In today’s chapters, Ms. MacFey meets her uncle and we see Fiana’s true nature.
Stay tuned after the chapter for the Author Notes, where I reveal tidbits of our inspiration, process, journey, and some very big mistakes and lessons we learned along the way. You can also read them beneath the audio player below.
AUTHOR NOTES
I really enjoyed listening to Chapter 23 again, because Moody is such a fun character. I love his speech pattern, if I do say so myself—I did a lovely job there.
We watch Moody Marlin once again see deeper into someone, just as he saw Rowan inside of Cullen, he could tell that Max MacFey was descended from his brothers. Even after all this time, Moody is still very powerful. After all, he is fey. Even though Fiana cast him aside and he could have done anything with his magic, he has stayed faithful to his lady. We’ll see in Book 2, Witch on the Water, why…
There is also some foreshadowing for Book 3, Fire of the Fey, in Moody‘s reaction to Maddy, basically saying she was an old soul because of the level of pain she had experienced. We’ll see bit more of Maddy’s pain when we deal with some pretty serious mental health topics in that book.
Now Chapter 24 is very interesting for me because of the reaction of a dear friend who recently read this book. For me, this scene of Fiana torturing Rowan was Gothic. It called back to medieval torture aesthetic in a dungeon, chained to a wall. Something Fiana experienced first hand, so this was all about English period drama once again, like something one would see in the London Dungeon.
But after hearing my friend’s response to this last year, I find myself questioning how many other people saw it this way… He saw it as a sadomasochistic sexual situation. Really?! BDSM? I’m still shocked he saw it this way!
For me, it was just a terrifying situation with a woman who had been traumatized for centuries until she had a psychotic break. Frankly, she lasted a lot longer than I would’ve under those circumstances! Just a few traumatic events left me down for the count for nearly a decade, and I’m definitely more cynical because of it…partly because I now know the evil that exists in the world, so I’m not surprised when I year of yet another powerful white (usually) man abusing his power, sexually or otherwise.
Still, we really get a good sense of the level of sociopathy inside of Fiana. She has become pure evil from her experiences. Come to think of it, I can see the sadism in Fiana’s utter joy at torturing others, even her long lost love, but I still don’t particularly see it as sexual. Just power—dark, sadistic power.
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Rowan of the Wood 