Book Review: The Ruthless Fae King

Title: The Ruthless Fae King
Author: Leia Stone
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Fiction

What It’s About:

Madelynn Windstrong, the princess of the fall courts of the Fae lands of Thorngate, pleads with her father to not agree to her marrying the monster, Lucien Thorne, King of Thorngate and the Winter Court. The deal is already done so when she meets Lucien, she asks to negotiate her own salary.  He gives her all she asks for, and she’s confused by his amicable personality because it is contradictory to what she’s heard of him.  As the agreement has been finalized, Lucien and Madelynn start the tour of all the courts by going to Spring first, where her friend, Sheera, tells her in confidence that Summer and Spring courts are planning to separate from Winter and Fall. The dinner there is tense, but manageable.  When they arrive in the Summer Court, however, Maddy sees the graveyard specifically made for the victims of the Great Freeze—something that happened when Lucien was 16, a few months after he lost his mother.  The Great Freeze killed many people including Maddy’s grandmother by the sudden onset of cold and freezing weather.  She watches as Lucien puts items made of icon their graves, clearly bothered by the loss and less that this is still lingering within him.  Once they reach the castle after receiving the warning from the Summer Guards that Summer and Spring were separating from Winter and Fall, Prince Marcelle of the Summer Court has room made up for Madelynn within the castle, but sends Lucien out to a guest house off the property. It seems odd to Maddy, but then Prince Marcelle jokes to her that if he knew she was taking suitors, he’d have made an offer, which disgusts her. In her rooms, she talks to Piper, her lady-in-waiting and then goes to speak with Lucien at the guest house, where she asks him to apologize for the Great Freeze. She gives her own perspective of it, as someone who lost a love one to it–all he’d done was send some gold and no explanation or apology, which doesn’t seem genuine or like he cared about the people. 

At the dinner, Marcelle takes some digs at Lucien and Maddy asks where Marcelle’s younger brother is, to which Marcelle tells her that he was sent for re-education.  Lucien apologizes at the dinner and one woman stands up and tells him that her husband died in the Great Freeze.  Lucien gets down on one knee in front of her and tells her that he had lost control of his power, and his mom wasn’t there to help him temper it, before apologizing to her again.  Marcelle speaks up and says that Lucien is just doing this to gain leverage—the words are treasonous according to Maddy, so she stands up for Lucien during the dinner, and makes Marcelle swear loyalty.  Lucien chooses to leave Marcelle with his life, and Maddy realizes that Lucien is playing the longer game—sparing Marcelle’s life shows his kindness, and gives Summer something to think about to stay loyal to him.  By this point, Maddy has found out or is quickly realizing that most of the rumors about Lucien were lies—he had lost his mother at sixteen and his father abdicated his throne to him as a result of grief, which meant that Lucien needed something so that no one messed with him and challenged him for the kingdom.

The two of them head to the Winter Court next, where everyone is happy to see Lucien and Maddy, further showing proof that Lucien is not the monster the other courts have made him out to be. Then Maddy meets Lucien’s father, who is drunk and begins making negative comments to Lucien.  They have dinner with the dad, and the man hurts Lucien with ice, after berating him and blaming Lucien for his mother’s death.  Maddy cannot stand this cruelty from Lucien’s father and asks Lucien to take dinner in private, so Piper, Maddy and Lucien leave the dining hall, leaving the father alone.  On her way out, Maddy tells him that they won’t dine with him until he’s sober and leaves him alone, enabling the three of them to have a quiet dinner alone.  She later goes down alone to Lucien’s father and tells him off—that he will not lay a hand on Lucien ever again, and she gives him an option—an elven healing place for addiction, or a mountain cabin with mead and wine where he can die alone. She leaves and runs right into Lucien who has head the whole exchange, and he tells her that he loves her.  They make plans to get married in a week, but the following day, chaos reigns.  Lucien tells her that some of the Fae of his and other courts had gone missing—one of them had returned, stripped of his winter powers, stating that the Nightfall Queen had ingested them.  As a result, they decide to move the wedding to the next day, and Maddy, Piper and one of the guards ride out to the Fall Court to inform her family. 

When she gets to her home, she sees a carriage draped and covering the insignia. Once she goes to her dad, she sees Marcelle and it turns out that her father got a dowry from Marcelle. Marcelle had paid up and in fully, while Lucien’s dowry hadn’t been paid yet, and no amount of begging from Maddy would make her father change his mind—Marcelle had convinced him to marry Maddy off to him and join Spring and Summer in breaking off from Winter as part of an agreement he brokered with the Nightfall Queen to leave them alone.  Maddy’s father believes he is only doing what is best for his people. Marcelle then puts castration handcuffs on her, effectively cutting off her access to her power as she had hurt him before.  He then drags her, forces her into his carriage and threatens to hurt her mother and sister if she doesn’t submit to him. Then, he has the priest marry them, and then that evening once they are back in Summer Court, he has the priest check her for purity, and he consummates the marriage.  Maddy goes somewhere else mentally, thinking about the day that Lucien had claimed to have seen her at fall court. She then starts fighting back and Marcelle has her taken to her own room, where she gets a lady-in-waiting, Birdie, who gives her the news that the three courts—Summer, Spring and Fall—had broken off from winter. Birdie also tells her that Marcelle has told everyone that he loves Maddy and that she was being forced to marry Lucien against her will, which Maddy knows is not true.  Once again, she gets reminded that she has to submit to Marcelle, as he is able to hurt her sister and mother, so begrudgingly she agrees to become crowned Queen of the Summer Court, but begins planning on ganging Marcelle’s trust to get her powers back and kill him. 

