Why…why do so many books suffer the exact same stupid trope. The characters are being lied to, manipulated and subjected to BS. Do the characters call it out? Yes. Do they just shrug it off and do it anyways. OF COURSE. So many scenes are exactly like this.
Spoilers
The order blatantly tells the MC’s they are using them to assassinate people to bring about something they can’t prove at all. It’s like no one cares, THEN, hey, we need you to strip completely naked in front of all of us in the hot desert heat for us to imprint our seal that we totally could do fully clothed. MCs? Again, just shrug, completely strip and get branded. They willingly do a BS “ritual” to be more or less strong-armed into joining this cult that manipulated them into assassinating people and refuse to truly answer any of their questions…IT’S COMPLETE INSANITY. And the worst part is this type of sequence of events just keeps on happening. It was PAINFUL to finish.