The Starving Saints

Voyne’s blood runs cold, then hot, and she shakes her head. “Leave her.” She doesn’t have time to care about the madwoman, her bizarre “logic” or her heresy. “She’s running,” somebody else says, and Voyne snarls and pulls away from their efforts. Progress earns her the candles she burns down to nubs in the close darkness of her stoppered tower. She doesn’t want to be, but the pain is too much, even though there’s no blood, even though there are no longer teeth against her skin. When at last the Loving Saint lies still beneath her hands, when she has drunk her fill of his hot and heady blood, when the buzzing in her missing ear has quieted to a light and diffuse din, she lifts her head and regards their audience.