Chapter 27 begins with Doyle telling Merry that he often comes to the Seelie sithen disguised in his black hound form. Merry tells Doyle that it’s too dangerous for him to be there with her, and that she refuses to lose both Doyle and Frost. Doyle refuses to leave her, however, so Merry makes Hugh and Co protect him if he is discovered.

Then Hugh suggests that Merry eventually try to help some of the Seelie sidhe conceive, as she did with Maeve Reed. He tells her that if she’s able to help one of the Seelie conceive, then any support would fall away from Taranis. Merry agrees to try this once she and all her people are safe.

Doyle makes a big fuss over trying to take his vengeance out on Taranis for what he did to Merry, but Merry makes him swear to leave Taranis be. Doyle finally relents, telling her “as my queen wishes, so it shall be” and Merry feels something in the air change, as if Doyle’s words helped to change something inside the sithen.

Doyle then turns back into the dog form, and Hugh takes Merry into his arms to carry her to where ever they’re holding this press conference. As they walk down the halls, the dogs are prancing around them and rose petals are falling from the sky? Ceiling? Rose petals are falling on top of everyone. One of the Seelie nobles with Merry tells her that once the queen of the Seelie walked everywhere in a shower of flowers. The chapter then ends with the group continuing on their way through the sithen with rose petals falling all around them.

Chapter 28

Chapter 28 begins with them continuing to walk through the sithen. What a fun couple of paragraphs. It’s so BORING.

We moved through the rooms of marble and gold. Rooms with cold pink walls with veins of silver and pillars of gold. Rooms of white marble with veins of pink and lavender and pillars of silver. Rooms of gold and silver marble with pillars of ivory. We moved always in a circle of falling petals, pink petals pale as dawn’s first blush, dark as day’s last salmon blaze, and a color deep enough to be purple. They fell around us, and I realized that the petals were the only living thing we passed. There was nothing organic in this place of marble and metal. It was a palace, but it was not a home for beings who had begun life as nature spirits. We were meant to be a people of warmth, life, and love, and there was none of that here.

It’s supposed to be so beautifully written, with all this flowery language but I find it just so contrived and boring. I keep thinking of some gross pastel vomit all over the walls of this marble palace. It’s like an easter nightmare that I can’t escape.

They’re STILL walking through the sithen, littering rose petals as they go. There’s been like 3 pages of this sort of “descriptive” language describing them walking through the palace. As boring as the book has been up til this part, this is truly the most boring chapter thus far. AND IT’S THE SECOND TO LAST CHAPTER OF THE BOOK. Shouldn’t this be the buildup to the big showdown with the baddie? Shouldn’t this be the climax of the book? No, instead we get pages of them just walking slowly through some Barbie hellscape of a palace. I don’t even care how this book ends anymore, I just want it over.

They eventually make it to the door to the room where the press conference is happening. The guards won’t let the group pass because that’s TENSION. The guards think the petals falling around Merry and Co aren’t a gift from the Goddess but rather illusion. One of the guards steps away from the door and asks Hugh, quietly, if he should “call them”. He then pulls out a cell phone and makes a call to someone, and we to read his side of the conversation. “Yes, yes, no.” Such writing!

So anyway the group is waiting to enter, and eventually they hear another guard tell someone “You are not allowed farther into our sithen, sir, by order of the king.” And then Major Walters,  one of the cops from a previous book, basically tells them to stuff it. Another voice calls out that there’s a federal warrant to bring Merry into protective custody, and of course the only way to do that is to bring her into the room the press conference is being held in. Convenient!

So of course they all argue back and forth for forever over whether Merry can enter the room or not. She’s injured, they have doctors. The guards won’t let her go anywhere near the Unseelie. Etc for forever.

“The king has ordered that she not be given back to the brutes who injured her. She cannot go near the Unseelie again.”
There was a moment of silence while the murmur of power began to build among the sidhe around me. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if they were whispering their magic. 
“The king said nothing about humans looking at her,” a new guard voice said. 
“We were told to keep her away from the press.”
“Why would the princess need to be kept away from the press?” Agent Gillett asked. “She will tell them firsthand about being rescued from the evil Unseelie by your brave king.”
“I do not know…”
“Unless you think the princess will have a different story,” Major Walters said. 
“The king has given his oath that it is so,” the talkative guard said. 
“Then you have nothing to lose by letting our doctors look at her,” Agent Gillet said. 

Such thrilling conversation!

God I hate this book!

They eventually let her enter the room. Merry starts having a bit of a panic attack, worrying that Taranis had actually raped her, and she eventually requests a doctor look at her. The guards don’t want her to move away from them, so everyone has to convince them that she cannot be healed by faerie healers, she needs mortal medical care. The faerie healer tells the guards that she is pregnant, so she needs to see human doctors.

Finally, after all that bullshit, Merry calls fucking rank on these guards, demanding to be taken into the room. “I, Princess Meredith NicEssus, wielder of the hands of flesh and blood, granddaughter of Uar the Cruel, command you to step aside and let us pass.” And the chapter ends when they finally let her further into the room to see the doctors.