“Did something happen to me.” Alodia Lightning rises from the bed, flush with nervous energy. Tight as wire she paces the length of the bed, fingers laced together, knuckles pink. “You know how I barely passed training? How I could barely respond to anyone’s commands in time? The first time I was out in the seraph, it felt exactly like that. I could barely control the unit. It was like a sack of powder, dead weight, I could drag it forward or throw it one length away, nothing in between. Like fighting a gravity well. But not this time.” She lurches in Misery’s direction, as if throwing herself into her grasp. “You saw how well I fought, didn’t you? It was like ballet. I was perfect. I performed better than anyone.”

“You did fight very well. I noticed that.”

“But there’s more.” She starts pacing again, but this time so close Misery can smell the faint salt of her skin, feel the heat off her chest. “I was just following instructions, but I didn’t have to. I could have broken out. I could have danced. Could have wrestled you, if I wanted to.”

“So you can move the seraph freely? The way I do? The way the Heretic units do?”

She reacts as if stung. “The Heretics? Are you saying—no. It’s nothing like them. I mean, I don’t know— But this felt holy to me. Ordained. Like I’ve been granted sacred power.”

Misery takes her hands to calm her, draw the princess back into her orbit. “The Heretics would replace the Larex Forge, themselves,” she explains. “Everything they do they call a miracle. They try to ape the sacred triumphs of the Demiurge. But their achievements are holy only in appearance. Beneath it is the nullvoid.”

Alodia Lightning nods slowly. “I’m nothing like that. I have control of my unit, the way you have control of yours.”

Misery already knows this. She pretends she did not. “Why didn’t you say anything? I’m sure Diamond would like to know. And the General.”

Her gaze is feverish. “I didn’t. I wanted to keep it secret. I—I thought it was your time. They should focus on you.” She pulls away and starts pacing again.

“So something’s changed about you. You’ve been transformed.” Misery thinks of that white cocoon Ruin put Alodia Lightning in. How long she spent in there.

The princess worries at her knuckles. “You said that I died in that cavern.”

“I thought you were dead. You looked dead.” And she was dead. Her heart had stopped. Misery remembers precisely the feeling of carrying Alodia Lightning to Ruin, that horrible meat-weight, devoid of movement, slowly leaching warmth.

“Your archangel brought me back. The Larex Forge. I was dead, and now I live.”