How Does It Feel?

In this section, Callie’s life-threatening predicament does not preclude her unbidden attraction to her imprisoner, Prince Mendax, in the common romantasy trope of Desire and Danger. The competing sensations of desire and danger, fear and fearlessness often grip Callie, and occasionally Mendax, speaking to a duality of feeling that highlights Emotional Complexity. In the dungeon of the Unseelie, the prince’s men and the guards are in awe of Callie’s boldness: “I’ve never seen anyone so fearless of the Smoke Slayers in all my time!” (72). Callie also displays an exceptional fearlessness with Lord Alastair Cain, a shapeshifting panther and Mendax’s personal assassin, whom she reaches out to pet when he approaches her with the task of killing her: “I was so tired of being afraid, and my body found some semblance of comfort in his furry presence” (114). Cain is later shocked by her willingness to protect him from Mendax, highlighting Callie’s powerful connection to animals, which stems from her connection to fairies and the Seelie who oppose Mendax and his kingdom of dark fairies.

In her protection of animals and bravery in the dungeons, Callie establishes herself as a bold and noble character, even volunteering her real name despite Cain warning her that this will give Mendax power over her. While Callie’s need to assassinate Mendax at the request of the golden fairy to prove her loyalty has not yet been revealed, her actions appear motivated by her genuine emotions rather than her end goal. Callie’s courage is key to her character, and it frees her from the dungeon, Cain, and even the forest bog.

Fear also provides arousal, highlighting Desire and Danger, whether it be the forest bog’s dangerous and violent sexual response to Callie’s terror or her own attraction to her violent captor. The bog moans with desire at her distress: “I haven’t tasted human fear in eons” (93). While the bog’s desire results in sexual assault and violence, Callie’s contrasting attraction to Mendax is dangerous because he is her captor. However, it is not his role as her captor that makes Mendax attractive to Callie. At first, Callie wonders if this is some sort of “Fae trick” or “type of magic” that elicits her reaction (103). Later, it becomes clear that fear, admiration for each other’s bravery, and even ruthlessness function as sources of mutual attraction: He responds by becoming physically aroused by her fear but, importantly, her strength, too, as it carries her through circumstances that frighten her.

Callie is drawn to Mendax’s ruthlessness and mystical strength, but he also holds Emotional Complexity, as he removes Callie from the bog after seeing that it has assaulted her. Though he later returns her to the dungeon and the bog, his instinct was to protect her from sexual violence, and the complex nature of the fantastical relationship between dark fairies and humans, who they fear and hate, is significant. Mendax correctly suspects that Callie is a human assassin, and this distinction is important because it helps to portray him as more nuanced rather than a one-dimensional killer and brute.

Callie’s Emotional Complexity regarding her feelings for Mendax inevitably involves the promise of pain, but it also involves the simple intensity of feeling at all, which Callie previously restrained herself from in the human world. When a guard knocks out her loose wisdom tooth, she laughs: “I felt it. It was when I knew I had truly gone mad. That was the first time I had felt the madness” (106). Rather than spur her to reject these feelings as she has in the comparatively restrained human world, the “madness” impels her to greater acts of boldness; her anger makes her braver. That anger and strength arouses Mendax. While Callie realizes that Mendax “knew exactly how evil and beautiful he was” (108), he begins to wonder what alluring mysteries she contains beneath her beautiful surface. This Emotional Complexity is key to understanding the text, as the title, How Does It Feel?, emphasizes the importance of embracing instinct and living beyond social restrictions. Callie struggles with social restrictions in the human world as a woman who is both beautiful and strong: She refuses to be contained by others’ perceptions of her, or to adhere to the belief that beauty and strength are binary concepts in a woman. In the fairy world, Callie can be as fierce as she feels, and she is aware of how this makes her beauty fascinating to Mendax.

In the explanations of the difference between the Seelie Fae and the Unseelie Fae, there are resonances with the concept of fallen angels: The Unseelie “were fae, but not the good kind” (87). The Unseelie have been cast out of the paradise that is Earth, powerful beings trapped in darkness. And though the Seelie are portrayed as beings of light and goodness, Mendax appreciates that there are nuances and contradictions within every juxtaposition. As he tells Callie, “There is beauty to be found in the dark, just as there is horror in the light” (110). Callie finds herself enthralled by his physical beauty and, though she resists, fascinated with his darkness, and the same is true of Mendax’s attraction to the mysterious Callie, who has been sent there to kill him. Through this examination of Emotional Complexity and Desire and Danger, the text deals heavily in the concept of nuance, claiming that there is good within bad and vice versa, as represented by Callie, Mendax, and the nature of social binaries.