We next check in with Mare and Cal, stuck in cells beneath some big murder arena named Bowl of Bones. Apparently the cells here are made of some material that suppress powers.

I didn’t think my opinion of the Scarlett Guard could get much lower, but it just did. There is a literal, physical substance that negates uberman powers and none of you knew about it? Or if you did, didn’t think it was worth using in your quest to destroy uberman rule?

The two sit around in their cells, morosely talking about how they’re both about to die and Maven is so evil and then having shipper moments about how “it wasn’t all a lie.” ‘Cause, you know, she was so pissed off at him for being loyal to the uberman regime, but now that he’s not the worst brother, it’s back to shipper moments. Apparently this book figures one of these two has to be a love interest, it’s just unpossible that neither of them are good boyfriend material, so it shoves whichever is least-bad at the moment into the role.

Mare also realizes that she told Maven about the other Reds with powers, so he’ll probably be all over that now. Oops.

Maven shows up to gloat.

Once, he told me Cal hated to lose. Now I realize the one playing to win was always Maven. Every breath, every word was in service to this bloody victory.

JFC, enough with this “only the worst one counts” bull. The statement applies to both brothers.

There’s yet more shipper moments when Maven is all ‘yeah, and you even took my girl’ and Mare goes ‘well I would have been your girl just fine if you didn’t turn out to be such a murderer and shit.’ Because, you know, so important right now.

Maven offers to spare her life, and Mare punches him. You know, he didn’t even say she has to marry him or nothing, it was just a straight-up offer. I miss the survivor Mare from the start of this book. Dying accomplishes literally nothing right now, and she hasn’t been set up as a ‘die for honor’ type character. In fact, it could be a defining difference between Reds and Silvers, that the latter will die for ideals and the former goes ‘fuck that shit, I got enough real shit trying to kill me.’

Alas, no.

I have to throw my head back and laugh, feeling the eyes of the brothers on me. “Cal betrayed me, and I betrayed him. And you betrayed us both, in a thousand different ways.” The words are heavy as stone but right. So right. “I choose no one.”

There have been far too many shipper moments in this chapter for this line to have real weight. It feels like nothing but lip service.

Mare points out that when she bleeds red as she dies everyone will know the truth and Maven is all “hah, whatever, the truth is what I say it is” then proceeds to detail how they’re going to kill everyone who ever knew her full story. So…you don’t care about people seeing her blood, but also you’re keeping it a secret?

Are you going to try and tell the world that Mare deceived the whole palace or something? Because that’s even more unbelievable than the whole “oh, she didn’t know she was Silver” lie from before. This whole book is terrible. Just say that you’re going to burn her or hang her and there won’t be any blood; that’s easy enough.

Finally it’s time for something to happen. The two are taken up to the arena and put in simple clothes and paraded out in front of the spectators.

“As for the Red girl, the trickster.”

…so they are going with that?

The lies in this book are a huge downfall. There’s so many, they’re hard to keep straight, it’s impossible to tell who knows what, but the thing is…most of them are so stupid and unbelievable in the first place. With a dab hand, a confusing web of lies can work to create a complex plot, but when none of the lies would have flown even in isolation, it just creates this weird pile-up of what-the-fudgery.

Lucas is brought out, too, and there’s a whole page of him being mad at Mare over the mindcontrol and Mare being so very sorry and I’m sorry but wasn’t there an execution about to go down?

“But now I know you’re not different, not anymore,” he continues, almost spitting. “You’re the same as all the rest. Heartless, selfish, cold—just like us.

Look, I can forgive Lucas for saying this. He’s been kept in a dungeon for, like, a week or something and he’s beaten and about to die and got mind controlled. He’s pissed. Okay.

But the book is setting it up to be something we’re supposed to agree with. Even before they started talking, Mare was all ‘oh, woe, I’ve caused all this with my machinations,’ but Mare has been the least duplicitous character in the whole book. Even joining the Guard didn’t net much, because she didn’t do anything with them besides turn off a few lights here and there. The one thing she did do, get the prisoners out, was a purely reactive act of desperation and loyalty, and they’re trying to paint it as being exactly the same as Maven’s power-hungry murderous grab for power.

The guy who got jerked around? He can be mad. Fine. But the book needs to stop with this shitfuckery. Not that it will, because it’s been doing this throughout the whole thing.

There’s several pages of Maven giving a speech and detailing crimes. Lucas gets executed quickly, then it’s time for Mare and Cal to be the main event, and there’s even more speechifying.

“Once we believed you to be the lost Mareena Titanos, another murdered citizen of my crown. With the help of your Red brethren, you deceived us with technological tricks and ruses

Look, anyone who actually believes this is just going to believe that you’re a fucking idiot. So why even bother?

They show a bunch of cobbled together video footage that makes it seem like Mare seduced Cal and orchestrated the whole thing.

Then five other Silvers join them on the field, because apparently this execution is going to be less of an actual execution and more of a tournament?

Way to end on an intelligent note, book.