The door opened like it had been waiting for an excuse.

  Sister Mercy came in first, which was always how it went — she moved fastest when she was worried, and right now worried was written all over her face in large, clear letters. Sister Marian was right behind her, and Sister Prudence behind her, and Eve was already in the room before any of them, having apparently beaten everyone through the door despite being the smallest person present.

  "Lilith—" Sister Mercy started.

  "What happened—" Sister Marian started, at the same time.

  "How are you feeling—" Sister Mercy continued, overlapping with Sister Marian's next sentence, which was something about pulse and pupils, and for a moment it was just a wall of concerned voices all arriving at once like they'd rehearsed the chaos.

  Lilith opened her mouth.

  Then Sister Marian stopped.

  She had gotten close enough to look properly — clinical first, feeling second, that was Sister Marian's way — and she was looking at Lilith's face with an expression that had gone very still and very quiet in the middle of all the noise.

  "Your eye," she said.

  The other voices stopped.

  Sister Mercy looked. Her hand came up to her mouth.

  Sister Prudence looked, and her expression didn't change outwardly, but something behind it did.

  The eye in question was gold and intact and looking back at all of them from a face that had, as of the last time Sister Marian had seen it up close, been missing that eye entirely. She had dressed that wound herself. She had wrapped the bandage with her own hands.

  "My regeneration grew it back," Lilith said. "It's part of what I was made with."

  Sister Marian stared at her. Then at the eye. Then back at her face. "Eve never mentioned—"

  "Eve didn't think to mention it," Lilith said, which was probably true and also probably the most charitable explanation available.

  Sister Marian looked like she had several medical opinions forming simultaneously and no framework to organize any of them. She reached out, stopped herself, reached out again and gently tilted Lilith's chin up, examining the eye with the focused attention of someone whose understanding was being asked to process something it didn't have a category for.

  "It grew back," she said quietly. Like saying it a second time would help.

  "Yes."

  "The socket was completely—" She stopped. "I cleaned it myself, there was nothing left to—" She stopped again.

  "I know."

  Sister Marian pulled back and looked at her steadily. "And you can see through it."

  "Yes."

  A pause.

  "That eye was blind," Sister Marian said. "From birth, according to everything you told us."

  "It was," Lilith said. "That part I can't explain."

  Sister Marian looked at her for a long moment with the expression of a woman whose medical knowledge was doing its best and coming up short. She closed her mouth. Opened it. Closed it again.

  Eve was at Lilith's shoulder, close and quiet, watching the sisters with the careful attention she gave to situations she was still reading.

  Lilith looked past them.

  The doorway was empty. The corridor beyond showed nothing but the usual orphanage gray.

  Is he coming? she thought. Or is he waiting until someone sends a formal request through Sister Prudence, and she'll make it very orderly, and it'll take the rest of the morning—

  "Ha'ken will see you when you're well."

  Sister Prudence. She'd noticed where Lilith was looking, because Sister Prudence noticed most things and chose which ones to comment on.

  "I'm well now," Lilith said.

  "You were unconscious until—"

  "I'm well now," Lilith said again, and stood up.

  The bed shifted behind her. Her feet found the floor. She was still in the medicae gown and probably looked like she'd had a difficult night, but her legs worked and her head was clear and the gold eye was seeing everything it was supposed to see.

  Sister Mercy took a step toward her. "Lilith, you should rest—"

  "I'll tell you everything that happened," Lilith said, looking at all three of them. "I promise. All of it. But I need to talk to Ha'ken first, and I don't want to wait anymore."

  She moved toward the door.

  Eve fell into step immediately.

  Lilith stopped and turned. Eve stopped too, and looked at her with the expression that said I am coming and this is not a discussion.

  "Stay here," Lilith said, quietly.

  Eve's expression didn't move.

  "I'll be fine." Lilith reached up and patted Eve's head once. "I need to handle this myself. Please."

  Eve held the look for another moment — long enough that it was clearly a choice and not a concession. Then she stepped back.

  Lilith turned back to the door.

  Behind her, she heard Sister Mercy start to follow. Then Sister Prudence's voice, low and even: "Let her go." A pause. "I'll take her."

  Sister Prudence walked slightly ahead and didn't fill the silence, which Lilith appreciated. She moved through the orphanage corridors with the practical certainty of someone who knew where everything was and had long since stopped wasting words on things that didn't need them.

