Duainfey by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Rebecca Beauvelley is a ruined woman. One misjudgement years before left her with a ruined arm and a cloud of scandal about her. No longer able to make any kind of good marriage, she has resigned herself to marriage to Sir Jennet Hale, a man old enough to be her father, and a second son in the bargain. Indeed, he father has told her that if she will not marry Sir Jennet, she is to be thrown out of his house and into a Wandering Village, where she will be forced to make her own way in life. And while Rebecca has the ability to heal with plants, many people no longer trust such things and would rather healing be done with machines that answer only to the hand of man.

Such machines were useless to her in the matter of her arm, and so it has become weak, useless and withered. Her younger sister, Caroline, is often unkind to Rebecca, thinking of the great marriage *she* will make, but when Rebecca meets Altimere, an Elder Fey who is in human lands on business, he seems quite taken with her. This both delights and flusters her, because she knows that she is something to be pitied to most other men that she knows. But Altimere doesn't seem to care about her withered arm, and his regard for her is most warm. But when Rebecca dances an entire set with Altimere at a ball that her Fianceé is attending, Jennet Hale becomes enraged and grips her withered arm hard enough to leave bruises.

Altimere, though, approaches Rebecca with a cup, and allows her to see two visions. One is of herself after marriage to Jennet, cold and mostly abandoned in his far northern home. The other is of herself wearing rich and costly garb and many jewels: happy, hale and well-loved. In that moment, all the misgivings she's had about marrying Sir Jennet Hale crystalize, and she agrees to leave for the Fey Lands with Altimere, giving her power into his hands to keep safe for her.

But her leaving is not without scandal, and her sister Caroline begs Atimere to take *her*, not Rebecca. But Altimere enchants the younger girl to go back to her room and forget what she has seen, and hides himself and Rebecca in plain sight until they can make the journey to the border between the human world and that of the fey. There, he asks if he can keep her name safe for her as they cross the border, as it is perilous, and she turns him down, feeling uneasy about the idea.

Once across the border, the two of them shelter in Altimere's estate, and he eventually becomes Rebecca's lover. But soon, she grows wary. She often finds herself doing things for Altimere that she had sworn to herself she would not, and when she makes love with Altimere's gardener at Altimere's behest, she ends up killing the other Fey. Altimere says that the fey was too weak, but does not deny why he died.

Altimere presents Rebecca with a necklace which she herself must put on. It costs her a great deal of pain to do so, but she does manage it, for which he is delighted with her. But soon after, Altimere has her seduce another Fey. But this woman is too strong and declines the offer, after which he makes Rebecca stab her. Rebecca does not want to, but she cannot resist, and she realizes that Altimere has entrapped her in a prison worse than any in the mortal world, simply by her giving him her power to keep. But in keeping her own name, she also retains her memories of the things he has her do, and she cannot escape him.

He brings Rebecca to court, where he uses her to seduce and murder several of the Faerie Queen's advisors. Rebecca tries twice to remove the necklace, knowing somehow that she will never be able to be free of Altimere and his will if she wears it, but is unsuccessful. Then Altimere leaves on a journey of his own, and Rebecca is raped by three Fey males at once, and due to her essential powerlessness, cannot escape them. However, they pay for their attack by slowly sickening and dying, their power stolen from them by Altimere's enchantments on her.

At her lowest ebb, Rebecca is ready to take three leaves of a plant called Duainfey, given to her by her mentor in herb-craft, which causes both clearing of the mind, and, in larger doses, death. As she is settled on this course of action, she is visited by another Fey, a female named Sian, who tells her that, even should she kill herself, Altimere might be able to bring her back should she not rid herself of the necklace before she died. And if she tries to remove it a third time and not be able to, she will never be able to remove it. This gives Rebecca pause, but Sian, and the sentient elitch trees, help her gain the strength and strength of will to remove the necklace.

But the Queen, cousin of Sian, and another cousin of Sian, Meri, a male Fey imprisoned and tortured cruelly by humans, may be more important to Rebecca's coming life among the fey than she knows. For now, exhausted, she merely sleeps.

I found this book hard to put down once I had started reading it. Rebecca never bemoans her fate or wails about the future she is heading for. She has come to accept it, and a life that is more like death: no caring, no wanting, no strong emotions. Nothing but being a dutiful daughter. And that, she sees in Lord Altimere's cup, will lead to a life worse than death for her.

Of course, Altimere baits her with a vision of a future with him, loved, cared for and full of plenty. Little does she realize then the cost of such a future with him. But even when she realizes the cost of the choice she made, she doesn't weep, wail and whine. She attempts to get out of it. But with a man who can control not only her actions, but her thoughts as well, this is much, much harder than it looks. And when she is at her lowest ebb, she is brutally attacked and sinks even lower. But once again, it is not with weeping or complaining. She simply does what she thinks will free her from the mess she has made.

Now that I have finished the book, I want to read more. I enjoyed the story even when I felt sad and horrified on Rebecca's behalf. The story was well and sensitively written, and were I in her place, I would probably have made the same choices she did. And felt worse about the outcome.

Rebecca's story is overlain with the story of Meri, who is a Fey who had been brutalized by humans. Although his assault is not spelled out, but rather implied, it is equally shocking, equally horrifying. Yet, although the stories of Meri and Rebecca don't converge in this volume, I think that each will in the next volume, and I hope for a peaceful resolution to the stories of both.

I recommend this book with the caveat that reading the brutalization of both Meri and Rebecca is hard to read, story-wise. I'm not sure which was worse for me, for both in their own way were equally bad, just different. But if you aren't afraid to read such things, you will find this book a wonderful, engaging read that will suck in all your attention and time until it is finished, and leave you longing for more. I've never read the authors in question before, but I will definitely be reading more of them now.