Silver Elite: Chapter 45

[penwalla]

It can’t be.

There’s no way Cross Redden is Wolf.

There’s no conceivable way that could be possible.

He’s not Modified.

But his mother is.

I’m almost certain she is, but that doesn’t mean anything. A Mod parent is not guaranteed to produce a Mod child. Hell, two Primes aren’t even guaranteed to produce a Prime child. The mutation caused by the biotoxin lies dormant in some people. Anyone could be born like me, like her.

Why is Wren pausing to explain the science of Mod inheritance at this critical moment? If it doesn't mean anything, why is that what you are focused on?

This scene is bewildering. This is the reveal the book has been building up to. This is THE TWIST. And what does Francis do? She immediately skips past it and fast forwards a few days. We don't even get Wren's reaction while she's in the room with Cross. No trying to conceal it from him, no confrontation. We skip ahead to a montage of Wren wondering who else knows about Vinessa.

Wren then looks Vinessa up on the internet, a thing that we have explicitly told is monitored. Naturally, there's nothing of use, because why would there be.

Wren decides she needs to figure out if Cross is Modified before talking to him about it, and...that's it. We don't get any emotional reaction from her at all, nothing about their relationship, about how this affects her feelings for him. No going over old conversations with Wolf. No wondering if Cross knows she is Daisy. No, instead we move onto Wren wondering if Lash and Ivy, two people who do not matter, are dating.

Halfway through the meal, I realize Lash is only eating with one hand. His other one is resting under the table on Ivy’s knee.

I try to keep my eyebrows from soaring. Is that a thing? Because I’m not entirely against it. I like Lash. I think he’s a good man, aside from the fact he’d strangle me with his bare hands if he knew I was Modified.

Insane that Wren has so much grace for the people who literally want to genocide her kind but none for the Uprising.

Cross invites Wren to come to his quarters, and she goes, wearing Betima's jeans. There is something disturbing to me about Wren happily wearing the clothes of this woman she barely knew who was brutally murdered. She acts like it's a tribute to her, but they were practically strangers and Wren explicitly now has other clothes.

Okay so, after pages of nonsense, we get the reaction Wren should have initially had.

I want him to be Wolf.

So badly. Because other than Uncle Jim, Wolf is the one person I trust most in this world. I don’t want him to be a voice in my head anymore. I want him to be this living, breathing man. Muscle and flesh and bone and a beating heart beneath my palm as I press it to his chest.

Wren hardly ever thinks about Wolf, by the way. I don't think she ever thinks about him unless she is trying to speak to him in that moment. And she and Wolf never share personal information, so it is objectively not true that she trusts him more than anyone else. Lyddie arguably knows more about Wren than Wolf does.

Cross wants to fuck while they make eye contact, which Wren normally refuses to do. I assume because he knows she is Daisy and he's probably always known and he's probably going to resolve this conflict himself by telling her that so she doesn't have to actually figure out a way to find out on her own.

When I close my eyes again, he rumbles in disapproval. “No. Don’t hide.”

It’s unbearable. It feels like he’s staring into my soul, and I don’t want to know what he sees. I just don’t. I betrayed Tana. Let them take her away so my cover wouldn’t be blown. I let them kill Jim. Stood there and watched him die. I—

“Hey. Where are you?”

I blink.

“Come back,” Cross whispers. “We’re right here.”

I normally don't recap the sex scenes, but this one is the first where it actually serves an emotional purpose, which makes it actually decent. This is the first sex scene in this book I have read without wanting to crawl out of my own skin.

So Wren and Cross are lying there after sex, and Wren is trying to figure out if he is or isn't Wolf. She starts telling him about this nightmare she has where she is drowning. Now, I think from context that this is something Wolf told Daisy earlier in the book, but I can't remember anything anymore, so who knows. Let me look it up.

Okay, we got one line much earlier in the book about Wolf having a recurring nightmare about drowning, but none of the details. So this is technically foreshadowed but I think we really needed details about this nightmare before this point in the book, because Wren doesn't tell us what she is going to do before she does it. Naturally. Gotta create suspense in this book by withholding information, since the author is incapable of creating it with pacing and writing style!

He moves so fast that I don’t see it coming.

In a heartbeat, I’m flat on my back with a knife at my throat.

Cross’s eyes are wild. Blazing. Every muscle in his body coiled tight as he peers down at me and snarls, “Who are you?”

Interesting.

So I will give the book credit, I did not think Wren would actually solve this problem on her own, so good for her. However, I am still going to complain about the pacing of this. I think it's not great to immediately pivot away from the reveal in the next chapter, do a montage, and then resolve at the end of the chapter. There's not time to build any tension nor does the book make an effort to build any.