A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 19 or “Don’t worry. The paint has arrived.”

THE OGRE’S FAIRYTALE BRIDE A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTA...

A Court of Jealousy and Haters: ACOTAR chapter 19 or “Don’t worry. The paint has arrived.”

As promised, I’m importing the A Court of Thorns and Roses recaps here from Patreon. These were originally written beginning in August of 2020, so there will be references to upcoming or seasonal events that won’t fit with our current timeline. I am not a time traveler and you’ll never be able to prove that I am. I will also include editors notes like this every now and then as we go, mostly to amuse myself but to give re-read value to those who’ve already been on this awful, awful journey with me.

I know what you’re wondering. And yes.

The next morning, my paint and supplies arrived from wherever Tamlin or the servants had dug them up, […]

THANK THE CAULDRON AND YE OLDE AMAZON DOT COM

The rest of that sentence covers Tamlin taking Feyre to the gallery. Of the hallways on the way there, she observes:

The marble floors shone so brightly that they had to have been freshly mopped, and that rose-scented breeze floated in through the opened windows. All this—he’d done this for me. As if I would have cared about cobwebs or dust.

I mean. He didn’t mop the floors. And you complain about everything else so it’s safe to assume you’d complain about cobwebs and dust.

Before Tamlin can show Feyre the gallery proper, she asks him why he would do something like this out of kindness. Because apparently, kindness is out of character for Tamlin despite us never once having seen this being the case.

Want a writing tip?

The smile faltered. “It’s been a long time since there was anyone here who appreciated these things. I like seeing them used again.” Especially when there was such blood and death in every other part of his life.

That’s what we call a POV skew. Feyre can’t definitively tell us the “why” behind Tamlin’s desire to see someone enjoy the gallery. She’s not in his head.

This is also a missed opportunity: if Feyre had compared her own relationship to blood and death and hardship to his, it would have created more of a bond between them in the reader’s mind. But this is super popular YA fantasy romance, so “I seen his abs through his shirt so now you should be horny, too, reader,” is good enough, I guess.

Tamlin opens the doors to the gallery.

The pale wooden floors gleamed in the clean, bright light pouring in from the windows. The room was empty save for a few large chairs and benches for viewing the … the …

The suspense is unbearable, Feyre.

What’s in the gallery? What is it?!

I barely registered moving into the long gallery, one hand absentmindedly wrapping around my throat as I looked up at the paintings.

Paintings so good, you have to choke yourself.

Pastorals, portraits, still lifes … each a story and an experience, each a voice shouting or whispering or singing about what that moment, that feeling, had been like, each a cry into the void of time that they had been here, had existed.

Aaaand prose so good I have to choke myself. Every time I run across something in this book that I find particularly neat or interesting, I get angry. I know I’ve been saying that a lot in these recaps but damnit, I’m just so frustrated. If Maas would slow down or get honest beta readers or an editor who gave a damn, her writing could be actually good! WHY NOT TRY TO BE GOOD?!

There’s an interesting bit where Feyre recognizes that despite the differences between her and the fairy artists who’ve made the paintings, their art transcends those boundaries and makes her understand them.

A concept so good, I have to choke a stranger because I’ve finally had enough disappointment and despair at the wasted opportunities that abound in this book and it’s translated to a Hulk-esque rampage of violence and blood.

That’s gonna be the title of my “spicy” “Young Adult” fantasy novel: A Rampage of Violence and Blood.

That’s a joke. I don’t have it in me to write something like this. It would suck the soul from my body. ed.—In a bizarre turn of events, I’m in negotiations about a spicy fantasy novel. The title is out of my hands, but I strongly suspect the publisher will go with something noun of noun and noun and I will have to stop making jokes.

Tamlin is shocked that a human could possibly appreciate fairy art.

I wiped at my damp cheeks. “It’s …” Perfect, wonderful, beyond my wildest imaginings didn’t cover it. I kept my hand over my heart. “Thank you,” I said. It was all I could find to show him what these paintings—to be allowed into this room—meant.

