Oh cool, another dream chapter. Chapter 30 begins with Merry
standing on a mountain looking over the land under her. Standing next to her is
a man in a big, thick cloak. He holds his hand out to her and she takes it. His
hand is dark, like Doyle’s, but when Merry looks into his face, it’s not Doyle.
It’s the God – which really freaking bugs me that LKH is calling this dude “the
God”. Like, I get “the Goddess” but “the God” just flows so awful, it totally
stops me when I read it. Anyway, the God takes Merry in his arms and she
instantly forgets about all her basically slaughtered guard lovers back in
reality. He kisses Merry, and then laughs and tells her to “share this with
them”.
So Merry wakes up and immediately tries to scream from the
intense pain she’s feeling in her chest. She doesn’t have the air to scream,
however. Merry sees Kitto looking down at her, and she notices he’s completely
covered in blood, but she cannot ask if he’s hurt. As she’s struggling to gain
her breath, she overhears some of the guards mention that “Mortal Dread is here…”
That’s the queen’s magic sword that can instantly kill an immortal. True death
to the sidhe (even though they can apparently totally die anyway, but whatever,
plot, right?!)
Kitto asks Merry if she can hear him, and she finally is
able to talk. She tells him she can hear him, and then notices Galen pulling
himself over to her on his arms. Merry tries to reach out to touch him, but she
cannot, and it hurts so badly she starts screaming. Galen keeps crawling over
to her, and he takes her hand in his. She then remembers about the dream she
had with the God, and she orders Galen to kiss her. He does, and then laughs
when they finish, telling her that she tastes like apples. Then he realizes
that he no longer is in pain. He’s totally fucking healed, whoopee.
So everyone gets to kiss Merry so she can heal them! Frost
is next. He had been completely gutted by the queen, and his intestines are
just hanging out, which would be totally rad if this weren’t a stupid magic
faerie sex book. I don’t know why LKH didn’t just go off the fucking rails here
and have Merry tug on his exposed innards because Frost isn’t paying attention
to her like the sexual being she is. Or why they don’t just have sex with his
small intestine draped over her like his hair usually does. Why not just roll
with it?
But, no, instead we get a nice, tender, loving kiss from
Frost even though he’s carrying his stomach in his hand. The kiss instantly
heals him, so Doyle drops down next. She tries to kiss him, but she’s in a ton
of pain and the guards realize that Merry isn’t able to heal herself with this
gift from the God. So Doyle, being less hurt than others, moves aside so that
Rhys may be healed next. His once sole good eye has been totally destroyed.
Rhys tries to tell Merry not to look at him, he’s far too hideous, and after some convincing, Merry finally is able
to kiss him. He’s instantly healed, so Merry tries to reach again for Doyle,
but Mistral instead drops Onilwyn by Merry so that she may kiss him. Andais had
basically ripped his throat out, so he was very near “death”. They cannot lay
him on his back due to the neck injury, so instead Merry has Kitto help her sit
up so that she can kiss him.
She’s about to go in for the kiss, but then a female voice
tells them to “Wait”. Andais comes into view, carrying Eamon, and she asks
Merry to heal Eamon, and then heal her human lover, Tyler, before she heals any
of the other guards. The guards pick Merry up so they can carry her over to the
queen/Eamon, but they realize Merry is too injured to move. So Andais carries
Eamon over to Merry. As she lowers Eamon down, she tells Merry that “you sliced
me up, niece, and you did a good job of it.” What the hell.
Andais then tells them that before she began slaughtering
all the guards, she was visited by another of the sidhe nobles, Nuline, and
they shared some wine. Nuline was one of Cel’s royal guards. Doyle tells the
queen that he doesn’t smell any poison in the room, but Andais tells him that
it was not poisin. It was a magic spell that put Andais into her bloodlust
state. Andais tells them that she will kill whoever cast that spell on her, and
then asks Merry to heal all the guards, and she places her hand on Merry’s arm.
As soon as she does that, the magic that the God had given Merry pulses through
her and rings out into the room.
I
heard the voice in my head: All power comes from the head. I understood then, or hoped I did. The
reason that the Unseelie couldn’t have children was that Andais couldn’t have
children. The reason our magic was fading was that Andais’s magic had begun to
fade. She was our queen, our head.
You… you didn’t know this already? I had this figured out
after Andais LITERALLY TOLD THEM SHE WAS INFERTILE. The reason the Seelie court
couldn’t have children was because the fucking king was infertile, WHY WOULD
THIS NOT BE THE SAME FOR THE UNSEELIE?
So anyway, Merry tells Andais to kiss her, so that she may
first heal Andais. So aunt and niece start making out, and it’s magical and
Merry can taste honeyed fruit and plums and bees and sunshine. As the kiss
ends, Merry opens her eyes to find that both she and Andais are glowing that
sidhe magical glow, and she realizes that she is now healed. Merry then
realizes how beautiful her aunt is, and the magical power of the God rushes
through her again, so they begin kissing again.
I
kissed those crimson garnet lips, and found my own lips were like deep, red
rubies, like melding two separate jewels. I felt my hands cupping the sides of
her face, and found the bones of her face delicate, fragile under my hands. My
hands were smaller than hers, they had to be, but for this moment they were
large enough to cup her face and hold it, gently. I became for that moment the
sun, all that was male, all that was the best of what it meant to be male, at
his height of prowess, the Summer King, Lord of the Greenwood. I kissed her as
she was meant to be kissed, gentle, firm, held in hands larger than my own,
held in a strength greater than her own, and the more tender for that, the more
careful for it. I kissed her as if she would break. Then she pressed into the
kiss, her power spilling through my mouth, and the kiss grew into something
less cautious, more sure of itself. At the invitation of her lips, her eater
hands on my body, the power of the greenwood rode through her, pierced her. She
tore her mouth from mine and cried out.
They then realize that their magical make out session healed
everyone in the room. NO WAY. But the mood is sullied after this happens:
“If
you were a man I would take you to my bed for this night’s work.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, but knew I had to say something. “Thank you for such
a compliment, Aunt Andais.”
She cocked her head to one side like a hawk that’s spied a mouse. “Reminding me
that you are my niece will not keep you out of my bed, Meredith. We are like
most deities, we often intermarry, or interfuck.”
Interfuck.
The queen is quite pleased, however, and the chapter ends
with her and Merry basically skipping from the room hand-in-hand to go kill
whoever placed that spell on the queen.
Labels: book review, Seduced by Moonlight