I walk up through the stairwells of the Convent Prioris with Sister Evangeline until we reach an ancient spire tower right in the heart of the cathedral sprawl. It isn’t gilded and grand like the worship halls; instead the marble is threaded with fine cracks and softened by mosses. As we reach the top of the steps, a flock of grey doves takes flight from the rafters, blustering their way out of the tower through one of the arched windows. A handful of shed feathers blow and wend through the air like snow. I cross to the window to try and catch sight of the birds, but they have already disappeared between the towers and spires and statues. Grey amongst the grey. Evangeline joins me by the window, her tread power-armour heavy. This close, I can see that the Battle Sister’s armour is as scarred as her face. The hum of the power pack prickles at my skin.

‘It is vast,’ she says. ‘The convent. The Palace.’

‘Surely the Convent Sanctorum is much the same,’ I say.

She narrows her eyes. ‘It is different,’ she says. ‘It feels different. Unknowable.’

I begin to understand what she means, then. ‘Because of Him.’

Sister Evangeline nods, and then crosses her hands to make the aquila.

‘I felt the same when I first set foot on this world,’ I tell her. ‘Even the air felt as though it could crush me.’

‘Have you grown used to it?’ she asks me.

I can’t help but smile. ‘No.’

That makes her smile, too. It is gone again so quickly that I wonder if I saw it at all.

‘I expect that you want to know about the mark,’ Evangeline says.

‘I do,’ I tell her.

‘There are reports,’ she says. ‘Records.’

I nod. ‘There are, but I want to hear it from you. Stories are like water. Pure at the source, but muddied the further they get from it. Reports and records can be falsified, or inaccurate.’

Sister Evangeline glances at me, her hazel eyes curious. ‘So can people, now and then,’ she says.

I hold her gaze. ‘Not to me,’ I say.

Sister Evangeline watches me for a moment, then she nods, and her eyes go back to the horizon. Rain has started to fall. It blows around the spires of the convent in misting clouds, darkening the grey, old stone. She tells me in her level, melodious voice about the devils that conquered Ophelia VII. About her last stand at the Contemplation with her Sisters, and the monster that came to kill them. She describes her Sisters’ deaths in turn with reverence in her tone. Isidora, Gytha. Then Evangeline pauses a moment. She shifts her hand to rest on the hilt of her sword.

‘And then there were only two of us standing,’ she says. ‘Myself, and Adelynn.’

‘Your Sister Superior.’

She glances at me. ‘Then you have read the reports.’