Metal Slinger

Jovie takes a long bath. When she emerges, she finds Beau in her rooms. In response to Jovie’s surprise, Beau warns her to “never let [her] guard down” in the palace (368). Beau says that she handled the person who threw vegetables at Jovie, but she refuses to explain what this means. (Jovie later learns that the person was put in a cage that hangs on the palace walls.) Beau explains that because the servants are nervous around Jovie, Beau will escort Jovie wherever she needs to go. Sensing Beau’s exhaustion, Jovie declines to go anywhere. Once alone, Jovie reflects that her beautiful rooms are an opulent prison.

She falls asleep and projects her consciousness to a grand dinner where everyone is battling for Acker’s attention. Jovie, invisible to everyone but Acker, tells Acker that she is irritated that he left her standing before his father and covered in vegetables. He admits that her treatment was unfair, but he contends that “nothing about [their] lives is fair” (374). He cautions her against appearing to him nearly undressed or else he will act on the desire that she seeks to ignore. In her projected form, Jovie moves through the palace halls, where she sees a large group of fanged rabbits. She briefly transports her consciousness to a snow-covered greenhouse, where someone calls her name. (This detail is not explained in this installment.)

Jovie returns to her body. As she begins to fall asleep, Acker joins her in bed. He reports that he intended to approach his father about annulling his engagement, but the king never appeared at dinner. Acker explains that he insisted on riding through the city with Jovie in order to show the people that he is not ashamed of her. He hopes that this gesture will sway the populace, as Acker is more popular with them than his father is. He urges Jovie to have patience while waiting for his people to warm up to her. Acker and Jovie kiss and fall asleep together.

Acker leaves just as Beau arrives the next morning. Beau explains that Acker’s presence in Jovie’s rooms has fueled new gossip. Beau hasn’t seen Edmond, but she promises to look after Jovie. Beau dismisses Jovie’s guards, one of whom seems hostile. Beau urges Jovie to report this suspicious behavior to Acker because the guards all report to him. Their presence is a compromise; originally, the king wanted Jovie to wear a “suppressor” that would limit her magic. Beau advises Jovie not to shrink away when others act afraid of her. Beau then introduces her to the kitchen staff, who warm up to Jovie when she shows appreciation for their cooking. As she and Beau tour the palace, Jovie dislikes the excess space and compares the palace’s opulence with the cramped quarters of Alaha.

People openly stare at Jovie as she passes. Jovie and Beau briefly stop to view Acker and Hallis training with the soldiers and then continue on to the library. There, they meet Beau’s mother, Greta, who excitedly shows Jovie around the library. Jovie asks for more information about matching bonds. Greta gives her an ancient tome but cautions Jovie against telling people about these books, as many of them are forbidden. Jovie also takes a book on light wielders and then spends the morning reading. She learns that each Heir receives a single gift and a single bond, at most.

Irina, the Princess Irina of Strou, watches Jovie from above, but the two do not converse. Jovie fumes at the thought that Acker kept Irina’s presence a secret. Back in her room, she finds a sketchbook from Acker. Beau warns Jovie that she will break Acker’s heart and her own if she keeps resisting their bond; Beau implies that this information comes from her mother’s skills at precognition.

That evening, Jovie confronts Acker about Irina’s presence. When he is not sufficiently apologetic about neglecting to inform her of this fact, Jovie throws a ball of light at him. He uses his metal powers to tie her up with metal bindings. He promises not to hurt her (due to his affection for her, not the blood oath) but refuses to release her if she continues to use her magic against him. He kisses her, and despite her fury, Jovie returns the kiss. She then bites him, causing a minor injury to highlight the absurdity of his request that she just “get over” his decision to hide Irina from her. He apologizes more fully but teases her about being jealous.

As they leave Jovie’s room, Jovie points out the guard who makes her uncomfortable. Acker instantly dismisses the guard, who openly insults Jovie. Furious, Acker yanks an iron-capped tooth from the man’s mouth. Despite this show of violence, the rest of the staff are friendlier to Acker than they were to Jovie.

Jovie and Acker head to the city. On the way, Acker asks her to attend training the next day in order to remind the palace inhabitants of her status as “the lost princess of Maile” (396). He explains that their engagement was an important element of a peace treaty and that Kenta needs to remember that her “return is a reminder of a time of peace and prosperity” (397).

