Would you like to find out who you are if you aren't mind-controlled to trust me?

She really wouldn't. She has been for sixty years perfectly content not knowing that, not being someone to whom that answer mattered. In a sense, caring about that answer was itself not trusting her mother. Aspexia Rugatonn never wondered who she'd have been if her parents hadn't allowed a devil to raise her.

It is a prerequisite, of course, for things she does care about. Which is to say that it might bring them about it and it might well render them forever out of reach. 

She's scared now, and irritated. "Do it."

As much as she'd like to snap her fingers and be done with it, it's not actually a quick process. It takes Catherine a few minutes to prepare the spell and then another hour to cast it, unraveling the enchantment - unraveling it on herself. She could just exclude Lilia, but - she doesn't feel the need to keep the rest of the charm. Rose and Ione won't notice anything, right away. She can check on them later and see if they still want anything to do with her.

After an hour of reverse-casting it's done and the enchantment peels off of her and falls away from all her descendants. "I can still - hurt you - if you still want to do the comparison."

What does Lilia want. That question has had such a simple answer for a very long time. 

She still loves her mother, she finds. That's reassuring. She hadn't been sure.

She still does not want Cheliax to burn to the ground. So that's good. 

She wants Alex. 

Yeah, that one remains a stretch goal and she is working on it. 

"I do still want the comparison," she manages to say after a moment.

She casts inflict pain three times. "This was how much when you made a mistake in public. And this when you were disobedient in private. And this for training you to resist torture."

There were more things besides inflict pain that Myrabelle did to Lilia when punishing her or training her to resist torture. Catherine does not want to try repeating them, even if the comparison would be applicable, which it wouldn't; Lilia is much tougher now than when she was a child.

Lilia is very still. She's a grown woman, now. It's not very bad, not really. Neither of them are under the impression it is in the hundred worst things her mother did to her.

It is torture. She has not been imagining anything about her childhood.

"Did it bother you, to do that?"

"Now or then?"

"Either. Both."

"Yes. Differently, now."

"I'm going to leave now," says Lilia. "I love you. I hope you are miserable."

One of those is probably going to give, eventually. 

She Teleports out.

Catherine plane shifts to privacy and only then lets herself weep.

It is a dangerous game trying to talk to Alex when she's in this mood but she's feeling reckless and lonely and like it'd be a waste of the mood not to. She goes to work and sends everyone else out of her office but tells them the Lord Marshal should be allowed in, if he wants.

"Only him. If Arazni stops by, tell her I'm busy."

Her secretary nods miserably. Lilia feels a flash of delight. She does not especially try to get her job done, just stares at it. 

Domenico Ervin has been working for de Montero since the Lord Marshal hired her, and has trusted her for... none of that time. He's sure the Lord Marshal has good reason to think she's turned over another leaf, but that's not quite enough to convince him that she's not planning to betray them all someday, or at least willing to do so if the right opportunity came up or someone offered the right price.

This is probably not what elaborately betraying them all looks like, though. He goes to tell the Lord Marshal.

Well that's... strange. He's not sure what to make of it. Someone should probably look into it, though, and it sounds like the sort of task that's not really delegable.

"Montero, did - something happen?"

"And here I thought I had successfully concealed all signs any things happened. Don't have me say that where Abadar's listening. …it's a personal matter, Cheliax is fine, and while I would like it if you stayed I do not expect anything bad to happen if you leave unless someone times a political disaster exquisitely for two hours from now."

He made sure he did not have anything else time-sensitive happening before coming here. He sits down, across from her. "If you want to talk about whatever it is, I can do that. If you want assurances about how I'll use the information I can grant those. If you want to be less afraid I can do that too. If you just want me to sit here either with or without the aura of courage I would like to fetch or send for some paperwork first."

She gives him a tired, fond smile. "You are very relentlessly decent, Lord Marshal. …I'd like to discuss something, confidentially, and I do not want the aura of courage."

"Alright." He's not going to ask unless it looks like she wants him to ask.

She is drumming her fingers on her desk, unhappily. "There is something I didn't mention. Out of - protectiveness, I guess. Of my mother, and of my - story about my childhood, and of your impression that I am presently in the possession of my senses. I have been subject to a very subtle enchantment since I was born, to make me like my mother, and make me trust her, and make me listen to her. We all have. All her descendents. It’s not - not very powerful, not really, but I have never been without it.

And today I - she took it off, with my permission, and this was obviously a good idea, but I feel - fairly hurt and confused and upset."

Really what she feels is - that jarring sensation some illusion magic inflicts where you stare at a face you've absolutely seen before but which your mind insists is unfamiliar, or refuses to resolve into a face at all even though it clearly has all the constituent parts in the right places. Except instead of about faces it's about the very concept of caring about anything at all. But she is not going to inflict poetry on Alex that she hasn't gotten independently approved by someone with taste in poetry. 

"...I'm so so sorry that happened - that you were enchanted in the first place and that it - hurt to have it removed. I am confused about a lot of things but since I'm not acting on any of this it's not very important to unconfuse me, unless you think it would help you to answer my questions."

"I would be happy to answer your questions. It might make me less confused also, really. I also might be all right with you acting on some of this, later, I just don't want to do - irrevocable things - while I'm -"

While she can't evaluate if it might hurt her mother, who she loves, who didn't stop being the center of the world just because it feels a little less obvious that she deserves to be the center of the world, who she wants a hug from quite badly even though they don't really have that kind of relationship and also she doesn't know if she'll ever speak to her again and also it's hard to imagine anything worse than never speaking to her again.

"Yes, of course - I - why? I think I can - guess, at least, why she applied it in the first place," because she's evil and an enchanter and evil enchanters solve trust problems with mind control, "But I don't understand why she would remove it. This is probably because I don't understand her very well."

Lilia feels a flare of defensiveness - why wouldn't her mother do that - which she is aware is insane. Why did her mother do that. She would be better at answering that if it hadn't come as such a surprise to her herself. 

"It was the right thing to do," says Lilia, "to remove it. …she wouldn't phrase it that way. It is a more complete victory over Asmodeus, isn't it, to beat him and then reclaim everything you expended in so doing - but she wouldn't phrase it that way either. She would say that - it happens that she wants me to be happy and free, and so she wanted to. But it's the same thing, really… we've been talking for a while about what relationship to have going forward. And I think we were at a point where - she could say she wanted me to be a friend and not a servant to her, but if she wasn't going to remove it, then she didn't really mean it, right."

"Will it upset you if I say things that are critical of her?"

"Possibly but I wouldn't want you to hold back on that account."