Standing over a messy pile of cracked bones and viscera, Shay swayed in confusion. Her actions had been instinctive and immediate, so swift her mind hadn’t been able to keep up with what she’d done. She blinked, refocusing her eyes. Blood. There was blood everywhere. And it wasn’t just red.

No, how could I have ever thought that? It was at least twenty different colors entirely! Plum and violet and another new one she didn’t even have a name for and…oh. Oh, it’s all over my hands.

Shay looked down at herself. At the front of her once-gray dress, at her sticky arms and splattered feet. And then again to the remains. Her memories caught up with her. The fatty, mineral flavor of bone marrow. The sweet, tender meat around the stomach. The succulent, salty, buttery mass of the brain.

“Oh. Oh.”

The remaining humans beat and pulled at the door, screaming for mercy. Shay stepped toward them, spanning several paces in an instant. Closing her eyes, she breathed deep through her nose. They smelled lean, to say the least—yet still the scent made her mouth water.

“Please no,” sobbed one, a woman in her thirties who’d probably been a scullery maid, just like Shay. “Please don’t do this.”

“Let us out you bastards! Let us out!” yelled the other, a man, and a little older. By the horse and hay scent of him, a stable hand.

There was no way she could finish all the best parts of them both. One and a half though, perhaps. So which should she start with? The woman smelled more appealing, but the man had more substance to him. And—

Wait.

This isn’t quite…normal. It occurred to Shay then that she should probably be screaming. Throwing up. Wracked by despair, panic, and disgust. Not deciding which of her fellow commoners to pick off next.

But they didn’t feel like fellows. They felt—smelled and looked and acted like—something other. Something human. Something as separate and distinct from herself as a fawn was to a wolf. She could remember what it had been like to be human with perfect clarity, though. It was like an organ which, no longer needed, had been cut away from her and laid bare for examination. And though she could now see it for all its imperfections and idiosyncrasies, she felt a bizarre, detached sort of attachment to it. It had been hers, after all. And that former piece of her would never have forgiven her if, her faculties and self-control regained, she had actively chosen to kill and eat an innocent…and one of her own at that.

At least, not without a very, very good reason.

Her stomach growled again, this time accompanied by a clenching pain. It was strange that she was still so hungry after having eaten so much. The hunger warred with her loyalty to her former self, pointless though that loyalty was. Surely that human version of her was gone forever, now.

Gritting her teeth just to give them something to do, Shay moved over to the door as the humans stumbled to either side to get away from her. She pressed her ear to its cold saintsteel surface and heard heartbeats and murmuring at its other side.

“Please let me out before I hurt anyone else,” she called. “Give me proper food and tell me what’s going on.”

The more she thought of it, the more frustrated she was at the lack of any explanation for her situation. But the fear and confusion of before, of her last lingering human moments, was gone. Faded away. What remained was a curiosity so intense it eclipsed all other emotions. Aside from the hunger, though she supposed that wasn’t an emotion, exactly.

“Not until you’ve finished,” said a voice from the other side. “Eat. Then you shall have all the explanations you desire. None but you may leave alive.”

Shay scrunched her nose. She’d never exactly liked being told what to do, before, though she hadn’t had any choice but to allow it. Now, despite her seemingly low position in this place, she felt inclined to resist.

“I don’t want to eat these particular people,” argued Shay. “Not unless they’re horrible murderers or something.”

There was a rushed and very quietly whispered argument from the other side of the door. Shay could only make out bits and pieces. She heard the squawk of a crow, and then there was the sound of a throat being cleared.

“They are,” said the same voice from before, at normal volume now.

“That’s a lie!” wailed one of the humans, the man.

“I’ve never hurt a soul,” sobbed the woman.

Shay knew instinctively and by scent that the humans spoke the truth.

“You’re lying,” she called back through the door.

There was a sound of frustration, and a bit more whispering.

“Well it doesn’t matter! Whether you eat them or someone else does, they die. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

Now, that one was most definitely the truth. And her stomach hurt.

