Kenzie approached, and I took two swift steps before putting my arm out, stopping her from getting far enough around the corner to see the image that was playing out.

“Perfect person?” I asked.

“In personality. He was someone who could fill the lonely void in any of our hearts, and we all have one, hm?” Damsel asked.

“Yeah,” Darlene said, off to the side.

“He intended to betray me. He’d killed four others already, made them love him, broke their hearts, broke them, humiliated what remained, then killed them. I got out unscathed.”

From her tone of voice, tense, too controlled, it didn’t sound like she had.

“Love and caring makes you weak,” Damsel said. “I annihilated that love and caring and I watched it bleed out. I didn’t even know the particulars. I had an inkling something was up, not about him, just… something. So I murdered him.”

“Oh,” Kenzie said, very quiet. “Swansong mentioned—”

“I know what Swansong mentioned!” Damsel raised her voice and her claw at the same time.

Kenzie, meanwhile, dropped her head, and moved obediently when I pushed her back and behind me.

Damsel met my eyes.

“We should get going. You’ve been… impressively helpful so far,” I told her.

“Picking your words carefully to appeal to the arrogant supervillain,” Damsel said. “Working that ‘impressively’ in there, hm? Swansong knew what you were doing and accepted the words like a dog accepts scratches behind the ear. Servile, weak, disgusting.”

“I think it takes a certain kind of strength to know how to receive affection,” Kenzie said, her voice small. “And give it.”

“I didn’t really know, you know?” Damsel said, ignoring the comment. “About the Jewel. Armstrong would tell me later. But right then? He was just a boy. All I had was an instinct, and I still maimed him. That’s how little a perfect affection means.”

I frowned, and Damsel locked her eyes to mine.

“Don’t look past the surface if you can’t accept what you see,” she said. “It was the same for your Swansong. Same feelings, same ideas, same decision to kill a boy she was fond of when she wasn’t sure, because power is that much more important than love. She made that call, same as I remember, and you think she wasn’t using you, Lookout?”

Behind her, the boy from the chair sat on a desk, wearing only a bathrobe. He had a piece of meat on a fork.

I spoke up, “You’re making yourself look small, Damsel, picking the most vulnerable person here and picking at the sorest sore spot.”

Damsel sniffed, dismissive.

“I’m not the most vulnerable,” Kenzie said, looking up at me. “That’d be Byron or something. He’s in the hospital.”

“Uh, sure,” Byron said, poking his head around the corner.