The girl doesn’t like this option (her scowl is not at all hidden), but she grudgingly wraps an arm beneath Phosyne’s shoulders and heaves upward. For all her poise, it’s immediately clear that she, too, is weakened. They get to their feet but it’s a near thing, both of them holding tight to the other’s clothing.

Walking is harder, but they manage. The only real problem is the stairs, which are too narrow to climb abreast. The girl winds up behind her, pushing, hands firm on Phosyne’s lower back. The world tilts wildly. They climb.

When at last they reach the king’s chambers, they can hear soft voices inside, and the girl pulls Phosyne hard against the stone wall. Then she stops, and Phosyne realizes she must not know where the entrance to her tower is.

Phosyne steers them through the shadows to the little door that leads up and up and—there are no guards, no sign of Ser Voyne—into her fetid rooms.

They really do stink. It’s embarrassing. The girl behind her is trying to be stoic, but she twitches with the first tremors of vomit.

Phosyne pulls away and staggers to her workbench, where the candle is still burning. It’s the second one she’s made; the other is upended in a cup of water, because the moment she takes it out, it starts to burn again. This one is a little more polite. When snuffed, it stays snuffed.

She holds it up. “Here, watch carefully,” she says. The flame trembles because her arm is trembling. She sits down on her stool before she can fall.

The girl waits in the doorway, watching. The door, at least, is closed behind her.

Phosyne upends the candle. It continues to burn. Wax does not drip from it. The girl’s eyes go wide; apparently she didn’t really believe Phosyne until this moment.

Phosyne looks at the inverted flame that does not dance up, that ignores the rules of the world, and then she dips it in the cup of water. The flame disappears without smoke.

As she pulls it out, she finds she’s feeling better, a little firmer, a little more real, because the girl is staring with naked want now, want and interest that Voyne hasn’t matched even while watching the same impossible demonstration. “To light it again is a little tricky. You can’t light it from another flame, or it will be just a candle. It will melt, it will gutter. Instead—” And here she rolls the words around in her mouth, hesitating just shy of revealing her secret. It will likely make the girl afraid.

Still, it’s how the flame is kindled. “Instead, it needs blood. Possibly my blood. I don’t know yet; Ser Voyne won’t let me test it on her.”