Voyne will die like this if Treila cannot be her eyes, and Treila cannot be her eyes if she loses much more blood than this or if she is entranced by a swallow of healing food.

So Phosyne dips her head and presses her lips to the bleeding slit in Treila’s side, and slides her tongue, thick with chewed fruit, against the wound.

Treila shudders, her head falling back against the stone, and Phosyne can’t tell if she moans from pain or pleasure.

All she knows is that the skin heals, and when Phosyne spits out blood and pulp, when she kisses Treila’s side one last time, there is only a white mark to show where the blade had pierced her.

Treila shoves her aside.

Phosyne falls back, just in time to hear the crack of Voyne’s skull against the floor. The Lady once more exists, standing above the three of them, regarding each in turn.

None move.

Treila is too weak to rise. Voyne has been beaten down one time too many. And the knife is back in the Lady’s hands as She stands over Phosyne, surveying the destruction.

“You toy with your food,” Phosyne pants. “You could have killed them five times over, couldn’t you?”

The Lady doesn’t answer, but the slight tightening around Her mouth suggests—no. No, She is struggling, just as they are. She is just as liable to fall.

“You can’t kill them, can you?” Phosyne murmurs, frowning. “You can do nothing to them I do not allow. I hold dominion.”

But that’s not quite right. She did not want Treila run through. Does not want Voyne insensate on the ground, eyelids fluttering as she tries to find one last store of strength within her.

“No, little mouse. I am your minder,” the Lady murmurs. “Power flows both ways.”

And yet the Lady does not move to cut either Treila’s or Voyne’s throats.

Phosyne struggles up to her knees, claws her hands into the aether around her, feels the rumble of the heavens outside, but can find not one thing to craft into a weapon. Her mind is blank and too full all at once.

She sways. “What do you want of us?” she asks, because there are no answers at hand.

The Lady smiles. “Only free me, Phosyne, and they might still live.”

Another bargain.

Phosyne begins to laugh. She is supposed to be beyond bargains, now. She is supposed to have made the right one. But there is always one more ahead of her, one more dangled morsel that she feels she would die without.

She wants them to live. She is desperate for them to live. But she will not give up this, her last shred of control, for a might.