Foreshadowing
*spoilers for the empress*
"She told me eagerly about all the theories she was reading. “There was this extraordinary explanation about why time itself is distorted the closer one gets to a black hole. I’d never really examined why that might happen before, but . . ." (The Diabolic, Chapter 37)
Okay. So the part where Nemesis and Tyrus go near the black hole and time slows, etc? And they didn't know that? Well SJ Kincaid foreshadowed this in book one, and all of us either didn't notice it, skimmed over it, or forgot it. But she fucking told us that (eventhough it's a theory) "time itself is distorted the closer one gets to a black hole" and when in the empress, we see nemesis and tyrus approach one, we didn't even fucking anticipate it. And when it's mentioned that the interdicts don't age, it never occurred to us that they were near a black hole.