Shay frowned. Best make it quick, then. She darted over to the woman, snapping her neck as easily as she might have a chicken’s. She finished the man in the same way before ripping his tunic away and driving her teeth into the soft flesh of his belly. A guttural, animal sound escaped her as blood gushed around her mouth, ran down her neck and onto her chest, hot and rich and still so alive.

When she rose from eating what she could of the third and final one, satiated at last and veins bursting with energy and light, Shay stood and threw back her head. She closed her eyes and for a moment forgot everything else and just thrilled in feeling more alive than she’d ever known possible.

What did they do to me?

They’d welcomed her to Sainthood, made her like them. But she’d never heard of a Saint who looked like her before, though her reflection had reminded her of something she’d seen in some old book, once. A long time ago. An illustration of a Saint with a few flecks of sliver leaf still clinging to the parchment of its skin. But that had been back before she could read.

Behind her, the door scraped open. She spun around, facing the pair of Saints to whom she’d been speaking. She recognized both, two of the men from the group who’d greeted her before. But their once-colorful auras were dulled, almost completely desaturated. And they smelled strangely…blank.

“Come,” said the foremost one, a man who looked only a little older than herself, with auburn hair and a close-cropped beard. The other pressed his lips together, narrow eyes wary. He appeared a bit older than the first, in that polished, glowing way that Saints had—with shoulder-length blonde hair and a goatee.

“I am Nicos, your mentor,” said the redhead, indicating first himself and then the blonde with a sweep of his hand. “And this is Aster—your priest and spiritual guide. We’ll show you to your room.”

Shay didn’t move.

“We’ll answer all of your questions once there,” he added.

Aster threw a sideways glance at him, then turned his icy glare back to her.

“Don’t try anything aggressive. Don’t try to escape,” he warned. “We’re all stronger than you are, and there’s a great deal more of us. You’ll regret it.”

“Nevermind Aster,” said the other Saint. “He’s like that with everyone. Right this way, if you please.”

Shay had nothing better to do, not yet. So, leaving the scraps of the first meal of her new existence behind her, she did as she was told.

Just beyond the heavy saintsteel door was a stairway, and beside that, another door with a silver panel mounted on the wall to its side. Her “mentor” slapped his palm to it, and the door slid open to reveal a space the size of a walk-in closet lined with padded black velvet and a narrow bench. It was so unlike the service lift at Heatherstone Manor—which Shay had never been allowed to use—that she didn’t recognize it for what it was until the door closed and the tiny room began to slide upward.

Shay vibrated with frustration and repressed energy. It was a sort of torture, being trapped in a cramped little box when she could have flown up the stairs so fast it would have actually been fun. Her cells seemed to vibrate with unspent energy. She wanted to move, to really, fully feel how much freer she was now in this new Sainted and silvered body. She supposed her captors must not wish to reveal too much of their lair to her, though, and had to admit it made sense. Though her mind buzzed with questions, she couldn’t focus on any one of them for long enough to ask. She wanted out.

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Thankfully, the lift was quick. It opened into an opulent corridor, where Shay drank in every detail with unending interest, speeding from one thing to the next in the blink of an eye, but staying at each long enough to fully appreciate it. The pair of Saints were forced more than once to tug at her sleeve to get her moving again as she became lost in the details of metallic tapestries and intricate gun-metal colored wallpaper, smoky crystal chandeliers, and taxidermied deer heads with antlers dripping in silver and diamonds.

The way light erupted off the gemstones into shards of glimmering color as countless as the stars could have captivated her for days. If it weren’t for the hunger, that is. And the desperate, curious need to know exactly what was going on and why. And to explore every inch of every part of the house she could get herself into. And—

“Ahem.” Aster cleared his throat again. Shay, having gotten lost in the fragmented beauty of a crystal whilst staring at a bit of chandelier, blinked rapidly and resumed course.

“We’re here,” said Nicos, opening the last door on the left and holding it open.

“Finally,” muttered Aster.

“Please, have a seat anywhere you like,” Nicos spoke over him. Shay brushed past them both, crossing the room in a few heartbeats to snatch at the handle of a door which, because it was made of stained glass and wrought iron, revealed the balcony beyond. But it was locked.

