#adows1e5

Monday, October 12

Secrets, torture and rescue.

Diana is taken by a flying witch and brought to a castle-ruin where the witch, Satu Järvinen, tries to open her up to figure out her secrets and her magic. Satu fails, despite trying to make Diana doubt Matthew by telling her his only after her magic and that he’s killed Gillian. So she leaves Diana in the oubliette to get reinforcement.

Meanwhile, the vampires of Sept-Tours are looking for Diana. Reinforcement in the form of Baldwin Montclair, head of the family and tracker extraordinary, arrive from London. He’s not Matthew’s favorite sibling and there’s a bit of dominance fighting going on before Matthew uses the “Knight’s of Lazarus of Bethany”-card and Baldwin falls in line. Working together, Diana’s located and they leave in a helicopter to rescue her.

Diana is not alone in the oubliette. There are ghosts of those that died there but also her parents. She recalls the stories her mother told her and when Matthew and Baldwin find her and are unable to go down and retrieve her, she’s able to fly up.

Matthew needs to use his blood to calm Diana down during the flight back to Sept-Tours. Her body is badly bruised and burnt so she needs help. Matthew, Marthe and Ysabeau take care of her while she tells them what happened with Satu but also that Domenico and Gerbert were there and that Gerbert in particular wanted to get his hands on her and that he once upon a time owned the Ashmole manuscript. Matthew reveals he killed a woman in Jerusalem that got between him and Baldwin. 

Saturday, October 10

Mating and Oxford break-ins.

Matthew returns from Oxford to an eagerly awaiting Diana. She’s been waiting since he called early that morning telling her he loves her. They mate.  

Matthew asks Ysabeau if they should leave as the mating might cause her trouble and an offended Ysabeau tells them to stay. She knows that what is happening is inevitable; “you need him as much as you need the air you breathe, and he wants you as he’s wanted nothing and no one since I made him.” They are now a family and will fight together.

The Oxford break-ins were to gain information about Diana. They even broke into her rooms at New College, looking for hair, nail clippings or skin. Matthew thinks it was to gain Diana’s DNA but Ysabeau’s convinced it had more to do with magic workings as witches usually use that kind of material in bindings and love spells. 

Friday, October 9

Hunting, teas and Knights of Lazarus.

Ysabeau takes Diana on a hunt to frighten her away from Matthew by showing her the true nature of vampires but fails. To love a vampire means accepting all parts of him so later on Diana calls her aunts to tell them about loving Matthew. They are not happy but accept and support Diana’s choice. They are much more concerned with Diana staying with Ysabeau.

Marthe shows Diana how to make her special herbal tea and makes her promise to drink one cup a day “to keep her healthy” while Ysabeau talks about the importance of names, sharing all of hers and Matthew’s.

Sunday, October 11

Hunting, family and bundling.

Diana’s determined for Matthew to let her into his life as a vampire so she makes him take her hunting. He needs to know she can cope with all of him and that he can trust her. Matthew’s not happy, but even less when he learns Ysabeau took Diana hunting and that she told her about him as “the life stories of a vampire are theirs to tell—and theirs alone.”  

After the hunt, Matthew wants to know how Diana feels about not being able to have children of her own with him. She says that there are other ways of having children and he reveals that Marcus is his.

Diana tells him she needs to know how the world of vampire works and what the rules are. She also says that the trouble they are in with the Congregation wouldn’t exist if she was made into a vampire, and he really doesn’t like hearing that.

They return home and Matthew calls her his wife to Diana’s surprise. ““Did I miss something?” I finally asked. “When were we married?”” and is told it was when he told her he loved her the day before, explaining how vampires mate.

“Alchemy is woven into every aspect of the All Souls story from the very beginning, even down to the timings. The action of A Discovery of Witches takes place over forty days and is purposely structured to mirror the forty days of an alchemical experiment. Forty was a significant number in alchemy, as Mary Sidney pointed out to Diana when they were working in her laboratory. Mary was delighted when her own experiment with the arbor Dianae took exactly forty days to complete, ‘just as the sages promised.’”