Wait­ing ai

Set against a back­drop of qui­et woods and the omi­nous entry to Under the Moun­tain, Chap­ter 33 of Sarah J. Maas’s sto­ry immers­es read­ers in the tense prepa­ra­tion of a young woman armed with not just phys­i­cal weapons but a relent­less deter­mi­na­tion to save Tam­lin from the clutch­es of Ama­ran­tha. With only a bow, a quiver, and two dag­gers at her dis­pos­al, she faces the daunt­ing task of nav­i­gat­ing a land ruled by beings whose very exis­tence is woven with the art of killing. Guid­ed by Alis through the still­ness that blan­kets the land, a stark reminder of her soli­tary jour­ney ahead unfolds.

As night falls, the grav­i­ty of her mis­sion press­es down with each step into the frigid air lead­ing to a cave entrance that serves as a sacred, ancient short­cut to her des­ti­na­tion. Alis’s part­ing advice rings with dire warn­ings: avoid the wine, be wary of deals, and trust no one, not even Tam­lin. The knowl­edge of a part of the curse that remains unsaid, a mys­tery she must unrav­el on her own, adds a lay­er of com­plex­i­ty and fore­bod­ing to her quest.

Her lone ven­ture into the cave, guid­ed only by the faint crack of light and the echoes of dis­tant voic­es, paints a vivid pic­ture of her courage and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The cau­tious approach towards the fire-lit pas­sage­way, with the aware­ness of Alis’s warn­ings echo­ing in her mind, show­cas­es the pre­car­i­ous bal­ance between fear and resolve that defines her jour­ney. The pas­sage through the cave serves as a metaphor for her tran­si­tion from the rel­a­tive safe­ty of her known world into the heart of dark­ness and uncer­tain­ty that lies ahead.

This chap­ter, dense with antic­i­pa­tion and the weight of unspo­ken curs­es, sets the stage for a tale of brav­ery, love, and the will­ing­ness to face the unknown for the sake of oth­ers. It jux­ta­pos­es the real­i­ty of phys­i­cal pre­pared­ness with the psy­cho­log­i­cal readi­ness to face hor­rors unimag­in­able, encap­su­lat­ing the essence of a jour­ney fraught with dan­ger but dri­ven by love.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

