Today, Mare gets ready for the big ball amidst much angst about how her clothes are silken chains and she’s not allowed to show fear. Honestly, I don’t mind it, but only because it’s so short and I just really, really want Mare to hold onto any vestige of her “these damn rich people” attitude.…

Cal and Mare go to her sitting room to dance to a little portable speaker and have many shipper moments. For the first time, he looks like he doesn’t have the weight of a throne on his shoulders. First time? What about when you first met him and thought he was a random servant dude?…

Maven, Cal, and Mare all try to argue their way out of a sparring match, logically citing Mare’s inexperience and how it would be an unbalanced fight. Evangeline and her friends point out that, since they have magic healers around, it’s not like she can get really hurt. Finally Evangeline just starts throwing knives at…

Mare stays up late for a week waiting for something to happen at midnight, and then finally one night the power cuts off and she knows that secret meetings are about to go down. Walsh arrives to take her outside, which seems like a silly risk considering they have such a short time window before…

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…