Previously, Tamlin and the Hybern maybe-incest twins have been inspecting the wall/going on camping trips, while Feyre’s been super sneakily, super carefully plotting their downfall. Most recently, Feyre turned popular opinion against Tamlin and Ianthe by tricking Tamlin into whipping one of his servants for an offense he obviously didn’t commit. It’s all very sneaky.
Trigger Warning: Attempted sexual assault
A Court of Wings and Ruin: Chapter 9
After the public whipping (which is a wild sentence to write on this blog, especially since we got started with Fifty Shades and have historically dealt mostly with private whippings), Ianthe is under the impression that everything is turning up Ianthe and, with Elon Musk-levels of social consciousness, invites all the upper classes into the manor for lunch. Feyre sticks behind to tend to the beaten sentry while he’s healed and then gets personally escorted by Bron and Hart, because this story is all about the collective power of the 99% unless we’re in the Night Court where the only characters who matter are the god king Rhysand and his friends who happen to run the government with him.
Feyre explains how her actions have secured her position as a favorite of the people in the upcoming revolution against the Spring Court…
If I had asked them, they would have handed me their own knives to slit their throats.
…apparently. No more convincing way to express that you’re a good guy in an oppressive government than by stating that your people would kill themselves for you.
The next day, Ianthe tries to flex her increased favor by telling the others she’ll join them on their next wall exploration camping trip.
The Hybern royals didn’t care.
But Jurian winked at me, as if he, too, saw the game in motion.
…does he? I wrote an entire post last week about Jurian explaining his motivations, and I still don’t understand what he has to gain from being on either side of this conflict.
Before they leave, we get a nice little scene with Feyre and Alis (her lady’s maid who was assigned to her in the first book, and totally knows that Feyre is up to some shit in this book – despite her sneaky sneakiness, I know) where Alis tells her that she and her nephews are totally-not-fleeing the country but just going to their home in Summer Court tomorrow.
“It has been too long since I saw my home,” she said, though her eyes shone.
“I know the feeling,” was all I said. […] “Don’t ever tell Tarquin you know me well.”
Her brows rose.
“There is a blood ruby with my name on it,” I clarified.
Even her tree-bark skin seemed to blanch. She understood it well enough: I was a hunted enemy of the Summer Court. Only my death would be accepted as payment for my crimes.
Alis squeezed my hand. “Blood rubies or no, you will always have one friend in the Summer Court.”
My throat bobbed. “And you will always have one in mine,” I promised her.
She knew which court I meant. And did not look afraid.
When they leave the next day, none of the sentries look at Tamlin. That night, Feyre “quietly, shyly” asks to share a tent with Ianthe instead of Tamlin. She considers slitting her throat in the middle of the night, but she reminds herself her plan is sneakier than that. That’s basically why this scene exists.
I wasn’t sure I’d been born with the ability to forgive. Not for terrors inflicted on those I loved. For myself, I didn’t care—not nearly as much. But [I] could not stomach the idea of letting these people get away with what they’d done.
…kind of not sure that’s technically called forgiveness… if it didn’t happen to you… but sure?
The others are off doing whatever while the maybe-incest twins survey another ambiguous hole in the invisible magic wall. (It’s been a pretty gripping start to this book.) Feyre watches them, eager to stir up shit.
“The first one was better,” Dagdan countered.
I sat atop a small boulder, peeling an apple with a paring knife.
“Closer to the western coast, too,” he added to his twin.
“This is closer to the continent—to the strait.” […]
I shoved the apple slice into my mouth and said around it, “I say go for this one.”
They twisted toward me, Brannagh sneering and Dagdan’s brows high. “What do you know of any of it?” Brannagh demanded.
I shrugged, cutting another piece of apple. “You two talk louder than you realize.”
Shared accusatory glares between them. Proud, arrogant, cruel.
They condescendingly fill in Feyre on so much of their evil plan that I have no idea whether it’s supposed to be suspicious or whether we’re actually supposed to think Banana and Damndaniel are just that dumb.
She laughed, swinging her dark curtain of hair over a shoulder. “The Cauldron is not for transporting grunt armies. It is for remaking worlds. It is for bringing down this hideous wall and reclaiming what we were.” […]
“This exact spot,” Dagdan said, a hand on the hilt of his sword, “exists because a person or object of mighty power passed through it. The Cauldron will study the work they’ve already done—and magnify it until the wall collapses entirely. It is a careful, complex process, and one I doubt your mortal mind can grasp.”
“Probably. Though this mortal mind did manage to solve Amarantha’s riddle—and destroy her.”
The answer to the riddle was LOVE. That was it. Calm your tits, Feyre.
The book skips ahead and Feyre suddenly tells the reader she has everything she needs and can return to Rhysand and the Night Court.
