“I was a child,” she says. “And the Church kept an airlock seal on my identity. Do you want to hear the story, or not?”

“Please.” Misery presses her knees together and shuts up. Starts to listen.

“My father died when I was a child,” Alodia Lightning says, curling back upon herself. “We were very close. I was his favorite. When he died I was devastated. Inconsolable. They tried to distract me. Tried to pacify me. But I was broken inside. No salve or kind word or pretty trinket was going to fill the chasm where he had been. He was gone, he wasn’t coming back.”

“That must have been hard,” Misery says. Using the sympathetic tones she learned from her brother as he ministered others on Rootsdown.

A shrug. It was a long time ago. “The Throne feared I would go mad, that the nullvoid would claim me, as it was already beginning to claim my mother. So they brought out a new salve. An experimental drug, which they administered to me.” She tilts her head up, gazing into the lights of the ceiling. “It worked. I felt better, I had more energy, I wasn’t in bed constantly embarrassing the family. The drugs shut a mains in my head. My emotions were gone. I felt nothing. I was free. The drug was like magic, a miracle. I didn’t have to feel anything anymore.”

“But?”

“But there was a price. One that I didn’t recognize back then. I started having dreams, powerful ones, frightening ones. Sometimes they came true.” She rests her hands on her knees and her chin on top of them. “More often than not, they came true. Or some version of it, anyway. If someone was going to betray the Throne, I would dream of it before it happened. I could predict Heretic attacks. Troop movements. I would have dreams where I’d be in the commanders’ minds.”

“The Heretic commanders?”

“Yes. My abilities did not differentiate by fealty.”

“And what did you think about all this?”

“I was a child. What did I think? I don’t know. The grown-ups seemed to like what I was saying. I just went along with the flow. Wherever they took me, there I went.

“Back then, I was Grandmother’s favorite. I was latched to her hip. She asked my opinion on court proceedings, individual nobles, minister supplicants. I was her oracle. Her little silver child. And I was so serious about my pronouncements, so calm so collected, nothing like they thought a child should be, that everyone believed that I had been divinely inspired.”