosyne cannot feel them the way she feels the people in the hall below, but she can see them, glittering and flat, teeth sharp and waiting.

There’s blood on them. The scent of honey. Something has changed, and Phosyne hesitates on the stairs. If she ascends, her little tower room waits. She doesn’t want to go there, she wants to end this, but for just a moment, the urge to flee rises up in her. The old urge, to hide, to become unremarkable once more.

She pushes it aside. She steps instead into the throne room.