‘And the Battle Sisters?’ Eugenia asks.

‘They came to see me, but this time it was not Mortina who spoke, but the younger Sister.’

‘And what did she say?’

I remember looking at her through half-lidded eyes, this warrior clad in black and silver and arterial red, with her piercing, emerald-green eyes.

‘She asked me to stand.’ I pause, remembering the cold stone under my hands and feet. The whistling of the wind and the ringing of the bells. Those green, patient eyes watching me. ‘At first my arms tried to give, and then my legs. My stomach cramped and my heart thundered and my vision blurred and turned black at the edges, but I got on my feet, just as she asked me to.’

‘Then what happened?’ Eugenia asks.

‘The Battle Sister smiled,’ I tell her, and I smile too, despite everything. ‘She told me that was the first lesson. That we must always try to stand, until we cannot. She told me that she would take me as her ward until I was strong enough to be made her Sister.’

Eugenia is smiling too, captivated by my story. ‘What was her name?’ she asks. ‘This Battle Sister who taught you the first lesson?’

I think of her then as I saw her last. In the dream I had whilst healing, cast in golden light.

‘Adelynn,’ I say. ‘And she taught me more than just the first lesson. She taught me everything. She made me her Sister just as she promised and I found that I no longer had the need for dreams.’

‘You found your purpose,’ Eugenia says.

I nod. ‘I fought beside Adelynn in a dozen wars, on a dozen worlds. We prayed together. Trained together. Sometimes, she would speak to me of her stories when I could not sleep.’ I pause, my heartbeat seeming loud all of a sudden. Loud and slow, like remembrance bells. ‘And then I watched her die on Ophelia VII.’

Eugenia makes the sign of the aquila with her unscarred hands.

‘May He keep her always,’ she says.

‘Heart and soul,’ I reply.

Eugenia gets to her feet, then, and goes over to the small devotional table against the far wall. She picks up the little eagle made from red wax. As she returns to kneel opposite me I see that it is clutching a wreath of flowers in its talons. She turns it in her hands.

‘This was meant for my Sister Superior.’ She checks herself. ‘For Sister Juliana. I did not get the chance to give it to her, though.’ She shakes her head. ‘I thought to leave it at the Convent Sanctorum, in the Hall of Remembrance, but I never had chance to do that, either. When we arrived at Ophelia VII, it was already burning.’

Her words pierce the fog of my thoughts like a lance.

‘When we reach Terra, the dead will be laid to rest at the Convent Prioris. Perhaps you could leave it there.’

‘Perhaps,’ Eugenia says absently, still turning the eagle. ‘Though…’