THIRTY-THREE
I have Sun­day off, so I spend the day out of the house. It’s a beau­ti­ful
sum­mer day—not too hot and not too cool—so I dri­ve over to the local park
and sit on a bench and read my book. When you’re in prison, you for­get
those sim­ple plea­sures. Just going out­side and read­ing at the park.
Some­times you want it so bad, it’s phys­i­cal­ly painful.
I’m nev­er going back there. Nev­er.
I grab a bite to eat at a fast-food dri­ve-through, then I dri­ve back to the
house. The Win­ches­ter estate is real­ly beau­ti­ful. Even though I’m start­ing to
despise Nina, I can’t hate that house. It’s a beau­ti­ful house.
I park on the street like always and walk up to the front door of the
house. The sky has been dark­en­ing dur­ing my entire dri­ve home, and just as
I get to the door, the clouds break open and droplets of rain cas­cade out of
the sky. I wrench the door open and slip inside before I get drenched.
When I get into the liv­ing room, Nina is sit­ting on the sofa in semi-
dark­ness. She’s not doing any­thing there. She’s not read­ing, she’s not
watch­ing TV. She’s just sit­ting there. And when I open the door, her eyes
snap to atten­tion.
“Nina?” I say. “Every­thing okay?”
“Not real­ly.” She glances over at the oth­er end of the sofa, and now I
notice she’s got a stack of cloth­ing next to her. It’s the same cloth­ing that
she insist­ed I take from her when I first start­ed work­ing here. “What is my
cloth­ing doing in your room?”
I stare at her as a flash of light­ning bright­ens the room. “What? What
are you talk­ing about? You gave me those clothes.”
“I gave them to you!” She lets out a bark­ing laugh that echoes through
the room, only par­tial­ly drowned out by the crack of thun­der. “Why would I
give my maid cloth­ing worth thou­sands of dol­lars?”
“You”—my legs trem­ble beneath me—“you said they were too small on
you. You insist­ed that I take them.”
“How could you lie like that?” She takes a step toward me, her blue
eyes like ice. “You stole my cloth­ing! You’re a thief!”
“No…” I reach out for some­thing before my legs give out under me.
But I grasp only air. “I would nev­er do that.”
“Ha!” She snorts. “That’s what I get for trust­ing a con­vict to work in my
home!”
She’s loud enough that Andrew hears the com­mo­tion. He dash­es out of
his office and I see his hand­some face at the top of the stairs, lit by anoth­er
bolt of light­ning. Oh God, what is he going to think of me? It’s bad enough
that he knows about my prison record. I don’t want him to think I stole from
his own house.
“Nina?” He takes the stairs down two at a time. “What’s going on
here?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on!” she announces tri­umphant­ly. “Mil­lie
here has been steal­ing from my clos­et. She stole all this cloth­ing from me. I
found it in her clos­et.”
Andrew’s eyes slow­ly grow wide. “She…”
“I didn’t steal any­thing!” Tears prick at my eyes. “I swear to you. Nina
gave me those clothes. She said they didn’t fit her.”
“As if we would believe your lies.” She sneers at me. “I should call the
police on you. Do you know what this cloth­ing is worth?”
“No, please don’t…”
“Oh, right.” Nina laughs at the expres­sion on my face. “You’re on
parole, aren’t you? Some­thing like this would send you right back to
prison.”
Andrew is look­ing down at the cloth­ing on the couch, a deep crease
between his eye­brows. “Nina…”
“I’m going to call them.” Nina whips her phone out of her purse. “God
knows what else she stole from us, right, Andy?”
“Nina.” He lifts his eyes from the stack of cloth­ing. “Mil­lie didn’t steal
this cloth­ing. I remem­ber you emp­ty­ing your clos­et. You put it all in trash
bags and said you were donat­ing it.” He picks up a tiny white dress. “You
haven’t been able to fit into this in years.”
It’s grat­i­fy­ing the way Nina’s cheeks turn pink. “What are you say­ing?
That I’m too fat?”
He ignores her remark. “I’m say­ing there’s no way she stole this from
you. Why are you doing this to her?”
Her mouth falls open. “Andy…”
Andrew looks over at me, hov­er­ing by the sofa. “Mil­lie.” His voice is
gen­tle when he says my name. “Would you go upstairs and give us some
pri­va­cy? I need to talk to Nina.”
“Yes, of course,” I agree. Glad­ly.
The two of them stand there in silence while I mount the flight of stairs
to the sec­ond floor. When I reach the top, I go over to the door­way to the
attic and I open the door. For a moment, I stand there, con­tem­plat­ing my
next move. Then I close the door with­out going through.
Much qui­eter this time, I creep over to the head of the stairs. I stand at
the edge of the hall­way, just before the stair­well. I can’t see Nina and
Andrew, but I can hear their voic­es. It’s wrong to eaves­drop, but I can’t help
myself. After all, this con­ver­sa­tion will almost cer­tain­ly involve Nina’s
accu­sa­tions about me.
I hope Andrew con­tin­ues to defend me, even when I’m out of the room.
Will she con­vince him that I stole her clothes? I am, after all, a con­vict. You
make one mis­take in life, and nobody ever trusts you again.
“… didn’t take these dress­es,” Andrew is say­ing. “I know she didn’t.”
“How could you take her side over mine?” Nina shoots back. “The girl
was in prison. You can’t trust some­body like that. She’s a liar and a thief,
and she prob­a­bly deserves to be back in prison.”
“How could you say some­thing like that? Mil­lie has been won­der­ful.”
“Yes, I’m sure you think so.”
“When did you become so cru­el, Nina?” His voice trem­bles. “You’ve
changed. You’re a dif­fer­ent per­son now.”
“Every­one changes,” she spits at him.
“No.” His voice low­ers so that I have to strain to hear it over the sound
of rain­drops falling out­side and hit­ting the pave­ment. “Not like you. I don’t
even rec­og­nize you any­more. You’re not the same per­son I fell in love
with.”
There’s a long silence, bro­ken by a bolt of thun­der that cracks loud
enough to shake the foun­da­tions of the house. Once it’s fad­ed, I hear Nina’s
next words loud and clear.
“What are you say­ing, Andy?”
“I’m say­ing… I don’t think I’m in love with you any­more, Nina. I think
we should sep­a­rate.”
“You’re not in love with me any­more?” she bursts out. “How can you
say that?”
“I’m sor­ry. I was just going along with things, liv­ing our lives, and I
didn’t even real­ize how unhap­py I was.”
Nina is qui­et for a long time as she absorbs his words. “Does this have
to do with Mil­lie?”
I hold my breath wait­ing to hear his answer. There was some­thing
between us that night in New York, but I’m not going to kid myself that he’s
leav­ing Nina because of me.
“This isn’t about Mil­lie,” he final­ly says.
“Real­ly? So are you going to lie to my face and pre­tend noth­ing ever
hap­pened between you and her?”
Damn. She knows. Or at least, she thinks she knows.
“I have feel­ings for Mil­lie,” he says in a voice so qui­et, I’m sure I
must’ve imag­ined it. How could this rich, hand­some, mar­ried man have
feel­ings for me? “But that’s not what this is about. This is about you and
me. I don’t love you any­more.”
“This is bull­shit!” The pitch of Nina’s voice is going up to the point
where soon only dogs will be able to hear her. “You’re leav­ing me for our
maid! This is the most ridicu­lous thing I’ve ever heard. This is an
embar­rass­ment to you. You’re bet­ter than this, Andrew.”
“Nina.” His tone is firm. “It’s over. I’m sor­ry.”
“Sor­ry?” Anoth­er crack of thun­der shakes the floor­boards. “Oh, you
don’t know what sor­ry is…”
There’s a pause. “Excuse me?”
“If you try to go through with this,” she growls at him, “I will destroy
you in court. I will make sure you are left pen­ni­less and home­less.”
“Home­less? This is my home, Nina. I bought it before we even knew
each oth­er. I allow you to stay here. We have a prenup, as you recall, and
after our mar­riage ends, it will be mine again.” He paus­es again. “And now
I’d like you to leave.”
I haz­ard a look around the stair­well. If I crouch, I can make out Nina
stand­ing in the cen­ter of the liv­ing room, her face pale. Her mouth opens
and clos­es like a fish. “You can’t be seri­ous about this, Andy,” she sput­ters.
“I am very seri­ous.”
“But…” She clutch­es her chest. “What about Cece?”
“Cece is your daugh­ter. You nev­er want­ed me to adopt her.”
It sounds like she’s speak­ing through grit­ted teeth. “Oh, I see what this
is about. It’s because I can’t have anoth­er baby. You want some­body
younger, who can give you a child. I’m not good enough any­more.”
“That’s not what this is about,” he says. Although on some lev­el, maybe
it is. Andrew does want anoth­er child. And he can’t have that with Nina.
Her voice trem­bles. “Andy, please don’t do this to me… Don’t
humil­i­ate me this way. Please.”
“I’d like you to leave, Nina. Right now.”
“But it’s rain­ing!”
Andrew’s voice doesn’t waver. “Pack a bag and get out.”
I can almost hear her weigh­ing her options. What­ev­er else I can say
about Nina Win­ches­ter, she’s not stu­pid. Final­ly, her shoul­ders sag. “Fine.
I’ll leave.”
Nina’s foot­steps thud in the direc­tion of the stairs. It occurs to me a
sec­ond too late that I need to move out of sight. Nina lifts her eyes and sees
me stand­ing at the top of the stairs. Her eyes burn with anger like noth­ing
I’ve ever seen. I should run back to my room, but my legs feel frozen as her
heels bite into the steps one by one.
The light­ning flash­es one last time when she reach­es the top of the
stairs, and the glow on her face makes her look like she’s stand­ing at the
gates of hell.
“Do…” My lips feel numb, it’s almost hard to form the words. “Do you
need help pack­ing?”
There’s such ven­om in her eyes, I’m afraid she’s going to reach into my
chest and yank my heart out with her bare hands. “Do I need help pack­ing?
No, I believe I can man­age.”
Nina goes into her bed­room, slam­ming the door behind her. I am not
sure what to do. I could go up to the attic, but then I look down­stairs where
Andrew is still in the liv­ing room. He’s look­ing up at me, so I descend the
stairs to talk to him.
“I’m so sor­ry!” My words come out in a rush. “I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t you dare blame your­self,” he says. “This was a long time
com­ing.”
I glance at the win­dow, which is drenched with rain. “Do you want me
to… go?”
“No,” he says. “I want you to stay.”
He touch­es my arm and a tin­gle goes through me. All I can think is that
I want him to kiss me, but he can’t do it right now. Not with Nina right
upstairs.
But soon she’ll be gone.
About ten min­utes lat­er, Nina comes down the stairs, strug­gling with a
bag on each shoul­der. Yes­ter­day, she would have made me car­ry those and
laughed at how weak I was. Now she has to do it her­self. When I look up at
her, her eyes are puffy and her hair is disheveled. She looks ter­ri­ble. I don’t
think I real­ized exact­ly how old she was until this moment.
“Please don’t do this, Andy,” she begs him. “Please.”
A mus­cle twitch­es in his jaw. The thun­der cracks again, but it’s soft­er
than it was before. The storm is mov­ing away. “I’ll help you put your bags
in the car.”
She chokes back a sob. “Don’t both­er.”
She trudges over to the door to the garage that’s just off the side of the
liv­ing room, strug­gling with her heavy bags. Andrew tries to reach out to
help her, but she shrugs him away. She fum­bles to get the door open to the
garage. Instead of putting her bags down, she’s try­ing to jug­gle them both
and get the door open. It takes her sev­er­al min­utes, and I final­ly can’t stand
it any­more. I sprint over to the door, and before she can stop me, I turn the
knob and throw it open for her.
“Gee,” she says. “Thanks so much.”
I don’t know how to respond. I just stand there as she push­es past me
with her bags. Just before she goes through the door, she leans in close to
me—so close that I can feel her hot breath on my neck.
“I will nev­er for­get this, Mil­lie,” she hiss­es in my ear.
My heart flut­ters in my chest. Her words echo in my ears as she toss­es
her bags into the back of her white Lexus, and then zooms out of the
garage.
She left the garage door open. I can see the rain pour­ing down onto the
dri­ve­way as a gust of wind whips me in the face. I stand there for a

