"So Carissa would, in fact, be a hidden cleric, then."

Wait what how does Keltham know that from -

Ione keeps a neutral expression, of course.  "Spoilers, can't say anything one way or the other about anything I didn't know two days ago."

"How many of my other trope-based predictions have been coming true and being hidden from me."

"I haven't knowingly run into Nocticula."

"Asmodia is a true 'asexual', and was 'the one who stands back and watches it all' in the sense that she was the Conspiracy's... Law-checker, consistency-checker, she had a giant wall with green, yellow, red, purple, and black writing for all the anomalies and inconsistencies in the fake universe they were constructing.  And was sort of insane about it.  As of two days ago, two-days-ago Ione says that she doesn't know what Asmodia's superpowers were, but Asmodia seemed to come back suspiciously healthier and less afraid after getting rezzed, which, contra to Sevar, is not usually what happens when somebody goes to Hell.  Sevar dropped hints about Project Lawful girls having an easier time in Hell, but claimed to not know anything herself, and pointed some fingers at Asmodia, who claimed to not know what Sevar was talking about."

"I'd definitely noticed a trend of all the Trope Girls having some reason to not be scared of Hell the way everybody else was, but as of two days ago, I didn't get any visible success on my prediction that Yaisa would get touched by a god and end up with some reason of her own."

"Ione-of-two-days-ago knows a bunch of your trope-based predictions came true while you were fighting with the Queen over Sevar, but they didn't tell that Ione any of the details, presumably because the Queen lost humiliatingly to you."

"I didn't fight Abrogail at any point that I know about!  From my in-universe character viewpoint, after Isidre said there might be a problem, we had one very rational and sane conversation and resolved everything peacefully in order to deliberately avert all the tropes that I thought could've been invoked!"

"Wait, no, that entire conversation with Isidre made absolutely no sense in terms of Conspiracy, of real Cheliax -"

"Ione, what the ass."

"Ione-of-two-days-ago says she doesn't know what the ass, sorry."

"She expresses that the real story is probably fucking awesome, if you could figure it out, and a glorious humiliation of Abrogail Thrune that ought to get printed in every newspaper on the planet outside of Cheliax."

"You sure that's not any spoiler leakage?"

"I have a lot of practice with not letting spoilers, info my character shouldn't know, leak to Keltham.  Unfortunately."

"...Yeah.  Fair."

"Peranza?"

"Ione of two days ago was told that Peranza had some mysterious unspecified mental breakdown as a result of being taught dangerous techniques, did something inexplicable with her mind that an incompetent Security allowed her to go on doing for two rounds before setting her to sleep, Gorthoklek got called in - Gorthoklek is a pit fiend, plausibly the literal actual scariest and most powerful entity in Cheliax ahead of both Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn - and then Peranza got turned into a statue pending there being real chel ilani to take care of her."

She's - not going to say anything about Sevar torturing the Security, exhibiting him to Project Lawful.  It just seems like that would be - cruel.

"Snack Service said not to make any decisions about Peranza-related issues, pending knowledge of a fact that only one person there knew... no, knew enough to deduce."

"Super not saying anything about anything Snack Service related.  You shouldn't think too hard about it yourself, if you can help it."

"I figured."

"...you want to just tell the whole story in something like a reasonable order."

She will.

It's a story that makes entire sense to her, now, if not to him.

She has a lot of practice in not letting any of that show.

Keltham has additional questions.

She has all the answers, and can't speak most of them.

Keltham asks Ione about her real life, before Project Lawful.  If there's anything there that seems - psychologically safe to say.  Keltham is, not really trying to get additional horrors piled onto him, right now, he expects to get enough horror during his next library expeditions.  He just - was wondering - about the real Ione.

It is probably better that he not be told most of it.

She does tell him the story of how she found a sick bird she wanted to nurse back to health, and how her older brother found the bird and slowly tore it to bits, living, while Ione watched, and how that was the last time Ione let herself care about anything, because she understood that anything she let herself care about would be used as a weapon to hurt her.

Oh.  She does understand, then.

Yes.

The romantic plotline is supposed to have Ione say, last time she let herself care about anything, until she met Keltham.

Ione was not, in fact, permitting herself to care too much about Keltham, until she, and he, were both out of Cheliax.

And she cannot comment about whether or not her current state of knowledge would let her care more about Keltham, because of all the possible worlds where it would be a spoiler that she could or couldn't.

Moot point; he's not advancing any relationships right now.  Ione, supposedly, already knows why not.

"Keltham, if you're trying not to think this through too much right now, you probably shouldn't be talking about it."