Our three characters decide to find a good hiding place for the night and recover before going on their assassination mission.  Katsa hunts while Po and Bitterblue set up camp, and when she gets back she learns that Bitterblue still isn’t comfortable around Po because “I get the feeling she’s not used to men showing her kindness.”

But what does this meeeeeeeeaaaan?  That statement implies that it’s more than just Leck that’s been abusing her, so does Leck ‘convince’ the men under his command to do terrible things, too?  Or just let it happen, and there’s enough bad eggs in the bunch to take advantage?  But if it’s just permissiveness, why only the men?  Women have the capacity for some really horribly behavior.  Or is it just that, like always with this book, women are completely fucking absent unless they happen to be princesses?

We don’t know.  This subplot carries on like they think there’s a whole culture of abuse going on in that castle, yet they act as if it’s only Leck committing the crimes.  As if, once again, it’s only the royalty that actually get any consideration, and everyone else is just set dressing.

“She’ll make for an awfully young queen.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that, too. But there’s no helping it.”

Uh, yes there is.

Leck isn’t a legitimate king, since he got his position through magic and trickery, so Bitterblue isn’t a legitimate princess.  Or at least, not a princess of Monsea; she might claim the title through her Leinid mother.  And if you people don’t care about legitimacy…well, then you don’t care, and you can put someone older and more experienced on the throne.

Help to plot the murder of her father. Yes, she probably would help, if she could. For such was the madness that rode the air of this kingdom as they sat in their rocky camp at the edge of the Monsean mountains.

First Katsa carries on about how much she doesn’t understand familial connections because she has no parents or siblings, and now she considers it insanity to want to kill an abusive and scary-as-fuck father.

One or the other, book.  Stop trying to have it both ways.

When Bitterblue wakes up, she tells her story.  Leck is a sadistic fuck who tortures the ‘small and the weak’ for fun, and even though Ashen suspected all this, his magic kept her from really hanging on to that suspicion in a meaningful way.  When Leck started targeting Bitterblue, apparently that was the limit, he couldn’t ‘convince’ Ashen to forget about that.

He wanted the two of them to agree to his abuse of Bitterblue, but at the same time he’d get impatient and punch Ashen?  Doesn’t sound like the ‘sick patience’ that she talks about him having, and also Ashen’s bruises are the only thing that remind the two of them to keep refusing.  Leck had Old Prince kidnapped to use as leverage, which seems like a lot of trouble to go through when you can just…stop punching your wife and wait for the bruises to heal and try magic again.

Bitterblue recounts how her and her mother stayed locked away and only had one serving girl to bring them food, though Leck would still talk to them through the door and try to magic them out.

Know what’s missing from all of this?  Other men.  The book has gone on at length about Bitterblue’s fear of men in general, but apparently the only one frightening her at any time was her father, and it wasn’t his maleness that was doing it, it was his insanity and his magic.  Did she pick up this fear before she went into isolation?

And then one day the girl who brought our food had cuts on her face, three lines on each cheek, bleeding freely. And other injuries, too, that we couldn’t see. She wasn’t walking well.

…

This book really fucking needs to stop dancing around this issue.  If it’s not going to talk about sexual abuse, then it needs to just stick to physical torture, which is already bad enough.

And then Ashen and Bitterblue escaped, and we know the rest from there.

They go over how Po has to be the one to kill Leck because magic, and then the lie about why Leck’s grace doesn’t work on Po.  You know what, the lie makes about as much sense as the real reason, so whatever.  Bitterblue tells them all about Leck’s personal guard, made up entirely of graced people.

How does Leck have so many magic people?  Are the Monsean people just known for producing a lot of magic babies?  He can’t be getting them from anywhere else, because the other kingdoms all follow the same model of “keep all the kids with different colored eyes until you discover their magic, then press them into service if it’s useful,” unless parents are hiding their magic kids and sending them to Monsea.  Maybe he’s hiring them all out of Leinid?  Or are there other places outside the seven kingdoms that also have magic people, and he’s getting his hires from there?

Psh, this book doesn’t care.  He just has an entire honor guard of magic fighters, end of story, shut up.

They decide that he’s going to try and kill the king from a distance to avoid the close-in guards, and he’s going to have to go alone the next day to attempt it.

If Po didn’t return to their camp above the gully by sunset, then Katsa and Bitterblue must flee without him. For if he didn’t return, it might mean the king was not dead. If the king was not dead, then nothing would protect Bitterblue from him, except distance.

I would like you all to remember that Leck not only has entire warehouses of animals to torture, but he also routinely does the same thing to young girls and kills people pose any threat to his bloody lifestyle.

In short, saving Bitterblue is not actually the goal.  It has never been the goal, and it shouldn’t be the goal now.  There is no reason to be so wholly focused on getting Bitterblue away.  Protecting Bitterblue is not the only reason – or even the main reason – to kill Leck.  The man is a magic serial killer; that is the reason.

But hey, all those other girls that Leck is murdering aren’t princesses, so who cares about them, right?