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

CHAPTER
33
We were giv­en a suite of con­nect­ing rooms, all cen­tered on a large, lav­ish
lounge that was open to the sea and city below. My bed­room was appoint­ed
in seafoam and soft­est blue with pops of gold—like the gild­ed clamshell
atop my pale wood dress­er. I had just set it down when the white door
behind me clicked open and Rhys slid in.
He leaned against the door once he shut it, the top of his black tunic
unbut­toned to reveal the upper whorls of the tat­too span­ning his chest.
“The prob­lem, I’ve real­ized, will be that I like Tar­quin,” he said by way
of greet­ing. “I even like Cres­sei­da. Var­i­an, I could live with­out, but I bet a
few weeks with Cass­ian and Azriel, and he’d be thick as thieves with them
and I’d have to learn to like him. Or he’d be wrapped around Amren’s
fin­ger, and I’d have to leave him alone entire­ly or risk her wrath.”
“And?” I took up a spot against the dress­er, where clothes that I had not
packed but were clear­ly of Night Court ori­gin had been already wait­ing for
me.
The space of the room—the large bed, the win­dows, the sunlight—filled
the silence between us.
“And,” Rhys said, “I want you to find a way to do what you have to do
with­out mak­ing ene­mies of them.”
“So you’re telling me don’t get caught.”
A nod. Then, “Do you like that Tar­quin can’t stop look­ing at you? I can’t
tell if it’s because he wants you, or because he knows you have his pow­er
and wants to see how much.”
“Can’t it be both?”
“Of course. But hav­ing a High Lord lust­ing after you is a dan­ger­ous
game.”
“First you taunt me with Cass­ian, now Tar­quin? Can’t you find oth­er
ways to annoy me?”
Rhys prowled clos­er, and I stead­ied myself for his scent, his warmth, the
impact of his pow­er. He braced a hand on either side of me, grip­ping the
dress­er. I refused to shrink away. “You have one task here, Feyre. One task
that no one can know about. So do any­thing you have to in order to
accom­plish it. But get that book. And do not get caught.”
I wasn’t some sim­per­ing fool. I knew the risks. And that tone, that look
he always gave me … “Any­thing?” His brows rose. I breathed, “If I fucked
him for it, what would you do?”
His pupils flared, and his gaze dropped to my mouth. The wood dress­er
groaned beneath his hands. “You say such atro­cious things.” I wait­ed, my
heart an uneven beat. He at last met my eyes again. “You are always free to
do what you want, with whomev­er you want. So if you want to ride him, go
ahead.”
“Maybe I will.” Though a part of me want­ed to retort, Liar.
“Fine.” His breath caressed my mouth.
“Fine,” I said, aware of every inch between us, the dis­tance small­er and
small­er, the chal­lenge height­en­ing with each sec­ond nei­ther of us moved.
“Do not,” he said soft­ly, his eyes like stars, “jeop­ar­dize this mis­sion.”
“I know the cost.” The sheer pow­er of him enveloped me, shak­ing me
awake.
The salt and the sea and the breeze tugged on me, sang to me.
And as if Rhys heard them, too, he inclined his head toward the unlit
can­dle on the dress­er. “Light it.”
I debat­ed argu­ing, but looked at the can­dle, sum­mon­ing fire, sum­mon­ing
that hot anger he man­aged to rile—
The can­dle was knocked off the dress­er by a vio­lent splash of water, as if
some­one had chucked a buck­et­ful.
I gaped at the water drench­ing the dress­er, its drip­ping on the mar­ble
floor the only sound.
Rhys, hands still braced on either side of me, laughed qui­et­ly. “Can’t you
ever fol­low orders?”
But what­ev­er it was—being here, close to Tar­quin and his pow­er … I
could feel that water answer­ing me. Feel it coat­ing the floor, feel the sea
churn­ing and idling in the bay, taste the salt on the breeze. I held Rhys’s
gaze.
No one was my master—but I might be mas­ter of every­thing, if I wished.
If I dared.
Like a strange rain, the water rose from the floor as I willed it to become
like those stars Rhys had sum­moned in his blan­ket of dark­ness. I willed the
droplets to sep­a­rate until they hung around us, catch­ing the light and
sparkling like crys­tals on a chan­de­lier.
Rhys broke my stare to study them. “I sug­gest,” he mur­mured, “you not
show Tar­quin that lit­tle trick in the bed­room.”
I sent each and every one of those droplets shoot­ing for the High Lord’s
face.
Too fast, too swift­ly for him to shield. Some of them sprayed me as they
ric­o­cheted off him.
Both of us now soak­ing, Rhys gaped a bit—then smiled. “Good work,”
he said, at last push­ing off the dress­er. He didn’t both­er to wipe away the
water gleam­ing on his skin. “Keep prac­tic­ing.”
But I said, “Will he go to war? Over me?”
He knew who I meant. The hot tem­per that had been on Rhys’s face
moments before turned to lethal calm. “I don’t know.”
“I—I would go back. If it came to that, Rhysand. I’d go back, rather than
make you fight.”
He slid a still-wet hand into his pock­et. “Would you want to go back?
Would going to war on your behalf make you love him again? Would that
be a grand ges­ture to win you?”
I swal­lowed hard. “I’m tired of death. I wouldn’t want to see any­one else
die—least of all for me.”
“That doesn’t answer my ques­tion.”
“No. I wouldn’t want to go back. But I would. Pain and killing wouldn’t
win me.”
Rhys stared at me for a moment longer, his face unread­able, before he
strode to the door. He stopped with his fin­gers on the sea urchin–shaped
han­dle. “He locked you up because he knew—the bas­tard knew what a
trea­sure you are. That you are worth more than land or gold or jew­els. He
knew, and want­ed to keep you all to him­self.”
The words hit me, even as they soothed some jagged piece in my soul.
“He did—does love me, Rhysand.”
“The issue isn’t whether he loved you, it’s how much. Too much. Love
can be a poi­son.”
And then he was gone.
The bay was calm enough—perhaps willed to flat­ness by its lord and
master—that the plea­sure barge hard­ly rocked through­out the hours we
dined and drank aboard it.
Craft­ed of rich­est wood and gold, the enor­mous boat was amply sized for
the hun­dred or so High Fae try­ing their best not to observe every move­ment
Rhys, Amren, and I made.
The main deck was full of low tables and couch­es for eat­ing and
relax­ing, and on the upper lev­el, beneath a canopy of tiles set with moth­er-
of-pearl, our long table had been set. Tar­quin was sum­mer incar­nate in
turquoise and gold, bits of emer­ald shin­ing at his but­tons and fin­gers. A
crown of sap­phire and white gold fash­ioned like crest­ing waves sat atop his
seafoam-col­ored hair—so exquis­ite that I often caught myself star­ing at it.
As I was now, when he turned to where I sat on his right and noticed my
stare.
“You’d think with our skilled jew­el­ers, they could make a crown a bit
more com­fort­able. This one digs in hor­ri­bly.”
A pleas­ant enough attempt at con­ver­sa­tion, when I’d stayed qui­et
through­out the first hour, instead watch­ing the island-city, the water, the
mainland—casting a net of aware­ness, of blind pow­er, toward it, to see if
any­thing answered. If the Book slum­bered some­where out there.
Noth­ing had answered my silent call. So I fig­ured it was as good a time
as any as I said, “How did you keep it out of her hands?”
Say­ing Amarantha’s name here, amongst such hap­py, cel­e­brat­ing peo­ple,
felt like invit­ing in a rain cloud.
Seat­ed at his left, deep in con­ver­sa­tion with Cres­sei­da, Rhys didn’t so
much as look over at me. Indeed, he’d bare­ly spo­ken to me ear­li­er, not even
not­ing my clothes.
Unusu­al, giv­en that even I had been pleased with how I looked, and had
again select­ed it for myself: my hair unbound and swept off my face with a
head­band of braid­ed rose gold, my sleeve­less, dusk-pink chif­fon gown—
tight in the chest and waist—the near-twin to the pur­ple one I’d worn that
morn­ing. Fem­i­nine, soft, pret­ty. I hadn’t felt like those things in a long, long
while. Hadn’t want­ed to.
But here, being those things wouldn’t earn me a tick­et to a life of par­ty
plan­ning. Here, I could be soft and love­ly at sun­set, and awak­en in the
morn­ing to slide into Illyr­i­an fight­ing leathers.
Tar­quin said, “We man­aged to smug­gle out most of our trea­sure when the
