The Orks were gone by late afternoon.
Not defeated — Orks were never really defeated, they scattered and regrouped and came back in different directions, and the Steel Legion knew this better than anyone. But pushed back far enough that the immediate threat had collapsed, the advance broken, the orphanage district declared clear by the time the light outside went from gray to the darker gray that passed for evening on Armageddon.
The damage was assessed quietly and without drama.
The east wing had taken the worst of it — sections of wall gone, the library partially open to the outside now, the roof over the far end needing significant attention before the next acid rain came through. Several other rooms along the outer face had broken windows and debris across the floors. The courtyard had rubble in it that hadn't been there in the morning.
And there were casualties.
Not among the children, fortunately — the shelter had held, the sisters had done their work, and every child who had gone in had come out again. But among the Steel Legion troops who had held the perimeter, and among the civilians in the surrounding district who hadn't made it to cover in time. Sister Prudence received the numbers with her usual stillness and went to organize what help the orphanage could offer the surrounding area, because that was what you did, and the doing of it was the only answer available.
Life continued, the way it always continued on Armageddon.
Carefully, and with awareness that tomorrow was not guaranteed.
Eve and Lilith did not leave Lysander's side.
This was not discussed or decided. It simply happened — the three of them moving through the remainder of the day together, through the careful process of getting the children out of the shelter and back into the undamaged parts of the building, through the quiet meal that Sister Mercy organized in the main hall with the focused efficiency of someone who needed something practical to do, through the low murmur of children processing a frightening day in the ways children processed things, which was mostly by talking about it loudly and repeatedly.
Lysander talked about it loudly and repeatedly.
He also ate everything on his plate and most of what was on Eve's before she noticed, and asked Sister Mercy three questions about the lasgun that she answered with the careful vagueness of someone who had decided the answers were not appropriate for a six-year-old and was buying time, and told Lilith at length about what the Ork had looked like up close which Lilith did not need described but listened to anyway because he needed to describe it.
He seemed, to all outward appearances, entirely himself.
When the time came to settle for the night, Eve looked at Sister Prudence and said, simply: "Lysander stays with us."
Sister Prudence looked at her. Then at Lysander. Then at the expression on Eve's face, which was not a request dressed up as a statement but an actual statement that happened to be phrased politely.
"Very well," she said.
The room was quiet.
Lysander had fallen asleep with the speed and totality of someone whose body had decided the day was over and was not accepting further discussion on the matter. He was on his side facing the wall, breathing slowly, one hand tucked under his cheek the way he always slept — Lilith had seen him sleep enough times in the common room to know his habits — and he looked entirely peaceful and entirely fine.
Lilith sat on the edge of her bed and looked at him and tried to locate the feeling that had been sitting at the back of her thoughts since the library.
Eve was beside her, close, their shoulders almost touching.
"Eve," Lilith said quietly.
"Mm."
"Does Lysander still feels… Lysander to you?"
Silence. Not the silence of someone who didn't have an answer but the silence of someone finding the right words for one.
Eve looked at Lysander's sleeping form for a long moment.
"Yes," she nod. Honest and simple. "He's him. Everything about him is him."
Lilith nodded slowly.
I just hope that we're not being tricked.
That was exactly it. That was the thing she hadn't been able to name since Lysander had opened his eyes in the library. He was Lysander — completely, genuinely, unmistakably Lysander, every part of him that she knew was present and accounted for. But there was something beneath that, something she couldn't point to directly, that hadn't been there before.
What happened to him? she thought. People don't just — come back. Not like that. Not cleanly, not without something behind it.
She didn't have an answer. She didn't have anything close to an answer. She had a boy sleeping peacefully across the room and the memory of holding him when he wasn't, and the space between those two things was full of something she couldn't see or name yet.
She added it to the list of things she didn't know and needed to find out, which was a list that never seemed to get shorter.
And then there's me, she thought.
The power. The Warp. The Ork in the library twisting the same way things had twisted on the Magos's ship — driven by the same thing but different from the first time, different in a way that mattered.
The first time, on the ship, she had been strapped to a disposal slab and certain she was about to die and the Navigator's Eye had opened not because she'd chosen it but because something had broken loose inside her without permission.
This time she had looked at an Ork holding Lysander by the head and she had chosen it.
Emotions, she thought. That's the trigger. Both times there was—
She stopped.
Both times there was someone I couldn't lose.
She sat with that. The implication of it, the shape of it, the fact that her most dangerous capability appeared to be tied directly to the people she cared about most, which was either a safety mechanism or a disaster waiting for the right moment, and she genuinely didn't know which.
She reached for the thread — the connection to the Warp she'd felt before, the thing she'd followed to the golden light. Nothing. It wasn't there. Or it was there and she couldn't feel it, which was different from it not being there, and she wasn't sure which of those was true either.
"My blank field came back," Eve said.
Lilith turned to look at her.
"In the corridor." Eve was still looking at Lysander. "When I was fighting. It pushed out — all the way, like before. Like it used to be." A pause. "It went away again when I got to the library."
When she got back to me, Lilith understood. When she got back into proximity.
She looked at Eve's profile. At the calm, careful way she was holding all of this — new information, processed and presented plainly, no drama around it, just the facts laid out and waiting to be thought about.
We are, Lilith thought, a genuinely alarming pair of children.
She leaned over and rested her forehead against Eve's.
Eve went still the way she always went still when Lilith did this — completely, without pulling away, just present.
We can't get a break, Lilith thought. We genuinely cannot get a single break in this universe.
She stayed like that for a moment. Just that — forehead to forehead, the quiet between them, Lysander breathing steadily across the room.
Then Eve spoke.
"Can we take him with us?"
Lilith pulled back slightly.
Eve was looking at her now, direct and serious. "To where we're going," she said. "Can we take Lysander."
The thought landed in Lilith's chest and stayed there.
She looked at Lysander sleeping.
Can we, she thought.
A week ago the answer would have been obvious — no, he was a child in an orphanage, they were leaving, those were simply the facts and they didn't bend. But a week ago Lysander had also been alive in the straightforward way people were alive, and now he was alive in a different way, and Ha'ken had said what happened in this room does not leave it with the weight of someone who understood that what had happened was not a small thing.
A child had died and come back.
In the Imperium of Man, that was not something that happened quietly. That was not something that stayed a private matter between three children and two sisters and a Space Marine. That was something that moved through the world and brought attention with it, and not all of that attention would be kind.
He's not safe here anymore, Lilith thought. If anyone finds out — if the wrong person finds out—
She looked at Eve.
"I need to talk to Ha'ken," she said. "And I need to talk to Lysander."
Eve nodded. Like she'd already known that was the answer and had just needed to hear it said out loud.
Lilith looked at Lysander one more time — at his peaceful, unbothered face, at the clear temple where the wound had been, at the small hand tucked under his cheek.
Something is different and I can't find where.
She lay back and stared at the ceiling and thought about Nocturne and what was coming and the boy sleeping across the room who had no idea that everything around him had just changed.
The darkness of the room settled around them.
Outside, Armageddon rumbled on.