Carissa wakes up in a mostly-white room with flowers decorating the walls, entirely healed, not a statue, and not in any pain.

Abrogail Thrune's voice:

"The Suggestion was:  Don't think about anything else that might be happening, you better believe that if we fuck this up the Queen will turn all of us into statues."

It takes Carissa a while to get, for some reason, but she gets it and, not very surprisingly, bursts into tears.

- it turns out that having lots of feelings and a deep sense you have nothing to lose is inconvenient for things such as addressing your Queen! Or existing!!! Now she has burst into tears! What the fuck! She didn't expect that and is terrified by it, it feels almost like having been changed into a different person, the kind of person who bursts into tears - she knows what she has to do, she knows what she has to pull herself together into, but the pieces are - too far apart, or something, or she forgot how they fit together, or maybe she's missing some -

Abrogail tells her to stop that.

"All you need to do, for a time, is rest.  I hope we've been intimate enough that I can say that it's not a threat to fear, and not an order from your Queen to drop everything and follow, when I say this much:  I put a lot of work into breaking you, in hopes you would heal into a less broken shape than you once had.  If you fall helplessly back into your old shape I'll be disappointed.  I think that if dath ilan were Evil they would not make their Evil out of hollow shells of people.  And it would be genuinely difficult to do this to you a second time, so please, don't try to put yourself together again, not in the same shape as before.  I say that so early, while you ought to just be bawling, because I am afraid you will try to twist yourself up while you're bawling."

"Rest.  Rest.  You did well."

Carissa:

 

"....did well?"

Abrogail:

"Yes.  Most importantly, you undid much of the conditioning that would hinder you in your new task and rank.  You suffered beautifully and satisfyingly for me, tried to live with the strongest will and determination I've felt from any mortal on whom I've used detection, I think you've hit fourth circle, and even taking that into account I'm still not over what you tried with that amulet.  What you were successfully doing with that amulet."

After some further aftercare:

"I, Abrogail Thrune II, swear in Asmodeus's name never to make you a statue for true."

"I originally planned to qualify, unless you betrayed the House of Thrune knowingly, deliberately, and unambiguously - but after seeing how your thoughts turned to me despite an attempted reassurance or two, I think it is best left without loopholes.  I do not actually want you obsessing ever after about fear fantasies of how you might end up betraying me and then statued.  I've had my fun, and it would be disastrous for Cheliax if an untampered truthspell showed that you'd come to love me more than Keltham."

"Though at this level of breadth and consequence I'll make no oath of it without greater payment, I also promise not to seek particularly to destroy your soul by any means nor deprive it of its eternity, either in person or by my dispatched agent or by my influenced pawn."

Carissa:

"I'll be worth it. make you queen of the world."

Further discussion.  Carissa reflects on what happened:

Carissa feels happy. It's a distant kind of happy, it's not the happiness she is used to feeling, but - it was a beautiful story with a happy ending, and she was impressive and valuable and Abrogail had a good time. also she can apparently use spellsilver at a distance of six or eight feet. and she's fourth circle. that's a lot to be happy about, really. 

Carissa feels - overawed. The sense of being in something greater than herself. It's a good sense. It's where a lot of her loyalty is located, to Asmodeus and to Cheliax, the sincere conviction that the people in charge are better than her. Abrogail is a great Queen. She doesn't just think this because Abrogail staged an incredibly elaborate torture-execution and then petted her hair. That wouldn't be a good reason to think it. She thinks it because she's - starting to get a fraction of a sense of how hard it really is, to do things, and Abrogail does lots of things.

Her complaints while she was dying and yelling at Abrogail were totally true, though. Except the ones inapplicable because Security's bizarre incompetence was to reduce the pressure on Keltham-actor or whatever. But notably they weren't complaints about actual decisions Abrogail has actually made. Because those have been good. Including the decision to rent Carissa, which has paid some serious corrupting-Keltham dividends and also been good for the both of them. Abrogail's advisors who were opposed to this were unreasonable, and that's only a tiny bit protectiveness of Maillol which Carissa now feels because he's one of the tools she'll need for her project and people made him worse at it. Unlike this. This made Carissa better. This was a gift to Carissa, not an indulgence at her expense, and Carissa is so grateful, and so - assured, very deeply, in her faith.

Abrogail:

"See, now those are the thoughts of a mind that is beginning to align itself behind its own passions, that won't fall apart in its inner divisions after Keltham gives you twenty more lectures on Law and taps you with an Owl's Wisdom."

"I'm not going to have time to work on all the other girls in his class, though, so good luck with that."

Abrogail checks whether Carissa would feel this encounter was incomplete if they didn't actually have sex at some point.

Apparently yes.

Sex doesn't make Abrogail Thrune feel anywhere near as alive as when Carissa thought she was having her last thoughts, and Abrogail was reading and feeling it through Detections cast with the force of eighth-circle sorcery behind them.

But it's not like she won't do it, to perfect her work on Carissa.

The story then continues with project lawful and their oblivious boyfriend.