A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 61:
As they embark on their journey to Hybern – which mercifully is quick and takes only about a page of winnowing – Feyre reminds us three times in the span of a couple pages that Rhys is her mate. I’m just preparing you because this happens for the rest of the book.
Rhys makes everyone promise him they’ll take care of his mate Feyre. Then, Hybern.
“I’ve been here twice,” Cassian murmured. “Both times, I was counting down the minutes until I could leave.”
I could see why. A wall of bone-white bone-white cliffs arose, their tops flat and grassy, leading away to a terrain of sloping, barren hills. And an overwhelming sense of nothingness.
This doesn’t really sound all that bad. Are they saying the landscape is so aggressively dull they want to leave? I was expecting like severed heads on pikes or piles of bones or something scary.
The fly down to the castle with no issues whatsoever. Is the castle the only thing here? I wonder if other Fae live there or if it’s just this lonely, somehow super-unguarded castle.
“Where is everyone?”
“Guard shift.”
WHAAAT? Is Maas trolling us? Everyone is busy on guard shift but they missed these clowns trying to break in?
Feyre can feel the two halves of the book calling to the Cauldron. It’s actually pretty cool, and I’m more interested in the book’s motivations than any other character in this story.
Cassian and Feyre meet Mor by “a small sea door”, which is also apparently unguarded. Mor can’t winnow them inside because there are too many wards, but when they reach her, the door is open. It’s just awful when you remember to ward your door but don’t hire a decent locksmith.
They enter and things go relatively smoothly:
Any time we reached a crossroads, Cassian and Azriel would branch out, usually returning with bloodied blades, faces grim, silently warning me to hurry. They’d been working these weeks, through whatever sources Azriel had, to get this encounter down to an exact schedule.
What sources could Azriel possibly have here? I swear to god if the actual answer is ‘the shadows’ I will scream.
They make it to the room with the cauldron, and there are somehow no guards in this room. It is so obviously a trap, I have no idea how they don’t realize it immediately.
Chapter 62:
The Cauldron was absence and presence. Darkness and … whatever the darkness had come from.
I get that it’s hard to describe how strange and intensely powerful the Cauldron feels, but come on.
Perhaps the entire universe had come from it.
Oh so that’s what the darkness came from.
Anyway, Feyre is seduced by the ancient power of the books begging her to return them to the Cauldron.
Whole, I would become not a conduit between them, but rather their master. There was no moving the Cauldron— it had to be now.
Realizing what I was about to do, Mor lunged for me with a curse.
They wind up letting Feyre try a bit longer, but it doesn’t go well:
Murky light and moldy stone poured into me, the room spinning as I gasped down breath, finding Azriel shaking me, eyes so wide I could see the white around them. What had happened, what—
I actually really liked this. Even though Feyre has all of her new powers, this is still something she couldn’t immediately overcome. It was a cool struggle to read.
Then Jurian shows up!
I knew the color of those eyes. I’d stared at one, encased in crystal, for three months.
“Stupid fool,” he said to me.
“Jurian,” I breathed.
FEYRE WOULD RECOGNISE THAT EYEBALL ANYWHERE!
I completely understand that the book’s motivations are your main point of interest. They have been my favorite character ever since the first one showed up.
This shit show of an ending is my favorite thing ever. Minus the return of NOW EVIL Tamlin.