Chapter 3 begins with Jeffery exiting the office, and Merry
expecting to argue with her guards over her decision to meet with Maeve. Rhys flat out
asks what will happen if Taranis objects to Merry breaking Maeve’s exile – and
he says Maeve’s name out loud. This causes Merry to worry – Andais has an
ability to hear anything spoken in the darkness, as she is the Queen of Air and
Darkness. Merry wonders if Taranis, being the King of Light and Illusion, has
the same ability to hear anything spoken during light. Doyle tries to comfort
Merry by telling her that in all of the Unseelie’s plotting against the king in
daylight, he never took any action and never seemed to hear of any plans made. They
should be safe to speak her name out loud.
Doyle also mentions that he had never heard of any sidhe by
the name of Maeve Reed, from either court, being exiled, and Rhys has to
explain to Doyle the concept of pseudonyms, how when she was exiled she took up
a new name so that she would not be known by her goddess name, Conchenn. Merry
laughs about how naïve Doyle is about the outside, non-faerie world, and jokes
that she needs to take them all out to see a movie. Kitto then grabs her leg
(he’s been sitting under her desk, remember?) and fearfully says that he
doesn’t want to see a movie.
Merry and Rhys try to console him, telling Kitto that he’ll
like theatres because they are dark and the ground is dirty and sticky. Kitto
tells them that he doesn’t want to get sticky or dirty, and Merry gently
reminds Rhys that Kitto’s mother was a sidhe, and Rhys gets all pissy about it.
“What does it matter? His father forced himself on a sidhe woman.” Doyle tries
to help calm the mood by being a jackass and asking a rhetorical “And how many
of our sidhe warriors took their pleasure on unwilling women, even goblins,
during the wars?”
Rhys tells him that he never forced himself on anyone, and
Doyle says of course he never did, after all, Rhys is one of the Queen’s
Ravens, forbidden from having sex with anyone but the queen and now Merry. This
pisses Rhys off, and the air in the room becomes quite tense. Rhys is nearly
shaking with anger, so Merry tries to comfort him. She says his name a few times
to get his attention, and Rhys turns his attention onto her. His gaze is so
forceful it causes Merry to scoot her chair backwards and she stands up, which
makes Kitto stand as well. This was a mistake – Rhys then turns his angry
attention to the goblin. He throws himself across the desk to grab at Kitto.
Merry grabs his legs and pushes him off the desk before Rhys can grab hold of
Kitto. Merry grabs the knife that was strapped to her thigh and presses the tip
of the blade against Rhys’s neck, and he freezes.
Merry issues Rhys a warning. “Understand this, Rhys, Kitto
is mine, as you are all mine. I won’t let your prejudices endanger him.” Rhys
spits back, “You’d kill me over a goblin.” Merry tells him that as they have to
protect her as her guards, by becoming her guard they are all now HERS to
protect. Uh what? I guess Merry thinks that by becoming queen, she is now
personally responsible for the safety of everyone she oversees. She also
realizes that none of her guards respect her, and she decides that if it comes
to needing to kill one of her guards to make them respect her, she will. BUT
YOU JUST SWORE TO PROTECT THEM ALL or something, Merry, make up your mind!
Merry must have confused herself after coming to that
realization, because she then starts laughing hysterically. Both Doyle and Rhys
start at her like what the fuck, and Merry just laughs and laughs. Kitto walks
over to her and Merry begins cradling him like a child, all the while holding
the bloody knife and laughing so hard she begins crying. The chapter ends with
Merry just full on sobbing while holding Kitto, and Doyle removing the knife
from Merry’s hand.
Characters Introduced:
Nada
Themes Introduced:
Merry needs to find a way to get the
guards to respect her. She also now feels personally responsible for their
protection.
Sex: Nah.
A Caress of Twilight - Chapter 4
Chapter 4 begins some time after Merry’s psychotic episode,
with her sitting in a chair in her office, holding a mug of hot mint tea. Her
boss, Jeremy Grey, is sitting beside her, having kicked both Doyle and Rhys out
of the office. Kitto sat at her feet, running a hand up and down the front of
one of her legs while Merry gently stroked the hair on his head with her free
hand.
Jeremy, being the boss, directly asks Merry if she feels up
to meeting with her next few appointments for the day. Merry assures him that
she’ll be okay, just needs a moment, and explains that she stopped the argument
by, you know, just casually throwing Rhys into a wall. Jeremy says that Rhys’s
neck wound and the blood didn’t come from being thrown into a wall, so Merry
admits that she pulled a knife on him, because he had tried to hurt Kitto, and
because he wasn’t obeying her orders. She cut Rhys’s neck to partly prove a
point. Rhys hates goblins because of what they did to him many, many hundreds
of years ago, but Merry needs Kitto around for her goblin alliance. She asks
Jeremy what she can do to alleviate the situation. Both the situation of Rhys and his hatred of goblins and
also the fact that her guard does not respect her as a future queen.
