Arven follows us, making sure we can’t escape.

So, it just occurred to me, but shouldn’t Maven be pretty easy to keep contained? He and Cal wear little sparky bracelets to make their initial fire, because as we learned earlier no Silver is able to create, only manipulate what’s already there. Take away his sparky sparky book bracelet and he wouldn’t have any fire.

It also occurs to me that, even though they went “aw, Mare can create, so cool!” there’s actually a lot of electricity in nature and even more of it in a palace full of electronics so how are we so sure that she’s creating and not just drawing up? Hell, you brain has electricity running through it, that’s what makes it work!

They are taken up to a soundproof tower with the king and queen in it.

The queen is here as well, waiting for us in nothing but a thin white gown.

I keep staring at this, trying to make sense of it. The king is in armor and wearing a crown, so they clearly had time to prepare for this. Why make the note that the queen is thinly dressed? What is this adding? Why is it here? Am I supposed to be getting some “scantly dressed = bad” thing going on? Because…it’s very random.

Elara mindreads Mare and gets the whole book, so at least we don’t have to go through a protracted rehashing of the plot? I hope.

“Leave us,” Elara says, her voice cutting and sharp. The soldiers wait, looking to Cal.

Man, fuck you book, you just don’t want this FUCKING QUEEN to have any authority, do you?

There’s some family arguing as the king sentences them both to death while the others try to “he’s your son, no” their way out of that.

And then Elara mind controls the king and Cal! I should have seen this coming, but I really didn’t think the book would let her do anything! They’re all aghast that she’s turning on them! But, then, Maven is in on it, too! The instructor dude gives Maven his powers back, but not Mare, and instead of running Maven joins with his mother in…IDK, standing around? Mare spends a lot of time flailing in her head about all the betrayal going on, but there’s not a lot of actual action…

So, I’m torn, because Maven playing everyone for his own gain this whole time is cool, but literally all the hints towards this have been “damn, but he has such an evil mother?!?!?!?!?!” and having the ultimate end of this game be “evil woman is evil and has evil babies” just literally sucks all the cool out of it. So I guess I’m not actually torn after all. Fuck this book.

“And this, this was just another plot. You pushed me into this, even though it was impossible, even though you knew Cal would never betray his father! You made me believe it. You made all of us believe it.”

“It’s not my fault you were stupid enough to play along,” he replies. “Now the Guard is finished.”

To be fair, yeah, that was a really stupid plan and none of the other players should have gone along with it. The fail here isn’t that Maven came up with a failtastic plan, it’s that no one else shut him down.

There are a lot of pages with Mare just flabbergasted at Maven’s betrayal, and they rehash most of the book with Maven and Elara going “yup, you were really dumb to believe that.” Sigh, and here I thought we’d get away without a rehash scene. Apparently we are not so lucky.

And then there’s more family fighting about how poor Maven wasn’t loved enough and Cal was loved too much and jealousy and bullshit and yada yada. It’s not…terrible, I guess? It’s just nothing new.

Elara forces Cal to stab the king to death, though it ends up being slow since Cal is trying to resist.

“It’s not you,” Tiberias says, his eyes on Cal’s wretched face. He doesn’t bother pleading for his life. “I know it’s not you, son. This is not your fault.”

Okay…that’s a pretty heartstrings-tugging line.

The cameras in the room come back on (how?) and Elara and Maven act all shocked that Cal killed the king for the sake of public show. Mare gets free through the power of…

Arven has let me go, and

…through the power of just because, apparently.

It’s nothing at all to shock the metal, burning it with sparks until the shackles fall off my wrists.

…how…???

Well, anyway, Cal and Mare flee the tower, and apparently all those guards that were around before just went on a smoke break or something, instead of waiting just outside the door.

Long tables set with fine china block the way, but Cal throws them aside with a blast of fire.

Just…do you know how literally anything works? Do you even care?

It all comes to naught, because eventually they are surrounded by too many people to fight and have to submit to being arrested.