Okay, this Q&A is a little different, being all from one person and all about Fury’s Kiss. A reader was highly confused (and somewhat hilariously indignant) about that book, and insisted I set the record straight. So I’ve done my best. I’m posting it here because I thought it might help someone else, too. :-)
Question 1) Dorina first saw a child when she was captured. She took her. But then lost her or smth? What happened to her when Dorina passed out?
The child ran off in the chaos surrounding Dorina’s capture by the vamps. She was just a kid, remember? A highly unusual kid, maybe, but a child nonetheless and a traumatized one. She had been trying to get out, Dory got her out, she wasn’t about to stick around.
Why Louis-Cesare didn’t bring the child too?
Because he was focused on Dorina/Dory, not some random child. And by the time Dory was subdued, the kid was gone.
But the most important question – when did all that stuff with the Irin and a girl take place? I take it that it was during a blackout. But since the whole book describes only few days, I can’t put it all together. Did it all happened at once?
No. It was taking place during the whole book.
For example after Louis-Cesare brought Dory home after rescuing her, and that’s why she still had bruises in the morning?
Part of it happened then, yes. Dory passed out, LC took her home and healed her as best he could. But Dorina is stronger than Dory and woke up soon after he left. And immediately went back out looking for the girl. That’s why she had bruises again the next day when LC remarked on it. He was surprised, because he thought he’d already taken care of them. He didn’t realize: he had taken care of the old ones; these were new.
Only it seems unlikely that the Irin knew Dory when he saved her at Slava’s. So at least some of those events of searching for the child happened after necromancer’s attack but before fey’s attack? When Dory’s supposed to be sleeping?
Yes. That’s why Dory was exhausted the whole book. Because Dorina was letting her get almost no sleep! She kept sneaking out to look for the child.
And if it happened that way, how did she could go back from Dorina to Dory all by herself? And how she could return home if she was Dorina? Besides without anyone noticing?
She’s been going back to Dory from Dorina for centuries all by herself. Why would she suddenly need help now? And it’s her home, too, isn’t it? She IS Dory, after all! Or part of her, anyway. And she has the mental abilities on her side of the brain, remember? She knows more of Dory than Dory knows of her, especially once the breech in the “wall” between them happened.
Or maybe the Irin brought her back home, but the first time Dorina was looking for the child she was alone, she didn’t meet the Irin yet, so how than did she managed to come home as Dorina?
Again, why would she not be able to? The break in the wall had already happened, and all kinds of info was tumbling through. Dorina picked up enough to know where to go to be safe and to heal.
To sum up, the more I think about it, the more questions I have. Could you please tell me the timeline of the story? Chronologically? I would really appreciate it.
No, because I don’t have time. You DO want Masks at some point, don’t you? :-) But if you pay attention, it should be fairly easy to work that out for yourself. It’s mostly chronological already, except for a bit at the end.
2) About the kiss. Whenever the girl kissed Dorina, it’s supposed to help to bridge her divide. But that kiss for sure happened before Mircea tried to see Dorina’s memories, right?
It happened shortly after the scene with Dorina meeting the Irin in the warehouse. They combined what they knew/their abilities to find the child.
So why Dorina wasn’t helping them during the attack on Mircea?
Because all this mental stuff was as new to Dorina as it was to Dory. Remember, the divide might have been breached, but they were still both on their respective sides of the mind. Dory on her side, Dorina on hers. And remember the depth of that chasm Dory saw at the pier? It was extensive. And littered with shards of memory that were all too easy to fall into. It took Dorina time to navigate it, time to understand what was happening. And when the attack came on Mircea, she hadn’t had that time.
And was Dorina there at all? Or the one fighting with Dory and Mircea was only Lawrence? And does that kiss mean that from now on Dory will be sane during her blackouts? that she will manage to control both of her sides? Or did that kiss have only short-time consequences?
Dorina wasn’t there during LC and Dory’s flight through Dory’s mental landscape, nor was she there at the battle with Lawrence at the end (it was him all the time.) He chased LC and Dory, he was the creature in the sky blocking out the stars, he was the one slicing up Mircea. Not Dorina. Who was still wondering what the hell was happening on her side of the brain. Dory assumed that she was fighting her “other half” because she’d always feared and distrusted it. But she never actually saw her attacker, did she? And at the end of the book, Lawrence makes clear that it was him.
As far as your other questions, I don’t do spoilers, so you’ll have to read the next Dory to find out how Dory deals with this new state of affairs!
3) While Dory was fighting Lawrence, was his body there too? In the same room with Dory? Because how did everybody know that it was Lawrence all along?
Dory defeated him mentally. But she still had the connection with Mircea established earlier, and he saw the whole thing. He was just too weak to help her. But that’s what that exchange at the end of the book (“I killed him for you. I know”) was all about.
What happened when Dory passes out after killing him? They found dead Lawrence? How did they find out about mental combat?
They found his dead body. She dueled him mentally. And Mircea showed them what had occurred when he woke up.
Also I guess nobody in the crowd knew what Dory did, but did the senators know? Did they know that she’s gonna be a senator too? If so, why was Louis-Cesare looking antsy?
LC, Marlowe and Mircea knew, because they’re a part of the consul’s “clique”. It came as a surprise to others. LC looked worried because he knew they hadn’t cleared any of this with Dory, and he was afraid of how she would take it. She isn’t diplomatic at the best of times, and in her current state . . . well, wouldn’t YOU have been worried? Lol!
And how did Mircea know that Dory was projecting? Was she projecting to all of them, the senate and the crowd? Or only to whom she was looking at or about who she was thinking? If so, how did Mircea know that she was thinking about the council?
She was projecting to the whole room, which is why Mircea was doing his best to shut her up!