Page 96 of The Starving Saints
Treila tumbles in the dirt. Rolls to her feet. Gets back up, grinning even as she gasps for breath.
It’s just like their old sparring matches, except that back then, they both had swords, and Treila obeyed the forms drilled into her. Now she is a wild thing, scrapping for survival. She slashes out with her blade again and when that strike is dodged, she grabs at hair, at clothing, at flesh. If Saint Voyne gets close enough, Treila will tear her throat out with her teeth.
She doesn’t get a chance. Voyne sends her crashing to the ground again, this time with a knee to the gut. Treila loses her grip and the blade goes flying, hitting the dirt and skidding into the undergrowth.
“Don’t fight me,” Voyne spits, all her weight on top of Treila now. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Does it make the meat sour?” Treila hisses back.
Voyne flinches.
It’s enough. It’s enough that Treila can squirm out from under her, can pitch forward, toward the knife, and—
And then she is struck in the back, borne down hard against the bench. Voyne’s fist is around her throat. Treila thrashes, manages to get onto her back but no farther. Voyne is between her legs, and Treila can’t help but laugh at that. Even now, this is the Loving Saint’s nature. He is lust and hunger and temptation.
She has, perhaps, three heartbeats left until the saint begins his feast. Voyne’s form is strong and heavy, and Treila can only writhe between him and the bench.
The only mercy is that the ringing in her head has, finally, gone silent.
“How will you have me, then?” she snarls. “Now that you’ve got me here at last?”
That drags a wicked laugh from him, and he leans down closer, sothat their lips are almost touching. He looks into her eyes, and still, there’s some shred of desperation there. Some question. He didn’t want it to pan out this way.
Voyne didn’t want it to pan out this way.
It doesn’t matter who she’s talking to, not now. It’s both of them together. If the Loving Saint wants to devour her in Voyne’s skin, then he will take the brunt of all her combined rage, all her spite and vitriol.
“You never knew me. You will never know me. That core of me you were so keen to take the measure of, you’ll choke on it before you get the smallest part of me. You’re weak, pathetic, hungry, clawing after scraps, too afraid to rule yourself.” When Treila grins, she knows there’s blood coating her teeth. “What you wouldn’t give to be in charge, but you’ll never have the strength. Too busy aching in the shadows. We’re the same, the two of us. You’re just desperate to be seen. So desperate you’ll kill for it. Die for it.”
The Loving Saint falters, finally. Stares down at her, brows drawn together, fist loosening around her throat.
It’s an opening. It’s the last opening she’ll ever get. It’s action or death and, above all else, Treila refuses to die.
So she arches up and kisses Voyne’s split and bloodied lips.
40
Treila de Batrolin, fierce and broken, kisses like she is dying.
Voyne returns her fervor before she can think better of it, blood high in her ears, body trembling. This is who she could not see. This is the hole in the world. The iron she’d gripped so tightly must have pulled the scales from her eyes, and revealed Phosyne’s co-conspirator, her way out. Treila de Batrolin.
She is the living embodiment of the moment Voyne began to doubt, before she was King Cardimir’s decorative defender, before she was reduced to ornamentation, stolen from the field. When Lord de Batrolin plotted against her liege, Voyne had turned without hesitation on an old friend, a mentor, and slaughtered him in front of an audience.
In front of this girl, trusting and so full of promise.
She’d meant to keep track of her, after. To keep her safe somehow. She’d failed, and Treila had been lost, thought dead. The winter had been hard. The winter had been more than hard. Later, Voyne had read reports of what was found when the ice thawed: bodies reduced to gnawed and pot-polished bone, the refugees of de Batrolin’s household reduced to nothing.
But Treila hadn’t died. No, she’d lived, and she is wild now in Voyne’s arms. They fall from the bench, to the ground, tangled in each other. This is not the compulsion to throw herself on Phosyne’s mercy; this is older, darker. This is five years of desperation, knowing that Treila had trusted her,wantedher in her adolescent fervor, awkward and so sure despite it.
It’s good that Treila is so red in tooth and claw; when Voyne sawher, meek and vulnerable in the garden for that brief moment before she fled, it had galled her to her very core. Treila de Batrolin, broken by what Voyne had done to her—if she’d been left with her mind for much longer, if the monsters had not arrived, it would have been Treila who destroyed Voyne from the inside out.
She still might.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”
Treila doesn’t let her speak. She rolls them over, straddles Voyne, and she is so small, so light.
“Did you make me want you?” Treila asks, pulling back just far enough to see how her eyes flash. “Did you know from the start? Was it always your intention to break me?”
