Last time on Gemma, fucking Gemma has opened the realms to the shadow. Solution? Lie to her friends and decide never to go back.

This chapter opens with them in church. They’re reading the bit where this guy promises God that he’ll kill whoever he meets first when he returns home, only it turns out to be his daughter and he’s all “oh no my beloved daughter”. All I took away from that back when I read it is that people in the past were fucking morons, who the hell do you think is going to rush out to greet you when you return if not a beloved family member? So if that’s how this section is supposed to be dramatically appropriate, then okay, good job there book.

Also, Gemma is staring at this stained glass angel, and there’s a chipped hole in the glass, and blah blah excessive but meaningless symbolism, it’s like we’re suddenly gone all Evangelion for the scene.

While they’re reading, Pippa is whispering. She’s saying she had to say it to be allowed to stay together even one more night.

“Please, Gemma. I have to see him again. Do you know what it is to lose someone without saying goodbye?”

So she’s fucked over a real person for an imaginary one.

Afterward, Gemma sits in the parlor by herself and waits for Moore, who’s inexplicably happy to see Gemma.

“Miss Moore,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
She gives a wan smile. “Yes, I believe you are.”
“I wish . . .” I stop, trying not to cry.
“I’d give you my handkerchief, but I believe you’re already in possession of it.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp, remembering the one she loaned me after Pippa’s seizure. “Forgive me.”
“Only if you forgive yourself.”

What. The. Fuck.

Moore is either playing some other game or she’s just a flat supporting sue.

Apparently this isn’t a big deal, though.

“I should like to travel for a bit, I think. Then I shall take a flat somewhere in London and offer my
services as a tutor.”

Right, because “tempted schoolgirls with heathen porn and occult rituals” won’t in any way hurt your chances of getting another teaching job.

“Gemma . . . should you ever need anything . . .” She stops, searching for words, it seems. “What I mean to say is, you seem a breed apart from the other girls. I think perhaps your destiny does not lie in tea dances and proper place settings. Whatever path you should decide to follow in life, I do hope I shall continue to be a part of it, and that you shall feel free to call on me.”

Again: What. The. Fuck.

The only way this makes sense is if Moore is Sarah and still trying to fuck with Gemma’s head.

Taken at face value? This is shit upon shit. Gemma is crowned “special”, by virtue of her birth no less, and while it’s fine for those other girls to end up nothing more than mobile dolls, she deserves better. So much better that it’s fine for other characters to have their main purpose be to wait around hoping for the chance to help her out.

And with that, Moore prances cheerfully into the carriage. All her getting fired does is inconvenience Gemma a bit with the loss of a favored teacher, it’s not like they actually destroyed her life or anything.

Next chapter is nighttime, which is time for their mini-Order to meet.

“How will we get out?” I ask. “She’s locked the doors.”
Felicity dangles a key. “It seems that Molly the upstairs maid owed me a favor after I caught her with the stable boy. Now, get dressed.”

Why are they even leaving? We’ve already worked out that they can do the magic anywhere, and they’re less likely to be caught if they stick to one set of rooms instead of running all over the woods and having to sneak back inside.

Anyway, once they get all the way there, Gemma again says she won’t do it because she doesn’t feel good. She’s not even trying to be convincing, I might add. She doesn’t pretend to do it and then, when it doesn’t work, blame it on her illness. Nor does she sound sorry or sick in the process. She’s just flatly saying no.

Felicity offers the bottle of whiskey, which is somehow merely “half empty” after all this time. Gemma refuses, but the rest of them get drunk. Felicity then quotes bits of that Lady Shallot poem.

She’s got a strange look on her face.
“Pip, darling, do you really want to see your knight?”
“More than anything!”
Felicity grabs Pip’s hand and runs toward the cave’s mouth.

This will end badly, won’t it?

Ann follows them out as well. Outside, Felicity howls at the moon.

“I want to see my knight.” Pippa pouts.
“And you will.”
“Not if Gemma won’t take us.”
“We all know there’s another way,” Felicity says. In the moonlight, her pale skin glows white as bone. A chill works its way up my spine.

Yup.

Felicity’s evil because ambition is evil. Fuck you, book.

There’s a deer, and she says it’s their sacrifice. Because that worked so well for the girls from the diary.

“We’re stronger than they are. We won’t make the same mistakes. The huntress told me . . .”
The huntress offering me the berries, whispering to Felicity on their hunts. Something’s fighting to take shape in my mind, but it won’t come.

JFC. So she doesn’t even realize she let the shadow into the realms, even after she’s told that it’d let the shadow into the realms?

This is a good example of a ragequit moment. You hit something like this and you know that the author is fundamentally incompetent and unable to write. Anything that seemed well done was simply an accident. The characters are not actually thinking about things in any recognizable way, human or otherwise, events simply happen as the author decides they do.

Felicity explains the huntress said that if she was given a token, she’d give them the power to enter the realms on their own. She also said that Gemma would object because Gemma didn’t want to share power.

Mind, the timeline of this doesn’t make much sense. Gemma mentioned earlier that the huntress and Felicity were spending a lot of time alone and Felicity didn’t say much about what they were doing, but that was before taking the magic out. I’m pretty sure they haven’t spent time in the realms since then. So that means the huntress was already corrupted, making the sequence where we find out it’s been corrupted since Gemma opened the doors a plot hole.

