The refugees, ecstatic in their feasting. The lesser beasts that came to the Lady’s table, now sated on honeyed flesh, waiting for command. The Absolving Saint, standing in the heat of the kitchen, watching Phosyne through layer and layer of stone, eyes cool and assessing. Ser Leodegardis set like a trophy at his side, heedless of what has happened but knowing, instinctively, to be afraid.

The Lady, too, for She holds dominion over Herself as well as everything else within Her world. Phosyne grabs on to that realization, clings to it, desperate, because it means that She cannot leave. She cannot leave so long as Phosyne remembers to hold Her leash, and so She cannot go out into the world and pass through its bonds of iron as if they mean nothing.

That is important. Phosyne must remember that. Hold tight to the leash, she tells herself again and again, even as the sound of her voice warps, twists, becomes unfamiliar.

She can see light refracting off water, and feel the dawning of revelation inside of her.

The taste of all these lives has opened a yawning pit inside of her. They all hold hunger in their bellies, and it is amplified, sharpened within the crucible of her skull.

What is falling through the stone as if it were water before this? What is seeing the boundaries of her little room compared with the whole world stretched out before her?

She wants to know all of it. She wants to touch it all, grasp it, bend it before her. The world is vast, and suddenly she is at the pinnacle of it, and she knows so little.

Tears streak down her cheeks, and she shudders at the cutting, burning reminder that she has cheeks, she has a body, she is just a woman and she is spinning out to pieces.

“Your hunger is so sharp,” the Lady says. Phosyne can barely hear Her. The world is so loud, so large, and she is drowning in it. She is ever-expanding. Something inside her has come loose, and she doesn’t know that she could tamp it down again, even if she wanted to.

And she does not want to.

No, no, she does want to, she does want to.

“You’d take everything if you could,” the Lady murmurs. “And you can. You are a black hole, little mouse. Endlessly hungry, endlessly, and all you had to do was notice it. How does it feel? Is it good?”

Phosyne sobs, and rain crashes against the stone. The sky itself is breaking. She can feel it breaking, even if she cannot see it—but she can see it, can’t she? If she shivers out of the boundaries of her skin, if she unleashes herself.

No. No. No, she must hold on, she must—she must remember what she is.