The next morning, Mare wakes up to a mysterious figure next to her bed and jumps up ready to defend herself from an assassin. Except it turns out to just be Walsh, the servant lady from when she first arrived, here to bring her breakfast.

Which just leads me to wonder…was Walsh hovering creepily over Mare’s bed, or does Mare assume her breakfast helper is going to kill her every morning? She’s been here for weeks; waking up with company should be routine or not by now.

Walsh ‘mouths’ the words “Rise, Red as the dawn,” which really seems like it wouldn’t work for a silent signal. Too long, not really enough lip movement to tell what’s being said without context. Whatever, she also slips Mare a note saying ‘midnight’ before she leaves. And…I guess someone’s going to come get her for this mystery meeting, since there’s no location or other instructions. Damn, you’re catch phrase is too long and your notes are too short, when you have all the time in the world for writing notes and less time for talking. Why so backwards?

Why can authors not figure out the whole point of secret notes is that you can explain things?

Also Mare’s schedule has shifted to allow her to go into training with her peers, which just further begs the question of what Julian is supposed to be doing with her if not…you know, training, like they have been.

If it’s anything like what I saw Cal and Maven go through, the ability practice in particular, I’ll be hopelessly far behind, but at least I’ll have someone to talk to. And if I’m really lucky, Evangeline will be deathly ill and stuck in bed for the rest of her miserable life.

Oh, fuck you, Mare.

She chats with Lucas, her friendly personal guard, on the way to training and finds out that he didn’t attend this particular class because he went into the army at age nine.

But Lucas shrugs like it’s nothing. “The front is the best place for training. Even the princes were trained at the front, for a time.”

…what?

Just…what?

First of all.

What?

Second of all, “in the army” doesn’t have to mean “in the fighting.” I mean, navies used to take people that young, but they were gophers and helpers with the intent of training them to be in the profession once they grow up, not “hey, go kill some people right now.” Why not take someone at nine and have them be runners with the quartermaster corps? Or, you know, just NOT ACCEPT SMALL CHILDREN IN THE ARMY?

This doesn’t make sense. It makes negative sense. It’s sucking up sense out of everything around it. Who would allow this? Why do they think it’s necessary? Why is he so blasé about it?

Well, that leads to talking about the war in general, which leads to Lucas saying some mean shit about Reds being suited to grunt fighting, and I do like that the Silvers keep saying all this shit even when they’re supposed to be nice, and Mare keeps being upset by it. Yes, show the friendly people being racist! I’d give you brownie points, book, but you’re still in the negative over that small child in battle nonsense.

He notes my discomfort, frowning a little. When he speaks, his voice is low and fast, as if he doesn’t want to be overheard. “I don’t have the luxury of questions,” he mutters. His black eyes bore into mine, full of meaning. “And neither do you.”

…and now I’m uncomfortable again. Stop trying to excuse his prejudice, having the friendly guy still be wrong was fine and dandy, don’t pull this “oh, he just has to be that way because circumstances” shit. The whole point of institutionalized prejudice is how thoroughly worked into the fabric of society it is, and that message gets lost if you cover it up with “erm, well, actually, the mean people just made everyone else do it.”

Mare changes into a jumpsuit and joins the others in the training room.

He notes my discomfort, frowning a little. When he speaks, his voice is low and fast, as if he doesn’t want to be overheard. “I don’t have the luxury of questions,” he mutters. His black eyes bore into mine, full of meaning. “And neither do you.”

Sigh.

Evangeline spouts off some very mild taunting and has collected some sycophants, female of course because no one else would be interesting in currying favor with the future queen. For some reason.

The girls are especially on edge; after all, I did take one of their princes away.

I still don’t understand this. How many of them were really angling for Maven, anyway? Isn’t it pretty much accepted that, since there’s only two of them, you’re probably not going to marry into the royal family? Do none of them have literally any other ambitions, especially since this isn’t a “your rank is tied to your husband” type society? (I think…)

Mare goes to hang out with Maven and talk about how much she can’t wait to get away from Evangeline, despite Eva doing LITERALLY NOTHING to Mare for all the many weeks she’s been there. Seriously, the two do not interact and when they do, Eva delivers one taunt and then doesn’t pursue the matter. Annoying, but hardly worth all this vitriol.

“Do you know when you—” I stumble, correcting myself. “I mean, when we go back to the capital?”

“After the Parting Ball. You were told about that?”

So…question still stands, just now it’s “do you know when the Parting Ball is?”

They talk about how girls are annoying social-climbing leeches who used to never leave Cal alone at balls. Sigh.

This book has a society where women are allowed into the army without question, where there’s never really been any hint that a woman can’t have social or political power in her own right, where women can do awesome things like chop your head off from across a room, where even their physical strength is on par with men because all of their strength is in superpowers and not in body-build…and yet still ABSOFIKKINLUTELY NO ONE has any ambitions or intentions outside of fucking the pretty prince?

And because no one has any ambition outside of marrying as well as possible, we still have all this bullshit woman-on-woman competition that doesn’t even make any sense.

Few Silvers inherit abilities from their mothers, and no one has ever had more than one ability.

Well, I guess that does at least explain the ‘families all have one power’ thing.

Mare watches all the kids warm up and practice their powers and gets disheartened about beating them. I’m still failing to see anything that one well-placed bomb couldn’t take care of.

Well, maybe the clairvoyant guy, but the best he can do is get out of the way.

Then we meet the instructor, Rane, whose power is to take other powers away. I guess that would come in handy when trying to wrangle teenagers.

Evangeline leads the line next to us, and for once she doesn’t seem concerned with me. Her eyes stay on Cal

Still confused on how that’s “for once” instead of “like always.”

They start by running laps while a telekenetic guy makes obstacles pop up in front of them, then target practice.

By the time the session ends, I’m dripping sweat and sore all over. Julian’s lesson is a blessing, allowing me to sit and recover my strength.

Okay, but, WHAT ARE YOU LESSONS?

Instead of answering, the two of them chit-chat and then quite randomly turn the conversation to Julian’s powers. He can mind-control people, but only if he maintains direct eye contact. So…basically any group of two or more people can beat him at anything. Mare acts horrified that this person she considered a sympathizer and friend has this terrible power but…like, all you have to do is blink to beat him, right? He can’t even make you go do something else, because leaving means breaking eye contact.

Julian goes on about how he could use his powers to take over everything if he wanted, but he doesn’t, but also his house is a “low” house because they don’t have as much strength as other houses? Dude, make up your mind, because crowing about how you’re holding back from a coup in the same breath as you try to garner sympathy for being an underdog is just…suspicious as fuck. It seems like he’s deliberately trying to ingratiate himself to Mare with a grab-bag traits he thinks she’ll like. Self-control, no personal ambition, underdog status. I mean, I think it’s the author trying to do the same to us, but still.

Jacob also goes on about how his sister married the king for love and everyone else was just so horribly jealous, because it’s not a good woman-hating novel with that traditional “everyone else was just jealous” line.