Alodia Lightning is so terribly close, and her breath shakes as she sucks in air. Fear or excitement? It could be both. “You think you’ve been reborn.”

“It’s the only explanation. I was made whole. Made new. All my shortcomings, corrected. The Larex Forge needs me as a seraph pilot, and now I can pilot seraphs. And this! Look—”

With a sudden motion Alodia Lightning pulls off her shirt to expose the topography of her back, its ridges and valleys verdant with tatts rendered almost black by the diffuse lighting. That dense cover has been cleared in a neat, wide path that runs from mid-vertebra to left hip, a miners’ road of pale, untouched skin. “You see it?” she asks, over her shoulder.

“Shit.” Misery leans and presses two fingers into the blank space, into the yield of her flesh. She understands the signs. “This was a scar.”

“And now it’s gone. The tissue dissolved, remade. Zie fixed it all.”

“Remade you as a tool.” A tool to serve Misery’s needs. Blood pulses in her mouth, but she’s not sure if it’s her heartbeat she’s feeling, or Alodia Lightning’s. The princess has always aroused a depth of feeling in Misery that she could not articulate, but now it feels entirely different. Her fingers absently trace the patterns across Alodia Lightning’s skin. The angular blocks of it, pregnant with meaning. Big and beautiful.

The princess’s breath quickens. “The first time I saw you, I wanted to kill you. I didn’t understand it myself. I was angry, but it was more than that—I wanted to absorb you. But I think I had it backward. The Larex Forge took me into Hir hands and released me again. Pushed me in the right direction.”