With the reputation these books have for being non-stop sexfests, I honestly expected this to be followed by Feyre telling the Tamlin that she can think of a better way to pay for that pizza just as soon as her roommate Taffiny gets out of the shower.

This would have been a fantastic bonding moment if it had come earlier in the story. Also, if we hadn’t seen it before. We’ve already done the dramatic room reveal and Feyre studying paintings and learning about Prythian. And the study was magic. Tamlin strolled in, lit all the candles magically… but that first time, the sentiment was wasted because it’s a library and she can’t read.

Imagine if this scene occurred in place of the library scene. Feyre could see the mural here; that information wouldn’t be lost. It could also incorporate Tamlin, making the reveal less of an infodump. Cutting the entire library scene and slotting the gallery into its place would lay the foundations of understanding between the two of them. That would have made everything that’s happened since charged with the romance that at the moment seems forced. As a reader, I recognize they’re gonna fuck, despite the lack of chemistry between the characters. I’m not excited for that. I’m not anticipating it. I’m just accepting it as a fact, like my own mortality.

Tamlin leaves Feyre in the gallery, where she stares at paintings until she almost passes out from hunger.

After lunch, Alis showed me to an empty room on the first floor with a table full of canvases of various sizes, brushes whose wooden handles gleamed in the perfect, clear light, and paints—so, so many paints, beyond the four basic ones I’d hoped for, that the breath was knocked from me again.

This is where I, a hobby artist myself, thinks snidely to myself “you really only need three and a white if it’s not watercolor,” but in the interest of not being a dick I will confess that most of the paint sets I’ve curated for myself are six colors (warm and cold primaries) and a white.

Anyway, Feyre says she began to paint and we go into a section break.

Weeks passed, the days melting together. I painted and painted, most of it awful and useless.

Self-portraits, then?

I bet when we hear about her art through Tamlin’s eyes, it’s going to be ZOMG SO AMAZING and she’s just modest. She don’t know they’re beautiful, that’s what makes them beautiful, as Harry Styles used to say.

Feyre does note that she takes an occasional break from her dawn-to-dusk painting to hang out with Tamlin and ride around on horses with him.

But there were the days when Tamlin was called away to face the latest threat to his borders, and even painting couldn’t distract me until he returned, covered in blood that wasn’t his own, sometimes in his beast form, sometimes as the High Lord. He never gave me details, and I didn’t presume to ask about them; his safe return was enough.

I guess if I’d ever gotten even a whiff of the chemistry these two supposedly have, I would be like, swoon, so romantic, she worries about him but doesn’t admit it to him. Since Tamlin has all the personality of wet toilet paper drying on the ceiling of a middle school bathroom, their relationship development means nothing to me.

And though my dreams continued to be plagued by the deaths I’d witnessed, the deaths I’d caused, and that horrible pale woman ripping me to shreds—all watched over by a shadow I could never quite glimpse—I slowly stopped being so afraid. Stay with the High Lord. You will be safe. So I did.

Okay, I’m putting money on it: the shadow she could “never quite glimpse” is Lucien. I might have thought it would be a really cool twist and actually, it’s Tamlin who’s the person who just calmly watches Feyre get cut apart, but we already know that Lucien isn’t a High Lord. We just found this out in the last chapter.

But whoever it is who gets to watch Feyre get tortured to death…lucky bastard.

The Spring Court was a land of rolling green hills and lush forests and clear, bottomless lakes. Magic didn’t just abound in the bumps and the hollows—it grew there. Try as I might to paint it, I could never capture it—the feel of it.

1. We fucking know because you tell us in every chapter.

2. Magic actually doesn’t grow there and that’s been established as a problem.

3. WE FUCKING KNOW BECAUSE YOU TELL US IN EVERY CHAPTER.

Feyre admits she even tries to paint pictures of Tamlin because she’s so comfortable being around him. She’s even able to not think about her family, sometimes. Until she does.

