She stops herself short, wets her lips. “The Church, too, wanted me. Gave me a name for public consumption: the prophet of Calister. Named after the hall of residence my brother and I had been sent to after Father’s death. All the predictions I made—the Tear of Assan, everything, I made in this state. It was all very secret. I suspect that back then, just as much as now, the Throne and the Church did not get along well. And they didn’t want it known that a member of the royal family had been bestowed this divine gift, or whatever.” She shrugs. “As I said, I was little. People asked my opinion and I answered. Grandmother doted on me. I liked it. I stopped missing my father.”

“And what happened?”

“Everything has a price, you know. The salves were killing me. I got sick. I almost died. So they stopped the doses.” Alodia Lightning snorts, a sardonic noise. “And you know what? When they took the drugs away, they took the visions away. They hadn’t come from some divine source. They were the product of a drug-addled mind.”

“That’s what you told yourself afterward,” Misery says.

The princess leans back, almost dreamy now. “So it ended. My grandmother was so embarrassed, she stopped talking to me. It killed my mother, you know. The shock of it all. My brother became Emperor. My darling older brother Abiel. He loathed me. He had been so jealous when I was the chosen one, and now that I had fallen out of favor he never let me forget it. Ever.”

“Not very kingly of him,” Misery murmurs.

“It gets worse,” Alodia Lightning says. “Those drugs fucked me up for life. My body never recovered. I can’t take normal salves anymore. My brain no longer makes half the chemicals it should. I take a dozen pills each day to keep my nervous system functioning. So you know. It was all worth it.”

“You were bitter about it.”

A volley of dry laughs shakes her narrow frame. “I ran away. I tried to be someone else, in places no one knew me. I ran salve lines. Made a name cooking tripsalves. But they caught me eventually. Dragged me home like a whelp. Pyrex Imogen was supposed to be my guardian, you know. Because Grandmother couldn’t handle me. Couldn’t stand the sight of me.”

Misery puts a hand on her shoulder, the barest touch of skin against shielded flesh. Alodia Lightning makes no move to flinch away. “I know what it’s like to be hated by family,” she says. “To want to run away. That’s my story too.” More than the princess knows. The self-hatred, the thought of being irreparably broken—those things live in Misery’s marrow too.