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.’

‘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.