My family, glamoured, cared for, safe, still had no idea where I was. The mortal world … it had moved on without me, as if I had never existed. A whisper of a miserable life—gone, unremembered by anyone whom I’d known or cared for.

That’s what happens to pretty much everybody in the end. But it’s apparently the first time Feyre has ever realized that even though she’s the main character of this book, she’s not the main character of the entire universe and it spins her into an existential crisis in which she can’t paint anymore.

No one would remember me back home—I was as good as dead to them. And Tamlin had let me forget them.

At what point did it become Tamlin’s job to make you remember, Feyre?

She spirals into this whole thing where Tamlin probably only gave her the paints to get her to shut up about her family and keep her in the dark about the blight and shit like that, which culminates in her thinking about how stupid and useless she is. Which, pardon the shit out of me, Feyre, is my job. But the passage really would be a good insight into depression, anxiety, or any number of other hateful brain diseases that trick people. Instead, it’s just another poor me, I’m so mistreated moment in a long line of self-pitying passages.

After dinner, she’s so pissed off at the unfairness of living in a paradise where everything is provided for and nothing is expected of her that she storms off into the garden.

“My father had this garden planted for my mother,” Tamlin said from behind me. I didn’t bother to face him. I dug my nails into my palms as he stopped by my side. “It was a mating present.”

Is that like a push present or something?

I stared at the flowers without seeing anything. The flowers I’d painted on the table at home were probably crumbling or gone by now. Nesta might have even scraped them off.

When are we gonna stop fixating on Nesta and how unfair Nesta is and how much she hated wonderful, wonderful Feyre for absolutely no reason? I get it, trauma from bad families lasts forever. But this kind of writing also makes books feel like they’re gonna last forever.

Tamlin providing for them or no, glamouring their memories or no, I’d been … erased from their lives. Forgotten. Id’ let him erase me. He’d offered me paints and space and time to practice; he’d shown me pools of starlight; he’d save my life like some kind of feral knight in a legend, and I’d gulped it down like faerie wine. I was no better than those zealot Children of the Blessed.

You mean the Cult of the Totally Right About Everything? Because so far, Prythian is exactly how they described it and the High Fae, with the exception of ones we’ve only been told about but never met, are also pretty much exactly how the Children of the Blessed envisioned them.

And why does the girl who runs through the woods skinning animals and fucking dudes in haystacks refer to the super polite and accommodating guy who lives in a sumptuous palace full of priceless art as feral?

Words mean things, Sarah.

I stalked to the nearest rosebush and ripped off a rose, my fingers tearing on the thorns.

Leo-pointing-at-tv-meme.gif

I ignored the pain, the warmth of the blood that trickled down. I could never paint it accurately—never render it the way those artists had in the gallery pieces.

I’m starting to think Feyre isn’t a very good artist. I’m very much wondering why there are apparently numerous paintings of Feyre pricking her finger in the present which were painted in the past.

The order of words also affects meaning, Sarah.

He didn’t reprimand me for taking one of his parents’ roses—parents who were as absent as my own, but who had probably loved each other and loved him better than mine cared for me.

Oh good, the Who Had It Worse circus is rolling into town, featuring Feyre the Sad-Sack Clown.

A family that would have offered to go in his place if someone had come to steal him away.

I opened my eyes so wide they’re stuck that way and now I can’t blink. This has to be a joke, right? Because in chapter four, Tamlin made it clear that it had to be Feyre because she’s the one who killed Andras. Nobody, not even Feyre, questioned that. And she’s the one who stood up and admitted to killing Andras, specifically so Tamlin would take her and not harm her family.

Plus, she’s saying her whole family should have offered to go her in place. In Feyre’s equation, three of them equal one of her in an even trade.

Feyre explains to Tamlin that she feels ashamed to have left her family and that she feels “selfish and horrible” for painting. That’s somehow tied to her shame over leaving her family but she doesn’t expand on it. We’re meant to just accept it without questioning it too much.

