Chapter 28 begins with Merry entering the queen’s bedroom.
Andais is standing in the center of the room looking piiiiiisssssed, but Merry hardly notices because she’s still
basically riding high from the magic that happened inside that alcove. Merry
realizes that Andais isn’t mad at her, but rather she’s pissed off at her
consort, Eamon. Andais had been “playing” with her human toy, and Eamon was
trying to get her to stop the torture. The human male that Andais is torturing
continues to beg for it, and so Andais is taking offense that Eamon would try
to stop her when obviously her toy wants it so much.
“You
told me once that you valued him because he could take so much pain. If you
kill him, you will not have him to play with, my queen.”
I love how they have to tip toe around Andais and explain
things to her like she’s a petulant child. Our queen, everyone!
Merry takes an opportunity to glance around the room, and
she sees many of the queen’s guards, all stripped naked and kneeling, heads
bowed towards Andais. It makes Merry wonder what has happened since she left
with the queen’s strongest men.
Andais takes her whip and lashes it out at Eamon. Eamon just
takes it, hardly flinching. This further angers Andais, so she does it again
and again, and when he still does not react, she drops the whip onto the ground
and flings herself at Eamon. She begins raking at him with her long, sharp
fingernails, and she uses her magic to begin almost sucking the oxygen out of
the room, using her powers over the air to drown everyone.
Eamon continues to struggle against her, to convince her she
should relax, but she isn’t having any of it. She manages to find a knife
somehow, and she begins slicing at Eamon’s chest. That’s when Doyle, Rhys and
Frost step up to the plate. “I hate having to do this,” Rhys says, and Merry
tries to ask them what they will have to do, but Doyle tells her that they do
not have the time to explain. The three of them go over to the queen, and Merry
tries to follow to stop them, but both Adair and Galen are holding her back.
Merry tries to order Galen to let her go, but of course he doesn’t listen to
her.
Doyle tells Andais that they have returned, and so she turns
her attention on him, beginning to slice up his arm with the knife. Doyle
allows Andais to slice at him a few more times before Rhys moves in front of
him to now take over the brunt of Andais’s anger. It continues like this, with
each guard taking a turn being sliced up by the knife before another steps in
to take over. This way, they can heal a little bit between attacks. Merry
starts losing her shit and trying to
break free, but Galen and Adair continue holding her back.
“Welcome
to the world of the guards, Princess,” Adair said. “Welcome to how we keep each
other alive. None but the queen and her Ravens have ever witnessed this. You
are most privileged.”
Merry then sees one of the kneeling guards staring at her.
Merry reads in his grey eyes that he thinks Merry is just another useless royal
sidhe, that she allows her men to be brutalized while she just stands there and
does nothing.
So the chapter ends with Merry deciding to do something
about this. She forces Galen to move out of her way so that she can see what
the queen has done to her men.
Labels: book review, Seduced by Moonlight
