Chapter 33 begins with Doyle stabbing Merry in the mouth
with his knife. I’m not kidding. Before a duel, the sidhe have to do various
blood oaths, and the first oath is a cut to the face. So she has Doyle cut her
lip, then he cuts her hand, and finally makes a tiny cut to her throat. They’re
all tiny, shallow cuts, but they all hurt and sting. Merry waits for Miniver to
receive her cuts, so that they may begin the blood oath process and begin the
duel.
We
stayed unmoving for a heartbeat or two, then she started forward, striding in
her full skirt like a confident golden cloud. I walked to meet her. I had to be
more careful, because the high heels I was wearing were not meant for striding
over old stones. It would ruin so much if I twisted an ankle.
Why in the fuck are you wearing high heels, Merry? Take them
off before you start dueling if you’re AFRAID OF FALLING AND TWISTING YOUR
ANKLE. You could die during this
duel, and yet you’re worried about tripping in your heels. Ughhhhh
Merry and Miniver meet in the center of the room, and they
lock eyes. Merry then realizes that Miniver seems overly excited for the duel,
as if she was enthralled with fighting and torture and death. Merry remembers
that whenever the queen would start her bloody entertainment, Miniver would
leave the room, and she always thought it was because Miniver was too delicate
for the entertainment. Merry now realizes that it was because Miniver was
afraid she could not control herself in the audience.
So they meet and Merry tries to get the oath thing started,
but Miniver won’t bend down to kiss Merry, or whatever they’re going to do to
make the oath. Miniver makes some big deal over the fact that Merry is shorter
than she is, which makes her unfit to rule the Unseelie Court. Merry reaches
with her cut hand for Miniver’s hand, but Miniver pulls away in disgust.
Since Merry was challenged, she got to decide the manner in
which the duel would be fought. She chooses magic so that she may fight with
her hands of power. Miniver has two hands of power as well. With one, she can
basically call down lightening or energy in bolt form. With the other, she
could form invisible claws over her hands and rip through Merry’s chest.
Finally, they embrace and press their wounds together for
the blood oath. Miniver is grabbing Merry so hard it hurts, but Merry is trying
not to show how badly Miniver is hurting her. Miniver pulls Merry to her mouth
so they can rub their cut lips together, and Merry uses her fear and pain to
begin causing Miniver to bleed with her hand of power. Merry is making the
blood pour out of her wounds, so Miniver throws her to the ground and stumbles
back. Her wounds have ripped open, her throat wound revealing the bones of her
neck, but Merry continues to make her bleed. Merry then reaches her, places her
hand on Miniver’s chest, and the chest basically explodes, but Miniver is still
living. In the past, whenever Merry had to duel, she could easily kill her
challengers because her blood would turn them mortal. However, with this duel,
even after all the blood loss, open wounds, and chest explosion, Miniver still
lives.
So Andais declares the duel over and Merry the winner, but
Nerys challenges this, saying that Merry must leave the dueling circle of her
own volition. Merry is having trouble walking, so instead she asks Doyle to ask
the queen to tell the room what Nerys did. Andais does so, and Nerys tries to
run from the room, but the queen’s guards stop her. Nerys’s people start
fighting the guards, and to stop this, Merry tells the demi-fey in the room
that she is offering them all the flesh and blood of Nerys and her people. The demi-fey
immediately flood over to Nerys and her people and swarm them. They begin feasting.
Merry then calls the goblins over to her, and Jonty and the
other Red Caps carry Merry from the dueling circle. One of Nerys’s people calls
out to Merry, begging her to call off the demi-fey. Merry tells them that Nerys
must die for what she did, and Nerys calls out that she will pay the price for
the attempt on the queen’s life if her people can live. Andais agrees to this,
and Merry calls the demi-fey off of Nerys’s people.
Nerys steps out of the audience, and Merry orders Ash to
kill her. He cuts her to pieces, but she is still living, so the queen hands
Merry her personal sword, Mortal Dread, to kill Nerys. Mortal Dread has the
magical power to kill an immortal. Doyle carries her over to the living remains
of both Nerys and Miniver. There’s some drama about how Merry is weak for
bringing both Nerys and Miniver to their true death instead of giving them over
to the goblins for food, but it’s really boring and sort of petty (Merry throws
some barbs at the queen, the queen does the same back, blah blah, it doesn’t
even matter).
Which doesn’t even matter because Miniver ends up wanting to
be fed to the goblins. She believes that she’ll heal before the goblins can eat
her, which means she could escape. Nerys, however, wishes for true death. Merry
orders the Red Caps to take Miniver to the goblin mound to be devoured, but
first she must kill Nerys. Andais tells Merry that she must be the one to deal
the death blow, otherwise if Merry is too injured to do so, Nerys will be
handed over to the goblins alive, just like Miniver. So Merry drives the sword
through Nerys’s heart, but starts wobbling around, so Galen finally fucking
helps her take off her high heels. While they’re doing this, Merry hears
Miniver screaming.
The
goblins had moved so that they court could see what they were doing. It was a
show – and what good is a show without an audience? One of the smaller Red Caps
was kneeling beside Miniver. His fingers were playing in the healing flesh of
her chest. He traced and tickled her flesh, as if he were touching her
genitalia. A touch here, a caress there, and it showed skill, but his fingers
weren’t between her legs. His fingers were inside the meat of her chest. He was
caressing the top of her heart as if that would finally bring her to orgasm.
So Andais comes down to stand above Miniver. She calls
Miniver a fool, and that because she has not yet died, she is proof that Merry
is no longer mortal. Miniver screams out “Lies!” because of course she would.
Andais sends Merry away so that she can be healed, but tells Merry first that
she must stop being so merciful, as if she shows any weakness to the court, the
sidhe will surely take advantage of that mercy and see her killed.
Fflur, who showed up in the first book, I believe, comes
over to take a look at Merry’s injuries. Merry is quite injured, and because she
is half-human, she heals much slower than the full sidhes, so Ash and Holly
leave her side, as they were supposed to be getting their sex that night.
Sholto, the King of the Sluagh, also tells Merry that he will wait to begin
their bargain negotiations because of her injuries. Guess what, their bargain
ALSO involves Merry fucking someone!
Anyway, the chapter finally ends with Merry being escorted
out of the room by her guards so that she may begin healing.
Labels: book review, Seduced by Moonlight
