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Summary
Chapter 55: No Use Crying Over Spilled Tea
Grace returns to consciousness when Jaxon shoves her away from him. He shouts at her to get out, and she obeys, though she doesn’t understand what has happened. Grace is so lethargic and woozy that she struggles to walk, and just barely manages to make it to the top of the stairs. She bumps into Lia and asks for help. However, to Grace’s extreme surprise Lia speaks cruelly to her and abruptly slaps her across the face. Jaxon comes racing out of his room, shouting at Lia to leave Grace alone. Lia calmly pulls a gun out of her pocket and shoots Jaxon in the heart.
Chapter 56: Vampire Girl Gone Wild
Grace shrieks and tries to get to Jaxon, but her legs crumple beneath her. She crawls across the floor, screaming, and Lia kicks her in the stomach. Lia tells her that she should have drunk more of the tea, and that Jaxon will be fine. Because Grace won’t stop screaming, Lia also shoots her with what turns out to be a tranquilizer gun. Grace loses consciousness.
Chapter 57: Double, Double, Toil and a Whole Lot of Trouble
Grace wakes up freezing and struggling to breathe, a voice inside her telling her to lie as still as possible. She realizes when she tries to sit up that all four of her limbs are restrained, and she starts to yank and struggle at her constraints. Wherever she is, it’s completely dark, and she tries to wriggle her arm out without being able to see anything around her. She manages to free one hand, and reaches over to untie the other. Working as fast and as quietly as she can, she works her feet loose and stands up. She’s startled by a horrible shriek coming from the dark distance, and begins to run. She hears an accompanying roar and the sounds of a fight, and realizes Jaxon must be fighting Lia. She enters a new room, and jumps when thousands of candles simultaneously light all around her.
Chapter 58: Never Do a Trust Fall With Someone Who Can Fly
Now that there’s enough light to see, Grace realises she’s in the tunnels under Katmere. She sees an altar covered with candles in human bone holders, and enormous vases full of blood line the room. She realises the wetness on the floor isn’t water: it’s human blood. She turns to leave and sees a huge green dragon flying directly at her. It breathes flame, missing her, and then grabs her by the arm and drags her into the air. Lia appears and begins to give chase, running along the floor below them. They crash-land to the ground when Lia grabs him, and the dragon and Lia begin to fight viciously. The dragon screams in rage when Lia punches a hole in his wing, and turns back into his human form. It’s Flint.
Grace tries to escape, but Flint catches her and slams her against the wall. He apologizes, saying that he was hoping to get her away without having to kill her. He can no longer do so, as the vampires have a plan for her that he must stop. Flint reveals that Lia killed Grace’s parents so that she would have to come to Katmere. Grace is still reeling from the news when Flint tells her he has to kill her or it will mean the end of the world. He begins to strangle her.
Analysis
As with many of the novel’s more dramatic and complex events, the revelatory events of these chapters take part in the secret tunnels underneath Katmere Academy. As has been previously discussed, these tunnels are conceptually related to Grace's growth into understanding and maturity. These things are also inherently linked to her uncovering the truth about herself, and discovering the secrets of the place in which she lives. It turns out that there was a whole lot more going on underneath the surface of Katmere Academy than Grace had even guessed. When Grace wakes up, chained to a rock in the dungeons, the author makes another clear reference to her unwilling role as “damsel in distress.” Through no fault of her own, Grace is once more placed in a frightening and tragic situation. All of the classic tropes of gothic horror surround Grace at this point. She's tied up, underground, in a dark and unknown place, it's freezing and damp, and there are monsters stalking the halls. These tropes from classical horror continue when the fight scene that follows is lit only by hundreds of flickering candles. As if this weren’t enough, all of these candles are held in candlesticks made out of bone, and the floor in the room is wet and sticky with blood.
When Grace finally sees Flint in his dragon form and he attempts to fly away with her, the language of the chapter becomes briefly mystical and dreamy. A lot of Chapter 58 is less coherent and less easily legible than the other writing in Crave. This is a formal representation of the careening journey Flint takes Grace on as he flies through the tunnels. Because it's narrated through Grace's perspective as she’s rushing through the dark void being carried haphazardly by a dragon, her recollection of events isn't as clear as it might otherwise be. This carries through to the writing, which runs ideas and images together as Grace sees them flash by her in the air.
The darkness of the tunnels plays an important part in the action of this section. Lia and Flint have both spent a great deal of time navigating the tunnels underneath the school, and so are far more familiar with them than Grace is. Because of this, and because of their supernatural abilities, they are able to move far faster through space than she can. Stumbling through the dark gives Grace the small advantage of being unseen, but all the major disadvantages of being injured, human, and unable to see in the pitch blackness. She also still doesn't understand what she is doing down there, and so the literal darkness that surrounds her metaphorically mirrors the internal obscurity that she’s also having to navigate. She knows that she is very seriously in danger of being killed, but as is so often the case at Katmere Academy, she doesn't really know why, or even who's actually responsible.
There's an interesting mirroring in the scenes of sexuality and violence between Jaxon and Grace that echoes into her encounters with Flint in the dark, gloomy tunnels beneath Katmere. Grace undergoes a lot of trauma to the neck in this novel. Jaxon pins her by it and bites her on it, and Flint attempts to end her life by crushing it. Flint tells Grace he doesn't want to kill her, but to prevent Lia from carrying out her plan—which involves Grace as a key element—he must do so before Lia can. He reveals that he knows about Hudson's intent to use his supernatural powers of control to dominate the hierarchy of paranormal beings and, eventually, the human world. Flint also reveals Lia's responsibility for the deaths of Grace's parents, a revelation so shocking to Grace that she momentarily stops fighting back. She feels choked up with tears and unable to speak from the news, but this quickly disappears when Flint resumes trying to choke her.
