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Summary
Chapter 16: Sometimes Keeping Your Enemies Close Is the Only Thing that Prevents Hypothermia
Grace freezes when she stumbles on Jaxon and Lia in a heated argument in the gazebo. She debates intervening but is deterred by their intense focus on each other. However, they see her, and both shoot her a furious look. Jaxon moves as if to approach her, but Lia grabs him, restraining him. Grace awkwardly makes her excuses and hurries away. Jaxon follows her and Grace, too curious to resist, asks what he and Lia were talking about. Jaxon reveals that Lia’s dead boyfriend was actually his brother Hudson, and then abruptly walks away.
Chapter 17: It’s Discretion Not Diamonds That’s A Girl’s Best Friend
Grace and Macy get ready for a snowball fight. Grace's curiosity about Jaxon, Hudson, and Lia leads her to lightly interrogate Macy’s, but Macy’s hesitant, cautious responses puzzle Grace. Macy tells her that it’s unusual for Jaxon to pay any attention to someone not in the Order, a nickname the other students have given the most popular boys at Katmere. Despite Macy's worries and her repeated, obvious evasiveness about Jaxon, Grace is determined to join the snowball fight. As the two leave the room, Macy warns her to stay away from Jaxon. As if summoned by his name, he appears behind Macy and tells her he doesn’t plan on going anywhere.
Chapter 18: How Many Hot Guys Does It Take to Win a Snowball Fight?
Jaxon is startled to learn that Grace plans to join in the snowball fight, but she ignores his objections. Jaxon insists she listen, telling her that Katmere isn’t safe for her, and just as he’s about to say more, Flint joins the group. Grace tells Flint that she asked Jaxon to join them, and there’s a prickle of antagonism between the two boys. Three of Jaxon’s friends appear and stand behind him, and Grace diffuses the tension by insisting that she and Macy go to join the fight. The group disperses, leaving Grace and Jaxon alone, and Jaxon tells her to make sure she builds an arsenal of snowballs. Grace jokes that he should take his own advice, and he tells her that he’s been trying to build up her defenses with her, before abruptly walking away once more.
Chapter 19: We Came, We Fought, I Froze
Flint teases Grace about Jaxon, trying to warn her away from him, but she quickly dismisses him. Flint, Macy and Grace team up, and the event rapidly turns into an all-out brawl. As the game intensifies, Grace, Macy, and Flint work together to build a snowball arsenal and defend each other. Grace is really enjoying herself for the first time at Katmere, especially when it seems like there’s a real chance her team might win. Macy and Flint suggest climbing the trees to gain a further advantage, and she’s astonished by the unexpected and extreme athleticism they both show when climbing. However, the wind quickly picks up, leading to Grace losing her balance, cracking the branch she’s standing on and falling from the tree.
Chapter 20: There’s Never a Parachute Around When You Need One
In a dramatic turn of events, Flint breaks Grace’s fall from the tree, grabbing her in midair and cushioning her impact on the snow. She’s worried that he’s hurt, but he seems fine, although he has a funny look on his face. The fight stops and Jaxon appears, furious that Grace put herself in danger. He and Flint have another moment of barely concealed enmity, and Grace notices a tiny earthquake happening as they stare each other down. Jaxon insists on escorting her back to the castle, and when Grace stands she discovers she’s hurt her ankle. Jaxon unceremoniously picks her up and carries her back.
Analysis
Before this section of the novel, the reader had only really been able to see Alaska from Grace’s viewpoint through the windows at Katmere. When she sets out to explore the grounds in Chapter 14—safely wrapped in many hot pink layers, of course—it is part of a new acceptance of her situation and a desire to make the best of things. The snowball fight is an extension of this urge to expand her horizons and suggests that she’s beginning to drag herself slowly out of the paralysis of her grief. Grace knows she needs to make new friends and try and keep the ones she has, and to do so she needs to participate in Katmere life. She thinks this to herself repeatedly when she’s considering Jaxon’s advice to do the opposite and stay out of Katmere’s operations entirely.
By this point in the novel Grace is becoming uncomfortably aware of her feelings for Jaxon. She feels nervous about what he’s up to when they aren’t together and is startled by the rush of negative feelings she gets when she sees him in heated conversation with Lia. She muses that the moment makes her feel like a prey animal, and she has to stop herself from running “like a startled rabbit” when she’s spotted. Grace has no context to understand their Jaxon and Lia’s pre-existing relationship, aside from knowing that Lia’s previous boyfriend had died in the last year. She feels shy and rejected after she turns away from their moment of intensity, and then horribly embarrassed when Jaxon catches up to her and tries to gloss over the discomfort. Of course, she’s quickly mollified to learn that part of the reason Lia was so upset was that her departed ex was actually Hudson, Jaxon’s brother. However, as Grace quickly realizes, this is about to open up an entirely different can of worms.
Grace and Jaxon’s relationship in this section remains complicated, partially because of Jaxon’s inexplicably frosty and brutishly defensive responses to any probing questions. Grace feels as though she’s constantly walking on eggshells, because anything she says could cause him to make one of his signature rapid departures. Jaxon also appears to be frustrated, as it seems as though he’s not used to having people disobey his advice, or his orders. He’s too proud to admit that he’s jealous of Grace’s friendship with Flint, and isn’t yet able to disclose the real reason why Katmere’s social scene is so intensely divided. The two are cautiously circling around each other, and the tension between them is ratcheting upwards.
Although the magical backgrounds of Grace’s classmates aren’t revealed until later, in this chapter we also see the rivalry between the various factions of the school being laid out far more explicitly than it had previously. What seemed like nasty looks and chilly silences between groups actually turns out to be a deep mutual aggression and distrust. Instead of co-existing in barely veiled dislike, during the snowball fight the different cliques of the school break their assigned team formations and begin to fight for their respective social groups. Grace is confused to see this, but she's not as surprised as she would have been previously, having seen all of the difficulties that occur when any of these clearly defined groups clash.
In particular, the tension between Jaxon and Flint comes to the fore, as the two have several moments that almost read as territory-staking. Jaxon doesn’t participate in the snowball fight, but when Grace is injured, he appears immediately and attempts to force Flint and everyone else away from her. Even though Flint breaks her fall and saves her from being seriously hurt, Jaxon is enraged and insists on walking Grace back to her room. She regretfully leaves with Jaxon and Macy, but not without failing to notice that as they walk away, none of the other students move a muscle. Grace makes a reference to the novel Alice in Wonderland here, as she wonders to herself whether “that last plane ride with Philip was really a trip down a very big rabbit hole.” Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Grace has found herself in a new world occupied by creatures who play by rules that seem strange and violent to her. She’s beginning to feel strongly that the danger Jaxon warned her about might be real.