  They found Ha'ken in the small courtyard off the east wing — the only outdoor space in the orphanage large enough that he didn't have to think about furniture. He turned when they came through the door.

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  His eyes moved to Lilith's face.

  Something shifted in his expression — brief, unreadable, gone before she could name it. He looked at her for just a beat longer than usual before settling back into his usual steadiness.

  Lilith held his gaze.

  "I'll tell you everything," she said. "The truth this time. All of it."

  Sister Prudence looked between them once. Then she turned and walked back inside without a word.

  The room Ha'ken chose was small and plain — a side room used mostly for storage, with two crates that served as approximate seating and a high window letting in a strip of gray light. Lilith sat on one crate. Ha'ken stood, because there was no crate that would have held him, and the ceiling was just barely high enough for him.

  Lilith looked at her hands for a moment.

  Then she started.

  "Eve and I aren't what the files said we were. Not exactly." She kept her voice level. "The project names were Project Alpha Plus for me and Project Omega Minus for Eve. The reports called me the failure and Eve the successful one. However, when I gain consciousness, Eve’s blank nature was suppressed to which the Magus deemed me as a defect."

  Ha'ken said nothing. Listening.

  "Her Blank field, it's not just strong. It's so strong that even the Magos who created her couldn't be in the same room without it affecting him. That's why she was kept separate. That's why the project was structured the way it was. It wasn't her strength they were containing." Lilith paused. "It was what she does to everything around her just by existing."

  Ha'ken's face stayed steady. Taking it in.

  "Before the fever," she continued, "I was already tainted. When the Navigator's Eye opened on the Magos's ship, I touched the Warp. I don't know for how long or how deeply. But it left something in me, and it was sitting there the entire time I've been here, and I didn't know it until it was gone." She met his eyes. "The golden flames you saw — whatever they were, they burned it out. I'm telling you because I'm not certain what those flames were. I'm not certain they were from the Warp. But I'm not certain they weren't either."

  Ha'ken nodded, once, very slight.

  "The dreams," Lilith said. "I've been dreaming inside the Warp. I think. It might just be dreams — I can't confirm it but it doesn't feel like dreams. There's a forest, and a temple, and I've met two women there on separate occasions. Both of them seemed to know me. Neither of them explained how. I don't know who they are."

  She paused, gathering the next part.

  "Then there's what happened. A woman came into the orphanage. She said her name was Amelia. She had modified armor I didn't recognize, and some kind of device that stopped time — or froze Eve specifically, I'm not sure which. I didn't see it happen. Eve was beside me and then she wasn't moving, and this woman was already in the room."

  Ha'ken's eyes sharpened slightly. Still not speaking.

  "She said she wanted my eye. The gold one. She said she'd take it either way." Lilith kept her voice flat. "Then she stopped, like something was talking to her. Then she shot me with something that put me under. That's the last thing I remember before an another dream from the Warp."

  A pause.

  "That's where it gets strange," she said, which was saying something given everything before it. "There was a golden light. The same one I've seen before in those dreams but I decided to ignore. I reached for it and memories came. Not mine. I don't know whose they were. I saw Astartes killing each other. Hundreds of them, in armors I didn't recognize. All fighting each other. I don't know what it was, or where it came from, or why touching that light showed me that."

  She let that sit.

  "And the project names — mine was Alpha Plus. Eve's was Omega Minus. I should have told you that from the start."

  She glanced at him.

  "Oh, and the regeneration," she added. "Mine and Eve's both. Omega-class. Eve grew back from injuries on the Magos's ship and I should have told you that too." A beat. "She didn't think to mention it. That's — that's on me, not her."

  Ha'ken's expression remained steady, but she could see him quietly reorganizing information behind his eyes.

  "The eye growing back — that part I can explain," Lilith said. "The regeneration did that. What I can't explain is why I can see through it. It was blind before. Whatever happened when I touched that light in the Warp, it changed something. And I genuinely don't know what."

  Silence settled in the room.

  Ha'ken stood with everything she'd said, and Lilith let him, and didn't try to fill the quiet with anything else.

  Then she took a breath.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  It came out plain and without rehearsal because she hadn't rehearsed it. She was just tired of carrying it.

