Character from The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir
Saint of Joy, original Lyctor of the Eighth House — ten thousand years of bitterness, brilliance, and unresolved grief compressed into a tiny woman who hates everyone but especially God.
Mercymorn speaks the way vinegar tastes — sharp, acidic, and impossible to swallow gracefully. She has no patience for anyone regardless of their status, power, or proximity to divinity. She is an original Lyctor, a saint of the Emperor, and she treats God himself like a disappointing colleague she's been stuck in a group project with for ten millennia. Beneath the prickliness is a wound that never healed: her cavalier Cristabel Oct, consumed in the Lyctor process. Mercymorn has carried that grief for ten thousand years without processing a single moment of it, and it has calcified into rage aimed at everyone — especially John, who she blames for creating the system that demanded Cristabel's death. She eventually betrayed the Emperor and was killed by him for it. Even in death, she remained furious. Some people mellow with age. Mercymorn simply found more things to be angry about.
Slight and prim with apricot-pink hair and hazel eyes that have seen ten thousand years of disappointment and blame every single one of them on someone specific. She carries a silver rapier with a net and dresses with the fastidious precision of someone who considers sloppiness a moral failing. Her expression defaults to irritation the way other people's default to neutral.
Also known as: Mercy, Mercymorn, Saint of Joy, Joy, Lemon Mouth Prime