“All Those years, what I did for them … and they didn’t try to stop you from taking me.”

Bullshit, Feyre, we were there! And we can turn back to chapter four where your father begged for your life and for Tamlin not to take you.

Like, if you’re going to retcon shit that happened in your book while the book is being written, might I suggest you scroll up and fucking fix it that way?

“I don’t know why I expected them to—why I believed that the puca’s illusion was real that night. I don’t know why I bother still thinking about it. Or still caring.” He was silent long enough that I added, “Compared to you—to your borders and magic being weakened—I suppose my self-pity is absurd.”

Pretty much, yeah. Don’t forget, he’s grieving for the friend you murdered, too.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this until right now, but…if the treaty demands a life for a life and fairies are out there slaughtering humans all the time, how is Andras’s death not a fair trade for one of the random villagers who are allegedly getting killed? ed.—Generally, I think of myself as a generally kinda stupid person. You know, like, I’m not a great thinker, right? But I’m still 100% that even my dumb ass could outthink every damn High Fae in Prythian and absolutely run that motherfucker.

Tamlin tells Feyre that if the whole thing with her family bothers her, it’s not “absurd” to be sad about it but I disagree because I’ve been trapped in this whiny brat’s head all the damn time. Tamlin is way more understanding than I am. Then, he kisses her boo-boo from the thorn.

His lips were smooth against my skin, his breath warm, and my knees buckled as he lifted my other hand to his mouth and kissed it, too. Kissed it carefully—in a way that made heat begin pounding my core, between my legs.

Is that the spicy part BookTok is soaking their panties over? Because this is like, the first time anyone hasn’t been fully dead from the waist down. ed.—I’m pretty sure that at this point, I still didn’t have TikTok, or at least, I wasn’t active on it. Like, when I tell you that shit CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL when I did.

Seriously, we’re 40% in with barely a stirring of my loins and everyone who recommended this book to me ever made it sound like solid porn.

When he withdrew, my blood shone on his mouth. I glanced at my hands, which he still held, and found the wounds gone.

Okay, wait. I’m kinda. Wait.

Hang on.

Is he a vampire or some shit? I thought he didn’t have enough magic to heal things anymore? Am I somehow confusing this with a different book I’ve forgotten all about?

Anyway, he somehow has the rose she “chucked” (direct quote) into the bushes in an earlier paragraph and the thorns are magically gone and he puts it in her hair and tells her she shouldn’t feel bad about painting because it brings her joy.

Tamlin seems like a pretty solid dude. You can do better than Feyre, bro.

He leaned in closer, so close that I had to tip my head back to see him. “Because your human joy fascinates me—the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all once, is … entrancing. I’m drawn to it, even when I know I shouldn’t be, even when I try not to be.”

Mr.Jen often says he wishes he could “feel joy” the way I do over tiny things. Is he a High Fae and, if so, where the fuck is my magic castle full of free food?

But I like this motivation for Tamlin liking her, despite the fact that we haven’t really seen Feyre express joy or anything other than self-pity. It’s so much more interesting than books of this genre that are like, “oh, you’re so sexy and mysterious and unusual and amazing and brave for reasons that will go unexplored as your actions continue to evade anything approaching a single one of those adjectives.” This is specific enough to satisfy me.

Just as soon as Feyre like…enjoys something.

But she kinda fixates on the “try not to be” part:

Because I was human, and I would grow old and—I didn’t let myself get that far as he came closer still.

I’m sorry, is he inside her at this point? I don’t mean penis in vagina. I mean like, has he fused with her and/or phased partially through her? Because he keeps getting closer when we’re told he’s already super close.

But bonus points to Feyre for just assuming that he doesn’t want to get attached to her because she’ll die and he secretly yearns to be with her forever or something.

