The next morning, Queen Elara sends Mare a note with her daily schedule and a comment that it’s non-negotiable and Lucas will escort her everywhere. Mare decides to call this rude. I…am not sure why, other than Mare’s general insistence that everything that woman does is Bad News. Okay, so maybe it could be rude by way of skimping on social customs but Mare doesn’t know Silver etiquette.

Mare gets dressed with the help of her maids who STILL HAVE NOT HAD ANY DIALOGUE YET. There’s something really off-putting about Mare’s constant litany of “these people are dangerous and horrible oppressors” paired up with an exclusive focus on said oppressors. I mean, I like Mare’s litany – it needs to be there – but take your own advice, book!

She goes to breakfast with the queen and Evangeline for more vague girl hate with no purpose. I’m already sick of this.

After that pointless interlude, Mare heads off to her lessons with Bess Blonos. We find out that Bess is a healer and can insta-heal herself, so in addition to being an adequate teacher she can also weather any accidental superpowers mishaps. Mare gets dropped off in an empty room that, for some reason, looks down on a training gym. For some reason, the princes and Evangeline and a bunch of nameless others are down there, “training for war.” Or so Mare informs me, but what would the future rulers of the country go off to fight fireball-a-fireball in a war where you have a ready supply of human meatshiels?

Do…do they even fight with powers in this war? I mean, they’ve talked about things like artillery already, and all of these superpowers seem vastly less useful than, ya know, bombs. (Although I guess Evangeline could stop a bomb, but that doesn’t mean she’s more useful on the offense!)

Bess comes in and…god, this fucking book.

She must be over fifty, older than my mother, but her skin is smooth and shockingly tight over her bones. Her hair is perfectly white, slicked back, and her eyebrows seem fixed in a constant state of shock, arched on her unwrinkled forehead. Everything about her is wrong, from her too-full lips to the sharp, unnatural slope of her nose. Only her deep gray eyes look alive. The rest, I realize, is fake. Somehow she was able to heal or change herself into this monstrous thing in an attempt to look younger, prettier, better.
So now we’ve got only got a vain evil woman to add to our evil woman repertoire, but we’ve also got that fine old “how dare you attempt to be anything other than naturally pretty. You must meet my beauty standards through genetics or else!” Because, of course, there’s no possible way to have anything like effective cosmetic surgery when your story includes fucking magic. Nope, that is unpossible, everything except “natural” beauty must be vilified.

Also, fuck off Mare, how do you know what she did? Maybe she just has high eyebrows and sharp features, or maybe magical healing has some side effects.

Savage. For a brief, shining moment, I think about spitting in silly Lady Blonos’s face. But what would that cost me? What would that accomplish? And it would only prove her right.
Would it? I guess technically, since “savage” in this context is largely defined by the oppressive party and tends to mean “anything not according to our social expectations.” So perhaps the more pertinent question is WHY WOULD YOU CARE? Don’t legitimize terms used to oppres you as if those terms had that meaning inherently.

Mare’s class passes in a time skip, and we never figure out why that classroom had to overlook the gym. Instead it’s off to lunch on some ornate glass terrace.

It’s beautiful in an artificial way
Unlike your sister’s beautiful embroidery, which she grew out behind your house. You know, naturally.

Two girls show up to be MORE MEAN GIRLS, ARE YOU SHOCKED, I KNOW I AM. Their interaction is literally so pointless I’m not even going to descirbe it.

That’s all this chapter has been so far: other females are mean to Mare. Why? Because reasons.

No one even has proper manners, it’s all smirks and glares and snide tons. Why? Because reasons. Apparently they all that the etiquette training Mare is getting and…what, non-verbal communication just isn’t a thing with Silvers?

One of the girls’ grandmother comes over, and she’s…at least not described as hideously ugly. Kind of sad that that’s a step up for this book. Ara used to be a spy in the war way back in the day, and she knew Mare’s fake parents.

And that’s it, after that Mare sits and talks as little as possible and lunch is summarized until Maven shows up. But apparently “I knew you parents” counts as an “interrogation” when Maven asks how her day is going. Hey, Mare, remember when the queen forcefully and painfully tore through all of your memories? Want to go back on your complaints of “interrogation”? No? Ladies be evil and that’s how you’re going to leave it?

God I hate this book.

And a little bit of ship-bait with Maven, and that’s the end of the chapter.

What is the point of all this? We aren’t learning anything new. Everyone hates Mare because evil mean girls, period, that’s it. We don’t learn anything about these women, and we skip through Mare’s lessons so we don’t learn about the world, we have completely stalled the book for the sake of incessant girl-hate.