"I'm afraid so."
It took time to be sure. There was no report from the Security team that took Sevar to Hell; Commander Hadrian did not reply to a Sending; a Scry failed to find Sevar -
- and another Scry found Hadrian's soul with his owner in Hell.
There were Messages exchanged then, through the Scrying. When Hadrian reported that Sevar had claimed the Most High had done all the talking last time, Aspexia knew, then, though mostly she had known already.
Discern Location did find Sevar in Osirion, in the Black Dome, though even Discern Location could narrow it no further through Ulunat's living shell.
Aspexia did scry also those devils she and Sevar had met at that fortress, and inquired of them too; lesser beings of Hell's surface layer, permitted to report knowledge of their interactions with adventurers, and not have that be an intervention of Hell. So Aspexia learned that Sevar had instructed them to kill, looted the bodies of her comrades, taken those bodies with herself, returned to the Material -
Carissa Sevar had claimed to be serving Asmodeus in a complicated way.
Sevar might, perhaps, have simply been lying.
If Sevar's words had been true or at least honest, there might be some tiny hope of Sevar still being aligned to Cheliax, returning to them reconciled, in time.
Aspexia Rugatonn, after careful consideration, is telling Pilar simply that Sevar defected.
The Queen, Aspexia now judges, has shown herself incapable of manipulating tropes - that one night's tryst, in retrospect, was simply appealing to the tropes to curse them after - and so Aspexia is now trying her own hand at it, for lack of literally anyone else. Does Pilar hold out hope in Sevar, the tropes will crush it; they seem to be in that sort of story. Does Pilar, now the last surviving trope-girl of Cheliax, believe herself by all signs betrayed, the story may subvert her expectation.
To Pilar, then, it should be told simply that Sevar betrayed and murdered her comrades within Hell, including Olegario, and fled to Osirion.