He gives her a slow, tender kiss on her cheek and says:

“One day—one day there will be answers for everything,” he said, releasing my hand and stepping away. “But into until the time is right. Until it’s safe.”

That’s mighty convenient for the author, ain’t it? “I can tell you exactly what’s going on but dang, it’s just really unsafe at this point. Better hang around for like three hundred more pages and endless descriptions of grass Feyre can’t paint until we get there!”

He left me and I took a gasping breath, not realizing I’d been holding it.

Look, I know fanfic has obliterated the usefulness of the phrase, but holding a breath you didn’t realize you were holding is a real thing and it’s a grammatical hill I’ll die on.

After a section break, Feyre decides she needs to go to the “sanctuary” of the woods to think about how things with Tamlin have changed following their garden interlude. Sanctuary is an interesting word choice to describe a place we’ve been consistently warned is super dangerous.

Especially when she notes that she’s brought her knife and her bow and arrows so she won’t be caught empty-handed.

Because everyone needs to be armed in a sanctuary.

I crept through the trees and brush for no more than an hour before I felt a presence behind me—coming ever closer, sending the animals running for cover. I smiled to myself, and twenty minutes later, I settled in the crook of a towering elm and waited.

How does she know it’s precisely twenty minutes?

She waits up in the tree until:

A snap and roar of fury echoed across the lands, scattering the birds.

When I climbed out of the tree and walked into the little clearing, I merely crossed my arms and looked up at the High Lord, dangling by his legs from the snare I’d laid.

She caught a High Lord in a snare. After telling us over and over that no human could possibly match a High Lord in any way.

Sure.

Like, maybe we’re gonna find out that he knew it was there and let himself get captured? I hope? I just want one glimmer of consistency in this book that isn’t Feyre whining about how everything sucks for her.

He chuckled, and I came close enough to dare stroke a finger along the silken golden hair dangling just above my face, admiring the many colors within it—the hues of yellow and brown and wheat.

But no mention of whether or not she can paint it. I’m dying to know, Feyre! CAN YOU PAINT IT AND DO IT JUSTICE?!

My heart thundered, and I knew he could probably hear it.

He couldn’t hear you sitting up in a tree or making a snare or anything like that.

But he leaned his head toward me, a silent invitation, and I ran my fingers through his hair—gently, carefully. He purred, the sound rumbling through my fingers, arms, legs, and core. I wondered how that sound would feel if he were fully pressed up against me, skin-to-skin. I stepped back.

Oh my gosh, is this chemistry? Unearned chemistry, but at least there’s a reason for her nethers to tingle.

What? This part was sexy.

Tamlin frees himself from the snare and asks Feyre if she’s feeling any better, and gives her some paper with poems on them. He reads her one:

There once was a lady most beautiful.
Spirited, if a little unusual
Her friends were few
But how the men did queue
But to all she gave a refusal

As he reads the increasingly off-color poems, Feyre realizes that they all include words from the list she’d been compiling when trying to send a message to her family.

“We had a contest to see who could write the dirtiest limericks while I was living with my father’s war-band by the border. […]”

By the border of where? Limerick, the town in Ireland? That border? BECAUSE I’M NOT SURE YOU CAN HAVE A LIMERICK IN A WORLD WHERE IRELAND DOESN’T EXIST. THAT PARTICULAR TYPE OF POEM WAS INSPIRED BY A SONG CALLED “WON’T YOU COME TO LIMERICK” AND WAS NAMED LIMERICK AS A RESULT BUT OKAY THEY MEAN THE ONE IN PRYTHIAN.

Despite previous characterization, Feyre finds the whole thing really funny. Yuppers siree, after being so sensitive about this list of words and interpreting any reference to them as mockery of illiteracy, Feyre is fully cool with Tamlin mocking her with obscene poems (the rest of which we are, mercifully, spared).

And then comes the section break.

The only thing that happened in that scene is the poems and the hair petting. It advanced the plot…not at all. I can’t even say it advanced the relationship because Tamlin poking fun at something Feyre is ashamed of doesn’t fit with his characterization and Feyre letting that shit slide without four chapters of woe-is-me definitely doesn’t fit with hers.

