Special Solicitation: Since our Q&A feature for Seven Days of Mercy went so well, I’m now asking all Tales of Ciel readers to submit your questions this week in anticipation of Ophiuchus Flinched. If you have any predictions you’d like to share about where the plot might be headed, go ahead and send that as well! I’ll also take non-question critique. Any conversation around the series is fair game. I’ll collect everyone’s sentiments in a feature to be published next week. Reply here or send your email to [email protected].

This week’s reader question comes with a big, fat SPOILER WARNING. If you haven’t read Seven Days of Mercy for the Apostatic Priest and you intend to, go ahead and skip this section. You’ve been warned.

The question comes from OnyxOlli in Minnesota. It came in just a little too late to make the extended Divine Heretic Q&A, but it’s a thoughtful question, so I did want to answer it.

I just finished Seven Days of Mercy on Kindle subscription and I couldn’t believe it was only 200 pages. It felt much longer (in a good way)…I did have a question about the ending. Is Ruxindra in trouble with the other priestesses? What will be the fall out from this?

Major spoilers for the climax of Seven Days of Mercy. You’ve all been warned.

At the end of the book, Ruxindra has forsaken her Apostatic Priesthood and potentially broken her vow (though she performs some mental gymnastics to convince herself otherwise). You’re very insightful to intuit that the Shibboleth will not be so flexibly minded when they learn what transpired in Mahakalpe, and I’m excited that you’re already thinking about how that dynamic might play out.

Ruxindra’s standing vis-a-vis her priesthood becomes a major complicating factor shaping the meta-narrative over the next few novels. Book 2, What Lies Between, takes the central cast far east of Ohtahp, to a land beyond the Shibboleth’s reach. Early on, Ruxindra implies that she’s concerned enough about reprisal from her sisters to take the scenic route.

Without revealing too much, I can say that Ruxindra successfully evades capture…for a bit, but the necessity of her journey will eventually force her back into the Pentamarine, where she and her cohort will be more exposed. The Shibboleth has a long memory, and Ruxindra will have to face her double-apostasy head-on when her sisters inevitably track her down.

So, there will be both implicit and explicit repercussions. The story demands it. The end of Book 1 hangs Chekhov’s angry warrior-priesthood pretty glaringly on the wall.

If you would like to submit a question to be printed and answered (anonymously or otherwise), simply reply send your question to [email protected]. No question is off limits!