Eleven

"One is a shift in identity, the other a mark of..." Harrow finds she can't quite make sense of the appropriate word, the clearest description to explain her new position in the world. The thing she'd bought with the bloodiest price. "Status," she says eventually, after a too-long pause that twists unpleasantly in her gut. "The Emperor and all who serve him are members of the First House, and for the myriad of his reign, there have only been nine who've ascended to Lyctor. To necromantic sainthood, of a kind. I am the last. The ninth."