Even though Augustine was critical of Mercy for “hammering out the eighth house before the paint was even dry on the Resurrection,” I don’t think Mercy had nearly as much influence on the eighth as her cavalier did. Cristabel was always eager for self-sacrifice — Pyrrha mentions that Cristabel was the only other person crazy enough to get trepanned on the regular during the lyctor trials, and then there’s the glaring fact that Cristabel killed herself not once but twice in the name of advancing necromancy/helping her friends. She was also fervently faithful, both before and after the Resurrection. It’s really interesting to look at Silas and Colum and see Cristabel’s influence on the eighth — how it warped and darkened over time, and also how that might’ve felt for Mercy as a witness.
Mercy watched her house become the house of zealots and parasites. She watched them become siphoners, leeching power from their cavaliers in a sickly imitation of lyctorhood, her greatest regret. She watched them become the house of “salvation no matter the cost.” She watched them (if Silas is any indication) become critical and unfeeling, fanatics who only knew worship without adoration — all the accusations that had been leveled at her, all the things she loathed. But that’s the path Cristabel laid for them. For all her good intentions, Cristabel’s self-sacrifice only ever managed to hurt people. It gave John the weapon he needed to end the world, it made her best friend into a monster, and it made her house into something she never would’ve wanted for anyone else. It must have killed Mercy to see Cristabel’s twisted legacy, to know her best friend died and she couldn’t even make it mean something.
