Turns out we’re still stuck at the ball.  In Dorians POV as he dances with her, so we can hear about how totally awesome he thinks she is.  Then we switch to Chaol so that he can fume on the sidelines and also inform us that they look tots awesome while dancing.  A random noble comes up to gossip and then he points out that they look tots awesome, and also Dorian is tots in love with her.

If you have to use some one-off side character to hammer in the fact that your character is in love, you’re overdoing it.  We should be able to tell from his actions, and in fact we can, so the extra just feels like bragging.

Tomorrow, he’d have a word with her guards about letting Celaena out tonight. Hopefully by then, he’d be less inclined to knock their heads together.

No.  No.  No.  They fucked up.  Do not hold back on the head-knocking.  This is not a minor thing.

But she wasn’t in love with him—Otho hadn’t said that. He had seen no attachment on her part. And Celaena would never be that stupid. It was Dorian who was the fool—Dorian who would have his heart broken, if he did actually love her.

Unable to look at his friend any longer, the Captain of the Guard left the ball.

1. Best friend has been seduced by assassin.
2. Assassin has no obvious feelings or attachments or really anything to hint that she won’t stab him in a second now that she has his trust.
3. ???
4. It’s totally cool to leave them alone.

Switch to Kate, who is understandably furious that Dorian and Cally are dancing.  And dancing.  And dancing.  Jeeze, he could take another partner for propriety’s sake, at least.  More of the same about needing to get rid of Cally.  Aaaand…that’s all we get from Kate. 😦

When Cally finally leaves the party, she goes back to her room and finds Dorian waiting there for her.  He’d left just before she did.  They banter for a thankfully very brief time and then he kisses her.  Its’…unobjectionable, but that’s all I’ve got.  These two still have zero chemistry.

Cally enjoys it until she remembers ‘oh, yeah, I hate this guy’s family’ and sends him off on his way.  Then some very rapid POV shifting again so we can find out that Dorian liked kissing her and Chaol is being a creepy-jealous voyeur. 

That was a lot of POV switching for not a lot of payoff.  Jumping from head to head through the whole mess made it hard to get invested in the emotions, which is hard enough already when I can’t get into the characters.

Cally sleeps in until 1am the next day.

Lemme tell you guys a story.  This person went and joined the army, went through basic, got up every morning at 4:30 to do army stuff.  Then they went to advanced training, got up every morning, did army stuff.  They had a routine is basically what I’m saying.  Then they got some time off, the first time off since joining, which is always a big deal.  Went out, stayed up late, partied, all that fun shtick.  Then they got up at 5am, went outside, and said “WHY THE FUCK AM I AWAKE?”

With a few different details and pronouns, that would be me and almost every person I’ve met in the armed services.  I’ve learned how to sleep in, but that means like 7am, unless I’m sick.  My grandfather has woken up at 5am every day of his adult life, and it doesn’t matter when he goes to bed, even if going to bed is at 4am.  I know people who can drink themselves sick and still wake up in time for formation, even if they go back to sleep again right after because it’s Saturday.

And yet Ms. World’s Best Assassin sleeps in until 1pm after just a little bit of a late night and some dancing?

To cap things off, Dorian is already there, in her rooms, like the creeper that he is.  They banter about the dog, which Cally decides to name Fleetfoot.

The dog, by the way, is perfectly well-behaved and sociable.  WTF, did Dorian switch her chosen dog with a different one while she wasn’t looking?  This is not how problem dogs behave, and now it’s sending the message of “no, it’s cool adopt that dog that needs a lot of care and work and attention, as long as you have good intentions it’ll magically be fixed!”  You suck at pets, book.

Dorian tries to talk about the kiss and find out if she’s upset about it.

“No! Oh, go away!” She flung herself onto her pillows, pulling the blankets above her head. She was going to die from embarrassment.

Good lord, are you five?

Blah, blah, more stuff the book thinks is cute ENOUGH OF THAT, WE GET ANOTHER KATE POV NEXT! 😀

Kate and Duke P are walking through the greenhouses, and Kate ruminates for a while about how Duke P is ugly and has pox scars and she doesn’t want to be ‘stuck’ with him.

“You seem out of spirits today, Lady Kaltain.”

“Do I?” She cocked her head in her coyest expression. “Perhaps today pales in comparison to the fun I had at the ball last night.”

But she still manages to handle herself and be polite.

I think the book wants me to dislike Kate for being all “ew, he’s ugly so I don’t like him,” but that’s pretty hard to do when the book has never passed up a chance to call Duke P ugly, no matter whose POV we’re in.

Duke P says she can stop pretending because he knows she wants the prince, but on the other hand, isn’t Cally so irritating?  Let’s get rid of her together anyway.

The black ring on his finger pulsed, and her head gave a throb of pain in response.

Yes, we get it with the ring already.  Either give us something new or give us some payoff for all that.

Duke P ends up telling her Cally’s real identity, then says there’s no way to get rid of her because also he tells her about the competition which is supposed to be a secret.  Good job keeping secrets, Duke.

Duke presents the idea that Kate could be at the final duel, because apparently there’s going to be some sort of ceremony before it.  And there weren’t any ceremonies to the goddess before this because…?  Reasons?  I guess the answer is reasons.  The plan is to have Kate slip a little something in Cally’s drink, not enough to kill her, just enough to make her off during the duel so that her death will look like an accident.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 5, Exclamation Marks – 11

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