The Battle Sister’s first strike severs the traitor’s arm at the shoulder. This time the Heretic Astartes does stagger, gouting dust. It releases Yumia, who falls to the floor and drags herself clear, struggling to breathe, as Sister Evangeline cuts the monster twice more with heavy, overhand strikes from her sword. Chest. Head.

The silent warrior crashes to the ground, and Sister Evangeline turns to face me, soaked with impossible rain and greyed with dust, save for those blazing scars. Her Sisters are with her. They, too, are anointed with dust. It fills in the scars they bear on their battleplate. It settles in the creases of their skin as they snarl and fire their weapons, forcing back the heretics from around us. I knew that I would feel something at the sight of her. Awe, perhaps. Purpose. But I surprise myself when what rises to the surface first is guilt.

‘I misread the signs,’ I tell her. ‘I only saw what I wanted to see.’

I expect her to be angry. Distrustful. I expect her to challenge me over the promises I made her, but she doesn’t. Her hazel eyes are calm as a cloudless sky.

‘We were both lost,’ she says. ‘But I know my path, now. My purpose.’

She looks to the ziggurat. To the claw of crystal at the top of it.

‘I have to put a stop to it,’ she says. ‘The sorcerer. The rite. All of it. I have to protect this place. This world.’

I look too. To where Sofika hangs suspended at the heart of the storm.

‘I won’t let you kill her,’ I say. ‘You know that.’

‘I do,’ Sister Evangeline replies.

‘I can save her,’ I say. ‘I can still make this right. Just help get me close enough.’

She looks at me. ‘Make it right for who?’ she asks. ‘For you, or for her?’

I know the answer she wants. The answer I should give. Even so, it’s an effort just to say it.

‘For her,’ I say.

Sister Evangeline nods.

‘With me, then, inquisitor,’ she says. ‘To the end.’

Evangeline

EVANGELINE

‘What in the stars is the witch hoping to do?’ Eugenia asks.

She is staring up at the widening gateway over the dais even as she fights, her remaining eye wide with revulsion.

‘He means to resurrect his brothers,’ Ravara says. ‘To use Sofika to drag what’s left of their souls out of the gateway. Out of the abyss.’

‘Is that even possible?’ Eugenia asks, appalled.

‘It does not matter,’ Ashava says. ‘Because he will not have the chance. We will stop him.’

She turns deftly and levels her flamer, loosing a stream of fire at two of the slow-moving heretics. Their ancient baroque armour catches, their eye-lenses cracking under the heat.

‘Evangeline will stop him,’ she says, catching my eyes.