Feyre spends an undetermined amount of time in her cell, getting sicker and weaker as her mud-caked wound continues to bleed and infection sets in and food doesn’t. Rhysand comes in and offers to heal her with magic, but only if she spends half of every month with him. Because…well, what kind of book did you think you were reading? One with sense or logic? Psh, as if, don’t you know literally every action taken by everyone in this book serves one purpose, regardless of literally anything else? And that purpose being SHIPPING?

It’s not like you can set up interesting character dynamics in some organic manner, psh, com on. Those are always so lacking in drama, right?

Feyre hesitates to take such an offer, and Rhys mocks her over how she’ll be super dead soon if she doesn’t because her other best option, Lucien, is under too much watch to sneak away. Also he hurts her wound more to make his point, because he’s a dick. And the love interest in the next book. Isn’t it so romantic? A guy who causes you pain to make a point, then says he will refuse to save your life if you don’t agree to outlandish terms right fucking now, while you’re delierious with fever and literally hours from dying? Doesn’t that sound like something a wonderful, respectful potential partner would do?

It’s not like he’s even got any reason to be making this demand. Near as we know, it’s not like magic in this world requires an exchange; he literally could save her scot-free. (Although a magic system that exchanges promises for results could be fun to play with. Someone run with that!) No, Rhys found her when she was at her lowest point and is deliberately using said lowest point to his own advantage and then threatening death and causing pain when she doesn’t immediately acquiesce.

If you want a scene like this to have some conflict and not just wholesale have someone show up to fix everything, cool, but SET IT UP BETTER THAN THIS. If magic had a cost and it was the only way to make it work, over just Rhys deciding on a cost because he’s a dick. If there was some immediate time matter, or if Rhys was being watched and this was his only chance to come down here and help, that would make more sense why he was aggressively pushing the matter. But nope, none of that was SET UP because this book doesn’t want to SET UP anything, it just wants to throw things up willy-nilly, slap-dash, as-they-come and this is the consequence of that.

“Why? And what are to … to be the terms?” I said, fighting past the dizziness.

“Ah,” he said, adjusting the lapel of his obsidian tunic. “If I told you those things, there’d be no fun in it, would there?”

Dick.

She bargains him down to a week (if you can call it bargaining, even) and he heals her, but he also leaves behind a giant, obvious, intricate tattoo on her hand and arm. And no, that’s not a leftover from the magic, he says it’s “customary” to mark deals in tattoos, so he deliberately put it on there and didn’t have to.

“You didn’t tell me this would happen.”

“You didn’t ask. So how am I to blame?”

How about ‘in every conceivable way possible’?

“I did this thing. I did by my own actions, after I decided to do it, when I had the option not to do it, knowing that you didn’t expect it, and I didn’t tell you about it, which is also an active decision that I made. So clearly it’s not my fault, right?”

Some time later, Feyre is set to scrubbing floors with dirty water and threatened if she doesn’t do the task. But of course she can’t clean anything with dirt, so dun dun dun. Then Lucien’s mother comes by and magically cleans the water to help her out.

“For giving her your name in place of my son’s life,” she said, her voice as sweet as sun-warmed apples.

So…was that the reason for that whole charade? Because…kind of weak.

So she’s set to another impossible cleaning task. Turns out the owner of that room is Rhysand, so I guess it’s time for more banter and shipping.

God, it’s like the book just forgot Tamlin exists, or else got bored with him, and decided to play with a shiny new toy instead.

Rhysand shows us his shape-shifted form just to demonstrate.

Indeed, it was still Rhysand’s face, his powerful male body, but flaring out behind him were massive black membranous wings—like a bat’s, like the Attor’s. He tucked them in neatly behind him, but the single claw at the apex of each peeked over his broad shoulders. Horrific, stunning—the face of a thousand nightmares and dreams.

Uh, yeah, sure, sounds really scary there. Whatever you say. Toooootaly not a smoking hot Goliath from Gargoyles or nothing, nope, that is going to be 100% scary to every member of this book’s target audience. I so believe that.

Rhysand finishes her cleaning task with magic, then orders her guards not to mess with her anymore, so…yay, what an exciting chapter of tasks that other people do for her that ends up going nowhere. *yawn*