Chapter 43 just immediately throws us into a sex scene with Merry, Ash, and Holly. They’re alone in the magic field, all laying together. Merry is tracing scars all over Ash’s body with her mouth and fingers, and she asks him how he got so many scars despite knowing fully well that goblins just fucking battle constantly.

They tell her about Cathmore, some giant goblin who would fight any he deemed a threat to his power. Eventually Ash killed him and claimed Cathmore’s sword as his own. Merry guesses that Ash got the sword because he was the one to defeat Cathmore, and both the men are surprised that Merry is aware of goblin law. They wouldn’t even be doing this if it weren’t for Merry’s understanding of goblin law, how could they forget?

The two men are being real dicks about fucking Merry.

“Good enough to fuck, but not to be seen in public with,” he [Holly] said.
I leaned back on my heels. “I don’t understand.”
Ash sat up, one knee bent, the other leg out straight so he framed his swell nicely. Neither of them had anything to be ashamed of in that area. I had trouble raising my gaze from between his legs to his face.
He laughed, and it was that masculine sound, pleased and sure of itself. “You’re not the first sidhe woman to want to sample forbidden fruit.”
“You’ve said that I was.”
“In public,” he said. “In front of the other goblins, yes. If a goblin lays with a sidhe, then they must show marks of violence. To do less in our kingdom is to be seen as weak. To be seen as weak is to invite challengers. We are already half sidhe, Meredith. If the goblins knew we could take our sex gentle and enjoy it, we would be challenged until even we were killed.”

They then go on to mention how they both tortured Kitto, who they called Merry’s “own pet goblin”, which yeesh.

Eventually they start talking more about oral sex in goblin culture:

Holly pressed his face into my hair. “You smell clean and sweet, like everything good. Good enough to eat.”
I tensed a little in his arms. “Goblins would mean that as a threat.”
“Never be fooled, Meredith,” Ash said. “We are goblins, but we are also ourselves.” He frowned at his brother.
“I’m a little more goblin than my brother,” Holly said.
“If you were sidhe, I’d say that you don’t get to give me oral sex, but I know the goblins see giving oral sex as an insult. I can perform on you, but you won’t perform on me.”
“True,” Holly said, “but my brother’s a pervert.”
It took me a second to understand, and it made me smile. Ash actually looked embarrassed. “There’s no one to see, no one to tell,” he said. “I can do what I want.”
I spoke from the circle of his brother’s arms. “And what do you want?”
“I want to taste you until your pleasure makes you shine for me.”
“Then can we fuck?” Holly asked.
Ash frowned at him, but I laughed. “Yes, eventually we’ll fuck.”
“I’d rather make love,” Ash said, and there was a longing in his face that I never thought to see. A longing for things he didn’t get a chance to do much. There was almost no privacy in goblin society for sex. To hide away meant you were embarrassed, or bad at it in some way.

Ugh to all of that.

Anyway, the chapter ends with Merry laying down on her back so that Ash can do his thing.

This book is so bad. It’s definitely the worst of the series thus far. They were literally JUST on the scene of a major battle, with all the Red Caps dying and suddenly Merry and the two goblins are swept away to a magical in-between land to talk about sex for an entire chapter? Merry spends NO time even thinking about what’s going on back home, when she had just spent so many chapters worrying about her men. These two dickheads show up and suddenly it’s all sex, no thoughts about anything else. Ughhh.