She went to the nearest window instead and peered out of it.

Strange. By the position of the moon in the early evening sky, only about five and half hours had passed since her initial departure from Heatherstone Manor. Funny, how quickly the whole world could turn upside down. Shay giggled. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed as Nicos and Aster exchanged a look—Aster’s concerned, Nicos amused. Of course, all of this was judging by appearance alone, as she could still neither smell them properly nor see the colors of their emanations.

Suspicious, that.

She considered what they might be hiding and how as she returned the full focus of her gaze to the view beyond the window panes. Dramatic mountain peaks spread out below and around them, blue in the rapidly receding light, while even more dramatic storm clouds loomed huge and dark overhead. Rain still fell, only harder than before. But the thunder and lightning—for now at least—had ceased. Shay rested her hands on the sill and pressed her face closer to the glass.

“What have you done to me?” she asked again. “And why?”

Behind her, Aster took a deep breath.

“The true nature of Saints is kept secret from commoners by necessity,” he began, stiffly as though he was reciting a line from a script. “You may want to sit down for this.”

Nicos scoffed.

“The last thing I want is to sit,” said Shay, still examining the view outside the window. Two wings of whatever palace or fort she occupied curved inward from either side, joined and enclosed at one end by a great gate. Beyond that and another row of low stone structures and bits of open land, she thought she glimpsed another wall, and a much smaller, more fortified gate. Presiding over it at all, at intervals, stood seven enormous bell towers.

“There’s no need for delicacy, Aster. Don’t you remember what it was like to be new?”

“It is a distant blur,” said Aster, primly.

“Just tell me,” insisted Shay, still not facing either of them but instead eyeing the courtyard enclosed within the horseshoe of the house. Stone gardens occupied much of it, with crystal-tiled paths winding between standing stones as tall as trees, their intricate carvings clearly visible despite the distance. A number of smaller buildings ringed the outer edges of the courtyard. One of which—at the very center—was all wrought iron and green glass. And beyond all that cloudy glass, Shay could make out the silhouettes of large, leafy plants. Trees? Do they have trees? Incredible. She would have to go see those as soon as possible.

Another deep breath and a throat-clearing issued from behind her, a short little huff of a chuckle.

“What you have likely been taught—that we are the chosen of the Almighty themselves, blessed by Archangels when we come of age—” said Aster.

“It’s a myth,” cut in Nicos.

“It is a simplified summation of what very well may be the truth,” said Aster, voice rising with his temper. “The symbiote may in fact simply be the physical means by which the Almighty makes their will manifest.”

Nicos snorted. Aster sniffed and went on.

“There is a…a being. A species. We believe it first arose as a result of the spread of the Mists down below and its mixing, its recreation of life. From what we can tell, it is some miraculous combination of fungus and animal.”

Shay turned from the window, listening intently even as her eyes roved the room, drawn to everything but the Saints themselves.

“It is a symbiotic being, capable of entering the bodies of highly intelligent species. Humans, ravens, crows. It grows around the brain and nervous system, becoming one with its host and transforming it. Forever.”

Again it occurred to Shay that, if she had learned this same information earlier in the day, she’d have been shocked. Horrified. Disgusted. Again. But now…she was absently fascinated, gratified to have a question answered at last—all on top of feeling utterly compelled to examine her immediate surroundings. There were few lanterns in the room, their glass stained a dark, cloudy gray to mute the brightness of the flames. Examining one of them, she caught sight of her reflection and found herself mesmerized by the metallic sheen of her skin. The jade brilliance of her eyes.

It seemed strange now that she’d been so unsettled the first time she’d seen the changes. So nonsensical to be upset by a transformatuion that had made her stronger, faster, more radiant. More resilient.

Aster and Nicos cleared their throats simultaneously.

“I’m listening,” Shay insisted, reciting back the line about symbiotic beings and transforming forever to prove it before finally turning to face them. “So, you’ve infected me with this symbiotic entity. Why am I silvery? The rest of you aren’t. And why me, a servant, a commoner?”

