Previously: Feyre almost got eaten by a fae in disguise.
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Feyre is still shaky after her nightmare, so she decides to pass the time drawing a map of the manor. Her survival instinct, which dips in and out whenever it's convenient for the story, reappears to say that she should know the good hiding places and easy exits around the manor.

A bit of paper in one hand and a pen gripped in the other, I carefully 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. If I were to remain here, it was essential to know the best hiding places, the easiest way out, should things ever go badly for me. I couldn’t entirely let go of the instinct.

I'm very confused as to what she's sketching, exactly. She's an artist, so how bad exactly are her renderings of DOORS, WINDOWS, and HALLWAYS that someone would look at that and not be able to interpret it because it doesn't have words? It's... a map....? Visual representation is like the whole thing.

It's too dark in the hallways for Feyre to admire any of the art. She hasn't looked at it in the daytime because anytime she "works up the nerve" (to look at the art?), there are servants in the hallway.

"These past three days, there had been servants in the halls when I’d worked up the nerve to look at the art—and the part of me that spoke with Nesta’s voice had laughed at the idea of an ignorant human trying to admire faerie art."

We're counting this as a "Feyre thinks about painting" shot mostly because I need it to deal with Feyre indulging in her second favorite hobby: daydreaming about Nesta hating her. I'm terrified that Feyre's Inner Nesta is going to become a thing like the Inner Goddess from Fifty Shades of Grey.

As Feyre keeps making her map and thinking about looking at the paintings some other time, Tamlin shows up. Of course, he does, because every time Feyre leaves her room, she's in the hall for like 10 seconds before Tamlin appears, like the stalker he is.

We get a bunch of descriptions about how big and scary Tamlin is in his animal form. When he turns back into a person, Feyre sees that he's injured.

I've mentioned before how Feyre's narration keeps telling us about how Tamlin is being all weird with her, but SJM isn't great at showing us that. Here is an example:

"“Did you kill the Bogge?” My voice was hardly more than a whisper.   “Yes.” A dull, empty answer. As if he couldn’t be bothered to remember to be pleasant. As if I were at the very, very bottom of a long list of priorities."

The only reason we know his yes is dull or dismissive is because Feyre says so? Like, girlie pop, you asked a yes or no question, and he answered? Now, if Tamlin had said yes, but moved past her without stopping or refused to answer, or something else, we could see he was being dismissive. Instead, we are just told he is, over and over again.

Tamlin is dripping blood on the floor, and instead of being like "let me go clean up after my intense battle with a beastie," he notices Feyre's map on the table.

He glanced down at the map on the table, and his voice was void of anything—any emotion, any anger or amusement—as he said, “What is that?”

I snatched up the map. “I thought I should learn my surroundings.”

Drip, drip, drip.

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

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Ignorant, insignificant human.

“No wonder you became so adept at other things.”

I supposed he was so far gone in thinking about his encounter with the Bogge that he hadn’t realized the compliment he’d given me. If it was a compliment.

1 - SOMEHOW, from seeing Feyre's drawings and x's, Tamlin deduces that she can't write. Am I missing something about how maps work? Sometimes they are just pictures, right?

2 -I'd love to know what Feyre is so adept at. I mean, certainly Tamlin has seen 0 evidence of her being good at anything. Truly, Tamlin and I are in different books.

3- "If it was a compliment."

This is so stupid and so forced. There is a way to make Feyre confused by Tamlin's intentions, particularly because, regardless of the Contrivance Treaty, he is her kidnapper, without making her a dunce.

And if SJM was going to make Feyre start thawing, I wish it were a little more based on personality and good traits and not pity for his... wealth and power:

Another splatter of blood on the marble. “Where can we clean up your hand?”  

He lifted his head to look at me again. Still and silent and weary. Then he said, “There’s a small infirmary.”   

I wanted to tell myself that it was probably the most useful thing I’d learned all night. But as I followed him there, avoiding the blood he trailed, I thought of what Lucien had told me about his isolation, that burden, thought of what Tamlin had mentioned about how these estates should not have been his, and felt … sorry for him.

We head to the infirmary, where Feyre cleans Tamlin's wound. She's slightly panicky the whole time because she can't stop thinking about how powerful Tamlin is.

"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?”"

Do... people often learn to hunt... by writing or reading about it...? I mean, like maybe you read up on things, but is that really a prerequisite for learning a practical skill? All of their dialogue is SO STUPID, OH MY GOD.

Feyre replies that she did what she had to do.

