Promises and Pomegranates

In this section, the violent language Elena initially used to describe Kal’s physical touch comes full circle. After their hasty, forced marriage, Elena described Kal’s kiss as him “crash[ing] his mouth” to hers (31). She has long compared his penis to a sword, something that can split her, bruise her, make her bleed. For his part, Kal has also used many words with aggressive or painful connotations to describe their sex—most especially what he does to her, how he wraps his hands around her throat, splits her, makes her bleed—still noting her “raised, broken flesh” (351), how he “shove[s] her” down and “mark[s] her as [his] own” (351), how the “air [is] torn from her lungs” during intercourse (352). However, he also now replicates Elena’s word choice when he says that “she crashes her lips to [his], melting into [him]” (355). Their pleasure isn’t just about what he does to her; it’s as much about what she does to him and the way she matches his intensity and his ferocious and furious arousal. She submits, but it is her choice to do so, and he submits to her now, too. This reciprocity is staged most starkly in the theater box, where Elena directs the encounter for the purpose of being overheard, where Kal adds an “A” to the original “K” on her thigh, and where he repeatedly pauses to seek her assent, which marks a shift from unilateral control to negotiated participation. Kal’s misophonia crisis at the performance further clarifies how Elena’s touch functions as regulation rather than mere arousal, since physical closeness quiets the sensory chaos that has long driven his violence.

Ultimately, Elena’s choice to stay with Kal—despite the fact that he hid his affair with Carmen from her—demonstrates how Desire Overwhelms Duty. When she and Kal went to Boston, she says, “I can already feel my soul clamoring for [my parents’] approval, even though neither of them fully deserve it” (237). It doesn’t take long, however, for her to realize that her mother still wants her to be “a nice little doll she can dress up and manipulate forever” (265). When Carmen confesses that, as early as Elena’s childhood, she “worked overtime to undermine any potential advantage [Elena] could have over [her]” (306), it becomes clear that Carmen’s desire to be admired, loved, and adored, overwhelmed her sense of duty to her daughter or to her husband. This information, combined with Stella’s insistence that, “If you love him, […] then you love him. Plain and simple. That doesn’t just go away, no matter the circumstance” (304), seems to give Elena the push she needs to choose Kal over her family. Carmen’s admission drives Elena’s decision to leak Ricci Inc. secrets to the press. Her email to the news agency operates as a countermove to the earlier flash drive surveillance, since Elena seizes narrative control by exposing the family’s crimes, which reframes her as an actor rather than an object within the public story of the Riccis.

Additional scenes consolidate the novel’s treatment of power, violence, and choice. Kal confronts Carmen with a gun, fires a blank at her forehead, and pistol whips her when she attempts seduction, which presents repudiation rather than rekindling, then he refuses Rafe’s demand for payment and later dissolves the trust, which signals an effort to detach his identity from financial and familial control. At the same time, his decision not to retrieve Elena from her grandmother’s apartment, and to send annulment papers that offer a voluntary exit, demonstrates a developing ethic of choice, even as the gesture initially wounds Elena, who reads freedom as abandonment. When she returns to Aplana and carves an “E” into his chest at his invitation, the novel shows mutual marking as a shared authorship over their bodies, which contrasts with earlier scenes where marking functioned as domination.

The arc from coercion to consent remains ethically complex, since earlier threats and forced vows cannot be undone by later negotiations, yet the text insists on charting a movement toward respect, as evidenced by Kal’s explicit check ins, his disclosure of misophonia, and his admission that obsession has become love. The Epilogue sustains that duality, as Elena frames Hades as a savior as well as a thief, Kal manages bloodlust through consensual blood play, and their life with Quincy suggests domestic stability while preserving darkness as a component of desire.

The resolution of the blackmail plot also reorients the novel’s politics of surveillance. Riley’s confession that she sent the flash drives relocates control from the Riccis to an outside actor, which breaks the family’s monopoly over the couple’s image and introduces a lingering thread of danger, Riley’s restricted calls from hiding confirm that exposure and secrecy continue in new forms. The Extended Epilogue leaves this thread open, which keeps the novel’s concern with watching and being watched alive beyond the immediate romantic closure.

The final chapters continue to highlight and blur The Boundary Between Obsession and Love while demonstrating how one can engage in Reclaiming Agency Within Forced Marriage. Although Kal continues to objectify Elena at times, even calling her his “magnum opus,” other revelations suggest that he recognizes his early feeling as obsession compared to his later feelings of the love, respect, and balance between them. He recalls their first night together, “When [he] gave in to an obsession for the first time, let it consume [him]” (297). He continues, “I’ve never believed in soulmates. Never thought myself worthy of having one, [but] I swear, she’s it. My soulmate. My fucking queen. My little Persephone” (297). The shift from obsession to soulmate reveals a reframing of Elena from object to partner, suggesting that Kal has come to see her as an equal who confers meaning rather than as a possession that satisfies his need for control. The scope and quality of Kal’s feelings for Elena have changed, moving far beyond an appreciation for her beauty or even her moral goodness. Moreover, despite the fact that Elena’s marital consent wasn’t always important to Kal, it is now. In the theater, he listens when she tells him not to touch her. This moment, though brief, illustrates how refusal becomes part of their shared language of intimacy, marking a turning point where Kal treats her boundaries as binding. Finally, before sex, he waits for her assent, saying, “It’s a single nod that comes next, barely perceptible with me holding her neck in place, but I catch it all the same” (293). Despite the way the marriage began, Elena reclaims her agency inside the relationship by insisting on her right to make decisions for herself and maintain the freedom to behave and value what she wants. he nod she gives in the theater scene becomes emblematic of this shift: small, almost imperceptible, yet decisive in its affirmation of her voice within the relationship. By the time of the Epilogue, Kal and Elena are not only bound by passion but by enduring love, raising a child together in a world no longer governed by the Riccis. Kal’s break from Ricci Inc. and Elena’s choice to remain at his side realize a mythic transformation that echoes Persephone’s ascension. No longer captive in the underworld, she becomes a queen in her own right. Together, they stand as co-rulers of the life they have built and actively chosen, proof that obsession has been reshaped into love.