Opening
In these chapters, Jude Duarte stops hiding—from herself, from the reader, and from the Fae. Harassment explodes into open warfare, sisterhood fractures, and a secret prince offers a different kind of power. By the end, Jude chooses a path that trades safety for leverage, transforming from victim to player.
What Happens
Chapter 6
Jude breaks the fourth wall to confess what she has left out: the humiliations that shape her. She recounts three memories that teach her how fragile a mortal body is in Faerie. At nine, one of Madoc’s guards bites off the tip of her ring finger, chews it while she watches, and threatens to eat the rest of her if she tells. At eleven, a reveler forces faerie wine on her and compels her to dance until she’s sick, while others laugh as if it’s fun.
At fourteen, she faces her most disorienting betrayal at home. Her little brother Oak, only four and not yet understanding his power, glamours her into hours of play and even makes her slap herself until she cries. Jude frames these stories as the origin of her hatred of weakness and of Mortality vs. Immortality: no matter how skilled she becomes, she remains breakable. The result is a chronic vigilance and a simmering self-loathing that feeds her need to never be powerless again—a knot of Fear and Powerlessness she cannot untie.
Chapter 7
Retaliation arrives after lessons. Jude and Taryn Duarte are ambushed by Prince Cardan Greenbriar and his friends. Locke grabs Taryn; others seize Jude. They hurl both sisters into a river crawling with carnivorous nixies and dump their schoolbags, ruining everything. Cardan presides from the bank, turning cruelty into spectacle.
He offers Jude a deal: renounce the tournament and admit she doesn’t belong. When she hesitates, he turns to Taryn, offering her a separate bargain—climb out, kiss him, and promise not to defend Jude. Taryn chooses survival. She wades ashore, kisses him on each cheek as Valerian hauls her up, and refuses only the added humiliation of verbally forsaking Jude. Cardan calls this torment the “least” of what they can do and orders Jude to give up. Jude spits out one word—“Never.”—and drags herself from the freezing water, shaking with rage at them and at herself.
Chapter 8
The next morning Vivienne Duarte spirits the twins to Maine. At the mall, Taryn and Jude exchange stiff apologies about the river. Vivi reveals her real plan: she’s moving in with her human girlfriend, Heather, and wants her sisters to come. The twins refuse; Faerie is the only world they understand. The scene underlines Belonging and Otherness: they are strangers in both realms.
The human afternoon—lipstick tests, junk food, Heather’s kindness—feels like a costume Jude can’t wear. On their way out, a human boy touches Jude’s arm and her instincts detonate. She breaks his jaw and kicks him down before she registers the choice. As his friends give chase, Vivi glamours them to safety. Shaken, Jude tells Vivi she can’t live in the mortal world—she would ruin it—because Faerie’s violence now lives in her.
Chapter 9
Tournament day. Jude sees Cardan whisper to Taryn; Taryn ends up in tears and won’t say why. Jude shoves Cardan against a tree; he promises she’ll regret it. During the mock war, he goads her, sneering that he wouldn’t be the “first to green gown her.” The taunt detonates all the bitter pressure Jude has been holding back.
Jude abandons a careful strategy and fights like a blade drawn too long. She targets Cardan and his circle, drives them back, and wins the match. No triumph follows—Madoc hasn’t even stayed to see it. Cardan corners her afterward, yanking her by the hair and demanding she kneel and beg in front of everyone. For a breath, she considers surrender to end it. Then she refuses. She delivers a blistering refusal, telling him she’s done making herself small and that as a mortal she has nothing to lose while he, a prince, has everything. Cardan goes silent and lets her go. Locke appears with a slow smile, telling her she gets under Cardan’s skin “like a splinter of iron,” and urges her to “keep it up.”
Chapter 10
Back home, Jude storms into Madoc’s study expecting Cardan—and finds Prince Dain instead, Cardan’s older brother and heir. Dain already knows she can lie and that Cardan has made her life miserable. He asks what she truly wants. When she says knighthood, he presses deeper. Jude admits her real desire: immunity to glamour.
