Aymar Castle Is Starving

For six months, Aymar Castle has been under siege by the army of Etrebia. Nearly nine hundred soldiers and refugees are crammed behind its walls, and although the castle has managed to hold off the enemy, starvation is becoming the greater threat. Food will run out within weeks, the crowded population is growing desperate, and the baking summer seems to stretch on without end.

Their unlikely hope is Phosyne, formerly Sister Sefridis, an excommunicated nun whose obsessive experiments with alchemy and magic once saved Aymar by curing its contaminated water. King Cardimir now expects her to perform another miracle and create food. So far, everything Phosyne has tried to grow has withered into blight. Her experiments have also produced things she doesn’t understand, including two sleek, scaled creatures called Ornuo and Pneio, which mysteriously appeared in her tower months earlier.

After hunger erupts into a riot, Cardimir assigns Ser Voyne to become Phosyne’s constant minder. Voyne is a celebrated knight and war hero, but she is deeply haunted by the violence she committed in Cardimir’s service. Her relationship with the king has also deteriorated until she feels less like his trusted warrior than his decorative lapdog.

During another major Etrebian attack, Prioress Jacynde and her technically skilled nuns help defend Aymar with incendiary weapons launched from catapults. In the chaos, Phosyne nearly burns herself trying to retrieve Pneio before Voyne tackles her away from the danger. Pinned in the dirt, Phosyne suddenly announces that she may have an idea for the food miracle Cardimir wants.

She will need it quickly, because Aymar is already approaching the point where its inhabitants will do anything to survive.

The Castle Begins Eating Its Dead

Among the starving refugees is Treila, a clever young woman who makes herself useful by catching rats. Her lowly position conceals her real identity: she is the daughter of Lord de Batrolin, a nobleman Cardimir had executed for treason five years earlier. Voyne participated in his downfall, and afterward Treila’s family was driven into the wilderness, where they starved. Treila has never forgiven either Voyne or Cardimir.

While hunting rats, she discovers a loose flagstone in her stitching room. After several days of work, she widens the opening enough to squeeze into a narrow passage leading deep beneath Aymar. It opens into a vast grotto containing a strange milk-blue stream. From a fissure in the rock, something speaks to her in a faint, almost boyish voice and asks her not to leave.

Treila flees.

Aboveground, the food crisis becomes horrific. Ser Leodegardis, Aymar’s castellan and Voyne’s childhood friend, secretly kills the remaining dogs for meat. When a starving man named Jecobe dies, Voyne discovers Leodegardis cutting the hands and feet from his corpse so the flesh can be sent to the kitchen without the refugees knowing what they are eating.

Voyne is appalled, but Cardimir makes the situation brutally clear. Unless Phosyne produces a miracle, cannibalism may be the only thing keeping Aymar alive.

Overwhelmed, Voyne admits to Treila that they are approaching a choice between feeding the garrison human flesh and “feeding them heresy.” Voyne also begins to recognize Treila’s face, forcing Treila to retreat before her true identity can be exposed.

Then trumpets suddenly sound through the castle.

The Saints Arrive with a Miracle

Four strangers have somehow appeared inside Aymar.

At their center is a tall woman who perfectly resembles the Constant Lady, the deity worshipped by Jacynde’s priory. Her eyes contain concentric rings of red, blue, and green, and accompanying her are figures matching the Warding Saint, Absolving Saint, and Loving Saint.

Most of Aymar immediately falls into religious ecstasy. Even Voyne weeps at the sight of them.

Jacynde is far less convinced. She has spent her life worshipping the Constant Lady without ever seeing evidence of direct divine intervention, and she bitterly distrusts the convenient appearance of these supposed holy beings.

Phosyne soon discovers something even more troubling. The guards never opened Aymar’s gates to admit the visitors.

They simply appeared inside.

Worse, they have brought exactly what everyone desperately wants: food. The great hall fills with impossible quantities of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, honey, and wine. Phosyne realizes that her own reckless experiments and attempts to manipulate reality may somehow have summoned these creatures.

Jacynde openly challenges the supposed Lady. The saints overpower her and force honeyed wine into her mouth. Voyne briefly breaks through the strange intoxication surrounding them and tries to attack the Lady with Cardimir’s knife, but the Warding Saint easily stops her.

The Lady responds not by punishing Voyne but by seducing her. She promises to make Voyne Her champion, and under the intoxicating scent and taste of honey, Voyne pledges herself completely to Her.

Treila Learns the Price of Escape

Treila has no intention of trusting the newcomers. She asks Phosyne for help escaping through the passage beneath the castle, and Phosyne creates a strange candle whose flame will burn continuously unless extinguished by water.

Treila returns to the grotto and deliberately douses the flame so she can speak with the creature inside the fissure.

It offers her passage out of Aymar in exchange for “just a touch.”

