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Back The Starving Saints Save as PDF
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. 14
  16. 15
  17. 16
  18. 17
  19. 18
  20. 19
  21. 20
  22. 21
  23. 22
  24. 23
  25. 24
  26. 25
  27. 26
  28. 27
  29. 28
  30. 29
  31. 30
  32. 31
  33. 32
  34. 33
  35. 34
  36. 35
  37. 36
  38. 37
  39. 38
  40. 39
  41. 40
  42. 41
  43. 42
  44. 43
  45. 44
  46. 45
  47. 46
  48. 47
  49. 48
  50. 49
  51. 50
  52. 51
  53. Acknowledgments
  54. About the Author
  55. Also by Caitlin Starling
  56. Copyright
  57. About the Publisher

She has the strength to do it. She has the iron in her spine. She has the stone beneath her feet.

“I have always had the mandate,” she agrees.

The darkness bows behind her.

49

49

Treila is just outside the keep when the sky breaks open and the deluge begins.

The clouds that have boiled out of empty air bring with them a flash and shudder of light. Not lightning, not thunder, but the sun itself roiling, spinning, careening between noon and dusk and dawn, stars springing to life and then winking out again. Treila stares up at the riot even as water falls on her with the force of an avalanche, churning the dirt below her feet to sludge. The rain plunges down her throat, chokes her, and it’s only that spasming that tears her away from the sight, bends her double so she can cough and gasp for breath.

It washes some of the honeyed sharpness of the Loving Saint’s blood out of her mouth and, selfishly, she clamps her lips shut, not quite ready to lose the rest of it.

She pulls herself inside a doorway.

The stones themselves begin to dance.

That’s the only word for it, the way they rock and slide against one another. Gravity and mortar seem forgotten. The world is lurching off its axis; no matter how hard Treila glares, it all refuses to still.

And above it all, she hears Phosyne, screaming.

It echoes down the stairwells, piercing and pained, and Treila freezes, clinging to a tapestry that has yet to melt. It’s pained, but also ecstatic, and she reaches reflexively for the knife that is not there.

You can trust me, Phosyne had promised her. And she’d known better, known not to, but—

But does the loss of a blade really matter? This would have happened either way.

There’s no time for regret. Treila throws herself down toward her workshop, praying the tunnel has not shimmied closed.

It hasn’t. It yawns black and beckoning in her lonely little room, with its needles and awls and waxed thread, the fragments of a life that doesn’t feel like hers. Treila, the glover, the rat catcher, doesn’t exist anymore. She has been washed away by the blood and flesh in her teeth.

Which is good. That Treila wouldn’t have survived this long, no matter the armor she’d built for herself.

This Treila slides back down into the earth like she was made for it.

She is maybe halfway through the winding passage, the sounds dying away, the world falling back to order as she moves, when she notices the next ill omen:

Voyne has doused the candle.