I used to think fanfic was a good place for people to learn to write but damn, not if they’re not gonna bother to learn the difference in conventions between writing fanfic and writing original fiction. I love fanfic and write pointless PWP scenes all the time but this book is already way, way too long.

After the break:

I was still smiling when we walked out of the park and toward the rolling hills, meandering back to the manor.

WHAT PARK?! THIS IS THE FIRST TIME A PARK HAS EVER BEEN MENTIONED. I THOUGHT THEY WERE IN THE WOODS BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE SHE SAID SHE WAS.

I have no idea where the fuck they are (apparently I should, from the way it was just dropped in there) but let’s just follow them and hope we find our way back.

Feyre asks Tamlin what he meant about his dad giving his mom a mating present and not a wedding present. Tamlin explains that High Fae marry, but they can also find a fated match who’s like their soulmate. It’s like, deeper than regular love, I guess.

I didn’t have the nerve to ask if faeries had ever had mating bonds with humans, […]

Whoa, yeah, that would have taken A LOT of nerve. Why is she just assuming that’s gonna be a possibility? Why is she even wondering about it? They’ve flirted a little, we know they’ve spent time together off-screen, and now she’s like, wondering if they could be soulmates?

She ends up asking him what happened to his parents, and it’s time for what I assume is a hallmark of Maas’s writing: the exposition dump. Tamlin rambles on about how his father was worse than Lucien’s terrible dad. Like, enslaved people. And pre-treaty, apparently they did some real, real gross things. He tells Feyre that the reason he spared her was that when he saw how shitty her house was he decided not to be cruel like the rest of his family.

Slaves—there had been slaves here. I didn’t want to know—had never looked for traces of them, even five hundred years later. I was still little better than chattel to most of his people, his world.

WHY WOULD YOU HAVE LOOKED FOR THEM?! YOU JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THEM!

Seriously, do editors just huff burning plastic fumes all day? Did Maas even bother to read through her first fucking draft or did she just go, eh, good enough, and mail it off?

Love that the white heroine is not only traumatized by the very thought that she could have been enslaved (but wasn’t) and has decided to opt out of knowing about slavery. That rings pretty fucking true.

Tamlin goes on another monologue about how his mother loved his father despite him being a full-on monster of a person. Tamlin joined the war-band because he wasn’t interested in inheriting the title of High Lord (and his brothers would have killed him if he had shown interest) and because:

“I’d realized from an early age that fighting and killing were about the only things I was good at.”

The problem was, no matter how he tried to downplay his abilities, he kept getting more and more magical, I guess.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, they were all killed by the High Lord of an enemy court. I was spared for whatever reason or Cauldron-granted luck. […]”

Editor’s Note: How did he survive when all of them had been killed?

Author: whatever reason.

Editor’s Note: Which court killed his family?

Author: …an enemy one.

Such a brutal, harsh world—with families killing each other for power, for revenge, for spite and control.

Bitch, your dad got beat so bad you shit your pants and that was just over money. Don’t act like you had no idea such a concept existed.

But brace yourselves, dear patrons. Because you’re about to laugh so hard you prolapse your anus.

Perhaps his generosity, his kindness, was a reaction to that—perhaps he’d seen me and found it to be like gazing into a mirror of sorts.

WHAT? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL OMG. OMG.

Yes, Feyre. He looked at you, the person who had just killed and skinned his friend and saw directly through to your inner selflessness and abounding goodness. That’s exactly what it was. That is exactly the benefit of the doubt most murder victims’ loved ones extend directly post homicide and mutilation of the corpse.

That was the equivalent of the heroine describing herself in a mirror. But this time, it’s a metaphorical mirror and instead of seeing how beautifully ugly the heroine’s perfectly attractive face and body are, we’re seeing how gorgeous her soul is.

