Misery and the princess gaze at one another for a silent moment that stretches like gel. The princess studies Misery like she’s sizing up a stranger. Her eyes, Misery notices, have gold flecks in them, tiny and bold against the darkness. Like holy bluestone, as though she’d been tainted before birth.

She finds the request for a chair in one of the system’s many menus. It brings a sculpted white thing out of the floor, its seat shaped like a flower blossom. Misery sits. Its surface looks hard and plastic but it’s foam, and molds to her form as she settles in.

Alodia Lightning breaks the silence. “So you lived. You survived it.”

“I did. And so did you.” She puts her hands in her lap to keep them from wandering. “I wasn’t sure that you would. You were dead, at some point, while we were in that chamber.”

“The doctor filled me in on what happened. You found an archangel mech.”

“I did. I flew it too. Almost as if it was made for me, specifically.” Even though she knows it isn’t. The archangel is a generous gift she is fortunate to borrow. She taps the amulet strung around her neck. “My mother’s amulet … her gift to me when I was born? That was the token to activate the mech.”

The princess shifts in her bed, absolutely rapt, her entire being leaning toward Misery. “So it’s true.”

“What is?”

Her dark eyes never leave Misery’s face. “So the General believes you. They’re letting you take on the Heretics, next time they come.”

“They are. You don’t approve?”

“No. I do,” says Alodia Lightning, leaning forward so close Misery can smell the antiseptic they’ve washed her skin with. Her hand crosses the border of the bed’s territory and closes over Misery’s, knuckle on knuckle. “I never wanted to believe it, the prophecy surrounding you. But I have to now.”

“The first time we met you tried to kill me.”

“I thought you deserved death. You were a fraudster, dabbling in things you had no knowledge about. I was appalled by it. Offended. Such gall.”

“Why did you think that? After all, I woke the Tear of Assan. Could I have if I were a fraud?”

The princess withdraws to the shelter of her bed, coy now, curling her knees toward her face. “How much do you truly know about the prophet of Calister?”

“As much as any child would, from what I heard and saw on the waves. The news. The bulls. Why?”

Alodia Lightning lurches forward once again. A strange glitter in her eyes—a madness, almost. “I was the prophet of Calister.”

Silence for a long, stunned moment. Then laughter bursts out of Misery like a boil lanced. “You? Come on. You’re my age. And the Imperial princess. How—”