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.

That’s what it’s like surrendering to the void. Powerful. Intoxicating. Absolutely terrible.

But it’s wrong to think of the voidmad as dangerous and violent. It’s untrue and unfair, a vise used to trap them in horrible situations. Mother wasn’t like that. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with reality, but she never lost the warmth and compassion that made the core of her. Even when she fought with Crem, even when she was all fire and spit, she was kind. Her sickness never drove her to homicide.