‘Though what?’ I ask.

She looks at me. Her dark eyes are unsettling. They are so earnest.

‘I intended this for my Sister Superior,’ she says. ‘But that is not Juliana now. It is you. You are the one who will lead us to the Shield. You are the one who bears the God-Emperor’s mark.’

Eugenia holds out the little eagle with his wreath of flowers. ‘Please, take it,’ she says.

For a moment, all I can do is stare at it. The last thing I want to do is accept it, this gift that was made for someone she loved and respected and then mourned for. But then I think about why I am doing this. To understand who my new Sisters are, and what they need from me.

I hold out my hand and let Eugenia press the eagle trinket into it.

‘I am glad to serve you,’ she says, with that earnest look in her eyes.

‘Thank you,’ I say, closing my hand carefully around the eagle so as not to break it.

‘Will there be anything else?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘This is enough.’

By the time I return to my quarters, I am exhausted and my scars are burning as if they have been made anew. It is so painful that I have little choice but to kneel, so I choose to do so with purpose. I light the cluster of candles on my devotional table and kneel before it, hoping that might ease the ache. I breathe deeply and slowly, catching the scent of smoke and of running wax, but the pain does not fade. It is persistent, just like the hollowness at the heart of me. The shameful sensation of grief and loneliness that I expected to fade after meeting with my squad, which has somehow only grown larger. I had hoped to feel closer to them. To feel like a leader. But I feel neither of those things. I feel nothing but pain, and that deceitful emptiness.

So I do what I always do when I am lost. I take a deep breath, knit my hands in my lap and bow my head to pray. My eyes flicker closed. The sound of the ship recedes. Everything recedes.

And then I feel the cold wind against my scars.

I open my eyes to find myself alone in a vast and edgeless darkness. In my hands I hold a single slender candle topped with a yellow, wending flame that flickers as the cold air pulls at it. The cold air pulls at me, too, despite my armour and my vestments. I take a deep breath, smelling candle smoke and cold stone. Dying flowers. I look around, but the candle flame only offers enough light to see the stone of the floor by. It is grey and old and set in place with mortar that has blackened with age. Inlaid into each stone is the God-Emperor’s aquila, wings spread as if it is about to fly. That is when I recognise this for what it is. A dream. The dream. The one I used to have as a child, before the convents and before Adelynn.