Chapter 36 begins with Merry waking up in the Queen’s bed, along with Galen and Nicca. Merry is at first terrified, because terrible things happen when you wake in the Queen’s bed, but then she sees Doyle step out of the shadows. Ivi and Rhys are there too. They want to know what happened while they were asleep.All the men are wearing cloaks for some reason.

Apparently a lot has happened. Oh joy. I love when a ton of important shit happens off screen and then we get to hear all about it in conversation later. Whatever happened to showing not telling? Isn’t describing what happened in conversation literally telling?

Merry feels the moth moving around under her skin, and Doyle tells her that it’ll only last a few hours before it becomes like a tattoo. Both Nicca and Galen have flowers or butterflies embedded in their skin as well. Turns out these eventual tattoos are marks of power, something that the sidhe used to have but like everything else faded as their power lessened.

Doyle is all salty about this, because he’s mad the marks of power are on Galen and Nicca, two less powerful of the sidhe. Pouty Doyle is fun because he’s meant to be this insanely powerful, terrifying black darkness of a being and instead he gets all butthurt over the stupidest things.

All the demi-fey have been healed and are doing fine, and Royal is waiting to meet with Merry. Instead of, you know, letting him in, since this huge momentous thing happened to him, they just continue to talk about those stupid tattoos. Then they finally tell Merry what else has happened while they were asleep.

Rhys had been attacked by three Seelie with cold iron. Cold iron can permanently harm the fey, remember? So he’s wearing a sling. Rhys had surprised his attacker by using a death touch on him, but whatever protection the Seelie man had threw Rhys’s death curse back on him. Thankfully he was able to heal most of it, just not where it hit his arm, thus the sling.

Turns out, the Seelie men had attacked Rhys because some Seelie woman accused Rhys of raping her. Rhys and two others, Galen and Abloec. They all believe that Taranis, Merry’s uncle and king of the Seelie, is behind the rape accusation.This is, like, super glossed over as NBD? You’d think that a rape accusation would be huge news, but nope.

They tell her that Andais was very pleased with all the power Merry is bringing back to the Unseelie court, especially those power tattoos. Doyle warns that the Queen may invite Merry to her bed at some point in hope of gaining one for herself. Which, again, is incest and again, is just fucking glossed over like no big deal.

Anyway, chapter 36 ends with them bringing food in for Merry and the others.