Treila cautiously slides a finger into the crack. She immediately feels teeth and a tongue closing around the joint and jerks her hand back in terror. The creature tears away a strip of flesh, leaving a bloody welt, but she saves the finger.

Then it makes its actual demand clear.

It wants the whole finger.

Treila refuses. She relights Phosyne’s candle, banishing the presence back into the darkness, and retreats to the castle.

For now, freedom costs more than she is willing to pay.

The Miracle Becomes a Nightmare

The saints’ salvation quickly reveals its true nature.

Phosyne discovers Jacynde kneeling blank-eyed with her tongue brutally cut from her mouth. A living bee crawls out from between her lips.

Soon afterward, Voyne attacks Phosyne. Her eyes are vacant and painted with the Lady’s colors, and there is fresh blood on her hands. Phosyne realizes Voyne herself mutilated Jacynde while under the Lady’s influence.

The food is equally horrifying. Treila watches the Loving Saint plant human fingernails in the garden, where they immediately grow into flourishing crops. At the great feast, roasted meat appears decorated with tiny wrist bones.

The saints are feeding Aymar human beings.

Voyne, completely enthralled, eats eagerly and tries to force Phosyne to do the same. Phosyne bites her and escapes, racing to the cistern containing the water she previously purified.

Voyne follows, ready to kill her.

Instead of fighting, Phosyne convinces Voyne to drink.

The purified water instantly breaks the Lady’s enchantment. Voyne remembers everything—the mutilation of Jacynde, the human flesh she consumed, and the atrocities she committed while believing herself blessed. She collapses in horror.

Phosyne, Voyne, and Treila now know they must escape. But when they try to use Treila’s underground passage, they discover that the Lady’s magic has altered Voyne in another way: Voyne’s attention slides away from Treila as though she isn’t there, and when Voyne attempts to crawl through the tunnel, solid stone mysteriously blocks her path.

Aymar itself seems determined to keep her inside.

Treila Finally Sacrifices Her Finger

With the castle deteriorating and escape becoming increasingly urgent, Treila returns to the grotto alone.

This time she knows exactly what the creature wants.

She extinguishes her candle and willingly pushes her left little finger into the fissure. The creature takes its payment slowly, biting through the finger in three agonizing stages until it finally severs it from her hand.

Only then does the bargain take effect.

Treila tumbles through a grotesque, fleshy passage and emerges outside Aymar.

The world beyond the castle is completely different.

Inside Aymar, everyone has remained trapped in sweltering midsummer. Outside, the valley has already reached autumn. Treila encounters royal soldiers who tell her they have been stationed there for two months, unable to approach the castle because of a strange supernatural barrier.

The saints haven’t simply taken over Aymar. They have trapped it inside a distorted pocket of time.

Treila has finally escaped and could remain safely outside.

Instead, she chooses to go back for Phosyne and Voyne.

She returns to the grotto creature and makes another bargain.

This time, she gives it her ear.

Phosyne Discovers the Saints’ Weakness

Back inside Aymar, Phosyne decides that understanding the Constant Lady may be more useful than simply running from Her. When the Lady offers to teach her, Phosyne accepts long enough to experience the entity’s strange perception of reality.

She learns that the saints feed on devotion.

She also discovers their weakness: iron.

That explains why Theophrane, Aymar’s blacksmith, has been unusually resistant to their influence. Years of working iron have left traces embedded in his skin.

By now, the castle has become grotesquely transformed. Voyne discovers sleeping refugees with pieces of flesh carved from their bodies. She finds Leodegardis missing an arm and a leg after sacrificing parts of himself to feed his people. Cardimir has deteriorated into casually drinking blood directly from a servant.

Shadowy creatures begin filling the castle, and Leodegardis tells Voyne to trust Phosyne and protect the people.

Treila returns through the grotto with her missing ear and encounters the Loving Saint, who is furious that she has been dealing with the ancient creature beneath Aymar. She threatens him with her knife and manages to get away.

Phosyne, meanwhile, is changing. Her magical abilities are growing stronger as reality inside Aymar becomes increasingly unstable. When Treila reaches her tower and urges her to escape, Phosyne refuses. She believes Aymar has become her responsibility, and she will not abandon Voyne.

Voyne eventually reaches the smithy, where Theophrane confirms that the invaders hate iron and gives her an iron hammer. Voyne uses it to smash the Warding Saint’s head, proving the creatures can be injured.

But the victory lasts only moments.

A mob of enchanted inhabitants storms the smithy and tears Theophrane apart.

Treila Kills Voyne

The Loving Saint has repeatedly tormented Treila by changing his appearance, including taking the form of Voyne. That deception eventually has catastrophic consequences.

Treila encounters the real Voyne in the kitchen garden wearing armor. Convinced she is actually facing the Loving Saint in another disguise, Treila draws her knife.

They fight.

Voyne pins her down and tries to reassure her, but Treila refuses to believe anything she says. She drives her dagger deep into Voyne’s throat.

