“Catherine-” Akua began, but I shook my head.

I met her gaze. Trust me, I silently asked. I have taken us from one mess to another, and twice you’ve had to save my life tonight. Trust me anyway. Slowly the shade nodded.

like, what the FUCK right

The shade was better at this: they’d put up their soldier against my schemer. And while we were fresh off our wars with Above, they’d been stewing in a hole of their own making for millennia. We had the edge, by the slightest of margins. That edge just wasn’t being used for what I wanted.

😀

And so finally I knew what everyone was after: Akua wanted to trick the sisters to their death, Komena wanted heads for her spikes and Andronike wanted me to walk to the altar willingly.

And I needed to outmanoeuver the three of them simultaneously, while prone and having my mind ransacked.

GOOD THING YOU DON’T NEED TO ACTUALLY OUTMANEUVER AKUA

JUST ASK HER TO TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH 😀

And that meant, unfortunately, that putting all my coin on the madwoman trying to fool living gods wasn’t an option.

if Akua wasn’t just so prone to this one specific fallacy in thinking Catherine would have been perfectly comfortable just relying on her, and considers it unfortunate that it just wouldn’t work

Catherine, if I may?”

“Try not to make a mess,” I sighed.

I am perfectly okay with things that are happening currently!

what i did not expect
– Akua addressing Catherine by her first name
– Catherine trusting her to rifle around her fucking head

I THINK THESE COME BUNDLED

I have learned much from you, darling one,” Akua Sahelian smiled. “I may fail, true. In my hour of judgement I may – most likely will – be unmade and cast into the deepest burning pits. But until then? Oh, what a glorious ride it will be.

I really don’t think I need to specify why THIS fucks me up 0.0

There’s no walking back the Folly,” I told her. “Not even for this. I’m one life, Akua. That’s the weight I have on the scales.

the part that really gets me here, I think, is that Catherine /tells/ her this. That she brings it up and puts it on the table out in the open. It just… it fucks me up, that she sees no downside to just talking to her honestly at this point

She’d always been gorgeous. Even when I’d first met her, before I’d learned to truly hate her, I’d thought as much.

it’s the ‘even’ that really kills me here

“So, the power of friendship,” I said. “Feels a bit ungrateful to say as much after such a touching interruption, but we’re not really friends. Acquaintances, at most, and that’s being generous.”

“You break my heart, dearest,” Diabolist drawled. “Again.”

“And I didn’t even need to punch through your ribcage first this time,” I replied, genuinely pleased. “I am getting better at this.”

t h e  p o w e r  o f  f r i e n d s h i p

Akua had grown on me, rather like the bubonic plague,

MY SHIP