After Tris’s flying leap down the stairs, a healer comes in to tend to her, and several pages are spent describing the process.  Which, while boring for me to write about, does a fair job in the story of building up tension.  After talking about the matter and getting a report from the healer, it’s pretty obvious what happened: someone put a curse on the top of the stairs, but it was crafted specifically to injure Tris without killing her, because she’s about as bad off as a person can get without rupturing internal organs and dying.  And, they figure it must have been Ishabal and it must have been done to keep the most obviously-powerful member of the group from leaving.

But Tris isn’t having none of that.  Even with magic, it’ll take weeks for her to get fit to travel again, and she tells her siblings to leave on time.  The longer they wait, the more roadblocks the empress can put in their path, and she says she’ll catch up to them when she’s hale. 

While they’re packing to leave, Shan comes to call on Sandry.  She’s not happy with him because she found out he’s the empress’s lover, but I’m not sure why she’s so upset, since it’s pretty obvious that everyone dances to Berenene’s tune whether they have other interests or not.  Eh, she’s 18 and has a crush, hurt feelings are going to be had, I suppose. 

Fortunately, she doesn’t let her crush or her feelz get the better of her when he starts kissing her and refuses to be pushed off.  Even though he’s a good kisser and gets her all weak-knee-ed, no means no and his forceful act doesn’t win her over because HELLS YEAH, IT’S STILL FORCE, PUSH THAT FUCKER OFF, SANDRY, WOOOOOO!  She’s even incensed about it, none of this swoony bullshit.  She can think he’s a good kisser and also be all “okay, but slow your roll, that was really rude, who the fuck do you think you are, anyway?”

Then she magically weaves his pants to a chair to make him stay sitting, just for good measure. 

Shan tries to convince her to marry him and that his dallying with the empress isn’t exactly because he’s just sooooo in love with her or anything.  But then Ambros comes in and ruins the mood (or improves it?) by pointing out that Shan’s family used to be big and powerful and frittered it all away, and he’s known as being ambitious in his attempts to get all that back. Shan does his best to salvage the situation and explain things away, but Sandry doesn’t fall for it, because Sandry is BOSS.

Later, Zhegorz is fretting about leaving and wants to stay with Tris, until she points out that they’ll have no way of getting early warning without him, since Tris is normally the one who sees stuff coming.  So he goes along, but because he’s Zhegorz, he’s not exactly….good at this.  Instead, as they leave the city and start riding south, he points out everything that’s coming at them.

Yeah, thanks for the warning about the sheep, Zhegorz.  He tries so hard, it’s kind of adorable.

Today’s chapter was mostly set up for the finale.  Not a whole lot there to comment on.