CHAPTER 7

The Throne’s jailors have learned their lessons. This time Misery’s thrown in a saint’s cell, a white honeycomb block lined with indestructible plastic she can’t bend to her will. The door is solid all the way through, and it’s harder than her fists. Her swollen knuckles are testament to that. She might punch the door again. Bruise-pain overrides the hunger eviscerating her. Saints metabolize light and can survive without food, so they don’t send any to this block. Misery hasn’t been fed in hours, or days, she can’t tell. Time is meaningless in this nothing cell with no furnishings and no sound but the rush of her blood. Feels like acid has eaten a hole through her belly. She’d rather have broken bones.

Crem did this when she was a tot, locking her in a room with only light for company to prove that she wasn’t a saint. A delightful test: if Misery survived they could call her a saint, and if she died of starvation then her stoneshifting was voidsickness, inherited from their mother. And Crem didn’t think she was a saint.

In any case he was right, and it was Mother who furiously rescued Misery, unseamed by hunger, before nature could take its course. This time, though, no one’s coming for her. It’ll be over if they don’t let her out soon.

You fucked up, Misery. You stupid fuck.

Misery says this through her hands, clamped over her face to block the interminable light. She’s a comma on the bed, a rectangle of white foam sealed in the floor. There’s no reply and she won’t pretend she wasn’t hoping for one. But Ruin has abandoned her. She’s used to the delusion coming and going as zie pleases, but zie has never been away for this long. It feels punitive.

Her mother’s amulet is gone too. They took it from her, along with the golden armor and everything else she was wearing. It’s just her and a gray zipsuit to cover her nakedness. Misery misses the amulet’s weight on her chest, in her hand, in her zone of awareness. For the first time since leaving Rootsdown, she feels completely and utterly unmoored.

She shouldn’t have done it. Hindsight is laser-guided, and perfectly useless, but she sees clearly now that causing mass murder and mayhem was a mistake. She wanted to make an impression but she made the wrong one.

That’s self-evident; no normal person would have to think this. She hears the admonition in Ruin’s voice, it’s what zie would say if zie were around. Misery curls deeper into fetal position.

Why did she do it? It felt right in the moment, like following gravitational pull, cleaving to a fundamental force of the universe. She didn’t think it through. Followed her gut. Saw a path and took it. Misery forgot, for a moment, the defining principle of her life: that she’s crazy and the nullvoid has been consuming her since she was born. And she’s never been the cautious type, but the recklessness she tapped into while she destroyed the Grand Amphitheater was something else entirely.