"They - aren't aspiring to my standards? The thing they're aspiring to seems messy, to me, and incoherent, but - I assume getting people to embrace Lawful Evil as part of their identities and motivations at all is hard enough, and it's too hard for some reason to make them embrace some version of it which is less petty and performative?"

"Petty and performative.  Yes.  There's a possible whole person who acts like the Mayor of Senara acts, out of a kind of pride and grandeur in being the worst person possible, more Neutral Evil than Lawful Evil, but whole.  There's a version of him who makes a threat like that because he takes an artistic pride in destroying somebody as absolutely as possible.  He's neither of those people, though, just grabbing at any thought of Evil that passes in his mind, the moment it passes his mind, even if the thoughts don't fit together."

"I won't say that the state of the nobility isn't my fault, or even that it wasn't my choice, but it was my choice out of a serve-yourself shit buffet.  With the triumph of Nidal's conquest, the external threat from Osirion, our internal explosion of spellsilver, I have the political momentum now to do some things I couldn't before.  Like issuing them with Intelligence headbands, and forcing them to actually wear the cursed things, if they can't otherwise keep up with changing times.  Wisdom would be better yet, but I dare not."

"...that's what I told the Mayor, actually, that he wasn't Evil either in service of Asmodeus or himself, that it was pathetic. No one in Hell is trying to prove how Evil they are. I think you can't risk Wisdom headbands yet but maybe once I have something to offer them that isn't heresy and that people don't notice is made of sand if they think about it too hard."

Again Abrogail Thrune speaks none of her thoughts, about what she prays to be the trope-foreshadowed destiny of a compact that Asmodeus Himself might have thought was only humoring this woman: whether Carissa will become someday an Empress who judges Abrogail's suitability as Queen, or become Lord Ruler of Golarion, or leave Golarion with an army to conquer some other place for Hell.  And whether come that day she'd have Abrogail with her as advisor, or leave Abrogail behind as regent, or have long since ceased to think of an obsoleted and discarded administrator of the Chelish region.

Abrogail says none of it, for if she says it, it's less likely to happen; there's all too many twists the tropes could play on them, if Abrogail speaks it aloud, and makes it an expectation that must be subverted.  And to say any such thing would also push Carissa's pride far far ahead of what her present position justifies.  Carissa herself, no doubt, is carefully not thinking any such thing; and that makes it Abrogail's place to read ahead in the story and think those thoughts for her.

Abrogail dances her evening's first and last dance with Carissa, and keeps her thoughts to herself while the music plays.

She's not a particularly good dancer, but with Cat's Grace up and the Queen leading her she can play her part. 

As for thoughts on the evening, those will have to wait until it's over. She's drunk, and tired. 

When the dance ends, Abrogail sends a silent command to her mages, and magical silence is laid upon the ballroom and all its levels.  It lasts 10 rounds, long enough that anyone can and should make their way to a balcony to hear the announcement that's obviously forthcoming.

- though, looking down, the Queen still stands in the dancefloor's center, with a fragile-looking beauty held in her embrace.

It's a gentle, intimate stance, and anyone who sees Abrogail Thrune like that will guess correctly that someone is about to suffer in an artistic fashion.

The other dancers draw even further back, amid the silence, to create a suitable stage for whatever comes.

Magical silence ends, and the Queen speaks into the waiting hush that remains.  "How did you find the party, my dear?  I hope it was not too tiring?"

"It was delightful, your Majesty."

"I do apologize for springing it on you, after such a long day and exhausting endeavor.  Very rude of Nidal to pick just then to end the war."

"How went your trip to the big city?"

"As I'd hoped, and then some. I did some shopping, witnessed some marvels, toured a palace that - if you'll forgive me - surpassed yours..."

There's a barely-audible whooshing sound: half a ballroom drawing in shocked breaths simultaneously, but saying nothing.

Some of the other half are starting to catch on.

"Did you find the buyer you sought, for your own wares?"

"Without difficulty! - you should have seen the rug in His waiting room. I could've stared at it for a thousand years and not wholly comprehended it, and rather hoped He'd have me wait at least a few days so I could try."

He hears the god-pronouns and his heart, already chilling, freezes over.

"Well done.  Lord Dispater does not treat with many."

"I hope it was worth all the waiting.  That fine headband - was it that which you received in exchange?  It's a mighty price, for a soul."

She permits it to assume its proper form, now. 6/6/4. Less than the Crown of Infernal Majesty, but not by very much. "What, this? It was part of our agreement. ....not a large part. Substantially less than half."

Abrogail releases her further from her half-embrace, turns her gently to show her the whole ballroom, or rather, show the whole ballroom to her.  One first introduces the lower-ranked person to the higher, in etiquette.

"Lady Carissa Sevar, commander of Project Lawful, who is now fully and irrevocably of the Infernal Empire..."

"I present to you the assembled nobility of Cheliax."

"Nobles of Cheliax, Carissa Sevar."

"Now go catch some sleep, dear."

She would really like to Teleport out, but tragically the whole palace is Forbiddanced. (Also she hasn't actually hit fifth circle yet but in the haze of the last few days that's started to feel like more of a trifling inconvenience that'll fall at her feet sooner or later). Instead, she inclines her head to the Queen, takes in the faces of the crowd, and then walks out. 

They get out of her way. 

"And the victim of this evening's entertainment is... the Mayor of Senara, who did attempt to extort one night's dalliance from Carissa Sevar, and, alas for him, succeeded.  Console him all your best."

When Carissa wakes she's in one of Abrogail's suite of lovely non-doompunk bedrooms, again, and Abrogail is asleep beside her. 

A second after that, while she's still trying to blink the image in front of her into coherence, someone tries to read her mind. 

She lets them. It is almost certainly a condition of having nice things, such as waking up next to a beautifully asleep and vulnerable Abrogail, that Abrogail's security can see at all times she continues to have no intentions of committing regicide.

She lets the stupid part of her brain that says she will not overthrow Abrogail because of how Abrogail is SO PRETTY THE PRETTIEST be a little louder than usual, in case it is helpful towards that end. 

It feels like she's grown so much she barely fits into this body; it helps, when she looks in the mirror, that the body is almost wholly unfamiliar. She is soul-sold, now, and compacted with Asmodeus shoothopefullyAbrogail'ssecurityisallowedtoknowaboutthat, and nearly as enhanced as magic can make a person, and she went to a party full of Chelish nobles and had a lovely time and picked out the worst person there and hurt him and enjoyed it. 

Asmodeus may or may not have had any genuine prediction in mind, about her, when He instructed her to deliver Him victory in His contest with Irori, but He was, in fact, right, that she is someone who wants things she can only have in Hell, that she is His, that no mercy from some other god could make her otherwise.

She has - to put it mildly - somewhat mixed feelings about Asmodeanism, the ideology, but it's relatively clear what her path is from here to change that. Once she's conquered most of the world then those souls in it which choose her get her, and whether the Church likes it or not by that point she'll be aggressively publicizing what it means to choose her. 

She sits down, then, and tries to rederive the Keltham seduction plan, and doesn't come up with anything, and is troubled by this but only slightly. It seems nearly impossible, that greater-Carissa's intent in building lesser-Carissa into this was traitorous. And, well, if it was, she can simply not defect; that's within her power. 

When Abrogail wakes she is wholly lost in stubbornly trying to hang a fifth circle spell. 

Abrogail Thrune comes awake, notices that there's somebody in bed with her who isn't powerful enough to be a direct threat, and in sheer reflex before her brain is even awake enough to remember who's there, stretches in a languorous and sensual fashion.

It only takes a few seconds to remember who and why, but she's already taken the correct action on reflex.