How Does It Feel?

In this section, Callie again employs her scientific background to succeed in this supernatural realm and her first two trials, highlighting her embodiment of Science and the Supernatural. Callie’s understanding of the luna moths leads to her ability to evade the giant winged creatures that hunt her in the first trial, and her study of bats helps her to locate their fatal weakness. Callie also notes this weakness in Mendax after they become lovers, foreshadowing her assassination attempt. Later, her knowledge of plant biology assists her in determining the poisons from the antidotes until the final round. Callie’s experience as a human in the fairy world resonates with her professional training, speaking to her role as an agent of the Seelie Fae. Callie’s professional training is indistinguishable from her identity, as she is under the protection of Seelie Fae, who are inextricably intertwined with nature and biology. As such, Callie knows how the natural world operates, understanding that, in the Unseelie Fae realm, she remains “in the presence of predators, and it was foolish to lie vulnerable beneath them” (199). She struggles not to appear as such obvious and easy prey—especially regarding her relations with Mendax—and her natural strength and courage help her navigate both the court and her feelings for Mendax.

The Emotional Complexity and dynamic between Callie and Mendax continues to hinge on the swings between resistance and submission for both characters. When Mendax attempts to dress her wounds after the first trial, Callie struggles in vain: “Not that I ever stood a chance of fighting the towering Fae male” (205). For all of her bravery in the arena, and boldness in confronting Mendax’s lethal creatures—including the forest bog, Lord Alastair Cain, and the winged menaces—she cannot resist Mendax himself, the most powerful of them all. Mendax offers the temptation of Desire and Danger, and they see the darkness and strength in each other. 

Callie “longed to touch” Mendax’s wings (207), speaking to her obsession with all winged creatures, grown out of her childhood encounter with the golden fairy. Wings and winged creatures represent both illicit desire and innocent fantasy, like the two halves of Callie’s personality itself, as well as Mendax’s. She is, at once, a doe-eyed innocent, as Mendax himself describes her, and a brutal assassin, taking down the forest bog and the winged creatures with ruthless efficiency. Mendax calls her his “wolf in sheep’s clothing” (215), demonstrating his awareness of her strength and genuine suspicion that she may be an assassin. Mendax begins to fall for her veiled ferocity. He keeps her tooth, knocked out earlier by a punch from a guard, on a chain around his neck, a macabre “memento from this enchantress to remember long after she was dead” (211). Their mutual attraction is forged in extremes, from forbidden human and fantastical Fae, the intensity of a brash life facing imminent death, and the juxtaposition between pain and pleasure. Their desire for each other is inherently dangerous because they both want to kill each other; they are associated with enemy Fae, the Seelie and the Unseelie, and they are so alike that they simultaneously annoy and fascinate each other.

The sexual chemistry between Callie and Mendax is dominated by Emotional Complexity, and the way in which their desire is consummated further complicates their power dynamic. Though Mendax initiates their interaction by touching Callie, Callie “beg[ged]” for more, and Mendax “readily acquiesced” (217). Callie enjoys the “pain-laced pleasure” of their interactions (216), as she admits to herself, in part because of the danger involved, as they are supposed to be enemies but feel strong mutual lust, which grows into love. Callie is also enthralled by Mendax’s obsession with her; she thinks about the potency of her own sexual allure, that she could enrapture a man such as Mendax, with his self-imposed isolation and brutal beauty: “What would it feel like to kiss that wicked mouth?” (224). When he allows her to touch the place where his wings join to his body, that hidden place of vulnerability, she begins to believe in his feelings for her: “He was being vulnerable with me. He had to believe I wasn’t really here to hurt him” (226). Mendax is also passionate about her ability to hurt him, further bending Desire and Danger as he reveals his physical weakness to his assassin.

Additionally, Callie and Mendax’s shared avoidance of romance suggests that neither knows how to navigate a relationship, let alone a connection with deep Emotional Complexity and Desire and Danger. When Mendax kills the Seelie prince for suggesting it is his duty to return Callie to the human world, he is overcome with his desire and love for her to the point of committing an act of war. When Callie is in the second trial, she hears Mendax’s thoughts—the result of their bonding ritual—willing her to survive. The poisonous oleander she ingests is symbolic of the circumstances Callie and Mendax both find themselves in, playing with danger in a game of politics and war between the Seelie and Unseelie Fae.