Night has fallen by the time Feyre makes it out of the forest. She's numb and shaking, but takes a moment to describe the way that her cottage looks like "striding through a living painting."

So like... the world? Wouldn't a living painting be the w—you know what? Nevermind.

Feyre can hear her sisters talking and assumes that they are talking about a boy or about ribbons when they should be chopping wood. God, don't they just sound like other girls? Feyre, in her not-like-other-girls indulgence, smiles at this cheap characterization of her sisters anyway. 

She kicks her boots against the cottage to knock the snow off, and it reveals faded ward markings. Her father exchanged a wood carving for the protective markings, but Feyre tells us they are useless. I'm sure this will be significant shortly.

Feyre opens the door and is blinded by the light inside the house, which seems like a lot of light, especially considering that she told us the cottage was illuminated on the outside as well.

"Feyre!" Elain's soft gasp scraped past my ears."

How does a soft gasp scrape? And why exactly would be it scraping PAST your ears? Where's it going?

"Though she was bundled in a threadbare blanket, her gold-brown hair—the hair all three of us had—was coiled perfectly about her head. Eight years of poverty hadn’t stripped from her the desire to look lovely."

Feyre, what the hell? Combing your hair isn't a rich people thing, Jesus.

Elain asks Feyre were she got the dead doe. Um, babe, the forest? What are you asking right now?

Elain doesn't note the blood on Feyre. Feyre says her family probably wouldn't notice if she never came back from the forest until they got hungry. We also learn that their mom is dead and she made Feyre promise to take care of the family. 

Elain asks how long it will take Feyre to clean the doe, providing Feyre with some more opportunity to complain about her family who just stand around and do nothing while the youngest daughter goes into the forest where faeries eat people and hunts for them. Feyre says that Nesta, the eldest sister, is cruel and Elain, the middle one, is stupid. Elain hasn't grasped that they are poor and in fact bought Feyre some paint in a summer past. Feyre talks about the chipping paint all over their house and if this feels like a weird interjection here, in the middle of describing her sisters, to just talk some more about how much she likes painting, just drink past the weirdness. 

Feyre's father speaks up and notes the luck she had in bringing them all such a feast. Nesta snorts. Feyre says this is normal for Nesta, who hates when anyone who isn't her receives praise. Plus, she hates their father and ridicules him endlessly. Feyre explains that Nesta took the loss of their fortune, after their father made a bad investment, the hardest.

"The deer took up the entirety of the rickety table that served as our dining area, workspace, and kitchen."

I didn't forget about our repeats and three-peats. 

"My father’s ruined leg was stretched out before him, as close to the fire’s heat as it could get. The cold, or the rain, or a change in temperature always aggravated the vicious, twisted wounds around his knee. His simply carved cane was propped up against his chair—a cane he’d made for himself … and that Nesta was sometimes prone to leaving far out of his reach."

NESTA.

"He could find work if he wasn’t so ashamed, Nesta always said when I hissed about it. She hated him for the injury, too—for not fighting back when that creditor and his thugs had burst into the cottage and smashed his knee again and again."

This is expecially interesting to read now on the other side of SJM's Call Her Daddy episode, in which she spoke about being in a hole while Nesta was in a hole and digging their way out together, essentially likening her own trauma to the character's. This has empowered a lot of SJM defenders to basically say that if you don't like Nesta, you are a bad person. And I know we are just at the very beginning of her "character arc" (lol), but um, if anyone is a bad person here..............

Feyre says that they used a bunch of their remaining money to pay for a healer for her father. It had taken 6 months before he could walk again and a year before he could go a mile. Selling his wood carvings hasn't been enough to keep them fed, though, so Feyre took to hunting. 

"Five years ago, when the money was well and truly gone, when my father still couldn’t—wouldn’t—move much about, he hadn’t argued when I announced that I was going hunting."

This is a genuinely upsetting amount of ableism.

1- There is a difference between can't and won't!!! His leg was smashed into pieces? He needs a mobility aid??? Do you want him to go in the forest and hunt????? I sort of get the resentment for him losing their fortune but the ableism is for what???????

2- Wood carving seems like a useful skill to have? I'm not buying that his wood carving and Elain's garden aren't ways that couldn't help out the family. And the fact that we are just supposed to buy that this family is like "whatever" about their own survival— regardless of if that gets explained later—is laughable. This is a terrible introduction to empty, flat characters.

I'd head into the woods where faeries eat people just to escape this family, tbh. Can't be held to a promise if I'm dead.

We continue on in this painfully dragged out introduction with Elain asking Feyre for a new cloak and Nesta asking for new boots, even though her pair are still shiny and new and Feyre's are falling apart at the seams.

Feyre tunes her sisters out as they bicker and joins her father at the table where he is examining the wolf pelt. He asks where she got it. THE FOREST, GUYS. STOP ASKING.

Papa Archeron says that this is risky, but Feyre insists she had no choice. She wants to yell at him for not keeping the family fed, but she stays silent. A saint, really.

Nesta tells Feyre she stinks and makes fun of her for being ignorant. Feyre explains that she was young when they lost everything and so she only received a basic education, so of course, Nesta makes fun of her for it.

Feyre asks Nesta to get a fire going, but she never chopped the firewood and refuses to do it now. Another thing that isn't well explained here is why Feyre just lets this happen. Maybe I'm just terrible, but I'd be like "not only are you not getting new boots, no food for you until you chop the damn firewood." What's Nesta going to do about it? Make fun of her illiterate sister and disabled father? SHE'S ALREADY DOING THAT. 

