The door is holystone. It whispers to her with the electric, back-of-the-neck prickle that holystone always has. She’s never seen this sort before—a pale gray streaked with white, only pretty because it shines—and she’s always wary of strange holystone. No fucking idea what it’s called. No fucking idea what it does. But ten minutes ago she watched the flint of its striped surface turn gelatinous and admit a young saint bearing a crate of dinner, breaking open and sliding over hir like liquid. Of course. That’s how she got in this box to begin with. The salve they put in her is still flossing her mind, muddying emotion and memory. Smearing adrenaline into a soggy mush of apathy. It’s hard to think, when the salves get her like this. If she had known, she would never have accepted the dose. But then, she’s been saying yes to a lot of shit she shouldn’t lately.

She doesn’t know what’s on the other side of this door. Guards, probably. Trouble. More trouble than what she’s stewing in right now. But anything’s better than sitting on her ass and waiting for the Emperor, or whoever, to pass judgment down. She didn’t sign up for any of this, and she certainly didn’t sign up to be thrown in a cell with zero cause upon arrival in the Imperial Capital. Misery has no idea where her sponsor, the Duke, is right now. For all she knows he’s in a lockbox too. And whatever’s coming next, if she waits for it, is probably worse than what it is right now.

It’s better to find your own trouble than to have trouble come find you.

Misery closes her eyes to focus better. There’s a familiar twinge she’s looking for, a fire in her nerves that tells her when she’s woken the holystone. These rocks are full of surprises, tricksy bastards: some invert gravity, some power the hearts of starships, yet others can destroy everything in their path. This holystone is ostensibly a doorway, but who knows what configurations lurk in its lightless depths? Won’t be the first time Misery wakes some voidtouched ability in holystone that’s brand-new.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

Slouched against the door is a delusion in human shape. A youth with every trapping of a classical softlad, milk-fleshed and bird-boned, icy bangs framing a high brow and jutting cheeks. And hir eyes! Cosmic presence radiates from the hollow of those sockets; sometimes they go bright as suns, sometimes they fall dark as the void between stars. Zie’s dressed in the kind of loose, off-shoulder blanket dress worn by angels in art from the sourceworld, ending above the knee and displaying a generous swathe of skin and nipple. Unreadable symbols crawl over one bare shoulder, fluid and sinuous.