I nod.

‘So, what did you do?’ she asks.

‘I left the orphanage behind. I left everything behind, save for the clothes on my back and a single candle. Winter still held its grip on the cardinal city, and the streets were slick with ice. The kind of cold that burns. I walked and I walked, and I kept the candle lit despite the wind and the cold until I reached the gates of the Convent Sanctorum as the sun was rising over the spires.’

‘That must have been an incredible sight,’ Eugenia says.

I think back to how the convent had looked, lit by the fires of the sunrise, all marble and iron and water-stained stone. To how it had sounded. The marching of the Sisters’ boots, and the prayer bells so loud that they hurt my ears. I think back to the tears I had been unable to prevent, freezing on my cheeks.

‘It was,’ I say. ‘I passed through the gates and approached the convent proper only to be stopped by two Battle Sisters clad in black and red. One young and the other old and scarred. The older one introduced herself as Mortina. She tried to send me away, telling me that the Orders Militant could not afford to concern itself with strays.’

‘So what did you do?’ Eugenia asks.

‘I told her no,’ I say. ‘I told her that I had come to offer myself up to serve, and I showed her the candle that I had managed to keep lit all the way from the orphanage.’

‘And what did the Battle Sister do?’

‘She stooped to my height, and told me that I was surely brave and devoted to have come so far with so little, but that it could not change her answer. She told me to go back to my family.’ I shake my head. ‘I told her that I could not. That they were dead.’

‘And did it change her mind?’

‘No. They walked away and left me there.’

‘But you did not go back,’ Eugenia says.

‘No. I took myself over to an alcove in the wall, and I sat down with my candle and I waited. When night came I curled myself around it so it would not go out, and slept until the morning. The prayer bells woke me and the same two Battle Sisters passed me by and saw that I was still there. Mortina told me to leave, and I told her no. This continued for three days, until the candle was burned almost to nothing and I was so weak that all I wanted to do was leave as Mortina kept telling me to.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Eugenia says.

I shake my head. ‘No, because of my dream. Because my mother had told me many stories over the years, but never once had she told me one in which Saint Katherine chose to turn away from a trial, or take the easy path. So I stayed, and one last time I curled around the candle until dawn. This time, when the bells woke me I was so weak that I could scarcely move. The candle had burned itself to the barest stub of wax. There was almost nothing left of it. Just a tiny, weak flame.’