Phosyne cannot see where the blow lands, but she can hear Treila gasp, can hear Voyne snarl as the Lady steps back. The sword slides from Her belly, falls to the floor. It leaves no hole behind. A thicket of thorns grows across the Lady’s robes instead, fresh armor, ready to cut.

And Treila is bleeding. She tries to move and can’t, a pained and ragged cry issuing from her throat. Voyne has her in her arms, is positioned over her as if to protect.

“It would have been better if you’d never seen her again,” the Lady says to Voyne. “It could be only nothingness that was bleeding out. Nothing worth saving, nothing worth staying your hand against me. What a pity that you had to return to her. I gave you a gift, glory and certainty and righteousness, and you squandered it.”

Treila spasms against the floor, blood flowing from her gut despite Voyne’s hands frantically applying pressure, and that reverses Phosyne’s retreat, unsticks her limbs. She throws herself at them, collapses to her knees at Treila’s side, fits her hands with Voyne’s over the wound.

“I can fix this,” she whispers. “I can fix this, I can fix this.” She understands viscera and flesh, now, and knows healing, received it from this girl’s mouth while she lay dying, rotting from the inside from lack of food. Food, food, she needs food. She will give Treila food and that will staunch the flow.

The Lady holds out a hand, and in it is an apple.

“Give it to her,” the Lady says.

It is golden and perfect.

“No,” Treila whispers. “No, I will not eat.”

But the juice of it is fragrant and sweet. Phosyne wants it, and can see how it will knit Treila’s flesh together again. It will obscure her mind, yes, but it will preserve her body, and what good is a clear mind beyond death?

She is panting, hyperventilating, feeling the pulse of Treila’s blood beneath her fingers, when Voyne collides with the Lady in a crash of steel. The apple falls from Her hand, bruising rapidly as it rolls to a stop against Phosyne’s thigh.

And the Lady is gone, and in another breath, the memory of Her as well. Phosyne blinks against a blank space, an absence, there and then gone as suddenly as it arose. Cumin coats her tongue, sharp and insistent. Pay attention, it says, but she is angry, she is terrified, and she can’t heed it. The room is getting hotter, is roasting them alive, and it is her fault. She is making the floor below them tremble and seeing colors she has no names for blossoming into being all around her.

Except no, there’s something else, something tangled in the flash of light on metal as Voyne convulses, grapples with the air.

Then Treila cries out, “Down!” and both Phosyne and Voyne obey without question.