The Lady sits upon the throne. The honeycomb has spread from Jacynde’s corpse and now crawls up the wall behind the Lady, up into the rafters. Brilliant sunlight shines warm through panes of wax that now stopper the windows. The whole room is warm and humming with the movement of a thousand bees. They move in and out of the mass of the Lady’s hair, Her braids coming undone. They sip at the nectar of the living blooms that wreathe Her.

The bees are not to blame; their nature has been played with as much as anybody’s, their life cycle accelerated, their hive fattened on unnatural nectar. But if Phosyne drives the blade between the Lady’s ribs, the comb will remain. The honey, too. The magic in it. The infiltration, the corridors filled with the Lady’s creatures. It’s too late to unmake what the bees have wrought.

There is little point in stabbing Her. There are a hundred more like Her within the castle walls, and Phosyne does not have the strength or skill to hunt them down one by one.

Voyne would argue with her, surely, but Voyne is not here to stop her. Voyne is dead.

Phosyne lifts her hand and shows the Lady the knife.

Her ringed eyes widen. Her golden lips part. She does not look at Phosyne’s face at all, just the glint of metal. There is a flicker of fear across Her brow, but it is slight, considering how much of a danger Treila has said it is to Her kind. More than that is curiosity. Wonder.

Expectation.

“From Ser Voyne’s throat,” Phosyne says. “You asked me for her body, but you have many already. Forgive me if I do not believe that was, in the end, your aim.”

To have the body, though, the knife had to be removed.

The knife is what matters.

The Lady inclines Her head in acknowledgment. “What a wonder you are, little mouse. And so you would offer me the knife instead?”

“The knife,” Phosyne agrees. “And in exchange, you will give me the castle and all the lives inside it that you hold dominion over.”

Her gaze sharpens at that. Her lips curl. “Not freedom? Not knowledge?”

“Those can come later,” Phosyne says, helpless but to smile back.

The knife, of course, is not just a knife. Phosyne knows that, even if she doesn’t know what, exactly, it represents. It is heavy in her hand, too heavy just for the metal it is made of. She lifts it an inch higher, takes a step closer.

From the outside, it is a lopsided bargain. A knife for the castle? A knife for victory? The Lady should rightfully push for more, but She doesn’t. Instead the air between them thrums with anticipation. With hunger.