Acker takes Jovie to see a blacksmith named Wells, with whom he has a friendly, informal rapport. Olivia, Wells’s wife, greets Jovie warmly. They enjoy a delicious, casual dinner, during which Jovie is impressed by the fresh produce, which is a rarity in Alaha. The familiarity between the couple and Acker makes Jovie miss her friends. Acker and Wells were both part of the small, tight-knit group that survived training together.

When Acker admits that Jovie is his match, Wells evinces fear. (This detail is not clearly explained.) Olivia, however, is ecstatic, as she predicted this when they were all children. Olivia came from a noble family, so she knew Jovie as a child. However, Olivia was exiled from her family when she married Wells, a merchant. Wells and Olivia are matched, which is rare for non-Heirs; Olivia has no magical gift, and marriages between Heirs and non-Heirs are considered taboo.

The couple offers their own information about the nature of bonds. They say that when one person accepts the bond and the other struggles against it, the bond will push them together—as with Jovie’s dreams. Wells considers this stage to be “at the beginning” and explains that, eventually, the bond will trap them both in dreams to keep them together (406). This idea frightens Jovie. Wells and Olivia are uncertain if Jovie’s “mind jumps” are related to the bond.

Olivia urges Jovie to return whenever she wishes, and Jovie and Acker depart. Acker worries that he will be torn between pressuring Jovie to accept the bond quickly and keeping her safe, and she explains that his propensity for hiding difficult information indicates that he, too, has doubts. She states that his behavior worsens her own doubts about bonding. He insists that he is confident about her and promises to stop hiding things. As they return to the palace, Jovie realizes that the palace walls are hung with cages containing people.

Jovie struggles through soldier training the next morning, as she has still not fully recovered her strength since the awakening of her magic. As they run past the palace gates, they see a weeping family reaching for a man in one of the cages on the wall. Hallis explains that the man has been condemned for failing to disclose his magical gifts. The king believes that the requirement to disclose magic “holds the Heirs accountable” (413). Hallis expresses doubt that magic is a gift rather than a curse.

Acker worries that Jovie is overexerting herself, but she persists with the grueling training session. When the soldiers are paired off to spar, Jovie is left out. She challenges the soldiers to test her skills, but Acker refuses to let anyone else spar with her. She knows that he is not fighting to his full ability but is nevertheless pleased when she lands a single blow against him.

Although Jovie’s intense pain after the training session makes her doubt the wisdom of participating in these events, Beau reassures her that the commander and soldiers were impressed by her tenacity. The king has returned, though nobody knows where he went. These disappearances are common, though Beau is surprised that her father left, given Jovie’s return and the pressure from Jovie’s mother. This incident reminds Jovie to summon her dagger. When she visualizes the blade’s location, she finds it to be in an obvious trap. She astral projects her consciousness to that location anyway and is mentally detained long enough to identify her mother, who looks delighted to see her. Jovie’s awareness snaps back to her own body, and she is shaken by this encounter. Her mother’s visible happiness has helped quell her fear that her mother didn’t want her.

Jovie spends the afternoon researching bonds. She learns that “anyone who creates a blood oath with another while telling a lie will kill them both instantly” (422). Jovie realizes that this is why everyone was concerned about Acker’s oath in which he vowed that he loves her and will never harm her. The bonds, dangerous and unreliable, were eventually outlawed and were punishable by being hung in the wall cages, though neither Jovie nor Beau know if this law is extant. Jovie is pleased that this means that Acker was telling the truth about loving her.

Jovie’s latest foray into astral projection occurs while she is physically in the bath. She is horrified to realize that she has projected to a room in which Acker is meeting with advisors. Seeing her astral form, he sends someone to her rooms to “check on” her, knowing that this will wake her. While they wait, he indicates that her astral form, which is visible only to him, should sit on his lap. She thinks that she is awake, not asleep, and that she projected herself to him because she was thinking of him while she bathed. Now, she flirts with him and makes suggestive comments, knowing that he must pretend to listen to the meeting around him. They have manual sex. The king enters just as a maid returns and reports that there is “an issue” with Jovie and that Beau is summoning Acker. The king urges Acker to dismiss this concern, but Acker hurries to Jovie’s room as the astral version of Jovie follows. Acker fears that the bond has trapped her in her projected state, as Wells predicted that it would.