Kitto, apparently, had overheard Doyle speaking to other
guards about Merry’s run for the throne. He tells her that Doyle is concerned
that she has not made any use of her alliance with the goblins. “You have the
goblins as your allies for only three more months, Merry. For three more months
if the Unseelie go to battle, it is you who the Queen must come to for the
goblin’s aid, not our King Kurag. Doyle fears you are simply going to fuck
everyone and make no move on your enemies.”
ISN’T THAT THE POINT OF THE WHOLE FUCKING STORY? Merry needs
to become pregnant before her cousin Cel so that she can take the throne! Ain’t
nobody got time for killing enemies when there’s so much fucking to be had!
Jeez!
Kitto tells Merry that in order to gain the respect of her
guards, in order for her guards to obey her command, she first needs to get
Doyle to obey her and respect her. Jeremy wonders how Kitto was able to
overhear such conversation, as surely the guards would not discuss that freely
with him. Kitto tells Merry and Jeremy that everyone, including Merry, tend to
speak over him as if he were a pet, not someone who matters. Merry never even
realized she had been doing that, and she apologizes and tells him that she
will stop doing that.
Kitto tells her that he doesn’t want her to stop, he likes
it so that he can hear things, know things. He likes when Merry just casually
strokes him, like she would a loved pet. Merry is confused by this – she’s not
sure what she should be doing with Kitto, then. Kitto climbs into her lap LIKE
A CHILD (seriously, this is in the book: He
clambered into my lap like a child. Told you he’s basically Merry’s child
sex toy!) Kitto snuggles up against
her. Merry asks Jeremy for a little privacy so she can help reassure Kitto that
he is one of hers, or some crap. Jeremy leaves the room.
Merry knew she needed to do something big to help reassure
Kitto that he belonged with them, so she decided to let him bite her again, so
that he can mark her skin. As she’s deciding what to do, the door opens and
Rhys steps in. Merry orders Rhys to join them.
Oh you know, invite the dude who just totally tried to
attack your tiny goblin fuck toy over to help him bite you, that’s smart.
Rhys tells her that he will not partake in whatever activity
Merry has planned, and Merry basically tells him he either has to do it, or
she’ll send him back to faerie. Rhys apologizes for his prior behavior, but he
cannot help Merry do anything with
Kitto. Merry again tells him he either has to do it or leave, and Rhys raises
his voice to yell at Merry and Kitto. As Rhys is yelling, Doyle pops his head
through the door and goes “Is there a problem in here?” and invites himself
into the office.
Doyle isn’t quite so sure why Merry is so insistent that
Rhys assist her with Kitto. He volunteers himself and also Frost as better
choices, but Merry is insistent that it be Rhys. “If he can’t control himself
around Kitto, then eventually he’s going to blow up and hurt him. You know
Kurag didn’t want to join a treaty with me, Doyle. He tried to weasel out of it
from the beginning. I forced an alliance on him, but if Kitto is injured, or
worse, killed, then Kurag could use it as an excuse to break the alliance. And
do you really think that if Kurag has to send us a second goblin, it will be
anyone as pleasant as Kitto?”
Doyle tries to reason with Merry. “But if you send Rhys
home, our Queen will also send a new guard to replace him, and there are many
less pleasant guards she could send than Rhys.”
Merry tells him that it doesn’t matter. She’s sick of the
histrionics.
She’s sick of the
histrionics.
Sick of the histrionics.
HAHAHAHAHAHA Give me a moment to catch my breath. Come the
fuck on, LKH. YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS LIVE FOR THE FUCKING HISTRIONICS.
YOUR BOOKS COULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE HISTRIONICS.
So Doyle orders Rhys to assist Merry, and Rhys is all ‘aw
hells no’. Doyle reminds him that Merry, his Princess, has ordered him to help
out and gave him the penalty for not assisting. Merry reminds Rhys that had
Rhys behaved himself originally, she would not need to let Kitto bite her
again, would not need to reassure Kitto and renew her alliance with the
goblins. Because Rhys has forced her into this position, Rhys needs to assist
her with it.
After much cajoling , Rhys finally agrees to try to help,
and the chapter ends with Doyle telling Merry he will be standing watch over
them in case anything like what happened before, with Rhys attacking Kitto,
happens again.
Characters Introduced:
None
Themes Introduced:
Meh
Sex: Nah.
Labels: book 2, book review, Caress of Twilight, faeries, urban fantasy