Afterward they lie tangled and still, cooling skin against cooling skin. Spider says to the air: “I used to wonder, you know. Why I survived when everyone else didn’t.”

“You were the only pilot who lived,” Misery says, a fact harvested from her chat with Diamond.

A low chuckle, electric in the darkness. “Diamond didn’t save me. In the week before I was in trouble, picking stupid fights left and right. Just being an asshole to everyone around. The night before, Diamond took me off duty. Said I wasn’t stable. We had a bust-up, she threw me in the brig. Had one of the backup pilots take my place. Radish, their name was. A ship’s tech. Next thing I know, things went dark and when I woke up everyone was dead, and I wasn’t. That Heretic ship jumped right into us. Smashed every seraph, cut our ship in half. Fucking monsters. Not one of the pilots made it. Most of the tech crew didn’t. That jail cell saved me. Double-reinforced and all. I don’t know why I was spared. Rewarded for being a piece of shit?”

“Diamond saved your life.”

“Kind of wish she didn’t.”

“That’s bleak,” Lightning says, mumbling into Misery’s shoulder.

Spider’s laugh rumbles through their joined frames like thruster bass. “Listen. I haven’t spent the last five years failing every psych test for nothing.”

“And yet.” Misery drums her fingers on the warmth of his skin. “Imagine if you’d passed. Imagine if you’d been released into duty, reassigned somewhere else. We wouldn’t have met. Eh?”

“Don’t. I know where that’s headed. This is preordained, the Demiurge moves in mysterious ways, you were saved for a reason. Blah blah. I’ve heard that shit. Sat through the sermons. Recited the parables. It doesn’t help.”

“And what does?” Misery pushes, gently. She has an inkling where his answer lies, but she wants to hear him say it.

Spider is silent, but the tension builds in his body, stiffening his spine. “Revenge.” A hand curls into a fist, hard upon her thigh. “The Heretics … those murderers … I will enjoy crushing them. I don’t care about being saved. I want to end them. The Demiurge? Put me in the right place at the right time. I will fucking destroy them.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Lightning says. The hunger radiating from them is delicious. Misery luxuriates in it as she drifts into sleep.

CHAPTER 25