Only when Voyne collapses and continues bleeding does Treila understand what she has done.

She has killed the real Voyne.

The saints seize upon Voyne’s death. Her body is taken to the chapel and covered in honeycomb. The Constant Lady tells Phosyne that She can resurrect Voyne—but only if Phosyne removes the iron knife from her throat, since neither the saints nor their servants can touch it.

Phosyne recognizes the manipulation and refuses to cooperate immediately.

Treila emerges from hiding and confesses that she killed Voyne. Rather than condemn her, Phosyne tells her to move Voyne’s body into the underground grotto.

There, Treila removes the iron knife.

Voyne convulses back to life.

Voyne Reveals the Truth About Treila’s Father

Voyne’s resurrection finally forces a confrontation that has been building between the two women from the beginning.

Treila has spent years believing Cardimir and Voyne destroyed her father over a petty dispute involving salt. Voyne tells her the truth: Lord de Batrolin betrayed Carcabonne to Etrebia. His execution was punishment for genuine treason.

That revelation doesn’t erase what happened to Treila’s family, but it changes what she believed about Voyne.

More importantly, they now have a common enemy.

Treila takes the iron knife back to Phosyne while Voyne remains in the grotto and speaks directly with the ancient creature. It reveals that it is itself connected to iron and has existed beneath Aymar since the castle’s first stones were cut.

It offers Voyne another bargain: it will strengthen her armor into true iron capable of fighting the invaders if she feeds it their blood.

Voyne agrees.

Phosyne Takes Dominion Over Aymar

When Treila returns aboveground, she discovers that King Cardimir is dead.

Even worse, Phosyne is cutting flesh from his corpse with a bone knife to feed the starving survivors. Phosyne insists she is negotiating with the Constant Lady and trying to save whoever remains.

Treila gives her the iron knife.

The Loving Saint confronts Treila again, but this time she discovers a strange power within herself. Focusing on an inner “prism” she has begun to perceive, Treila attacks him savagely, sinking her teeth into his throat and tearing him apart until the other hungry creatures devour what remains.

Phosyne makes an even more dangerous move.

She offers the Constant Lady the iron knife in exchange for dominion over Aymar and every life within it.

The Lady accepts.

But Phosyne has trapped Her.

Because the knife is iron, accepting it binds the Lady to Aymar. Phosyne becomes the one holding Her leash.

The power is almost too much for a human mind and body to contain. Reality begins collapsing around the castle. Weather and time shift wildly, the stones themselves move, and Phosyne feels her identity beginning to dissolve. She clings to the name Phosyne, repeating it to herself so she can remember who she is.

Voyne Returns in Iron

Treila makes her way back beneath Aymar and discovers that Voyne is alive.

The grotto creature has fulfilled its promise. Voyne now wears heavy, genuine iron armor capable of resisting the saints.

Together, Treila and Voyne return to the keep, which has become almost unrecognizable. Human remains have been incorporated into ordinary objects, shadow creatures fill the corridors, and the boundary between people, insects, saints, and the castle itself is breaking down.

They fight their way toward Phosyne.

Voyne retrieves her sword and joins Treila in climbing toward Phosyne’s tower, where the final struggle with the Constant Lady is unfolding.

The Constant Lady Falls

Voyne attacks the Lady, but an ordinary sword cannot simply kill Her. The Lady retaliates by stabbing Treila with the iron knife.

Phosyne saves Treila, using her growing supernatural power to heal the wound.

She finally understands that possessing dominion means she doesn’t have to defeat the Lady like an ordinary enemy.

She can command the world around Her.

Phosyne pulls the Constant Lady directly into the stone floor and drags Her down into the cistern beneath the tower. Ornuo and Pneio ignite, heating the water until it boils around the trapped entity.

The Constant Lady is cooked alive.

But killing Her destabilizes everything She has changed. Aymar begins collapsing as the distorted reality surrounding it tears itself apart. Phosyne chains herself to the stone in an attempt to hold the world together and begs Voyne to kill her before the destruction spreads.

Voyne refuses.

She pulls Phosyne free instead.

The three women make their way back to the throne room, where Phosyne realizes there is another way to restore order. She kneels before Voyne and relinquishes her dominion over Aymar to her, asking only for Voyne’s continued protection in return.

Voyne accepts.

Instantly, the distorted world rights itself.

The endless midsummer disappears. Aymar returns to the same cool autumn experienced by the world outside, and time finally begins moving normally again.

The surviving Absolving Saint, now revealing a more insectlike form, negotiates for the remaining invaders’ release. As part of the bargain, they will once again be vulnerable to iron.

Before leaving, Phosyne makes one final command concerning the people of Aymar.

The survivors will wake fed and without memories of the horrors that occurred inside the castle.

After everything they have sacrificed and survived, Phosyne, Voyne, and Treila walk through Aymar’s open gates together.

Outside, summer is finally over.

They leave the starving castle behind and step into autumn.