She sees, through the haze of a ringing skull and burning adrenaline, a frightened, desperate woman, whose skin is red and scalded, whose robes are stained crimson with blood over her ribs, whose eyes are the same cloudy gray they were the day they met. She sees a woman she has sworn to protect, though the king she gave the oath to no longer lives, and wouldn’t merit obedience if he did. She sees the woman who, in her own way, has ushered Aymar through a great and terrible transition.

The False Lady is dead, or at least locked away. If her words are to be trusted, Phosyne holds dominion over every life in Aymar, with possibly only the exclusion of Treila and Voyne.

Voyne doesn’t feel excluded, not really.

“I am your minder,” Voyne says, with more patience than she feels. Her certainty doesn’t remove her fear, not even close. But the world is spinning apart around them, and Voyne cannot fix that herself. She can’t fix any of this herself. Treila holds the leash of the beasts that wait to devour them, and Phosyne holds the keys to the world. “I will bring you back to yourself. Do you trust me?”

Phosyne bares her teeth, shakes her head.

“She will kill you if she has to,” Treila says softly, from just over Voyne’s shoulder. Voyne fancies she can hear a strained smile in her voice. “Do not doubt that. That she hasn’t says there is still hope.”

Phosyne laughs, weakly. She weeps. She folds down, held up only by Voyne’s hand around her throat.

Voyne tightens her fingers just a little, a reminder of the chapel, of the cistern, of everything between them.

Phosyne’s breath catches.

“Let me take you from this place,” Voyne says. Her head is foggy, but she knows they cannot remain here. Sweat rolls from her skin, even now that the boiling stew below them is closed off. “Relax. Trust me, Phosyne.”

She tightens her fingers, and, like in the cistern, it lets Phosyne’s hands slide from the stone. Voyne pulls her up to her feet, her aching muscles protesting every inch.

And when they are both upright, together, Voyne slides her other arm behind Phosyne’s knees and lifts.

She takes a moment to make sure she has her footing, and looks up to see Treila evaluating the two of them, standing as well, Voyne’s sword clutched in her arms. Alive and whole. It is more than Voyne had hoped for.

Phosyne saved her, too.

Voyne could not have borne her loss. She knows that, as much as she knows she cannot abandon the woman in her arms.

Together, they leave the tower and make their way down the stairs, breathing ragged in the close space.