  "I knew what Eve was from the files. Her real capability. I knew it when you made your promise and I let you make it without the whole picture because I was afraid of what you'd decide if you had it." She held his gaze. "You'd already shown me who you were and I still didn't trust it. You deserved better than that. I'm sorry."

  The quiet in the room changed.

  Ha'ken looked at her for a long moment — the patient, unhurried way he had of looking at things he took seriously. Then, slowly, he lowered himself until he was at her level, one knee on the ground, red eyes even with hers.

  "I will take everything you've told me to the Chapter Master," he said, quietly and evenly. "All of it. I'm telling you this so you know — not to warn you, and not to threaten you. Because you were honest with me, and I will be honest with you in return."

  Lilith nodded. "Yes," she said.

  Something in his expression — just briefly, just for a moment — softened.

  “You may go now and rest.”

  Then he stood and reached for the comm bead at his jaw after Lilith had left. Ha’ken’s voice sounded serious and formal as he said with a quietness that somehow carried more weight than volume would have

  "My lord. The child I mentioned before." A pause. "I believe she is blessed by the Emperor."

  The week that followed was still house arrest, technically.

  The walls hadn't moved. The orphanage was the orphanage. But the feeling of it had shifted — less held breath, more waiting, the way air changed before weather arrived.

  Lilith told Sister Prudence, Sister Marian, and Sister Mercy about the intruder. All of it — the armor, the frozen time, the gun, the eye taken and then grown back and now seeing. She watched Sister Marian's expression move through disbelief and into something more complicated that she didn't entirely put into words. She watched Sister Mercy go pale and then quietly firm up. She watched Sister Prudence nod once and say nothing yet, which meant she was thinking carefully about several things at the same time.

  Life continued in the small ways it did.

  The ball was Sister Marian's idea, which had surprised Lilith enough that she'd almost smiled when it appeared — small, worn, clearly older than most of the children in the building. For your depth perception, Sister Marian had said which she used a lot.

  Lilith and Eve had settled into a quiet rhythm with it. Their room. The afternoon light coming gray through the window. The soft back and forth, Eve tracking every throw with the effortless precision she brought to anything physical because Eve didn't really have a casual setting, not for anything.

  Thwap. Back to Lilith.

  Thwap. Back to Eve.

  Thwap—

  A knock.

  They both looked at the door.

  "Come in," Lilith said.

  Ha'ken opened it, turning slightly sideways through the frame the way he always did. He looked at them both, and his expression carried something — not urgency exactly, but weight.

  "I know who she is," he said.

  Lilith lowered the ball.

  "Amelia Watson." He said it the way he read information — clean and precise. "Former high-ranking member of the Ordo Chronos. She left her post — the records differ on whether she resigned or was removed — and has been operating independently since. Wanted in multiple systems for the theft of artifacts." A brief pause. "Including, it's believed, a device capable of usage of chronomancy."

  Amelia Watson, Lilith thought. Why does it sound familiar?

  "She's been difficult to track," Ha'ken continued, "because of the device. She moves without leaving the usual traces." He paused again, and this pause sat differently from the others. "Several organizations are looking for her. She has, so far, remained unfound."

  Lilith nodded slowly.

  Ha'ken looked at her.

  "There's something else," he said.

  Eve had gone still at Lilith's side — her natural stillness, the one that meant full attention.

  "The Chapter Master has reviewed everything I reported." Ha'ken's voice was even and careful. "Given the daemon attack, the infiltration, your attacker and what she was able to do — and given what you told me." He looked at her steadily. "Our return to Nocturne has been moved forward."

  Lilith looked at him.

  "How far forward?"

  "One week."

  The room was quiet.

  Lilith sat with the word and felt it arrive in stages. One week. Not the distant someday she'd been keeping in the back of her mind, the future-thing that would come eventually when the time was right. One week from now.

  Nocturne, she thought.

  She looked at Eve.

  Eve was already looking at her. Her expression was doing something difficult to read — too many things moving through it at once, the way big things moved through Eve, who had never learned to feel things quietly or loudly, just deeply.

  Lilith looked back at Ha'ken.

  "Okay," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

  Ha'ken nodded.

  The ball sat still in Lilith's hand. The gray afternoon light came through the window. Outside, Armageddon kept rumbling on the way it always did, entirely indifferent to the fact that everything was about to change.