Feyre goes into a flurry after spotting her father, getting ready to run because she assumes he’s here to rescue her. She somehow doesn’t wonder how a man with a poor leg and no knowledge of the country managed to walk all the way here, but eh, she is startled I guess. Though…she also doesn’t wonder why he’s leaving. He’s on the grounds and walking towards the gate. She thinks he arrived to save her and…what, chickened out? Was just really bad at recon?

She sneaks out to go with him, but Tamlin is there to catch her. Tamlin, in beast form, points out the by now painfully obvious, that it’s an illusion and not her father and there are monsters in the night.

I mean, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt at first, she’s been through a lot. But all the way through packing and sneaking out she didn’t once stop to think “that’s some mighty un-my-father-like behavior right there”?

“I made a promise,” I said, my breathing ragged. “To my mother, when she died. That I’d look after my family. That I’d take care of them. All I have done, every single day, every hour, has been for that vow. And just because I was hunting to save my family, to put food in their bellies, I’m now forced to break it.”

[…]

“They are cared for—they are fed and comfortable.”

Fed and comfortable. If he couldn’t lie, if it was true, then … then it was beyond anything I’d ever dared hope for.

Then … my vow to my mother was fulfilled.

She’s been harping about this ‘vow’ she made to her dead mom for a while now and Tamlin has repeatedly said that her family is safe and all that. So…what’s different about now that she suddenly believes it?

There’s some vague history for Tamlin, apparently he wasn’t supposed to have the title (WE HAVEN’T HEARD A TITLE FOR HIM YET, BY THE WAY, THIS IS PISSING ME OFF) and talk about the monster at the gate and how the blight is causing more and more monsters to slipping out of the territories.

“What else is different now?” I asked, trailing him up the marble front steps.

He didn’t stop this time, didn’t even look over his shoulder to see me as he said, “Everything.”

Well, someone knows he’s in a book, doesn’t he?

Feyre settles into a routine of going out on patrol with Lucien and bemoaning her lack of purpose in life, because she has now suddenly 100% accepted the whole “your family is fine” thing. There’s some minor angsting over Tamlin being in a “mood,” portent dreams out of nowhere, god I’m bored.

So, Feyre lost all motivation once she accepted her family is fine, but really the book didn’t have much going for it even before that because, come on, we knew she was going to stick around. The setup was fine and dandy, but once she got to Prythia there was nothing to take up the slack. We’ve had possibilities what with all this blight talk, but so far it’s had the status of B-plot because our main character can’t be arsed to actually look into it, and there’s nothing pressing or timely to force our interest in the matter. Feyre wanting to escape the closest we came to tension and once she gave that up, well, what’s left?

Next chapter, Feyre is half-heartedly wandering around the castle and making a half-hearted map, because she doesn’t want to go back to sleep after her dream. Scintillating, isn’t it?

I’d probably be more okay with this if the setting were more interesting.

Tamlin comes in, having just killed the Bogge and all shellshocked and injured over it. He waves off his injuries and focuses on her mapmaking.

I opened my mouth to point out his hand again, but he said, “You can’t write, can you.”

[earlier]

Icarefully traced my steps, noting the windows and doors and exits, occasionally jotting down vague sketches and Xs on the parchment.

It was the best I could do, and to any literate human, my markings would have made no sense. But I couldn’t write or read more than my basic letters, and my makeshift map was better than nothing.

Look, if you want to show that Feyre can’t write, maybe don’t pick an activity that is mostly drawing? I really don’t understand how sketching and making Xs and Os is somehow incomprehensible to literate people. Maps, by and large, aren’t supposed to have words on them. I mean, place names, sure, but not every map needs those. Certainly not a makeshift rough draft of a house.

And they immediately move on from that to cleaning up his injured hand.

I was almost at the open door, stifling the urge to bolt back to my room, when he said, “You can’t write, yet you learned to hunt, to survive. How?”

I don’t even understand this book. It’s like it just decided that one thing is important and it’s going to talk about that thing and whether it fits or not be damned. Want writing to be important? It’s important! Suddenly it’s absurd that things unrelated to writing can be learned without writing!

The next morning, she catches Tamlin and Lucien arguing. Apparently there’s something Lucien expects Tamlin to do, something that will have some effect on the blight, and he thinks Tamlin isn’t putting in enough effort towards this goal. Given the book we’re in, I’m thinking he either needs to woo or kill Feyre, I wouldn’t be surprised at either.

Feyre comes out of hiding, and Lucien stomps off, leaving Feyre and Tamlin to hang out, chit chat, have sympathetic moments, all that shippy shit.