Qi-Oh stops walking. ‘No, you don’t,’ she says. ‘I lost everything on Ophelia VII. My eye. My home. All of my Sisters, save for Calyth. And now she is gone too.’

Her words conjure my own Sisters. Gytha. Isidora. Adelynn.

‘You are not the only one who lost everything.’

Qi-Oh turns on the spot and looks at me. ‘No,’ she says, again. ‘You have Ashava. You have the sword.’

She points her finger at me. At the scars on my face.

‘You gained everything,’ she snarls. ‘The rank. The blade. The mark on your face. You are blessed, Evangeline.’

I try to keep my temper. To breathe, and let her words wash over me, but I cannot. Qi-Oh’s words snag easily on my own ragged edges, exposing my grief. My shame. The hollowness, at the heart of me.

‘I didn’t want any of it,’ I tell her. ‘All that I wanted was to die. To follow my Sisters to the God-Emperor’s side. But I couldn’t. I failed. Everyone praises me and expects of me and calls the mark a blessing, but I do not feel worthy, and it does not feel like a blessing.’

The words are so raw and so shameful and so utterly true that I feel weak in the wake of saying them. It is all that I can do to stay standing, and to answer Qi-Oh when she speaks again. Her voice is different, this time. It is gentle.

‘What does it feel like?’ she asks.

I should lie to her. I should at the very least denounce my doubts. But I find that I cannot. That somehow the answer I kept from Ashava and Elivia and even Arch-Cardinal DiCrimio will not be kept from Qi-Oh.

‘Hollow,’ I say. ‘It feels hollow.’

She is quiet for a long moment, her remaining eye narrowed and unreadable. Then I see her blink. See a tear paint a clean line through the blood on her face.

‘Perhaps we are Sisters, after all,’ she says softly, and she extends her hand. Neither of us says a word as we clasp wrists, in the old way. The way that proves a lack of weapons. As I drop my hand away from Qi-Oh’s arm a loud rumbling splits the air. A wracking of the ship’s bones, as though the Vow is being twisted from bow to stern. The remaining lumens flicker out, one at a time, and when they reassert themselves with the loud thump of activation, they are accompanied by another sound. One that is as welcome and heartening as prayer-time bells.

Re-entry chimes.

‘We are out,’ Qi-Oh says absently, when the chimes die down. ‘We made it through the abyss.’

I nod. All around us, the Vow is creaking from the stress, venting air and coolant and long trails of condensation. Sighs, and tears.

‘Out of the abyss, and into the darkness beyond,’ I say.

Book Three

BOOK THREE

THE DARKNESS BEYOND

Evangeline