"He was still sitting on the table, still straddling that inner line between the here and now and wherever he’d had to go in his mind to endure the fight with the Bogge. I met his feral and glowing stare."

I hate stuff like this in first-person narration. There is absolutely no way Feyre could know that Tamlin was straddling "that inner line" (??) between anything. Is she a mind reader? Is there a typical expression for straddling inner lines? No, this is cheating, and I hate it.

Tamlin says she isn't what he expected for a human, and Feyre just walks out without saying anything, so maybe he didn't mean that one as a compliment either.

We cut to the next morning. Feyre finds herself alone, so she gets super excited about being able to study the art now, something she can't do around other people for a reason we still have yet to hear.

When I found the front hall empty, I almost smiled—felt a ripple in that hollow emptiness that had been hounding me. Perhaps now, perhaps in this moment of quiet, I could at last look through the art on the walls, take time to observe it, learn it, admire it.

I hate when my emptiness is hollow. I prefer when my emptiness is full.

Feyre hears voices coming from the dining room and heads on over to eavesdrop. Tamlin and Lucien are arguing. Lucien wants Tamlin to do something, but Tamlin refuses, saying he can't stomach it after what his father did to "their kind." Tamlin wants Lucien to back off, but Lucien won't. They don't have a lot of time left, and the nasty fae keep invading their lands. They both get all growly as Tamlin says that he knows exactly what's happening on his own lands.

Feyre assumes this is in reference to the Blight.

"The blight. Perhaps it was contained, but it seemed it was still wreaking havoc—still a threat, and perhaps one they truly didn’t want me knowing about, either from lack of trust or because … because I was no one and nothing to them."

I... what? When was the Blight never a threat? Didn't we spend an entire chapter talking about the threat of the Blight and how it would spread to humans, too? Wasn't it just last chapter that Tamlin mentioned that the Blight had changed everything???? What does she mean it's "still a threat?" Sarah Janet Maas is just writing all these words that DON'T EVEN MATTER TO HER OWN CHARACTERS, JESUS CHRIST.

Of course, super-survivor, awesome hunter Feyre makes a noise that gives her away, so she has to walk into the room and pretend she's here to ask Lucien if he wants to go for a ride. Lucien says he's busy and says Tamlin will go with her instead. Everyone hates everything about this, but here they are.

Feyre says she doesn't want to go hunting because she hates hunting. Tamlin asks what she'd like to do instead.

We time jump again, and Tamlin is leading Feyre somewhere.

"“You’ve been going for hunts,” Tamlin said at last, “but you really don’t have any interest in hunting.” He cast me a sidelong glance. “No wonder you two never catch anything.”   

No trace of the hollow, cold warrior of the night before, or of the angry Fae noble of minutes before. Just Tamlin right now, it seemed.""

That dialogue feels like all of the other dialogue Tamlin ever has. What makes him not a cold warrior or a fae noble right now? Oh, I know. Feyre just said so. Cool.

Feyre tells us again again again how scary Tamlin is, especially now that he killed the Bogge. Feyre asks about his hand, and Tamlin realizes that he never thanked her. The Bogge have special bites that slow fae healing down. He asks how she learned to bandage a wound this way, because he can still use his hand. Feyre says it was trial and error.

Tamlin asks if anyone has ever taken care of her. Feyre says no. He asks if she also learned hunting through trial and error. Feyre says yes. She sometimes studied other hunters. Tamlin asks if she's ever going to use the knife she stole from his table. Feyre asks how he noticed. Tamlin replies that he's trained to notice things, but he could also smell her fear.

And tell me, Tamlin, does fear smell like stolen knives or...? What's going on here?

Tamlin is amused and tells her she's going to have to get better at stealing knives and eavesdropping if she wants to escape his kind. Now that she's caught, Feyre asks about what she heard, about Tamlin not having much time.

We know what's up:

Tamlin says that all he has is time because he's immortal, but that yes, the Blight is blighting and the Nasty Fae are arriving.

Tamlin opens a set of double doors and announces that they are at the study, as requested. Because this plot has 0 tension and SJM has to rely on cheap tricks, we end on the "cliffhanger" of Feyre looking inside and her stomach twisting.

I call these curb-hangers. Like, there is no cliff. We are gonna take a tiny step off a curb and be in the next chapter. Can't wait for it to just be a really nice room.

This was 9 Kindle pages and 34 em dashes.

Next time: Will Feyre ever be able to look at the art on Tamlin's walls? Find out in Chapter 13.

♥️

Mari