A cheer goes up. Nobody sees what Phosyne sees, that this is wrong in so many ways. And it isn’t even the promises of salvation, or the sudden appearance of the saints who now turn to their swarming petitioners, or the mass of bodies that bows to touch the hems of their robes, while Ser Voyne stays glued to the Constant Lady’s side.

It’s the simple fact that the king should not be the one making this announcement. That is the Priory’s task, to be the intermediary between the numinous and the mundane. They should be organizing this adulation, rewarding patience with honey on the tongue.

But there are no nuns in the yard. Even Jacynde is nowhere to be seen. Just like the night before.

That’s because she knows this is your fault. Phosyne groans and closes the window. She knows something is wrong, and she knows who is to blame.

Still, nobody dragged her from the tower in the middle of the night. That sits wrong in her gut, even as she feels relief. Ser Leodegardis will, of course, stand by his liege, and might even attempt to protect her, even if he doesn’t believe the saints are who they claim to be. But he’s no fool. If Jacynde has doubts (and she must, or she would have been out in the yard)—and if she has realized that the only other source of dubious miracles in these walls is Phosyne (which she did months ago)—then she would have demanded Phosyne, and Leodegardis would have at least come to question her.

That nobody has so much as knocked since Treila returned her to her little pen is concerning.

She stumbles down her steps, braced against the wall, and tries once more to recall how she summoned Ornuo and Pneio. Why can’t she remember? She does remember the terror of it, and the subsequent delight, as they curled into her lap and nuzzled at her jaw, companionship when she didn’t know she had been aching for it for so long. But the actual invocations? It’s a blank spot in her memory. Food, perhaps, will unlock what she couldn’t remember last night, but her thoughts remain sluggish, recalcitrant.

The fruit was not enough to revive her fully, and her continuing, gnawing hunger demands she sate it, so she eats two pieces of tough beef, and another strip of meat she doesn’t recognize the flavor of. As she chews the last, she has a flash of brambles beneath her feet, nose low to the ground, a hundred different scents, and then the bright clarion call of a horn.

She swallows. It goes away.

Frowning, she looks for more of the fruit Treila paid her, but finds none. Either she ate it all last night (hopefully), or the boys decided to eat it (likely). Then she remembers the honey again, but when she turns to it, she finds it . . .