The day before the last test, Nox and Cally are having a chat during practice.  Nox sees the scars on Cally’s hands and starts putting puzzle pieces together, which make him automatically smarter than every other person in this book.  Cally starts telling him it’d be in his best interest to leave the castle and competition, but she’s cagey about why.  Because…reasons?  It’s not like she can’t tell him “hey, btw, Cain’s summoning monsters to kill off the competition.”  Her excuse for the everyone else is that she can’t prove it, but why would Nox need proof?

There are only five of us left. Four make it to the duels

So, in spite of multiple deaths, the numbers still match up as expected?  Have they simply not been eliminating people after some tests?  And why bother killing people if you’re still going to have to go through all stages of the competition?  One would think Cain would just kill everyone, or at least put a dent in the number of final duelists he has to face.

Nox also figures out her real identity.

“And you can either be the King’s Champion, or go back to Endovier?”

“That’s why I can’t leave.”

You know, except for that little escape hatch you have set up in the sewers.

Little did I know that the blond-haired girl was Queen of the Underworld.”

“Thank you for warning me. You could have opted to say nothing.”

“You were the only one who bothered to take me seriously,” she said, smiling with warmth that she meant.

The other two guys that Cain might kill, though, fuck ‘em.  I mean, they weren’t nice to Cally, and if you’re not nice to Cally, then you deserve to die.  It’s not like life is inherently worth preserving or anything, no, only the people that you have a personal relationship with are worthy of being warned of their impending death.

That night, Nox takes her advice and disappears. 

And then, KATE! 😀 😀 😀

she normally wouldn’t have dared to smoke before a public meal, but the headache that had plagued her all afternoon hadn’t gotten any better.

Aw, poor Kate, still taking a highly addictive substance for medicinal reasons and suffering because of it. 😦

While stumbling around in her drug-induced unsteadiness, she comes across Cain.  Absolutely nothing happens except for some trippy descriptions that don’t go anywhere.

by the time she reached the duke’s table, she’d forgotten all about it.

…so, if it’s all that ‘memorable,’ then why should I care?

Later, Cally and Dorian play chess.

And she’d never, not in a million years, tell him about the ridderak. She might feel something for him, but if he told his father about the power of the Wyrdmarks and Wyrdgates … Her blood chilled at the thought.

…well, that’s incredibly vague and uninformative.  The man hates magic; if you tell him Cain’s doing magic he’ll cut Cain’s head off.  You’ve no reason to think he’d use the weirdmarks, because back when magic was abundant he wasn’t using that.  He’s already got an army that he’s using to pillage and burn across the continent, and one would think that if he wanted magical help doing that he would have just used magic.  I know you keep claiming that magic and weirdmarks are different, but that’s an academic difference, really.  In the end, they’re still “intangible force used to do stuff.”

And if that’s not magic, then how about YOU TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK MAGIC IS?  The book has been curiously silent on that point.

They play chess and hold hands and talk about kissing.

But all of this … everything that had happened with the ridderak meant all the books she’d read were true. What if Cain could summon anything to him—like the dead?

You know what would be helpful here?  If we knew what was in the books she’s referencing.  Or, really, if we had any context for this.  Again, we don’t know anything about the magic in this universe, so we don’t know if raising the dead is something unusual or not.  Is she saying that weirdmarks are a replacement for normal magic or more powerful than normal magic?

To stop thinking about the plot, Cally decides it’s makeout time instead.

She let the touch, the taste of him fill the room of her mind with water.

With water.  With water.  What the everlasting fuck?

They makeout for hours and after he leaves, Cally does what Cally does best.  Sit on her ass and mope.

White Fang Mountains—that cursed borderland between Adarlan and the Western Wastes. They said that evil still crept out of the ruins of the Witch Kingdom—and that old women with iron teeth still wandered the lonely roads in the mountain passes.

Wow.  So women are the root of magical evil.  Clever, book.

She finally goes to sleep and dreams of being chased as a little girl.

Later when it’s discovered that Nox ran off, they decide not to have the final test and just skip straight to the four-person duel.  Those tests were pretty damn useless, weren’t they?

We spend a whole page with Dorian just so he can think about how much he luuuurves Cally.  The quality of this book is not consistent.  The POV switches are getting shorter and more pointless, although at least we’re seeing far fewer epithets. 

Then Cally mopes more.

She’d told her guards she didn’t want any visitors tonight, and to turn away even Chaol and Dorian if they arrived.

Because, you know, the convicted criminal totally gets to override their boss and their bosses boss.

These are your jailors, Cally, not your personal assistants.

The rest of the chapter is more moping.  That’s two chapters today with nary a lick of progress, just a lot of Cally sitting around and being scared but not doing anything.  “Queen of the Underworld” my ass.

Drinking Game Count:  Epithets – 2, Exclamation Marks – 4

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