ter­ri­to­ry fell. Nostrus—my predecessor—was my cousin. I served as prince
of anoth­er city. So I got the order to hide the trove in the dead of night, fast
as we could.”
Ama­ran­tha had killed Nos­trus when he’d rebelled—and exe­cut­ed his
entire fam­i­ly for spite. Tar­quin must have been one of the few sur­viv­ing
mem­bers, if the pow­er had passed to him.
“I didn’t know the Sum­mer Court val­ued trea­sure so much,” I said.
Tar­quin huffed a laugh. “The ear­li­est High Lords did. We do now out of
tra­di­tion, most­ly.”
I said care­ful­ly, casu­al­ly, “So is it gold and jew­els you val­ue, then?”
“Among oth­er things.”
I sipped my wine to buy time to think of a way to ask with­out rais­ing
sus­pi­cions. But maybe being direct about it would be bet­ter. “Are out­siders
allowed to see the col­lec­tion? My father was a merchant—I spent most of
my child­hood in his office, help­ing him with his goods. It would be
inter­est­ing to com­pare mor­tal rich­es to those made by Fae hands.”
Rhys kept talk­ing to Cres­sei­da, not even a hint of approval or amuse­ment
going through our bond.
Tar­quin cocked his head, the jew­els in his crown glint­ing. “Of course.
Tomorrow—after lunch, per­haps?”
He wasn’t stu­pid, and he might have been aware of the game, but … the
offer was gen­uine. I smiled a bit, nod­ding. I looked toward the crowd
milling about on the deck below, the lantern-lit water beyond, even as I felt
Tarquin’s gaze linger.
He said, “What was it like? The mor­tal world?”
I picked at the straw­ber­ry sal­ad on my plate. “I only saw a very small
slice of it. My father was called the Prince of Merchants—but I was too
young to be tak­en on his voy­ages to oth­er parts of the mor­tal world. When I
was eleven, he lost our for­tune on a ship­ment to Bharat. We spent the next
eight years in pover­ty, in a back­wa­ter vil­lage near the wall. So I can’t speak
for the entire­ty of the mor­tal world when I say that what I saw there was …
hard. Bru­tal. Here, class lines are far more blurred, it seems. There, it’s
defined by mon­ey. Either you have it and you don’t share it, or you are left
to starve and fight for your sur­vival. My father … He regained his wealth
once I went to Pry­thi­an.” My heart tight­ened, then dropped into my
stom­ach. “And the very peo­ple who had been con­tent to let us starve were
once again our friends. I would rather face every crea­ture in Pry­thi­an than
the mon­sters on the oth­er side of the wall. With­out mag­ic, with­out pow­er,
mon­ey has become the only thing that mat­ters.”
Tarquin’s lips were pursed, but his eyes were con­sid­er­ing. “Would you
spare them if war came?”
Such a dan­ger­ous, loaded ques­tion. I wouldn’t tell him what we were
doing over the wall—not until Rhys had indi­cat­ed we should.
“My sis­ters dwell with my father on his estate. For them, I would fight.
But for those syco­phants and pea­cocks … I would not mind to see their
order dis­rupt­ed.” Like the hate-mon­ger­ing fam­i­ly of Elain’s betrothed.
Tar­quin said very qui­et­ly, “There are some in Pry­thi­an who would think
the same of the courts.”
“What—get rid of the High Lords?”
“Per­haps. But most­ly elim­i­nate the inher­ent priv­i­leges of High Fae over
the less­er faeries. Even the terms imply a lev­el of unfair­ness. Maybe it is
more like the human realm than you real­ize, not as blurred as it might seem.
In some courts, the low­est of High Fae ser­vants has more rights than the
wealth­i­est of less­er faeries.”
I became aware that we were not the only peo­ple on the barge, at this
table. And that we were sur­round­ed by High Fae with ani­mal-keen hear­ing.
“Do you agree with them? That it should change?”
“I am a young High Lord,” he said. “Bare­ly eighty years old.” So he’d
been thir­ty when Ama­ran­tha took over. “Per­haps oth­ers might call me
inex­pe­ri­enced or fool­ish, but I have seen those cru­el­ties first­hand, and
known many good less­er faeries who suf­fered for mere­ly being born on the
wrong side of pow­er. Even with­in my own res­i­dences, the con­fines of
tra­di­tion pres­sure me to enforce the rules of my pre­de­ces­sors: the less­er
faeries are nei­ther to be seen nor heard as they work. I would like to one
day see a Pry­thi­an in which they have a voice, both in my home and in the
world beyond it.”
I scanned him for any deceit, manip­u­la­tion. I found none.
Steal from him—I would steal from him. But what if I asked instead?
Would he give it to me, or would the tra­di­tions of his ances­tors run too
deep?
“Tell me what that look means,” Tar­quin said, brac­ing his mus­cled arms
on the gold table­cloth.
I said bald­ly, “I’m think­ing it would be very easy to love you. And eas­i­er
to call you my friend.”
He smiled at me—broad and with­out restraint. “I would not object to
either.”
Easy—very easy to fall in love with a kind, con­sid­er­ate male.
But I glanced over at Cres­sei­da, who was now almost in Rhysand’s lap.
And Rhysand was smil­ing like a cat, one fin­ger trac­ing cir­cles on the back
of her hand while she bit her lip and beamed. I faced Tar­quin, my brows
high in silent ques­tion.
He made a face and shook his head.
I hoped they went to her room.
Because if I had to lis­ten to Rhys bed her … I didn’t let myself fin­ish the
thought.
Tar­quin mused, “It has been many years since I saw her look like that.”
My cheeks heated—shame. Shame for what? Want­i­ng to throt­tle her for
no good rea­son? Rhysand teased and taunt­ed me—he nev­er … seduced me,
with those long, intent stares, the half smiles that were pure Illyr­i­an
arro­gance.
I sup­posed I’d been grant­ed that gift once—and had used it up and fought
for it and bro­ken it. And I sup­posed that Rhysand, for all he had sac­ri­ficed
and done … He deserved it as much as Cres­sei­da.
Even if … even if for a moment, I want­ed it.
I want­ed to feel like that again.
And … I was lone­ly.
I had been lone­ly, I real­ized, for a very, very long time.
Rhys leaned in to hear some­thing Cres­sei­da was say­ing, her lips brush­ing
his ear, her hand now entwin­ing with his.
And it wasn’t sor­row, or despair, or ter­ror that hit me, but …
unhap­pi­ness. Such bleak, sharp unhap­pi­ness that I got to my feet.
Rhys’s eyes shift­ed toward me, at last remem­ber­ing I exist­ed, and there
was noth­ing on his face—no hint that he felt any of what I did through our
bond. I didn’t care if I had no shield, if my thoughts were wide open and he
read them like a book. He didn’t seem to care, either. He went back to
chuck­ling at what­ev­er Cres­sei­da was telling him, slid­ing clos­er.
Tar­quin had risen to his feet, scan­ning me and Rhys.
I was unhappy—not just bro­ken. But unhap­py.
An emo­tion, I real­ized. It was an emo­tion, rather than the unend­ing
empti­ness or sur­vival-dri­ven ter­ror.
“I need some fresh air,” I said, even though we were in the open. But
with the gold­en lights, the peo­ple up and down the table … I need­ed to find
a spot on this barge where I could be alone, just for a moment, mis­sion or
no.
“Would you like me to join you?”
I looked at the High Lord of Sum­mer. I hadn’t lied. It would be easy to
fall in love with a male like him. But I wasn’t entire­ly sure that even with
the hard­ships he’d encoun­tered Under the Moun­tain, Tar­quin could
under­stand the dark­ness that might always be in me. Not only from
Ama­ran­tha, but from years spent being hun­gry, and des­per­ate.
That I might always be a lit­tle bit vicious or rest­less. That I might crave
peace, but nev­er a cage of com­fort.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, and head­ed for the sweep­ing stair­case that
led down onto the stern of the ship—brightly lit, but qui­eter than the main
areas at the prow. Rhys didn’t so much as look in my direc­tion as I walked
away. Good rid­dance.
I was halfway down the wood steps when I spot­ted Amren and Var­i­an—
both lean­ing against adja­cent pil­lars, both drink­ing wine, both ignor­ing each
oth­er. Even as they spoke to no one else.
Per­haps that was anoth­er rea­son why she’d come: to dis­tract Tarquin’s
watch­dog.
I reached the main deck, found a spot by the wood­en rail­ing that was a
bit more shad­owed than the rest, and leaned against it. Mag­ic pro­pelled the

