Judging from the bewildered look on Rebecca’s face, the thought of being a threat to anyone hadn’t even crossed her mind. “Do you think I will?”

“You’re strong enough that you could,” Isabelle said. “Do you want to be a menace?”

“No,” Rebecca said. “Well, not to everyone,” she amended.

Isabelle moved on from this before she could turn her mind to her personal rivals. “Are you afraid of other people hurting you?”

“Well, no, but…” She struggled to give form to her fears. “I mean I don’t … I’m not…”

“Yourself,” Isabelle suggested. “Like you’re not the same person you were before?”

Rebecca relaxed a little. “Yeah.”

Isabelle sat on a crate and gestured Rebecca to sit beside her. “Being a Seelenjäger doesn’t change who you are, it just means you’re a sorcerer and a noblewoman.”

Rebecca squirmed. “Does that mean I have to wear frilly dresses and talk like I have my thumb up my arse?”

“Sometimes the dresses are fun,” Isabelle said, “but you don’t have to wear them all the time. They’re a tool, a disguise for special occasions. And being a noble is just another skill you’ll have to learn, like tying knots, or picking pockets. It’s something you do, not who you are. Marie, Major Bitterlich, and Jean-Claude will show you.”

“What about you?” Rebecca asked.

And what should Isabelle tell her? Marie, Jean-Claude, and Bitterlich had been privy to Isabelle’s secret since the beginning. They’d made up their own minds that she was going to be well, that she would beat this corruption like she’d overthrown every other foe.

“I’ll help you as long as I can,” Isabelle said. She could promise no more. Even now with her medication in full effect, the headache squeezed her head in a vise, and her chorus of ancestors was banging on her skull like inmates at the agonesium. She couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, fighting until there wasn’t any Isabelle left to fight with, but the thing about last stands, even famous last stands, was that they were, in fact, last. Isabelle was coming to an end. Her body would live on for a while, she supposed, but whatever strange residue remained once her identity had been annihilated wouldn’t be her. It would be up to other people to remember her.

“You mean you’re dying,” Rebecca said. It took a child to say what no one else had been willing to, but Rebecca had grown up on the streets, with death all around her. Rebecca looked back and forth between Isabelle and Marie. Isabelle filled in the unspoken What about me?

“Marie will take care of you,” Isabelle said. “She gets cranky if she doesn’t have someone to look after.”

“I do not,” Marie denied. “But that is beside the point. You’re not allowed to die.”