I had numbers, I had a purpose, I had a specific location, and the names of foreign territories.
But more than that, I had a people who had lost faith in their High Priestess. I had sentries who were beginning to rebel against their High Lord. And as a result of those things, I had Hybern royals doubting the strength of their allies here. I’d primed this court to fall.
Which you would think is a good thing, since we’ve been riffing endlessly on all her goofy scheming, but I honestly enjoyed these first few chapters of ACOWAR so much more than I enjoyed anything in ACOMAF that I’m honestly kind of dreading whatever comes next.
Feyre explains that the kingpin of her scheme is that when the party returns without her, she had… already planted a false memory in one of the sentries about how the maybe-incest twins killed her. Don’t get me wrong, this is all very thorough, but I feel like Feyre could have opted for something a lot less complicated if a tool in her arsenal is “make people believe literally anything”.
Feyre begins her escape in the dead of night, but at the last moment…
I made it about a hundred yards into the cover of the trees before I halted.
I heard Lucien first.
“Back off.”
A low female laugh.
Everything in me went still and cold at that sound. I’d heard it once before—in Rhysand’s memory.
Keep going. They were distracted, horrible as it was.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
OH SHIT! CONFLICT! Haven’t had one of those in a while! Usually Rhysand just knows all the answers.
Lucien tries to tell Ianthe he’s not interested, telling her not to touch him. Feyre notices that Ianthe literally has Lucien bound up with magic rocks that nullify his magic. Feyre feels conflicted between leaving now that her plan is complete or risk ruining all of it by helping Lucien because it’s the right thing to do. The latter wins out.
“That’s enough,” I said. […]
I saw her note [my] pack
Ianthe dismisses Feyre. Feyre goes in for controlling Ianthe’s mind.
“Take your hands off him.”
She did.
“Unshackle him.”
Lucien’s skin drained of color as Ianthe obeyed me, her face queerly vacant, pliant. […]
“Pick up that rock.”
Lucien remained pressed against that tree. And he watched in silence as Ianthe stooped to pick up a gray, rough rock about the size of an apple.
“Put your right hand on that boulder.”
She obeyed, though a tremor went down her spine.
Her mind thrashed and struggled against me, like a fish snared on a line. I dug my mental talons in deeper, and some inner voice of hers began screaming.
“Smash your hand with the rock as hard as you can until I tell you to stop.”
…so I’m kind of conflicted on how this eye-for-an-eye response affects the scene’s message about consent. I mean, we know that Ianthe is a serial offender, so on the one hand, fuck her. Actions should have consequences, and I can’t begin to give two shits about abusers suffering their comeuppance. And it’s great that she’s doing this on behalf of someone else who was about to suffer at their hands.
But while I don’t care about Ianthe, let’s think about what this says about Feyre and how she’s changed as she’s grown accustomed to her new powers. This is muddy enough now where I wouldn’t blame someone for not exactly finding relief in the revenge fantasy/power fantasy aspects of Feyre’s response here. This isn’t exactly “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” revenge here. I think it’s fair to say you lose some of the moral high ground when there’s shades of the abuser’s own abusive actions in your reaction to them. I think it’s fair to say that Feyre’s approach, while well-intended, is also abusive as hell.
“You will never touch another person against their will. You will never convince yourself that they truly want your advances; that they’re playing games. You will never know another’s touch unless they initiate, unless it’s desired by both sides.”
Thwack; crack; thud.
“You will not remember what happened here. You will tell the others that you fell”
…like “oh, those injuries? Yeah, she fell” is classic physical abuser language for controlling the narrative, but, uh, Feyre is the good guy? This is all ok because Feyre inceptioned the concept of consent into Ianthe’s mind without her actually learning anything about her behavior and that solves that problem? It’s ok when she robs someone of their agency in order to do harm to them and then magically gaslights them about it, because she’s the white lady in the pretty dress on the cover of the book, I guess? That’s the message we’re getting here?
“every time you look at that hand, you are going to remember that touching people against their will has consequences […] You will live with that terror every day, and never know where it originates.” […] I smiled a bit. […] “I hope you live a long, long life, Ianthe, and never know a moment’s peace.”
It’s important to keep tabs on how Feyre’s using all her new powers, because ever since we met Rhysand and all his other world’s most powerful superfriends who are assholes but for good reasons and they can do no wrong, the A Court of Thorns and Roses series is starting to slip into an uncomfortable Ayn Rand-ian message that just because these people have these powers, then that means it’s ok for them to use them however they see fit.
Tune in next chapter to pretend to be surprised when we find out that Feyre’s sneaky sneaky schemes were not quite as sneaky as she thought.
“The word you’re looking for, Lucien,” crooned a deceptively light female voice, “is daemati.”
We whirled toward Brannagh and Dagdan as they stepped into the clearing, grinning like wolves.
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