Adelynn’s voice catches in the vaulted space, surrounding me. She is standing over me, her own sword held loosely in her gauntleted hand. Her emerald eyes are cold, but not unkind. Never that.

‘Stand, Evangeline,’ she says.

I try to do as she says, but I only make it as far as my knees before I fall again.

‘I can’t,’ I tell her. My voice is soft and blurred by sorrow. ‘It hurts too much.’

Adelynn shakes her head. ‘Everything hurts, Evangeline,’ she says. ‘It means you are alive. Pain is a blessing.’

‘Then I don’t deserve it,’ I reply.

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘Because I failed,’ I tell her, and I do cry then, my tears betraying me by painting silent trails down my face. I look down at my hands. At the scars that led me to a lie, because this isn’t really the Convent Sanctorum, and Adelynn isn’t really here. This is just a dream. A misfiring of my mind as my body tries to die.

‘I thought I could do this,’ I tell her. ‘Lead. Find the Shield. Be worthy of first one, then the other. Earn an honourable death. But I could not. You never should have put your trust in me. You never should have granted me the sword.’

‘The words you just spoke are precisely why I granted you the sword, Evangeline.’

I look up at her. Adelynn is haloed by the sunlight coming through the tall glassaic windows at her back.

‘You are humble,’ she says. ‘Earnest. You will never have more cruel a master than you are to yourself.’

‘That is why you gave me the sword?’ I ask her. ‘Because I am unkind to myself?’

‘Because you strive. Because you will not allow yourself to fail.’

‘But I did fail,’ I tell her. ‘The Shield was nothing but an illusion.’

Adelynn shakes her head. ‘That is not failure, Evangeline. The only way we fail is to give up.’

I shake my head, now. ‘You always say that,’ I tell her. ‘You always have. But the Shield isn’t here, Adelynn. It never was.’

Adelynn smiles softly, her eyes creasing at the corners.

‘Isn’t it?’ she asks.

‘What do you mean?’ I say.

‘Look around you,’ she says. ‘You already have the answer.’

I look around to see my Sisters frozen in place like statues, their blades and bolters raised. Not just those who are living, but those who are gone, too. They are all standing tall, their weapons drawn. All painted in gold, by the dawn light spilling through the glass.

‘Do you see?’ Adelynn asks.

I nod, my tears coming freely now.

‘It is us,’ I reply. ‘That is why He brought me here. My purpose was not to find the Shield, but to be the Shield. To protect this world.’

‘Yes, Evangeline,’ Adelynn replies. ‘That is why.’