In Jovie’s room, her body is unresponsive, and her eyes are wide. Beau can see the astral Jovie’s aura, which is more prominent than an embodied aura. Astral Jovie wraps herself in a towel, which shocks Beau, who can only see the towel, not the woman it covers. Jovie urges Acker to leave, suspecting that the bond, encouraged by their sexual encounter, now wants to keep her in her astral form as long as he is near. Acker leaves, and Jovie waits to return to her body.

After hours of waiting, Jovie finally returns to her body. She asks Beau to escort her to Acker’s chambers; Beau uses secret passages to do so. Acker’s room lies behind a solid iron door. Acker admits that he feels “robbed” of his first sexual encounter with Jovie, as she was in her astral form and he had to pretend that he couldn’t see or feel her. He fears that the bond forced her to have sex with him, but Jovie denies this. She admits that she has cared for him for a long time, and she jokingly offers to seal the promise with a blood oath. Acker, alarmed, tells her never to offer such an oath to anyone, including him. She tells him that she loves him. As they have sex, Jovie feels the bond forming between them, though she worries that “nothing lasts forever” (441).

Acker startles Jovie while she peruses Greta’s forbidden books. He has projected to her, an ability that they now both possess. However, he does not recognize the secret area of the library. They have sex, and then the projection of Acker leaves. Jovie finds Greta nearby, and although Jovie is embarrassed that the other woman knows of her encounter with Acker, Greta is unconcerned. Greta sadly admits that she did once love King Edmond, who used to be a better man before he was corrupted by power. Jovie understands that Greta is delivering a warning that power may also corrupt Acker.

Jovie learns from one of Greta’s books that Uma, the previous light wielder, was overthrown after her lover poisoned her with ground-up hearthstone, the only substance that can separate someone from their magic.

Jovie feels inspired to draw for the first time since leaving Alaha. (The urge returned once the bond was established.) Now that she has experienced romantic love with Acker, she muses that her love for Kai is clearly platonic. She fears what will happen if she has to leave Acker as she had to leave Kai. Astral Acker appears briefly to compliment her drawing and then leaves. She focuses on their bond and projects to him as he meets with Hallis.

Hallis (who cannot see astral Jovie) and Acker guide Jovie through the process of using her magic while in her astral form. Acker realizes that he cannot spar effectively against her because of his blood oath, so Jovie spars with Hallis instead. Hallis lands several blows on her even though he cannot see her and only has one hand with which to fight. When she grows frustrated with her failure, her power bursts out of her, knocking Hallis down. Acker cautions Jovie against signaling how she uses her hands to access her power.

Jovie gleans palace gossip from the kitchens, where people express their fears of war, their preference for Acker over the king, and their observations about the uncertain alliances between Strou and Maile. Beau brings Jovie to Greta, who has uncovered ancient recordings of various Heirs’ powers, including those of Evelyn, Jovie’s mother. Jovie’s father, Greta reveals, was not an Heir. Evelyn’s marriage was scandalous because she married a guard for love. Evelyn is an elemental who works with air, while Edmond, Acker’s father, is an elemental who works with fire. When Jovie looks for Acker’s mother, she recognizes Grenadine, her neighbor in Alaha.

Eager to tell Acker about this news, she projects to his rooms and finds that Edmond is ordering Acker to marry Irina and either keep Jovie as his mistress or return her to Maile. Acker refuses, citing his love for Jovie, but Edmond considers this reason insufficient. He blames Jovie’s “little stunt” at the Dark Forest for rousing Roison against Kenta; with Roison and Alaha both preparing for war, Edmond argues that Kenta needs Store’s army to defend itself. He does not believe that Evelyn will aid Kenta, not even with proof that Wren, not Kenta, kidnapped Jovie years ago. Edmond sees evidence of Acker’s blood bond with Jovie and says that if Acker ever gives another bond, he will be jailed. Edmond also threatens to ensure that Acker “never lay eyes on [his] match again” (459), and he insists that Acker wear an anti-magic collar during all future interactions with him. Acker storms away. Jovie returns to her body, afraid that Acker will give in to his father’s command to marry Irina.

