[ Mercy takes the news of her brother-Saint's death like a carnivorous plant snapping shut on a quivering insect, a violent secrecy in the blankness of the closed maw.

Patience truly had been fond of the horrid girl. Mercy had held it as a mark against both of them. Training her in blade and soul, instilling in her all the tedious discipline of his persistent, glossy virtue. Calling her chick, as if Ianthe Tridentarius was anything but the ugliest, worst feathered brood parasite she'd ever seen. ]

Or that he lost out on the chance to do it himself. He always did say he'd like to pluck my heart out.

[ She shivers, barely, in the wind coming off the water as it stirs the fine hairs on the backs of her hands, and whatever stillness quelled her spite vanishes as she rakes her gaze over the baby Lyctor once more. ]

I assume you leapt to his defense. [ She says, very clearly not assuming that at all. ] How clever you proved yourself surviving even that. I'm certain he'll tell you it was well done, if he could - he always had a weakness for doomed effort.

[ She could tell Ianthe where to find him, and the rest, if she chose to. ]