“Don’t you see? Gemma wants the power all to herself! She wants power over us.”
“That’s not true!” I struggle to my feet and take a step backward, away from them.
Pippa comes up behind me. I can feel her breath on my neck. “Then why won’t you take us?”
I’m caught. “I can’t tell you.”
“She doesn’t trust us,” Felicity says. Suspicion spreads like a disease. She crosses her arms in triumph, lets the damage sink in.

Indeed, Gemma doesn’t trust them. And indeed, Gemma is refusing to ever let them back in and is lying about it just being a temporary thing.

The realms don’t even need to be corrupted for this to happen. Felicity already knows the shadow bargain is an option, and is only happening because Gemma’s lying to her friends and threatening to cut them off from the things that are most important to them. The shadow barely had to do anything. This was completely caused by, and therefore completely preventable for, Gemma.

Pippa is realizing that if she can get back there on her own to get magic, she doesn’t have to marry Bumble at all.

Felicity takes her hands. “We could change everything.”
“Everything,” Ann says, joining them.

Girls wanting to change everything is evil. FEMINISM.

Gemma, being melodramatic and continuing to ignore that this was very predictably caused by her being an idiot, compares it to a fire starting from a single stray spark. More like a dam bursting, I’d say.

“All right,” I say, desperate to keep them from going it alone. “All right, I’ll take you. Let’s go back to the cave and join hands.”
“That time has passed,” Felicity says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we are no longer content to ride on your coattails, Gemma. We’ll enter the realms by ourselves, thank you.”

Fuck yes Felicity. Yes, your plan doesn’t make much sense when you can guess that if killing a deer was good enough they wouldn’t have killed a kid, but I’m completely behind the sentiment here. Magic equality! Magic is too important to let it be kept away in the hands of a few aristocrats who think they alone should have unrestricted access just because of an accident of birth.

The other girls approve, so Felicity tells them to strip.

We can’t catch a deer in corsets and petticoats. We’ll never stand a chance. We’ve got to be naked, like the huntress.”

So now female power has gone full out bacchae on us. Because the Greeks were so great on the feminist front.

They chase the deer until it falls into a ravine.

Felicity crouches low, creeps closer. She leans over it, stroking the brown fur, making comforting shushing noises. She’s not going to do it. A feeling of relief floods through me as I wait for her to scramble up the embankment.

She then bashes its head in with a rock. I’m not sure if this is just supposed to be drawing out the suspense or if the idea is that she’s extra evil for trying to comfort it. Regardless, it sounds like the deer’s broken a leg, so it’s not like leaving it to die is an improvement.

Slowly, Ann and Pippa scuttle down the slope in crablike movements and each take their turns with the rock. Their bare backs, arched and taut, shine in the night. When they move away, the thing at the bottom of the ravine no longer resembles a deer above the neck. The head is pulpy, an overripe melon fallen on the ground and split open in surprised outrage. I turn and vomit into a sparse bush.

Oh shut up. Every single breakfast you talk lovingly of the crispy, delicious bacon. The deer had a relatively clean death, quite possibly cleaner than the poor pigs.

Felicity carries the rock back up and hands it to Gemma. Then they join hands to try to make the door appear, but nothing happens. Felicity doesn’t understand, the huntress promised this would work…

Right then Kartik decides he needs to get in on the idiot-ball sale.

Kartik steps into the clearing, stops when he takes us in, bloodstained and half wild. He takes a step back, ready to retreat, but not before Felicity sees him.

She grabs a “sharp stick” and pounces, making a gash across his chest.

“I told you we’d carve your eyes out the next time,” she growls.
I had thought Felicity dangerous a moment ago, when she felt powerful. I was wrong. Wounded and powerless, she is more dangerous than I could imagine.

God, I hate the juxtaposition right here. That description of Felicity is lovely, and the general sentiment is something that should be a major consideration in any story where power and oppression are in play like this. And it’s right after Felicity has gone randomly batshit and decided to put a guy’s eyes out just because, discrediting it all.

Gemma says to let him go and she’ll take them. Felicity backs off Kartik, saying that she’s sure once they get to the realms, the huntress will give them the power of their own.

Felicity gives me a hard look. Things have changed forever. There’s no going back.

Only because you lied for no reason and then refused to explain yourself when they figured out you were lying.

I follow them into the woods so that they can dress again.

…they didn’t actually clean any of that blood off. There’s no mention of going to the lake first or anything. Part of why they took their clothes off was to avoid getting blood on the cloth, and now they’re dressing with bloody hands?

“Take my hands,” I say, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.

…but definitely at no point warning them about anything.

You know what the worst part is? The way it’s set up. Felicity and Pippa both admit to their secrets first, and Gemma holds back. Then finally Gemma admits things as well, and they all trust each other. Gemma should have shown that trust by, this time, going to them first instead of keeping it a secret the same as before. I mean, what sort of story is this? How has Gemma changed? The way she’s acting now is the same as at the start.

If Felicity is meant to be corrupted, have her not believe Gemma and think the explanation is a lie. I mean – it is rather sueish, isn’t it? Rather centered all on Gemma. The sort of story a girl might tell, if she was going to do something like that. And nothing bad did happen when they took magic out. And Felicity’s flaw is that she wants to be the one in charge and the one in control, she wouldn’t take losing this well no matter what the reason was.

Or, since Gemma fucked up everything last time because of Pippa’s marriage, skip this whole thing and have Gemma let them into the realm despite knowing it’s dangerous because she still thinks that’s more important.