“Impossible,” it said. “You were stripped.” The smoke cauterized its wounds, leaving a stump where its claws used to be. Miss Virtue’s body was flaring out, expanding into an unfamiliar shape, stone groaning as her bones gave way to something else, something very loudly not of this world. “It was a terrible fall,” she concurred, her deadened eyes fixed on Vengeance. “No other angels to sacrifice a piece of themselves so I might regain a memory of what I used to be.”