Feyre just leaves instead and heads into the room where she describes the giant wedding bed they still own and that was somehow magically transported from their old manor into their new rickety cabin. It's so special that Feyre never painted it. And, wow, what an excellent way to transition into telling us all the stuff she has painted.

We fast forward to dinner and Feyre thinking again about what she'll do with the rest of the meat and hides.

"I sucked on the tines of my fork, savoring the remnants of fat coating the metal. My tongue slipped over the crooked prongs—the fork was part of a shabby set my father had salvaged from the servants’ quarters while the creditors ransacked our manor home."

This is a throwaway line, but it gave me the ick. Those were your servants!! You had a manor home and they has SHABBY FORKS? Like idk, I'm not thinking these were particularly good and kind rich folk. 

We also get more information about the dead mom, who was cold towards her children, because apparentely even the dead women in this story have to be awful. Dead Mama Archeron only loved her husband and parties. She only spared time for Feyre when she was contemplating how Feyre's painting abilities might land her a husband.

There's nothing left of Dead Mama Archeron except the magically transported wedding bed and the promise Feyre made 11 years ago to "stay together and look after them." 

I find it hard to believe that a woman so cold who basically did not love her children would make a deathbed wish about keeping the family together. Also, in what world does it make sense to ask the 8 year old to take care of the family? Also, also, I know at 8 you don't have a full education, but she wasn't a toddler when they lost their wealth? Why did Maas make her illiterate? 

"But I’d sworn it to her, and then she’d died, and in our miserable human world—shielded only by the promise made by the High Fae five centuries ago—in our world where we’d forgotten the names of our gods, a promise was law; a promise was currency; a promise was your bond."

That whole sentence is a mess.

I asked all those questions about why Mama Archeron did this, and Feyre now guesses that maybe Mama was delirious with fever or maybe her impending death gave her some sort of clarity about her children. Maybe, though, this is just bad writing and poor characterizations, and Feyre holding fast to this promise has not at all been explained in any sort of reasonable or in-character way. MAYBE.

Feyre tunes back in to her family, and Nesta is complaining about the poor people in the village, just in case you haven't picked up on the really subtle character work here. Feyre is sipping hot water because they can't afford tea. Elain literally has a garden. But okay, fine, sure.

Nesta moves on to talking about the woodcutter's son who maybe intends to propose to her. Feyre tells us AGAIN about how mean Nesta is and how maybe she could've used that meaness to help them survive if she weren't so preoccupied with their lost status. (I have to hear it again, you have to hear it again.)

Feyre can't believe Nesta can't chop wood but wants to marry a woodcutter's son. I don't know, Feyre. It sounds to me like that's a good way to ensure someone else can always chop wood for you. Nesta thought Feyre wanted to marry them all off so  that she could spend her time painting.

Feyre says that if someone worthy wanted to marry Nesta, that was different. This is a weird thing for Feyre, who has told us so much about how her sisters are incapable of accepting their new station, to say. Worthy of what?? You are poor, too! And Nesta is a terrible person!

Nesta says that it doesn't matter what Feyre thinks, the woodcutter's son might almost definitely maybe soon propose. Then she'll never have to eat scraps again. Feyre shares that the woodcutters are actually almost as poor as they are. Feyre saw him once in the forest, and he looked hungry enough to steal the rabbits she caught, so she avoids him.

Feyre says they don't have a dowry to offer, but Nesta insists that her and Woodcutter are in love. I don't know why this bothers Feyre at all, honestly. I would be like COOL, BYE. Having Feyre insisting that they don't have a dowry and Nesta would just be a burden makes no sense to what we've been presented of these characters and their circumstance, but SURE. Feyre doesn't want Nesta the Evil to go and get married and be someone else's problem because, um, she would be a burden to another family. Sure.

“What do you know?” Nesta breathed. “You’re just a half-wild beast with the nerve to bark orders at all hours of the day and night. Keep it up, and someday—someday, Feyre, you’ll have no one left to remember you, or to care that you ever existed.”

This feels like such a weird and out of context insult. I mean, maybe "no one will remember you" is Feyre's greatest fear or something but we don't know that. It's not like Nesta is threatening to withhold love and attention. Feyre doesn't get any. They already don't notice her, by Feyre's own admission. So why would Nesta be like "keep this up and see that no one will remember you!" Remeber her when??? What does this even mean???

Nesta storms off and Elain goes after her.

Feyre asks her father to talk to Nesta, but he asks what he's supposed to say if they're in love. Feyre insists it can't be love because she's seen the way the woodcutter's son acts around the village. Uh, how? All you've told us is that one time he was hungry enough that it looked like he might steal from you but then he didn't. I mean, I'm not going to bat for the woodcutter's son here but this whole argument is so forced and manufactured. I feel like I've been in this chapter for 17 years.

Papa says that they need hope as much as they need bread and meat, so to just let Nesta have this. Feyre looks at her fading paintings on the table (but she doesn't say painting so maybe just have some water. Hydration is important) and says that soon they would be chipped away and gone and there would be no mark of her left here. Again—why is that a worry? Where are you going? Your hope like 2 pages ago was to get rid of your sisters and just live here with your father and paint? And now you are like "who will remember me when I'm gone?" Gone where??

Anyway, we end with Feyre saying that there's no such thing as hope.

And honestly, two chapters into this book, I might almost agree with her :(

That was 12 Kindle pages, 54 em dashes and 13 paints.

See you in chapter 3!

♥️

Mari