Katy Dionys could pull the pain from a broken body and leave only warmth behind. Tonight she wanted to prove it. A woodcutter lay in the village square, his leg crushed under a fallen cart. He screamed with each breath. Katy knelt beside him. Her black symbiote flexed over her skin. Her red eyes caught the lantern light. She reached out to touch his wound and drink the agony away. The woodcutter saw her face and screamed louder. "Demon!" His wife dragged him back by the arms, scraping him over the stones. Doors slammed shut around the square. A mother yanked her child indoors. Within seconds Katy knelt alone. The woodcutter's leg still bled, but fear had carried him out of her reach. Katy stayed on her knees. She had come to end suffering. Instead she made it. The suit that gave her power was the same thing that emptied every street she entered. Moonlight thinned across the square. A figure stepped from the dark between two houses. White hair, pale wings sewn with faint stars, a robe the color of deep night. Katy had seen this being once before, at the edge of sleep. An angel of the new moon, drawn to hidden things. She spoke gently. "They run from the shell," the angel said. "Not from you." "Then help me get to them," Katy said. "He'll lose the leg by morning." The angel knelt across the wounded man's empty blood. "The new moon shows nothing. That is its gift. Under my sky, no one sees what frightens them." The angel spread one wing over the square. The lanterns dimmed. The stars vanished. Darkness fell so complete that Katy could not see her own hand. "Now they cannot see your eyes," the angel said. "Only feel your hands. Go." Katy crawled toward the sound of ragged breathing. She found the woodcutter by touch. His wife gasped but did not run; in the dark, Katy was only a voice and warm fingers. Katy pressed her palms to the crushed leg. The symbiote drew the pain up through her like water up a root. The man's scream softened. His breathing slowed. Under her hands the agony turned to something like relief, and he wept from the sweetness of it. "It stopped," he whispered. "It stopped hurting." When the angel lifted the wing, moonlight returned. The woodcutter looked up and saw Katy's red eyes above him. This time he did not scream. He had felt her mercy before he could fear her face. Others crept from their doors to watch. But the angel was already fading into the dark, wings folding shut. "I cannot follow you everywhere," the angel said. "I hold one square, one night. Tomorrow you walk into daylight alone." The angel vanished. Katy looked at the crowd, at the sunless hours ending, and knew her cover would not last past dawn.