Character · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin
Everly
Author of the Cookbook's fifth edition, an insectile crawler ('a spark in my chitin'): her notes on mercenaries, on a sponsor's box that saved her party, and on hope — then 'I take it back. I take it all back', her sponsor Dictum Waystation Controls, Limited having steered her toward a watched and heartrending death. Carl cannot stop thinking of her last entry as the masquerade nears.
Segment appearances
Arc
The Everly interlude: a sward mantis who left her colony, refused her fellow mantises, and followed a sponsor's compass up fifty flights of an advertisement to a dead end; the Inevitable Ruin her mother the queen named; an ogre who was not an ogre saying 'Maybe it's not inevitable' as the ceiling met his face; fifth edition; crushed (ch. 16).