So, for the whole rest of the day, she-of-the-every-power-known-to-witchdom, she who is supposed to be ‘smart’ and ‘willful’ and ‘independent,’  she who is the protagonist of the book, what does she do?  She sits inside the castle and mopes about how she can’t date Matthew.  Really.  That’s it.  And then she quite randomly gets some visions of pointless stuff while staring at the fire, but doesn’t say anything about them. 

Aunt Sarah calls.  It’s also pointless.

Matthew says that they’ll play by the rules and not cause any trouble, and also that Diana is now under house arrest (no, really), to which she doesn’t bat an eye.  She’s more emo over the whole ‘we can’t date’ thing than she is over the ‘you can’t even walk outside on your own’ thing. 

You want me to play dead. And you’ll give up your work and Ashmole 782? I don’t believe that.”

Diana, stop it.  He said ‘no more kissy times’ not ‘no more magic book times.’  Your relationship really is not so important that it includes everything else that’s going on.

“This family is not a democracy, especially not at a time like this. When I tell you to do something, you do it, without hesitation or question. Understood?”

Good gravy, Matthew, she’s not even in your family.  And I don’t care if you were ‘from a different time,’ you’re old enough by now to learn how to keep up with the present.  Join the 21st century. 

“I will kill you myself before I let anyone hurt you.”

…

……

I…I just…I don’t even. 

That is…so unbelievably creepy and obsessive that I don’t even know what to say about it.  That’s not love, or really any good sentiment I can think of at all.  That’s…that’s just obsession, no other word for it.  Dangerous obsession, potentially fatal obsession.  He’s not swearing to protect her, he’s basically saying “do what I tell you do or I’ll kill you.”

And Diana’s only reaction?  Is to get mad at the Congregation for being such party poopers about the whole dating thing.  Not one single note of ‘fuck off’ or ‘jeeze, death before pain?  Get some priorities’ or even ‘holy fuck, you’re scary and I’m not sure I should be here.’  None of that. 

Matthew then tries to tell her that he’s dangerous, and she goes with the tired old “but I trust you’d never hurt me!” bullshit, even though he basically says that her uncontrolled magic is driving him crazy and making him want to eat her. 

So to prove his point he lifts her up off the ground by her neck and threatens to eat her.  Quite literally attacks and assaults her.  Diana’s reaction?

He wanted to frighten me off for some reason, but I was in no real danger

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?  WHY ARE YOU SO FATALLY STUPID AND BROKEN?

The man is attacking you!  I don’t care what his reasons are, if he’s got anything, any reason at all, saying that the best course of action is physical assault, then RUN.  If he wants to scare you by assaulting you, then it doesn’t matter if he wouldn’t go through with it.  Because he’s still a guy that tries to get you to comply with him through fear, and his first choice for scaring you is to attack you!  Those are both, in and of themselves, BAD THINGS.

Guh, and the author really thought this counted as romance?

So when he finally stops assaulting her, she starts…um, having some sort of vision and goes in a trance and sees a bow.  A disembodied voice tells her to stay with Matthew because they have One True Love.  I think it’s supposed to be goddess-Diana telling human-Diana this, but as a lovely commenter pointed out, goddess-Diana was a virgin goddess who would kill men for thinking they could have her. 

Fail on so many levels, author.  Fail for getting your mythology wrong, and fail for thinking that ‘ordained by the gods’ romance would do anything but make me laugh at the audacity.  Right, because your squishy-kissy times are of ~*~*~cosmic importance~*~*~ now, aren’t they?

While in the middle of Diana declaring that she’s in love with Matthew and her parents– I mean, the Congregation can’t tell her who to love because she’s an adult, damnit (seriously, what part of this isn’t supposed to sound like a teenager?), Matthew gets a phone call saying his office was almost broken into.  He decides to leave, but tells Diana to stay put.  She puts up a token fight, then does a complete 180 in min-conversation and agrees to stay.

They have a few more meaningless arguments, mostly about Matthew’s ~*~*~feelings~*~*~ for her, and I’m really just sick of this whole romance mess.  It was bad enough to start with, and now it’s completely taken over.

As a cherry on top of the fail pie that is this chapter, Diana watches Matthew drive off into the sunset and cries her emo tears of ultimate sadness as he goes.

Oh, yeah, and all through this chapter, Diana kept having visions.  They’d last a line or two, have nothing to do with what’s going on, barely make any sense at all, and the scene would continue on around them as if nothing had happened.  No confusion in Diana’s thoughts, no awkward moments of silence, no hiccups in the dialogue, nothing.  Just extra words that I had to read for no reason at all.