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

F OR THE NEXT TWO AND a half years, Rex and I stayed mar­ried,
liv­ing in a house in the hills, devel­op­ing and shoot­ing movies at
Para­mount.
We were staffed up with an entire team of peo­ple by that point. A
pair of agents, a pub­li­cist, lawyers, and a busi­ness man­ag­er for each of
us, as well as two on-set assis­tants and our staff at the house, includ­ing
Luisa.
We woke up every day in our sep­a­rate beds, got ready on oppo­site
sides of the house, and then got into the same car and drove to the set
togeth­er, hold­ing hands the moment we drove onto the lot. We worked
all day and then drove home togeth­er. At which point, we’d split up
again for our own evening plans.
Mine were often with Har­ry or a few Para­mount stars I had tak­en a
lik­ing to. Or I went out on a date with some­one I trust­ed to keep a
secret.
Dur­ing my mar­riage to Rex, I nev­er met any­one I felt des­per­ate to
see again. Sure, I had a few flings. Some with oth­er stars, one with a
rock singer, a few with mar­ried men—the group most like­ly to keep
the fact that they’d bed­ded a movie star a secret. But it was all
mean­ing­less.
I assumed Rex was hav­ing mean­ing­less dal­liances, too. And for the
most part, he was. Until sud­den­ly, he wasn’t.
One Sat­ur­day, he came into the kitchen as Luisa was mak­ing me
some toast. I was drink­ing a cup of cof­fee and hav­ing a cig­a­rette,
wait­ing for Har­ry to come pick me up for a round of ten­nis.
Rex went to the fridge and poured him­self a glass of orange juice.
He sat down beside me at the table.
Luisa put the toast in front of me and then set the but­ter dish in the
cen­ter of the table.
“Any­thing for you, Mr. North?” she asked.
Rex shook his head. “Thank you, Luisa.”
And then all three of us could sense it; she need­ed to excuse
her­self. Some­thing was about to hap­pen.
“I’ll be start­ing the laun­dry,” she said, and slipped away.
“I’m in love,” Rex said when we were final­ly alone.
It was per­haps the very last thing I ever thought he’d say.
“In love?” I asked.
He laughed at my shock. “It doesn’t make any sense. Trust me, I
know that.”
“With whom?”
“Joy.”
“Joy Nathan?”
“Yes. We’ve seen each oth­er on and off through the years. You know
how it is.”
“I know how it is with you, sure. But last I heard, you broke her
heart.”
“Yes, well, it will come as no sur­prise to you that I have, in the past,
been a lit­tle . . . let’s say, heart­less.”
“Sure, we can say that.”
Rex laughed. “But I start­ed feel­ing like it might be nice to have a
woman in my bed when I woke up in the morn­ing.”
“How nov­el.”
“And when I thought of what woman I might like that to be, I
thought of Joy. So we’ve been see­ing each oth­er. Qui­et­ly, mind you.
And, well, now I find that I can’t stop think­ing about her. That I want to
be around her all the time.”
“Rex, that’s won­der­ful,” I said.
“I hoped you’d think so.”
“So what should we do?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, breath­ing deeply, “Joy and I would like to mar­ry.”
“OK,” I said, my brain already kick­ing into high gear, cal­cu­lat­ing the
per­fect time to announce our divorce. We’d already had two movies
come out, one a mod­est hit, one a smash. The third, Car­oli­na Sun­set,
about a young cou­ple who have lost a child and move to a farm in
North Car­oli­na to try to heal, ulti­mate­ly hav­ing affairs with peo­ple in
their small town, was pre­mier­ing in a few months.
Rex had phoned in his per­for­mance. But I knew the movie had the
poten­tial to be big for me. “We’ll say that the stress of film­ing Car­oli­na
Sun­set, of being on set and watch­ing each oth­er kiss oth­er peo­ple,
ruined us. Every­one will feel bad for us but not too bad. Peo­ple love
sto­ries of hubris. We took what we had for grant­ed, and now we’re
pay­ing the price. You’ll wait a lit­tle while. We’ll plant a sto­ry that I
intro­duced you to Joy because I want­ed you to be hap­py.”
“That’s great, Eve­lyn, real­ly,” Rex said. “Except that Joy’s preg­nant.
We’re hav­ing a baby.”
I closed my eyes, frus­trat­ed. “OK,” I said. “OK. Let me think.”
“What if we just say that we haven’t been hap­py for a while? That
we’ve been liv­ing sep­a­rate lives?”
“Then we’re say­ing that our chem­istry has fiz­zled out. And who’s
going to go see Car­oli­na Sun­set then?”
This was the moment, the one Har­ry had warned me about. Rex
didn’t care about Car­oli­na Sun­set, cer­tain­ly not as much as I did. He
knew he wasn’t any­thing spe­cial in it, and even if he was, he was all
wrapped up in his new love, his new baby.
He looked out the win­dow and then back at me. “OK,” he said.
“You’re right. We went into this togeth­er, we’ll leave it togeth­er. What
do you sug­gest? I told Joy we’d be mar­ried by the time the baby
comes.”
Rex North was always a more stand-up guy than any­one gave him
cred­it for.
“Obvi­ous­ly,” I said. “Of course.”
The door­bell rang, and a moment lat­er, Har­ry walked into the
kitchen.
I had an idea.
It wasn’t a flaw­less idea.
Almost no idea is.
“We’re hav­ing affairs,” I said.
“What?” Rex asked.
“Good morn­ing,” Har­ry said, real­iz­ing he’d missed a large part of
the con­ver­sa­tion.
“Dur­ing the course of mak­ing a movie about both of us hav­ing
affairs, we both start­ed hav­ing affairs. You with Joy, me with Har­ry.”
“What?” Har­ry said.
“Peo­ple know we work togeth­er,” I said to Har­ry. “They’ve seen us
togeth­er. You’ve been in the back­ground of hun­dreds of pho­tos of me.
They’ll believe it.” I turned to Rex. “We’ll divorce imme­di­ate­ly after the
sto­ries are plant­ed. And any­one who blames you for cheat­ing on me
with Joy, which we can’t deny for obvi­ous rea­sons, will real­ize it’s a
vic­tim­less crime. Because I was doing it to you, too.”
“This actu­al­ly isn’t a ter­ri­ble idea,” Rex said.
“Well, it makes both of us look bad,” I said.
“Sure,” Rex said.
“But it will sell tick­ets,” Har­ry said.
Rex smiled and then looked me right in the eye, put out his hand,
and shook mine.
  *  *  *  
“NO ONE’S GOING to believe it,” Har­ry said as we drove to the ten­nis
club lat­er that morn­ing. “Peo­ple in town, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and me. There are a lot of peo­ple who will dis­miss it right out
of hand.”
“Because . . .”
“Because they know what I am. I mean, I’ve con­sid­ered doing
some­thing like this before, maybe one day even tak­ing a wife. God
knows it would make my moth­er hap­py. She’s still sit­ting there, in
Cham­paign, Illi­nois, des­per­ate­ly won­der­ing when I’ll find a nice girl
and have a fam­i­ly. I would love to have a fam­i­ly. But too many peo­ple
would see through it.” He looked at me briefly as he drove. “Just as I’m
afraid too many peo­ple will see through this.”
I looked out my win­dow at the palm trees sway­ing at their tops.
“So we make it unde­ni­able,” I said.
The thing I liked about Har­ry was that he was nev­er one step
behind me.
“Pho­tos,” he said. “Of the two of us.”
“Yeah. Can­dids, look­ing like we’ve been caught at some­thing.”
“Isn’t it eas­i­er for you just to pick some­one else?” he said.
“I don’t want to get to know some­one else,” I said. “I’m sick of
try­ing to pre­tend I’m hap­py. At least with you, I’ll be pre­tend­ing to love
some­one I real­ly do love.”
Har­ry was qui­et for a moment. “I think you should know
some­thing,” he said final­ly.
“OK.”
“Some­thing I’ve thought I should tell you for some time.”
“OK, tell me.”
“I’ve been see­ing John Braver­man.”
My heart start­ed beat­ing quick­ly. “Celia’s John Braver­man?”
Har­ry nod­ded.
“For how long?”
“A few weeks.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure if I should.”
“So their mar­riage is . . .”
“Fake,” Har­ry said.
“She doesn’t love him?” I asked.
“They sleep in sep­a­rate beds.”
“Have you seen her?”
Har­ry didn’t answer at first. He looked as if he was try­ing to choose
his words care­ful­ly. But I had no patience for per­fect words.
“Har­ry, have you seen her?”
“Yes.”
“How does she seem?” I asked, and then thought of a bet­ter
ques­tion, one more press­ing. “Did she ask about me?”
While I had not found liv­ing with­out Celia to be easy, I did find it
eas­i­er when I could pre­tend she was a part of anoth­er world. But this,
her exist­ing in my orbit, made every­thing I had been repress­ing come
bub­bling up.
“She didn’t,” Har­ry said. “But I sus­pect it’s because she didn’t want
to ask, rather than not want­i­ng to know.”
“But she doesn’t love him?”
Har­ry shook his head. “No, she doesn’t love him.”
I turned my head and looked back out the win­dow. I imag­ined
telling Har­ry to dri­ve me to her house. I imag­ined run­ning to her door.
I imag­ined drop­ping to my knees and telling her the truth, that life
with­out her was lone­ly and emp­ty and quick­ly los­ing all mean­ing.
Instead, I said, “When should we do the pic­ture?”
“What?”
“The pic­ture of you and me. Where we make it look like we’ve been
caught in an affair.”
“We can do it tomor­row night,” Har­ry said. “We can park the car.
Maybe up in the hills, so pho­togs can find us but the pic­ture will look
seclud­ed. I’ll call Rich Rice. He needs some mon­ey.”
I shook my head. “This can’t come from us. These gos­sips aren’t
play­ing ball any­more. They are out for them­selves. We need some­one
else to call it in. Some­one the rags will believe wants me to get
caught.”
“Who?”
I shake my head the moment the idea comes to me. I already don’t
want to do it the moment I real­ize I have to.
  *  *  *  
I SAT DOWN at the phone in my study. I made sure the door was
closed. And I dialed her num­ber.
“Ruby, it’s Eve­lyn, and I need a favor,” I said as soon as she
answered.
“I’m open to it,” she said, not miss­ing a beat.
“I need you to tip off some pho­tog­ra­phers. Say you saw me neck­ing
in a car up in the Trous­dale Estates.”
“What?” Ruby said, laugh­ing. “Eve­lyn, what are you up to?”
“Don’t wor­ry about what I’m up to. You have enough on your plate.”
“Does this mean Rex is about to be sin­gle?” she asked.
“Haven’t you had enough of my left­overs?”
“Hon­ey, Don pur­sued me.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“The least you could have done was warn me,” she said.
“You knew what he was doing behind my back,” I said. “What made
you think he’d be any dif­fer­ent with you?”
“Not the cheat­ing, Ev,” she said.
And that’s when I real­ized he’d hit her, too.
I was tem­porar­i­ly stunned silent.
“You’re OK now?” I asked after a moment. “You got away?”
“Our divorce is final. I’m mov­ing to the beach, just bought a place in
San­ta Mon­i­ca.”
“You don’t think he’s going to try to black­ball you?”
“He tried,” Ruby said. “But he won’t suc­ceed. His last three movies
bare­ly broke even. He didn’t get nom­i­nat­ed for The Night Hunter like
every­body thought. He’s on a down­ward spi­ral. He’s about to be as
harm­less as a declawed cat.”
I felt for him, in some small way, as I twirled the phone cord in my
hand. But I felt for her much more. “How bad was it, Ruby?”
“Noth­ing I couldn’t hide with pan­cake make­up and long sleeves.”
The way she said it, the pride in her voice, as if admit­ting that it hurt
her was a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty she wasn’t will­ing to give in to, made my heart
break. It broke for her, and it broke for the me of all those years ago
who did the same thing.
“You’ll come over for din­ner one of these days,” I said to her.
“Oh, let’s not do that, Eve­lyn,” she said. “We’ve been through too
much to be so pho­ny.”
I laughed. “Fair enough.”
“Any­body in par­tic­u­lar you want me to call tomor­row? Or just
any­body with a tip line?”
“Any­body pow­er­ful will do. Any­body eager to make mon­ey off my
demise.”
“Well, that’s every­body,” Ruby said. “No offense.”
“None tak­en.”
“You’re too suc­cess­ful,” she said. “Too many hits, too many
hand­some hus­bands. We all want to shoot you down from the air now.”

