‘They,’ Zoric echoes. ‘You’re talking about the warp, aren’t you? About devils and ghosts, like those we faced in the Chamber Awaiting. That’s what we found on Hellebore. That’s why you took our memories.’

I think about the gateway opening overhead, and the horrors crawling out of it. About the sorcerer in his serpent’s mask, his voice like shifting sand.

Not yet.

‘Not just devils and ghosts,’ I tell him. ‘Something worse.’

Zoric’s pale eyes are wide and wary. ‘What could be worse than devils?’ he asks.

‘The Archenemy,’ I say. ‘Ancient warriors sworn to false gods, led by a sorcerer clad in cobalt and gold.’

Zoric stares at me. ‘Cobalt and gold,’ he says. ‘With a serpent’s mask.’

I watch him carefully. ‘You do remember.’

He sits back in his chair, his hands loose in his lap. ‘Just the mask,’ he says. ‘I dream about it sometimes. Wake up fighting for air and I don’t know why. Yumia is the same.’ He shakes his head as if he’s trying to shake out the memory. ‘You said that they showed you what you wanted to see. Why?’

The sorcerer’s words echo in my head again.

Not yet.

‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘But I allowed myself to be blinded. Fooled. And Sofika paid the price.’

‘That’s why you ordered Efrayl to spare her,’ Zoric says.

I shake my head, remembering. ‘When we brought Sofika back on board the Pandion, Efrayl said that he could save her life. He told me the cost. That she would be bound to the machine. That it would breathe for her and bleed for her. That she would never walk again. That it would only be a temporary measure, and that eventually even the machine would stop working and she would die anyway.’ I shake my head again. ‘I looked at what my blindness had done to her and I wanted to tell him no, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.’

‘So what happened?’ he asks.

I remember it. Efrayl looking at me, desperate, blood-soaked to the elbows. Sofika lying there in pieces, her pale hair matted with blood and her mountain-sky eyes growing distant and dim.

Even then, she still smiled at the sight of me.

‘Sofika spoke before I could,’ I tell him. ‘She said that we swore to find the Conduit, together, no matter the cost.’ I take a breath, and close my hands into fists. ‘I tried to tell her no. That this was too much. But she wouldn’t have it. She gave me an answer that she knew I couldn’t deny.’

‘What was that?’ Zoric asks.

I don’t think of almost losing her, then. I don’t think of Hellebore. I think of a wide night sky through viewport glassaic. Of starlight, and the warmth of Sofika’s hand in mine.

‘That we do not break vows.’