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I softened my gaze until I could see the weaving strands of desire emanating from those on the decks above us, dangling down from the ceiling, trying to ensnare the angelic. Instead, I knotted them to each other, which kept them away from her. It was slow work, but worth the considerable effort. Together, each of those yearnings formed a thick fog filling the room; once I’d tied them off, they were almost pathetically weak.

‘You should not do this,’ the angelic warned. ‘It is forbidden.’

‘Forbidden by whom?’ I asked.

‘By those who keep me here.’

‘Those two arseholes? Dignity and Fidelity?’

She nodded.

Now we were getting somewhere. I found two strands stronger than the others– but they had nothing to do with sexual desire. They were thick as ropes, strong enough to hold a massive galleon to the dock in the midst of a hurricane. I’d assumed all along that the prince must have found some unimaginably ingenious way to bind the angelic to this cabin, and that Dignity and Fidelity had been forced to guard her or risk worse harm coming to her.

I was wrong: theywantedthe angelic bound to this whoreship. The justiciars hadn’t come here to protect her. They were her jailers.

‘Why would two Glorians betray their oaths and everything they believe in?’

Yes, thank you. I’m aware of the irony here.

‘The justiciars betray no one. They merely enforce my sentence.’

‘Who dares punish a spirit incapable of sin?’

‘You know the answer.’

I guess I did.

The Infernals would love to corrupt an angelic, just to stick it to the Aurorals, but they could never pull it off; their spells wouldn’t work on her. A wonderist– areallypowerful wonderist– might be able to snare her momentarily, but once she altered her form, any binding would slide off her like shed skin.

That left precisely one possibility.

‘Why would a Lord Celestine condemn one of their own angelics to indentured servitude on a pleasure barge?’

‘They said I was imperfectly made.’

‘By perfect beings?’

Her eyes lowered to the floor, as if she couldn’t directly acknowledge the obvious flaw in her argument. ‘It is our mission to bring Mortals to the Auroral path.’

‘And you failed?’

‘Not exactly, but there is a. . . a greater urgency to our cause now. The Lords Celestine have deemed princes and archons more vital to the Great Crusade than Mortals of lesser stature. Prince Stercus has great wealth and a vast army at his disposal.’

None of which is supposed to matter to the Auroral Song, in which each of us is a melody as beautiful as all the others.

‘I take it you refused your assignment?’ I asked.

‘One does notrefusethe Lords Celestine. I merely. . . questioned.’ She lifted her eyes and I saw something briefly flicker there, like a match that sparks but cannot light. Before I could work out what I’d seen, she was back to staring at the floor. ‘That which I have become has been deemed more useful to the Auroral Song. My shame provides a warning to other angelics that ours is not to debate, but to do as we are commanded. There must be discipline if we are to defeat the Infernals when the Great Crusade comes.’

‘Bullshit. The Great Crusade’s always coming, it just never gets here. The Lords Celestine can’t invade the Infernal plane any more than the Lords Devilish can breach the Auroral one, and neither can step foot in this one. It’s all just posturing so they can keep their people in line.’

I let too much of my own resentment seep through the barrier I’d been building up between us. The angelic leaned closer, hands gripping the footboard of the bed as if it were the railing of a ship and she’d just spotted a sea monster in the distance. ‘How did you survive your apostasy?’ she asked. ‘How could you not go mad with longing to hear the Auroral Song?’

‘I. . .’

I had worked hard to repress the memory of the serene perfection of that voice in my head: comforting beyond words, the most beautiful, heart-wrenching instrument in the universe, played just for me– and then, for a single act of disobedience, I was cut off for ever.

The angelic watched the anguish on my face. Momentarily freed from the desires of others, the natural perceptiveness of her species returned to her. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you turn away from the Auroral Song?’