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

33
How do you cling to hope? I had resolved to go along with the con­ser­va­tor­ship
for the sake of my sons, but being in it was real­ly hard. I knew there was
some­thing more inside me, but I felt it dim­ming every day. Over time, the �re
inside me burned out. The light went out of my eyes. I know that my fans could
see it, although they didn’t under­stand the full scope of what had hap­pened,
because I was so tight­ly con­trolled.
I have a lot of com­pas­sion for the woman I was before I was put into the
con­ser­va­tor­ship, when I was record­ing Black­out. Even though I was being
described as so rebel­lious and such a wild girl, all my best work was accom­plished
dur­ing that time. All in all, though, it was a ter­ri­ble time. I had my two lit­tle
babies and there was always a �ght around my try­ing to see them.
I look back now and I think that if I’d been wise, I wouldn’t have done
any­thing but focus on my life at home, as hard as it was.
At the time Kevin would say, “Well, if you meet me this week­end, we’ll have a
two-hour meet­ing and we’ll do this and that and I might let you see the boys a
lit­tle bit more.” Every­thing was almost like a deal with the dev­il for me to get
what I want­ed.
I was rebelling, yes, but I can see now that there’s a rea­son why peo­ple go
through rebel­lious times. And you have to let peo­ple go through them. I’m not
say­ing that I was right to spi­ral, but I think to hin­der someone’s spir­it to that
degree and to put them down that much, to the point where they no longer feel
like themselves—I don’t think that’s healthy, either. We, as peo­ple, have to test
the world. You have to test your bound­aries, to �nd out who you are, how you
want to live.
Oth­er people—and by oth­er peo­ple, I mean men—were a�orded that
free­dom. Male rock­ers were rolling in late to awards shows and we thought it
made them cool­er. Male pop stars were sleep­ing with lots of women and that
was awe­some. Kevin was leav­ing me alone with two babies when he want­ed to
go smoke pot and record a rap song, “Popozão,” slang for big ass in Por­tuguese.
Then he took them away from me, and he had Details mag­a­zine call­ing him Dad
of the Year. A paparaz­zo who stalked and tor­ment­ed me for months sued me for
$230,000 for run­ning over his foot with my car one time when I was try­ing to
escape from him. We set­tled and I had to give him a lot of mon­ey.
When Justin cheat­ed on me and then act­ed sexy, it was seen as cute. But
when I wore a spark­ly body­suit, I had Diane Sawyer mak­ing me cry on nation­al
tele­vi­sion, MTV mak­ing me lis­ten to peo­ple crit­i­ciz­ing my cos­tumes, and a
governor’s wife say­ing she want­ed to shoot me.
I’d been eye­balled so much grow­ing up. I’d been looked up and down, had
peo­ple telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenag­er. Shav­ing
my head and act­ing out were my ways of push­ing back. But under the
con­ser­va­tor­ship I was made to under­stand that those days were now over. I had
to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed ear­ly and take
what­ev­er med­ica­tion they told me to take.
If I thought get­ting crit­i­cized about my body in the press was bad, it hurt
even more from my own father. He repeat­ed­ly told me I looked fat and that I
was going to have to do some­thing about it. So every day I would put on my
sweats and I would go to the gym. I would do lit­tle bits of cre­ative stu� here and
there, but my heart wasn’t in it any­more. As far as my pas­sion for singing and
danc­ing, it was almost a joke at that point.
Feel­ing like you’re nev­er good enough is a soul-crush­ing state of being for a
child. He’d drummed that mes­sage into me as a girl, and even after I’d
accom­plished so much, he was con­tin­u­ing to do that to me.
You ruined me as a per­son, I want­ed to tell my father. Now you’re mak­ing me
work for you. I’ll do it, but I’ll be damned if I’ll put my heart into it.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

