Emily had always respected the Abbey of the Everyman. High Overseer Khulan was an excellent man and many of her people followed the Strictures. She didn't feel particularly attached to them herself, but she respected the comfort that people drew from the Abbey.
With all the Abbey's fear mongering about the Outsider, however, she had privately laughed. A vague supernatural entity as a stand in for bad behavior? It seemed quaint and ridiculous; a product of old belief from simpler times.
But now she stood in the Void, face to face with the Outsider, and she knew that everything that the Abbey said about the Outsider was true... and somehow false at the same time.
He stood, waiting for her answer, and she sensed that he would be content to stand there for an eternity, watching her (looking through her) until she decided. Had her father faced a choice like this fifteen years ago? She wished with a sudden surge of anger, that her father hadn't kept this secret from her. Fifteen years and she'd never known Corvo had carried the Outsider's mark, not until that moment in the throne room when he'd disappeared in front of her eyes and reappeared behind Luca Abele's man reaching for her and sliced off his head.
She could have used his advice now. The Outsider didn't seem malevolent, but he didn't seem altruistic either. He felt more like... a boy playing with ants, building bridges across chasms of dirt with twigs but also throwing down rocks as obstacles out of sheer curiosity.
A gift like this had to come with a price. But Corvo was the same, right? Emily cast her mind back, certain that Corvo had not been marked before her mother's assassination. She remembered vividly when Corvo had rescued her from the Golden Cat. She remembered the warmth of his arms folding her into a tight embrace, and the smile that lit his eyes. And in the weeks following at the Hounds Pit Pub, she had watched him come and go. He had been tired, yes, and sad, but the core of who he was had never changed. If she took the Outsider's mark, would she remain unchanged? She was Empress of the Isles. Could she take such a monumental risk?
But she needed help. A one armed, one-eyed ship captain was her only ally at the moment. She needed every advantage.
With a feeling of walking to the edge of a precipice, Emily looked straight into the Outsider's ebony gaze.
"Yes, I accept."