Dain offers something different from the visible glory of a knight. He wants her for covert work, a mortal who can lie in a court where words bind and truth traps. He invites her to join his Court of Shadows as his spy, promising a geas that will make her immune to all faerie glamour and compulsion—except his own. Jude understands the risk and the leash. She accepts, kneels, and swears her oath, choosing clandestine power over public honor and stepping into the game of Power, Politics, and Ambition.
Character Development
Jude’s fear hardens into will. The river, the mall, and the tournament strip away her last illusions about safety, pushing her toward secret power over sanctioned status.
- Jude: Moves from hiding her shame to weaponizing it; rejects appeasement, wins the mock war, and chooses Dain’s shadow court over knighthood. Gains immunity to glamour at the cost of binding herself to a prince.
- Taryn: Reveals a survival code built on appeasement. Accepts Cardan’s bargain at the river, keeps secrets after his private talk, and prioritizes safety and belonging over twin loyalty.
- Cardan: Escalates from tormentor to rattled adversary. His cruelty seeks isolation as much as pain, but Jude’s refusal exposes the limits of his control.
- Locke: Plays spectator and instigator. Participates in cruelty yet privately encourages Jude’s rebellion, signaling a taste for chaos and manipulation.
- Prince Dain: Appears as composed and strategic, valuing Jude’s mortal talents. His offer is protection and a shackle—control disguised as opportunity.
- Vivi: Loves the mortal world and offers escape, but her solution doesn’t fit Jude, highlighting the gulf between sisters’ identities.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters braid together Cruelty and Bullying with Family, Loyalty, and Betrayal. Cardan’s attacks aim to isolate Jude—physically by tossing her to the nixies, socially by splitting her from Taryn. Taryn’s bargain becomes the sharpest cut: in a land of glamour, the betrayal that hurts most is freely chosen. Meanwhile, Vivi’s invitation to flee is another kind of rupture, love that pulls in the opposite direction.
Jude’s trajectory reframes Power, Politics, and Ambition. Denied overt status, she embraces covert influence. Dain’s Court of Shadows weaponizes her mortality—her ability to lie—turning a human liability into an asset within a truth-bound court. The river functions as symbol: a forced immersion into her reality, a near-drowning that baptizes her in ruthlessness. She emerges colder, clearer, and more dangerous.
Key Quotes
“I’ve told this story all wrong.”
- The confession sets the tone: Jude revises the narrative to include shame and fear, insisting that her ambition grows from trauma, not bravado.
“Never.”
- In the river, Jude’s one-word refusal is a hinge. It rejects Cardan’s terms and asserts a new self-definition—she will endure pain before surrendering agency.
“First to green gown her.”
- Cardan’s sexualized taunt weaponizes gossip and reputation, aiming to humiliate Taryn and destabilize Jude. It reveals how social cruelty and power intertwine in Faerie.
“Like a splinter of iron… keep it up.”
- Locke’s admiration is double-edged. Iron harms faeries; calling Jude a “splinter” flatters and reduces her to a tool, hinting he enjoys the damage more than the justice.
“This is the least of what we can do.”
- Cardan’s promise of escalation clarifies the stakes. The bullying isn’t random—it’s a program to break Jude’s will by eroding her safety, status, and relationships.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence pivots the novel from survival to strategy. Jude refuses public submission, accepts private constraint, and chooses influence over honor. The Court of Shadows pulls her out of schoolyard cruelty and into succession politics, where her mortality becomes leverage rather than a liability.
The rifts formed here—Taryn’s choice at the river, Locke’s meddling, Dain’s binding geas—reconfigure alliances that drive the rest of the story. Jude isn’t just enduring Faerie anymore; she’s contesting it, with a vow to take as much from her enemies as she can on the way up.