CHAPTER 33
“I prayed over your pho­to­graph,” Slick whis­pered. “I sat with those
clip­pings and your pho­to­graph, and I prayed for guid­ance. That man
put so much mon­ey into Gra­cious Cay, and he made him­self Leland’s
friend, and he came to church with my fam­i­ly, but I saw that pic­ture,
and read those clip­pings, and I didn’t know what to do. That
pho­to­graph is him. You look at it and you know.”
Her chin start­ed to shake, and a sin­gle teardrop streaked fast down
one cheek, shin­ing sil­ver in the light of the bed­side lamp.
“I called him in Tam­pa,” Slick said. “I thought that was what God
want­ed me to do. I thought that if he knew I had these clip­pings and
the pho­to­graph he would be scared and I could get him to leave the
Old Vil­lage. I was a fool. I tried to threat­en him. I told him that if he
didn’t leave right away, I would show every­one the pho­to­graph and
the clip­pings.”
“Did he know it was me, Slick?” Patri­cia asked.
Slick shot her eyes to the glass of water and Patri­cia hand­ed it to
her. She took two loud gulps and hand­ed it back, then squeezed her
eyes shut and nod­ded.
“I’m sor­ry,” Slick said. “I’m so sor­ry. I called him yes­ter­day
morn­ing and told him you were going into his house. I said you’d
find what­ev­er he was hid­ing. I told him his only choice was to nev­er
come back. I told him he could let me know where he went and I’d
mail him his checks when Gra­cious Cay returned on its invest­ment,
but he had to leave from Tam­pa and nev­er come back. I thought he
want­ed mon­ey, Patri­cia. I thought he cared about his rep­u­ta­tion. I
told him the pho­to and clip­pings were my insur­ance so he could
nev­er come back. I thought you’d be so hap­py I’d solved this. I was
full of pride.”
With­out warn­ing, Slick slapped her­self in the face. Patri­cia
grabbed for her hand, missed, and Slick hit her­self again. Patri­cia
caught her hand this time.
“Pride goeth,” Slick hissed, eyes furi­ous, face white. “The church
didn’t want to do my Ref­or­ma­tion Par­ty, so we kept the kids home
tonight to have fam­i­ly time. We were play­ing Monop­oly, Tiger and
LJ weren’t fight­ing for once, and I was about to put a hotel on Park
Place. It all felt so safe. I got up to be excused, and I took my mon­ey
with me because I pre­tend­ed I thought Leland would steal it if I left it
behind. The kids loved that. I came upstairs to use the bath­room
because the down­stairs toi­let keeps run­ning.”
She looked around the room, reas­sur­ing her­self the door was
closed, the win­dows were shut, the cur­tains were drawn. She
strug­gled to get her hands free and Patri­cia gripped her wrists
hard­er.
“My Bible,” Slick said.
Patri­cia saw it on the bed­side table and hand­ed it to her. Slick
clutched her Bible to her chest like a ted­dy bear. It took her a minute
before she could speak again.
“He must have come in the upstairs win­dow and wait­ed for me,”
Slick said. “I didn’t know what hap­pened. I was walk­ing down the
hall and then I was face­down on the car­pet, and some­thing heavy sat
on my back, press­ing me down, and a voice in my ear said if I made a
sound, a sin­gle soli­tary sound he would…who is he? He said he
would kill my entire fam­i­ly. Who is he, Patri­cia?”
“He’s worse than we can imag­ine,” Patri­cia said.
“I thought my back would break. It hurt so much.” Slick put a hand
to her lips and pressed her fin­gers against them, hard. Her fore­head
broke into deep fur­rows. “I’ve nev­er been with any­one except
Leland.”
She gripped her Bible in both hands and closed her eyes. Her lips
moved silent­ly in prayer for a moment before she start­ed talk­ing
again. Her voice was lit­tle more than a whis­per.
“My Monop­oly mon­ey went all over the car­pet when he hit me,”
she said. “And I just kept look­ing at that orange five-hun­dred-dol­lar
bill in front of my nose. That’s what I focused on the entire time. And
he kept telling me not to make a sound, and I didn’t make a sound,
but I was so scared one of them would come look­ing for me that I
want­ed him to fin­ish so he would leave. I just want­ed it to be over.
That’s why I didn’t fight. And he did. He fin­ished inside me.”
Slick clutched her Bible so hard her knuck­les turned red and white
and her face crum­pled. Patri­cia hat­ed her­self for ask­ing the next
ques­tion but she had to know.
“The pic­ture?” she asked. “The clip­pings?”
“He made me tell him where they were,” Slick said. “I’m sor­ry. I’m
so sor­ry. My pride. My stu­pid, stu­pid pride.”
“It’s not your fault,” Patri­cia said.
“I thought I could do this alone,” Slick said. “I thought I was
stronger than him. But none of us are.”
The tips of Slick’s bangs were wet with sweat. Her cheeks shook.
She inhaled sharply.
“Where does it hurt?” Patri­cia asked.
“My pri­vates,” Slick said.
Patri­cia lift­ed the duvet. There was a dark stain on the robe over
Slick’s groin.
“We need to get you to a hos­pi­tal,” Patri­cia said.
“He’ll kill them if I tell,” Slick said.
“Slick…,” Patri­cia began.
“He’ll kill them,” Slick said. “Please. He will.”
“We don’t know what he did to you,” Patri­cia said.
“If I’m still bleed­ing in the morn­ing, I’ll go,” Slick said. “But I can’t
call an ambu­lance. What if he’s out­side watch­ing? What if he’s
wait­ing to see what I do? Please, Patri­cia, don’t let him hurt my
babies.”
Patri­cia went and got a warm wash­cloth and cleaned Slick as best
she could, found some pads beneath the sink, and helped her into a
night­gown. Down­stairs, she took Leland aside.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is she okay?”
“She’s hav­ing bad cramps,” Patri­cia said. “But she says she’ll be
fine tomor­row. You may want to sleep in the guest room, though. She
needs some pri­va­cy.”
Leland put a hand on Patricia’s shoul­der and looked into her eyes.
“I’m sor­ry I bit your head off ear­li­er,” he said. “But I don’t know
what I’d do if any­thing ever hap­pened to Slick.”
Out­side, it was still and dark. The can­dle on the porch had burned
out and all the Creek­side trick-or-treaters must have long since gone
home. Patri­cia walked briskly around the side of the house and threw
Slick’s under­wear, robe, and ruined clothes into the trash, stuff­ing
them all the way down under the bags. Then she ran to the Vol­vo and
locked all the doors behind her. Slick was right. He might still be
out­side.
Once she had the car mov­ing she felt safer and the anger rose up
inside her, mak­ing her skin feel too tight. Her move­ments felt rushed
and hur­ried. She couldn’t con­tain her­self. She need­ed to be
some­where else.
She need­ed to see James Har­ris.
She want­ed to stand in front of him and accuse him of what he’d
done. It was the only place to be that felt like it made any sense to her
right now. She drove care­ful­ly through Creek­side, using all her self-
con­trol to make wide cir­cles around the few remain­ing trick-or-
treaters, and then she was on John­nie Dodds and she put the ped­al
to the floor.
In the Old Vil­lage she slowed again. The streets were almost
emp­ty. Burned-out jack‑o’-lanterns sat on front porch­es. A cold wind
whis­tled through her Volvo’s air-con­di­tion­ing vents. She stopped at
the cor­ner of Pitt and McCants. The Cantwells’ front yard was emp­ty,
all its lights dark. As she turned toward James Harris’s house the
wind set the corpses hang­ing from their trees twist­ing, fol­low­ing her,
reach­ing for her with their ban­daged arms as she drove past.
The mas­sive, malig­nant lump of James Harris’s house loomed on
her left, and Patri­cia thought about his dark attic with its suit­case
con­tain­ing the lone­ly corpse of Francine. She thought about the wild,
hunt­ed look in Slick’s eyes. She remem­bered what Slick had hissed:
If he did this to me, what’s he going to do to you?
She need­ed to know where her chil­dren were, right that minute.
The over­whelm­ing need to know they were safe flood­ed her body and
sent her fly­ing home.
She pulled into the dri­ve­way and ran to the front door. One jack-
o’-lantern had burned out and some­one had smashed the oth­er one
against their front steps. She slipped in its slime as she raced up her
porch steps. She opened the door and ran to the sun porch. Korey
wasn’t there. She raced upstairs and threw open Korey’s bed­room
door.
“What?” Korey shout­ed from where she sat, cross-legged on her
bed, hunched over a copy of SPIN.
She was safe. Patri­cia didn’t say a word. She ran into Blue’s room.
Emp­ty.
She checked every room down­stairs, even the dark garage room,
but Blue was still out. She felt fran­tic. She checked that the back door
was locked, she grabbed her car keys, but what if she went out
look­ing for him, and he came home? And how could she leave Korey
alone with James Har­ris out there?
She had to call Carter. He need­ed to come home. Two of them
could deal with this. She jumped at the noise of the front door
open­ing and ran to the hall. Blue was just clos­ing it behind him.
She grabbed him and pressed him to her body. He froze for a
moment, then squirmed out of her arms.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just glad you’re safe,” she said. “Where were you?”
“I was at Jim’s,” he said. It took her a moment to process.
“Where?” she asked.
“At Jim’s,” he said, defen­sive­ly. “Jim Harris’s house. Why?”
“Blue,” she said. “It is very impor­tant you tell me the truth right
now. Where have you been all evening?”
“At. Jim’s. House,” Blue repeat­ed. “With Jim. Why do you care?”
“And he was there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“All night?”
“Yes!”
“Did he leave at any point, or was he out of your sight for even a
sin­gle minute?” she asked.
“Only when a trick-or-treater rang the bell,” Blue said. “Wait,
why?”
“I need you to be hon­est with me,” she said. “What time did you go
over there?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Right after I left. I was bored. No one was
giv­ing me good can­dy because they said I didn’t have a real cos­tume.
And he saw me and said it didn’t look like I was hav­ing much fun so
he invit­ed me inside to mess around on his Playsta­tion. I’d rather
hang out with him any­way.”
What he was say­ing couldn’t pos­si­bly have hap­pened because of
what James Har­ris had done to Slick.
“I need you to think,” she said. “I need to know exact­ly what time
you went into his house.”
“Like around sev­en-thir­ty,” he said. “Jesus, why do you care? We
played Res­i­dent Evil all night.”
He was lying, he didn’t under­stand the sever­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, he
thought it was just anoth­er spray-paint­ed dog. Patri­cia tried to make
her voice under­stand­ing.
“Blue,” she said, focus­ing on him intent­ly. “This is extreme­ly
impor­tant. Prob­a­bly the most impor­tant thing you’ve ever said in
your life. Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying!” he shout­ed. “Ask him! I was there. He was there.
Why would I lie? Why do you always think I’m lying? Jesus!”
“I don’t think you’re lying,” she said, mak­ing her­self breathe slow.
“But I think you’re con­fused.”
“I’m! Not! Con­fused!” he shout­ed.
Patri­cia felt tan­gled in string, like every word she spoke only made
things worse.
“Some­thing very seri­ous hap­pened tonight,” she said. “And James
Har­ris was involved and I do not believe for a minute that he was
with you the entire time.”
Blue exhaled hard and turned to the front door. She grabbed his
wrist.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to Jim’s!” he shout­ed, and grabbed her wrist in return. “He
doesn’t scream at me all the time!”
He was stronger than she was and she could feel his fin­gers
bear­ing down, press­ing into her skin, against her bone, leav­ing a
bruise on her fore­arm. She made her­self unclench her fin­gers from
his wrist, hop­ing he would do the same.
“I need you to tell me the truth,” she said.
He let go of her wrist and stared at her with utter con­tempt.
“You’re not going to believe any­thing I say any­way,” he said. “They
should put you back in the hos­pi­tal.”
His hatred radi­at­ed off his skin like heat. It made Patri­cia take a
small step back. Blue stepped for­ward and she shrank from him.
Then he turned and start­ed up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To fin­ish my home­work!” he yelled over his shoul­der.
She heard his bed­room door slam. Carter still wasn’t home. She
checked the time—almost eleven. She checked all the doors and
made sure all the win­dows were locked. She turned on the yard
lights. She tried to think of some­thing else she could do, but there