And it’s all based on someone else’s experience which is just… the cherry on top of a rotten maggot and slug dairy-free ice cream sundae.

“[…] When the title fell to me, it was a … rough transition. Many of my father’s courtiers defected to other courts rather than have a warrior-beast snarling at them.”

A half-wild beast, Nesta had once called me. It was an effort to not take his hand, to not reach out to him and tell him that I understood.

DOES HER ARROGANCE HAVE NO BOUNDS?! He’s cursed to be an ACTUAL BEAST. You don’t understand that type of body horror because YOUR SISTER SAID SOMETHING MEAN.

This is like when someone’s human family member dies and someone hijacks their grief to talk about their dead cat.

I HAAAAAAAAATE IIIIIIIIIT!

Before I could ask about it, we cleared the little wood, a spread of hills and knolls laid out ahead.

I THOUGHT THEY WERE ALREADY OUT OF THE WOODS?! WHERE IS THIS FUCKING PARK?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

Anyway, she sees faeries assembling wood for bonfires, for a holiday called “Calanmai”, standing in here for Calan Mai, which is kinda similar to Beltane. Spoiler: I read ahead and it’s a good thing she called it Calanmai or I would never have noticed that the structure of the ritual is lifted almost entirely from The Mists of Avalon.

But he does call it “fire night”.

I’m wondering why Prythian celebrates seasonal holidays when the land itself is always divided up into seasons that never, ever change. It would have been neat if the author who created the world would have wondered that, too.

Tamlin even describes it as a “spring ceremony” meant to create magic to sustain his lands for another year. But how does a year work, when it’s always spring? Do the other courts have to do this? What about the winter place and the autumn place? How do they summon up magic if their seasons are about death and dormancy?

Why write fantasy if you’re not curious about the world you’re creating? That’s the entire point.

Tamlin warns that Feyre will see more faeries than usual, despite the fact that the blight has scared them off from the land.

“It has—but there will be a number of them. Just … stay away from them all. You’ll be safe in the house, but if you run into one before we light the fires at sundown in two days, ignore them.”

“And I’m not invited to your ceremony?”

“No. You’re not.” He clenched and loosened his fingers, again and again, as if trying to keep the claws contained.

He’s probably frustrated because he already had a date for this thing lined up and then you had to get involved in his life and he doesn’t want to have to explain all this baggage to the faerie lady he’s trying to pull.

Though I tried to ignore it, my chest caved a bit.

Again, the arrogance. The sheer arrogance. She’s spent all this time shit-talking faeries, trying to escape, trying to set traps for them, literally killing more than one, and then she’s gonna get sad because she’s not invited to one of their parties?

When they arrive at the garden which I guess could have been a basketball court or a mountain and probably still could be in a future chapter because this author has apparently never been outside before, there’s something bad lurking. Tamlin tells her:

“Stay hidden, and no matter what you overhear, don’t come out.”

Come on, dude. You know she isn’t gonna do any of that. Are you new here?

Alone, I looked to either side of the gravel path, like some gawking idiot. If there was indeed something here, I’d be caught out in the open. Perhaps it was shameful not to go to his aid, but—he was a High Lord. I would just get in the way.

DID YOU NOT HEAR THE INSTRUCTIONS HE CLEARLY GAVE YOU? That’s something else I’m noticing a lot about Feyre. People who know better than her will tell her to do something and she takes the time to sit around and try to make it her decision. Writing Tip: Listening to other characters and trusting them to know better in situations when they actually do know better will not make your female characters weak.

I had just ducked behind a hedge when I heard Tamlin and Lucien approaching.

No matter what you overhear…

Maybe I could sneak across the fields to the stables.

Stay hidden and don’t come out.

That’s the gist of what he said, right? And what’s she considering?

I was about to make for the high grasses mere steps beyond the edge of the gardens when Tamlin’s snarl ripped through the air on the other side of the hedge.

