In my bones there was a sudden boom as of two worlds colliding.

Um…poetic?  And confusing, we don’t get any further information on these colliding worlds.

She wakes up in a haze to see the three vampires with medical training trying to save her without turning her.  Apparently vampire blood heals anything it touches, so Miriam just has to…bleed on her neck a little.  Weird.  Then they take her back to the house.  It’s honestly amazing how many words are spent on just that.  Pages and pages and pages of vampires professionally freaking out, and all I can figure that they’ve done is bleed on her neck a bit and put her in the back of a car.  But they have to do everything ~*~*~dramatically~*~*~.

I wonder if Diana’s blood would do the same thing.  Seems to have fixed the hole that Juliette punched in Matthew’s chest pretty well.

Lots of talking that means nothing, at least three different descriptions of Diana trying to sleep, pointless description…ah, here we go, a new topic.  Diana asks Miriam about Juliette.  *sigh*  Even when the book turns lucid, it’s only to talk about backstory.

“Giving him your blood like that was unspeakably dangerous. He might not have been able to stop drinking.” A note of admiration had crept into her voice.

“Ysabeau told me the de Clermonts fight for those they love.”

I’m pretty sick of this line.  Diana keeps getting praise for ‘fighting for love’ and being called brave and insisting that she’s not going to give up Matthew without a fight.  But let’s be honest here.  She’s not fighting for love so much as blindly clinging to it and telling the rest of the world to go fuck itself.  She’s obsessed with Matthew more than in love with him, to the point that she’s willing to risk her own life, the lives of others, and (if we believe the book) civil war just to stay with him.  Being in love is awesome and all, but it’s not the end-all, be-all of the universe.  There’s other things to consider.  When you fail to consider those things, you aren’t a romantic hero.  You’re a selfish child throwing a tantrum, just with much more serious consequences.

“You used magic to save me. I could smell it—lady’s mantle and ambergris.”

“It was nothing.” I didn’t want him know what I’d promised in exchange for his life.

Okay, makes sense on account of those two other ladies.  But if it was magic, then why did Matthew have to eat her?  Why couldn’t it just be the magic that saved him?  It’s not like goddess-Diana said that was part of the bargain.  Maybe Matthew would have been just fine on his own and Diana was an idiot for giving him blood.

Matthew is going to go human-hunting with Marcus, because apparently after eating Diana, he needs to get the taste out of his mouth.  So to speak.  No one in any part of this conversation has any fucks to give over the person he’s about it.  There’s an implication that Matthew will find someone ‘bad,’ but that doesn’t make this any better.  Bad things done to bad people are still bad things.

Diana asks to talk to Ysabeau, because apparently she’s really taken with her as a mother figure, for no reason I can tell.  Diana starts sobbing to Ysabeau over the phone, spilling out all her emotional anguish, but that part is done in summary rather than actual dialogue.  I guess this book can only manage ‘showing’ instead of telling when it comes to romance.  Any other emotion is just too hard and gets skipped.

Ysabeau recognizes ‘the goddess’ in Diana’s story, but she refuses to tell us anything more.  This is really, really starting to make me uncomfortable.  While I’ve no problem with fictional deities in stories, goddesses just don’t fit with the story we’ve been told so far, and when you bring in all the Wicca fails on top of that, I just don’t even know what to think.  The fact that everyone seems to just roll with it as if they always knew that goddesses are tots real makes me feel like the author just got this idea late in the game and failed to go back and incorporate it into past worldbuilding.

Then Emily comes by to talk to her next and try and explain why Sarah is so pissed off that she left the house.

“You’ve known Matthew for a few weeks. Yet you follow his orders so easily, and you were willing to die for him. Surely you can see why Sarah is concerned. The Diana we’ve known all these years is gone.”

I really don’t know what’s going on here.  Did someone point out to the author that she just straight-up wrote creepy abuse, so she decided to get back by mocking the idea via characters?  Is that what this is?  She brings up all these valid points that other people have made, then has Diana cry, cry, cry “but I love him!” as if that makes one whit of difference?  Because it sort of feels like that.  All these perfectly logical lines like this just get brushed under the rug with poor excuses, and there’s not even a hint of self-awareness to suggest that she knows how creepy it is.

Matthew’s many secrets—the Knights of Lazarus, Juliette, even Marcus—I pushed to the side, along with my knowledge of his ferocious temper and his need to control everything and everyone around him.

STAHP DOING THAT!

Emily carries on with her protests, but now they’re all about how people want to kill them, not about how Matthew is a controlling, abusive fuckwad.

Because we’re supposed to just brush aside that control issue, like Diana did.  But I won’t.  I won’t do it, book, and you can’t make me.

Matthew comes back home from his hunting trip, and still no fucks are given over the mysterious person that he ate.  He and Diana talk for a little bit, and then rather spontaneously decide to timewalk.  I guess we’ll have to wait until next time to find out when they want to go.