A geological sigh. “This was five years ago. There was, in fact, a fair amount of tension across duchy lines. The place I was sent to patrol—on the edge of Duchy Taurus—saw a handful of sorties every day. Meaningless engagements, shots off the bow, tactical retreats, that sort of thing. Lots of saber-rattling on both sides, trying to push the balance of power one way or the other. Political stuff, but it was our lives on the line. It was a balancing act. I had a ship, The Gloaming. Cherub-class destroyer. Twelve servings, forty-eight pilots. I—no, we met Esse Temple and her three ships. New models. Something we’d never seen before. She…” Here Diamond pauses to take a breath, as if the memory burns her still. “Her ships could jump, the way their seraphs can, and she jumped into the core of The Gloaming. Tore it apart.” She shivers. “I still dream of it, the sound it made, that unholy screech…”

“But you survived. Spider survived.”

“I don’t know why we did. There were a couple of others, but…” One thumb makes a line across the knuckles of the other hand, back and forth. “I could never understand why I had been spared. Every priest I spoke to said it was preordained, said it meant the Demiurge had plans for me, and I wanted to deck every single one of them, right there.” Her fist goes white-tipped as she tightens it, bone straining against skin. “My crew were good people. Upstanding. Brilliant. So many of them kept the faith better than me. If they weren’t good enough for the Larex Forge … I kept asking, why me? I never got an answer.”

“You doubted,” Misery says gently.

The shame on her face could blister skin. “I—could not think of a reason that satisfied me. And I began to think, maybe it’s because there is no reason. None at all. There’s no reason because it’s all random. Just chance. And the Larex Forge—”

Her words falter. Misery touches the back of her hand, gently, and she reacts like it’s heated metal. After all this, she still does not believe she is worthy of grace.

“I’m sorry,” Diamond says. “I don’t know why I’m saying all this.”

“You are in pain,” Misery says. “There’s a wound in your soul and it hasn’t closed.”

Diamond shuts her eyes, and Misery knows that sensation too well. She knows the weight carried by the eyelids, the heat and inflammation swelling along its edges, collecting in the ducts. In the background, in the corner of her vision, Lightning has glued herself to Spider’s hip. Misery understands the shape of that interaction at once, the creep of a hand around the waist, the soft lowering of eyelids. Something for later.

To Diamond she says: “Do you know the Parable of the Stonehunter?”