Jovie prepares for an ornate dinner that is ostensibly in her honor, though most of the court still ignores her. Hallis escorts her to the event because Acker has been summoned by his father, though Acker also directed his friend to give Jovie his mother’s pearl necklace. Jovie accuses Hallis of being in love with Beau. He doesn’t deny it, but he also doesn’t indicate that he intends to act on his feelings.

Acker, who has defied his father, meets them on the way to the dinner. Hallis worries about this defiance, but Acker refuses to let anyone get between him and Jovie. Acker plans to use their simultaneous arrival at the event to irreparably damage the alliance with Strou. They enter the party together, and Acker kisses Jovie’s cheek in front of everyone, making his intentions unmistakable. The assembled crowd shouts their approval to Acker, visibly angering Edmond. Irina is also furious when she enters to find Jovie next to Acker.

The narrative shifts back in time to “the morning after the storm in Alaha,” when Jovie (then still using the name Brynn) tells Kai that she broke “the Kenta soldier” out of the flooding brig (469). Kai is shocked, as he and Brynn planned to let Acker die and then put his drowned corpse into a boat so that his death would appear accidental. Brynn schemes to pretend that she doesn’t know her true royal lineage, thereby manipulating Acker into taking her back to Kenta, where she will then kill Edmond. She plans to use Acker’s conviction that she is an innocent, manipulated party to get him to trust her. Kai is hurt that Brynn intends to do this, as her plan will mean that he will be forced to marry someone else.

Brynn argues that manipulating Acker is her best chance to aid “the rebellion” before Alaha runs out of food, given their ban from the Market and Wren’s refusal to send out fishing expeditions. Kai admits that the perception that Brynn has been kidnapped will pressure Wren to ally with Roison. Brynn encourages Kai to use his persuasive powers against her in order to manipulate Acker into killing Dupre. Kai finds the idea that he would manipulate Brynn into falling in love with him “as insulting as it is disgusting” (471), but he agrees to play upon Acker’s prejudices in this way. He urges Brynn not to tell Messer about their plan, as Messer would “lose his shit” (472). (This statement alludes to Messer’s fear, revealed when he discloses his shapeshifting abilities, that Acker will betray Jovie.)

In the narrative present, Jovie and Acker dance at the ball late into the night. When Acker asks Jovie to marry him, she cries, feeling that her “heart is breaking, just as Brynn told [her] it would” (475). She promises that she will love him forever. Suddenly, the nobles around them begin collapsing from poison. (Jovie has prevented Acker from drinking any poison himself.) Now, she quickly puts a magic-suppressing collar around his throat, and Beau lashes him to his chair with her metal rope. Soldiers advance on Jovie, but Acker orders them to stop, possibly due to the influence of the blood oath that he swore. Jovie instructs Messer, who is hiding among the guards, to kill the Kenta soldiers.

Jovie offers Acker a deal: If he takes Edmond’s throne, she won’t kill his council. She introduces herself as the head of the Alaha rebellion and tells him that Edmond is the one agitating for war. Wren, meanwhile, fought to stay free from war but is running out of options as Edmond starves Alaha into submission. Beau frames Edmond’s goal as a “desire to return the land to the dark ages where Heirs were worshiped like gods” (479). Jovie plans to offer sanctuary in Maile to those who are unwilling or unable to fight Kenta. She states that if Acker takes Edmond’s throne and agrees to peacefully coexist with Roison, Maile, and Alaha, there will be no war.

Acker refuses. His ignorance of his father’s misdeeds causes Messer to comment that Edmond’s powers seem more like Wren’s compulsion than what Acker believes Edmond’s powers to be (metal) or what Greta’s records reported them to be (fire). Jovie and Beau find this detail significant but cannot discuss it now, as Acker is nearly free. Jovie moves to kill Edmond, but Acker reminds her of the “life debt” that she owes him for agreeing not to kill Kai. Instead of killing Edmond, Jovie stabs her hearthstone blade into the source of Edmond’s magic, severing his connection to his power. Maile soldiers enter and fight the Kenta soldiers. Jovie frees Acker to chase her through the chaos, knowing that he cannot hurt her. When he catches her, he kisses her, and Jovie recognizes this gesture as a farewell. He orders her to leave, and she flees.