The Lady Storm gestures to Ashe. “Arrest them.” She will hold these two interlopers in custody. Keep them imprisoned where they can’t do any harm. Their existence here is a wound, tearing into the fragile body of the truces both political and personal. She will staunch the flow of blood, heal the unexpected rift opening before her. She will maintain the status quo.

But Ashe freezes in fear: Arresting the Imperial princess? Is that allowed? That moment of hesitation costs them. It’s all Misery needs. Do something, she thinks, and the angel sent to her by the Forge grins, bright-eyed in hir triumph. Mere human folly cannot thwart the will of the Demiurge.

In the flash of a human eye, Monkglass falls into divine hands. Ruin controls the station as easily as zie extracted secrets from its core. Power fails across the nerve center. Stonecharge fails. Darkness descends. Before anyone else in the office can react, Misery grabs Lightning by the wrist, and runs.

CHAPTER 33

Misery and Lightning crash through the maze Monkglass has become, lit only by yellow strips of battery-run emergency lights, a gloaming just enough to wayfind without hitting architecture. Monkglass exerts a heavy pull, and Misery has dismissed it as part of the station’s wrongness, the taint of the nullvoid manifesting as physical discomfort. But in this state of flight, lungs burning and limbs burning, she realizes it’s gravity. Where Angelsteeth was a subgrav station, Monkglass’s settings tend toward supergrav, possibly at its commander’s vanity. It’s just like home, except that Misery’s body has forgotten what home is like. But at least she’s built for this, her bones solid and her calves thick. Lightning, raised in the weak gravity of the Capital, is not having a good time. Breath scours her airways and acid stings each thudding footstep. The princess isn’t complaining, and she won’t stop: driven by need and adrenaline she will run until her body gives out. But Misery can’t have that. Needs her whole and at her peak when she steps back into that cockpit.

So she pulls them sideways into a narrow service corridor. A moment to breathe and collect themselves. Panicked bootfall makes a surround-sound orchestra, some sections more distant than others. Monkglass seethes, trying to locate its intruders. The veil afforded by Ruin won’t last forever. But they can afford this brief moment. They must.

Lightning’s eyes gleam, pet-like, in the dark. “What just happened? You did this?”

“No. That was the angel. Ruin. My messenger. Zie cleared the path.”

Understanding washes over Lightning. Of course. Saved by the Grace of the Demiurge, they have been granted a tiny window to regroup. To plan their next moves. “I can’t believe what I saw. What I heard. The Lady Storm … she betrayed us.”