You both make good points here. Rag, your point that she doesn't consider herself weak so she thinks she doesn't warrant death is particularly salient, I'd say. But the way she talked about being 'the queen's chosen' made it sound like it's a specific, formal title and if the kithrak is chosen, then she can't also be chosen. That's the vibe I got anyway.

Niara, normally I'd agree that the purification is just a ruse, but...it feels like an unnecessary one from what little we've seen of gith culture, through Lae'zel. She's already demonstrated a willingness to murder herself and therest of the party when it seemed as though transformation was on the horizon. She even described a whole thing with a circlet going over your head. The gith just to me don't seem likea people who would go to such lengths when they're a race that is literally indoctrinated from birth to be zealot soldiers in the battle against the mindflayers. Especially since becoming a mindflayer is genuinely a fate worse than death. Plus as you said, it seems like more risk to tell the gith to go back to a creche since they might actually make it and change before anyone there realizes. It just doesn't feel like it lines up quite right to me.