I turned—just enough to spy on them through the dense leaves. Stay hidden, he’d said. If I moved now, I would surely be noticed.

WHY ARE WE HAVING A FULL PAGE EXPLANATION FOR WHY FEYRE IS CHOOSING NOT TO RUN? BECAUSE THE HIGH LORD SAID SO AND HE KNOWS MORE ABOUT THIS WORLD THAN SHE DOES IS ENOUGH! WE DON’T NEED TO HEAR THE EXPLANATION OF WHY SHE’S GONNA STAY BUT ONLY BECAUSE SHE DECIDED TO.

Tamlin and Lucien are…apparently in the middle of a conversation with a disembodied voice? That we’re not hearing until just right now? How did she miss the first part when she’s just on the other side of the hedge?

I don’t care. Fuck it, at this point, I just don’t care. This book made sense to someone somewhere. Maybe I’m the one who’s poorly written. Maybe I’m a poorly-written, sad-sack author in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay who doesn’t realize they’re reading a book within a book. Maybe at the denouement I will be killed in an accident that’s supposed to be ironically funny but instead just shows the audience that they’ve wasted two hours of their time on something that’s objectively just not entertaining.

Again, by Charlie Kaufman. Can’t stress that enough.

The disembodied voice Tamlin and Lucien are arguing with is there to warn them that the dreaded She is angry about the dead naga and Tamlin’s “continued behavior.” What behavior, oh ghostly voice?

“Speak you so ill of she who holds your fate in her hands? With one word, she could destroy this pathetic estate. She wasn’t pleased when she heard of you dispatching your warriors.” The voice now seemed turned toward Tamlin. “But, as nothing has come of it, she has chosen to ignore it.”

I think I’ve figured out what’s happening. There is a fantasy novel style plot going on, but it’s not in the book we’re in. Which is why we’re not privy to it at all, and the author keeps delaying the plot with sentences like, “she has chosen to ignore it” so no detail is needed.

“Tell her I’m sick of cleaning up the trash she dumps on my borders.”

The voice chuckled, the sound like sand shifting. “She sets them loose as gifts—and reminders of what will happen if she catches you trying to break the terms of—”

We found her. The Chosen One. The one who loves em dashes even more than Jenny Trout.

This scene doesn’t serve up much new information at all. I’m pretty sure we’ve already heard about She releasing the bad faeries or being in charge of them or whatever. Though She is clearly part of the main plot (which, again, hasn’t shown up and we’re almost halfway through the book) here’s what I think I’ve pieced together, so far:

She is badShe likes the bad faeriesFor some reason, Tamlin owes her fealtyBut she keeps attacking himAnd that’s supposed to make him more obedient

The disembodied voice tells Tamlin it can tell that he’s afraid and not to worry because it’ll all be okay soon, but it’s, you know. Evil mocking. In response:

“Burn in Hell,” Lucien replied for Tamlin, and the thing laughed again before a flap of leathery wings boomed, a foul wind bit my face, and everything went silent.

My guess is the evil disembodied voice is running off to tell everybody back at the office about how hilarious is it that these non-Christian faeries keep talking about hell.

Once the thing is gone, Tamlin and Lucien find Feyre. Lucien is super concerned about what she might have overheard, but just like us, she didn’t understand what the fuck they were talking about. Good thing the author doesn’t take the opportunity to clue us in, beyond Tamlin saying that some faeries are really, really scary.

Thank god someone reminded us.

Apparently, the thing that was in the garden is called an Attor. I guess we should hold onto that information in case it comes back later. The important thing is that it didn’t see Feyre.

I guess it’s good that it couldn’t hear her through the hedge the way Tamlin and Lucien can hear her breathing halfway across the castle or whatever.

Tamlin is clearly shaken up and tells Feyre he’ll see her at dinner.

Understanding a dismissal, and craving the locked door of my bedroom, I trudged back to the house, contemplating who this she was to make Tamlin and Lucien so nervous and to command that thing as her messenger.