While shopping for the Coronation, it starts to snow, and a woman who clearly is from the Winter Court drops a note in Maddy’s pocket, which she reads later.  The note is from Piper, who Maddy last saw running for secret tunnels to the Winter Court on the day that Marcelle had kidnapped her.  In the note, Piper tells Maddy that she is working with Lucien to extract her mom and sister to the winter court and will be coming for her.  Maddy makes the decision to eventually confide in Birdie that she plans to escape and that she loves Lucien. Birdie decides to help her. One night, not too long after, it gets particularly cold that Marcelle suggests that they share a bed and he is cruel to his servants. It continues to get colder, and after another request, Marcella agrees to free Maddy’s chains so that she can beat back the cold for them.  Birdie brings her a clock, and on the inside—only visible to Maddy, is a note that the Winter King is here.  When Birdie asks Maddy if she wants to step out for fresh air, Maddy realizes that Lucien is outside.  She does go outside with Marcelle and five of his men. Marcelle tells her that there’s an archer that will shoot her if she hurts him, so she uses her wind magic and asks the soldiers to create fires so that she can use the heat to warm up the area.  It becomes quickly obvious to her that Lucien isn’t fighting her, and when things get warmer, Marcelle tells her that she is worth every gold coin he had paid for her. This causes her to snap, and she knocks everyone aside, while pinning Marcelle to the wall.  He asks for mercy and she begins to soften, but then ice hits him and kills him—formed by Lucien.  Maddy tells Lucien that she’s no longer pure, and Lucien, for good measure, throws ice at Marcelle’s dick out of anger.  He tells her that he wants her anyway because everything about her is pure.  Suddenly, soldiers come upon the scene and she tells everyone to stand down, but since she has to go with Lucien, she asks Birdie to go get the brother.  Suddenly, she gets shot in the abdomen by the archer, who in turn gets killed by Lucien. 

Lucien rides with Maddy atop Drae—she had passed out but he froze the area through which the arrow protruded so that she doesn’t lose blood.  Lucien is terrified that he’s lost her, because he cannot feel her pulse, and feels the darkness of his power consume him, but when they arrive to Raife, he tells Lucien that she’s still alive.  Raife asks Lucien to stop with the cold as that will kill her, and he begins to heal her. Since Maddy lost a lot of blood, he calls for Lani, who does a blood transfusion between Lucien and Maddy, as there are no Fall Court faes that could help her, including her mom and sister who are still not there.  There is no telling what effect it will have on Maddy, but Lucien is fine with that as he’d rather have her alive. 

Maddy wakes up and Lucien is happy, but tells her the situation with the transfusion.  Her mom, sister and Piper show up then, and they test her powers due to the transfusion—she does have her wind but also she has ice.  As the Nightfall Queen is advancing on Winter, the plan is for Lucien to build an ice wall to keep the queen out, while Maddy and Drae fly to Spring and Summer to convince them to rejoin with Winter—the reason they’re not going to Fall is because Maddy’s mom controls it now, and pledges to help them.  Maddy quickly convinces the Spring Court, but in Summer, she needs Drae’s help as well as Marcelle’s Brother’s help to convince the people. Ultimately she tells the faes of the Summer Court what Marcelle did to her, and wins their help that way.  She returns with Piper on Drae to the Winter, and finds chaos—nothing is going according to plan.  Turns out that Lucien is weakened from the transfusion and doesn’t have his full powers.  Arwen drags Maddy onto Drae and tells her to go create the ice wall, but before they leave, Lucien jumps on and tells her what to do–the key to controlling ice is anger—and when Maddy channels her anger from Marcelle forcing himself on her, she creates a forty-foot wall. 

That night, Maddy and Lucien get married, celebrate with everyone and spend the one night together.  The next morning, Lucien reveals that he’s back at full power again, and the three kings and their wives talk about the plan. The plan is for the three kings to stay and oversee the battle, while the three queens will go to the King Moon’s territory to speak to him.  Drae pulls out a tin box the boys had buried when they were eight to prove to Axil that they are really the wives of these three kings.  Lani and Maddy fly atop Arwen and come upon a female wolf who tells them that the King can be found in Death Mountain, but that Arwen cannot safely fly there as she’ll be shot.  So the three Queens decide to get assistance from the wolves to take them to the base of the mountain and find their own way to the King from there. 

My Thoughts: Well this one was a lot heavier than the other two because of all of the things that happen to Maddy but also because of how Lucien has been treated. My heart goes out to Lucien specifically because of his abusive father, and I love that Maddy does stand up for him after realizing that she was wrong all about him; that all of the rumors were incorrect about him. I think Lucien is by far my favorite male character in this series so far, and Arwen is my favorite female character thus far. I cannot wait for the next book in the series!