In this chap­ter, the nar­ra­tor reflects on the dif­fer­ing per­son­al­i­ties and dynam­ics with­in their social cir­cle, par­tic­u­lar­ly focus­ing on Bea’s ambi­tious and proac­tive nature com­pared to their own and Jane’s oppor­tunis­tic ten­den­cies. The tale unfolds around a com­pli­cat­ed tri­an­gle of rela­tion­ships involv­ing the nar­ra­tor, Bea, and Blanche—a nar­ra­tive striped with themes of jeal­ousy, manip­u­la­tion, and the shad­owy back­sto­ries of South­ern socialites.

The nar­ra­tor recounts an evening when they felt the ten­sion between Bea and Blanche’s rival­ry, accen­tu­at­ed by Blanche’s flir­ta­tious behav­ior towards them. This event is set against the back­drop of the narrator’s ren­o­va­tion work for Blanche, which includes reg­u­lar meet­ings and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, seem­ing­ly inno­cent but loaded with innu­en­dos and impli­ca­tions, much to Bea’s dis­com­fort. Despite the attrac­tions and provo­ca­tions, the nar­ra­tor is more enticed by Bea’s finan­cial lux­u­ry than the prospects of an affair with Blanche.

An unfold­ing rev­e­la­tion occurs when Blanche attempts to seduce the nar­ra­tor, lead­ing to a moment of infi­deli­ty. How­ev­er, this encounter is short-lived as the nar­ra­tor backs out, cit­ing loy­al­ty to Bea. Blanche’s retort expos­es Bea’s true iden­ti­ty and hints at a dark fam­i­ly his­to­ry, sug­gest­ing that Bea’s mother’s death was not acci­den­tal but rather an out­come of a fall that might have been orches­trat­ed by Bea her­self after being humil­i­at­ed at a sig­nif­i­cant event.

The nar­ra­tive takes a dark­er turn as the nar­ra­tor con­tem­plates Bea’s pos­si­ble manip­u­la­tive streak, reflect­ed in a past inci­dent involv­ing the wrong­ful dis­missal of a sec­re­tary, Anna, over alleged theft—a sit­u­a­tion that seemed too con­ve­nient­ly resolved in Bea’s favor.

Through these accounts, the chap­ter weaves a com­plex web of rela­tion­ships fraught with secrets, jeal­ousy, and the pur­suit of pow­er with­in the gen­teel yet cut­throat set­ting of South­ern high soci­ety. The nar­ra­tor is left to pon­der the extent of Bea’s manip­u­la­tion and the true nature of the per­son they mar­ried, ques­tion­ing the foun­da­tion of their rela­tion­ship and Bea’s moral com­pass amidst the façade of South­ern charm and hos­pi­tal­i­ty.

Chap­ter 33 of “The Ten­ant of Wild­fell Hall” by Anne Bron­të show­cas­es a piv­otal moment in the unrav­el­ing of Helen’s rela­tion­ship with her hus­band Arthur. This sec­tion is rich with the themes of betray­al, self-real­iza­tion, and the stark real­i­ties of a mar­riage falling apart.

The chap­ter opens with Helen over­hear­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between Arthur’s friends, Grims­by and Hat­ter­s­ley, lament­ing the end of their rau­cous gath­er­ings at the house, attribut­ing the change to Helen’s influ­ence. Helen, hid­den and lis­ten­ing, begins to grasp the extent of the impact she has—or rather, hasn’t—had on Arthur’s behav­ior. This leads to an inti­mate yet dis­turb­ing encounter between Helen and Arthur out­side, where affec­tion quick­ly turns into con­fu­sion and rev­e­la­tion. Arthur’s reac­tion to Helen’s embrace, a mix of affec­tion fol­lowed by shock and irri­ta­tion, high­lights the grow­ing chasm between them.

Helen then shifts to an evening filled with soci­etal expec­ta­tions, where she plays the part of a live­ly host­ess, mask­ing her inner tur­moil. The nar­ra­tive del­i­cate­ly bal­ances Helen’s inter­nal con­flict with her out­ward demeanor, show­cas­ing Bron­të’s skill in por­tray­ing com­plex emo­tion­al land­scapes.

The chap­ter inten­si­fies as Helen comes across a dis­turb­ing con­ver­sa­tion between Arthur and Lady Low­bor­ough, con­firm­ing an affair. This rev­e­la­tion shat­ters Helen’s com­po­sure, lead­ing her to con­front the harsh real­i­ty of her mar­riage’s facade.

In a poignant turn of events, Helen resolves to con­front Arthur direct­ly, result­ing in a heart-wrench­ing con­ver­sa­tion where she sug­gests sep­a­ra­tion for the sake of their child and her well-being. Arthur’s resis­tance and cal­lous­ness fur­ther solid­i­fy the depth of his betray­al and his unwill­ing­ness to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for his actions.

The chap­ter con­cludes with Helen con­tem­plat­ing her lim­it­ed options, trapped in a love­less mar­riage but deter­mined to find a way to pro­tect her child from Arthur’s destruc­tive influ­ence. This chap­ter is not just a turn­ing point in Helen’s jour­ney but also a crit­i­cal com­men­tary on the soci­etal con­straints placed on women and the harsh real­i­ties of nav­i­gat­ing mar­i­tal and famil­ial oblig­a­tions amid per­son­al tur­moil.

Bron­të’s nar­ra­tive here is a deep dive into the com­plex­i­ties of human rela­tion­ships, the pain of betray­al, and the strength required to con­front uncom­fort­able truths. Through Helen, Bron­të voic­es a call for agency and resilience in the face of soci­etal and per­son­al adver­si­ty.