‘Is this what I am meant to do?’ I ask Him, letting the wind carry my words. ‘Am I on the right path?’

I wait a moment, though in reality I do not expect an answer. Not a literal one, anyway. But just as I am about to turn away from the edge, a burst of marble-white birds take flight from below the lip of the platform. They flurry upwards into the angry sky, scattering feathers. One drifts and twists, caught in the updraught, until it comes to rest at my feet. I stoop and pick it up.

‘It is beautiful, isn’t it?’

I turn to see Ashava standing at the edge beside me, staring out at the distant horizon. I look at the ancient, crumbling face of Terra stretching out below us. At the smog and fog. The curves of void shields casting lambent light over the statues and spires and triumphal avenues. Over the fortifications, and furnaces. The manufactories and mortuaries. Some of the structures are blasted and broken. Some are still burning as they have been ever since the Great Rift opened, because even the Throneworld is not immune to suffering. Like me and my Sisters, it is deeply wounded. Scarred by what has been visited upon it. Even so, there is only one answer to Ashava’s question.

‘It is beautiful,’ I reply. ‘More so than I ever thought it could be. I am glad I had the chance to see it, if only once.’

Ashava glances at me. ‘Perhaps you will again,’ she says. ‘If the God-Emperor wills it.’

There is a moment of silence between us in which the bells toll on.

‘If He wills it,’ I say, after a moment.

‘Evangeline.’

I turn away from the edge at the sound of my name to see Canoness Commander Elivia standing there with her two Celestians, her crimson cloak snapping in the high winds. The rest of the commandery, almost four hundred Battle Sisters, are standing in ordered rows at the landing platform’s edge, waiting. Watching me expectantly.

‘It is time to go,’ Elivia says.

I run my thumb over the edge of the marble-white feather and then let it go, allowing the wind to take it wherever it may. It rushes back over my shoulder, heading for the edge, and the storm-wracked horizon.