Aster scowled. Nicos smiled, his eyes crinkling pleasantly at the corners. Gray with a touch of sky blue.

“Most of us weren’t made as you were. We’re exposed to spores, we breathe them in, and they begin to grow from there. But your symbiote is of another caste of this being entirely. Like the queen in a hive of bees. The Saints they create are, ah—not as strong as others, but very important. They’re the ones who create the spores which transform the rest of us, you see.” He paused. “When the last Silver passed, she left behind a sort of seed, or egg, and from that emerged the nymph we’ve used to change you. That little flying creature. They’re picky about their hosts, tend to want to bring in fresh blood. We try to give them a wide range of options, but always they have to have the scent. It’s indescribable, distinct. Nymphs will only join with people who have it.”

“Almost all of us were servants indentured to great houses,” Shay observed, gaze wandering again, this time to the bed. Huge, four posted and curtained in black, made of some sort of pearly gray wood. The duvet and pillows looked so unbearably soft and silky that she had to touch them immediately. Shay darted over to the bed and stripped down to her underdress so as not to get it sticky with blood. Using it first to wipe away the remaining blood on her hands and face, she tossed the stained maid’s dress aside and dove into the blankets, spreading her hands across their soft expanse. ‘I’m still listening.”

Nicos began to speak, but Aster’s words cut across him again, his tone sharp-edged.

“Yes, well. We take what we can most quietly acquire. Losses which will raise the fewest questions.”

Shay glanced over again, looking between the two of them. Nicos peered back with interest, while Aster twisted his lips sourly. Again, she wondered at the extent of what they concealed from her.

“So I’m different,” she acknowledged, sitting up now as her eyes roved about the room again. “A hive queen. Am I the only one who must eat human flesh, then? I suppose I can’t be, since you said that someone else would devour those others, if I did not.”

“Oh no, we all need that,” replied Nicos. “Without human flesh or blood, we degenerate. We become mons—“

“Ill,” Aster spoke over him. Again. “We become very ill, of body and mind, and begin to die. But with human flesh, we thrive. We halt the aging process—”

“Slow it, more like,” interjected Nicos, now starting to sound a touch agitated, though still his scent was masked. While the two seemed to bristle at each other, Shay inspected the large armoire. Made of the same silvery-gray wood as the bed and the rest of the furniture in the room, for that matter, it was empty save for a few silk dressing robes. There was a table with a few chairs around it, over near a mock-hearth filled with crystals and candles. And a massive, floor-length mirror, too.

Incense-burners wrought in the shape of angelic silver wings hung at intervals along the walls, decked in emeralds and exhaling streams of delicately scented smoke. She couldn’t identify the smell, but it was fresh and a little medicinal, and so she guessed it came from some kind of plant. Perhaps the trees down in the greenhouse? There was a fully stocked writing desk and vanity, too, and a luxurious pinstriped couch. Silver on gray. No radiator or stove or true hearth, though. Saints didn’t get cold.

“Drastically slowed,” hissed Aster. “And by those of greatest strength, stopped entirely, yes.”

“Fascinating,” said Shay, meeting his eyes and forcing herself not to look away at more interesting things. “So what is this place called? Who is my—” captor? Jailor? Owner? She bristled, lips pulling back to bare her teeth. “Master. Who is my master?”

“This is Heaven’s Hall, palace of Lord Evinstrad,” said Aster, lifting his chin. “And you are now his ward.”

Ah. That made sense, given the size, elevation, and luxury of the place. It was easy to believe it home to the island’s highest authority, beneath only the Sovereign themselves. And it was bound to be well-guarded and fortified. Difficult to escape.

Before she could decide upon the most judicious way to ask whether or not she was a prisoner, the first bell sounded. The note struck Shay like a dagger through the skull and she yelped, slapping her hands over her ears. The others winced, Aster reaching into his sleeve and Nicos the black leather pouch at his belt. Each of them withdrew small items whose purpose became apparent as the Saints stuffed them into their ears.

Shay, Nicos, and Aster each looked to the other. The other Saints’ expressions answered the question in Shay’s eyes.

They were under attack.