A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 50:
I slept beside him, offering what warmth I could, monitoring the cave entrance the entirety of the night. The beasts in the forest prowled past in an endless parade, and only in the gray light before dawn did their snarls and hissing fade.
Ah yes, these horrifying beasts that are such a threat. So threatening we gloss over them and they’re barely a blip on anyone’s radar. I’m shaking in my knee-highs.
Feyre frets over Rhys since he was poisoned and is in rough shape. She’s too weak to winnow them away, and she prays one of their friends will find them. I still have no clue where the friends are or why Feyre and Rhys went off without them given there are like three million threats against the most hated court of all time.
So. Feyre decides that she has to go hunt the Suriel again (the creature that will give you answers if you capture it). And conveniently there is one there…and Feyre immediately captures him. We waste no time. It’s like, “I’m going to capture the Suriel. Okay, captured.” It’s also the same Suriel as before somehow? Like bloody hell this guy gets around.
“What fascinating changes a year has wrought on you— on the world,” it said.
[…]
“I helped you before. I have helped you now. And you will free me before I lose my patience, Cursebreaker.”
We are obviously not reading the same series.
The Suriel informs her that all she needs to do is let Rhys drink some of her blood and he’ll be healed. He also reveals some crucial plot info that no one could have ever seen coming from a million miles away:
The Suriel’s stained teeth clacked against each other. “If you wish to speed your mate’s healing, in addition to your blood, a pink-flowered weed sprouts by the river. Make him chew it.”
I fired my arrow at the snare before I finished hearing its words.
The trap sprang free. And the word clicked through me.
Mate.
“What did you say?”
[…]
“If you wish to … ” The Suriel paused, and grinned, showing nearly all of those brown, thick teeth. “You did not know, then.”
He totes knew what he was revealing. I mean, isn’t his whole thing that he knows all the answers to shit? What a cheeky gossip the Suriel is. New favorite character.
The Suriel, who definitely knows everything, knows the exact moment Rhys realized Feyre was his mat – except Feyre won’t let him tell her when this was because she wants Rhys to tell her for some reason – so he obviously knew she didn’t know. The Suriel was as fed up with this shit as we all are, you guys! Official head canon!
Feyre can’t believe she could possibly be Rhys equal. If that wasn’t eye-roll inducing enough, here’s the explanation for why they’re suited to be mates.
“He is the most powerful High Lord to ever walk this earth. You are … new. You are made of all seven High Lords. Unlike anything. Are you two not similar in that? Are you not matched?”
Oh man, Suriel, get out of there. You have better things to do than tell Feyre how she and Rhysand are the most super special fantastic awesome unique people ever.
Feyre returns to Rhys and is furious with him. She gives him her blood and heals him. Angrily. She confronts him about the secret he’s been keeping and when he knew she was his mate.
“I suspected for a while,” Rhys said, swallowing once more. “I knew for certain when Amarantha was killing you. And when we stood on the balcony Under the Mountain— right after we were freed, I felt it snap into place between us. I think when you were Made, it … it heightened the smell of the bond. I looked at you then and the strength of it hit me like a blow.”
I don’t get how he suspected it for awhile. Could he tell that before Feyre was “Made”? How did Feyre not suspect but he did?
Rhys actually gives some pretty good reasons why he didn’t tell her. I get why Feyre is annoyed, but it is a pretty hard thing to bring up to someone who was seconds away from marrying someone else. Also, it’s pretty tough to have to inform the other person you’re mates and then be like, “Cool, so now what? Do we bone?”
But then he has to go and give this excuse:
“The other night you told me you wanted a distraction, you wanted fun. Not a mating bond. And not to someone like me— a mess.” So the words I’d spat after the Court of Nightmares had haunted him.
Okay. Fine with the other ones, Rhys, but this one is dumb and emotionally manipulative.
Rhys turns everything around on Feyre to make her feel guilty when she tells him there weren’t supposed to be secrets like this between them. Feyre forces him to winnow her back to the Illyrian camp because apparently he’s healthy enough to do this now, and apparently they could have just winnowed back there before when they were wandering around the forest for no damn reason.