Chapter summaries Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil V. E. Schwab

Carnevale’s Deadly Game: Chapter 33 Analysis

!!! SPOILER WARNING !!!

This page contains detailed plot analysis for Chapter 33 of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Do not read further if you wish to avoid major spoilers.

Summary

Matteo escorts Sabine and Alessandro into a lavish Carnevale ball at the Palazzo Ducale, where masks and music replace the chaos of the Piazza San Marco. Sabine, hollowed by hunger, scans the crowd for a victim, but Matteo stops her. He proposes a cruel game: she must select a single human prey, stalk and seduce them over the coming nights, but she cannot take their life until Lent. The prize is the secret to claiming any place as her own. Sabine balks at the ten-day wait but, goaded by the challenge, chooses a woman wearing a mask adorned with a gilded lily. Over the subsequent days, her hunger sharpens into an unbearable ache. She tracks the lily’s movements across three nights of festivities, losing her once before finding her again. On the fourth night, Sabine stages a broken shoe to engineer an encounter. The woman, charmed by Sabine’s striking hair, invites her inside. Sabine’s will nearly splinters, but pride holds her back. She refuses and returns to Matteo’s palazzo, where she dreams of the kill. Examining her reflection, she is surprised to find herself physically unchanged, despite feeling starved. Meanwhile, Matteo’s own restraint frays his relationship with Alessandro, who suffers from both creative block and his lover’s cold distance.

Key Events

  • Sabine enters the Carnevale ball, overwhelmed by sensory cacophony and her own hunger.
  • Matteo explains the rules of his game: stalk, seduce, but delay the kill until Lent.
  • To motivate her, Matteo offers the prize of learning how to magically claim a place.
  • Sabine selects a woman in a gilded lily mask as her prey.
  • For three nights, Sabine loses and then rediscovers her target.
  • On the fourth night, Sabine engineers a meeting with a broken shoe; the woman invites her in, but Sabine resists the urge to feed.
  • Sabine dreams of the kill and wakes to find her physical appearance unchanged.
  • Matteo describes his own strategy of control and admits to avoiding Alessandro’s bed to resist temptation.

Character Development

  • Sabine: Her predatory instincts clash with a newfound competitive drive. The chapter forces her to confront the difference between immediate desire and delayed gratification. Her memory of being a human girl named María, savoring the last cherries of the season, reveals a century-old struggle with self-restraint. Her choice to refuse the woman’s invitation proves she values winning Matteo’s game—and the knowledge it promises—more than momentary satiation.
  • Matteo: He reveals a darker, more pedagogical aspect of his monstrous nature. By framing the hunt as a “game,” he tries to teach Sabine that “we need less than we think.” His admission that certain urges cannot be understood or satisfied by his human partner, Alessandro, underscores the isolating chasm between immortal predator and mortal lover.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Control vs. Desire: The chapter’s central tension. Matteo’s game redefines hunger as something to be directed and prolonged, not merely sated. Sabine’s physical pain and the image of the cherry on her tongue make the struggle visceral.
  • The Mask: Literal Carnevale masks symbolize hidden identities, but also the duplicity required by immortals. Sabine’s peacock mask contrasts with Matteo’s crow and Alessandro’s swan, marking them as “mismatched birds.” The act of removing her mask to bait the gilded lily is a calculated performance of vulnerability.
  • Hunger as Hollowing: Sabine’s thirst is consistently described as an absence—a “too-still space behind her ribs,” a body “hollowed” by sunlight. The fear of physically wasting away is subverted when she finds her reflection unchanged, suggesting the starvation is spiritual as much as physical.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter marks a critical turning point in Sabine’s education under Matteo. It moves beyond simple survival or moral debate and into a direct, prolonged test of willpower. The wager restructures the narrative’s pacing, transforming the hunt from an act of immediate violence into a slow-burn psychological game. It also deepens the reader’s understanding of immortal physiology and psychology: Sabine’s unchanged reflection reveals that the true cost of her hunger may not be physical decay, but the mental torment of restraint. The strained dynamic between Matteo and Alessandro further illustrates the collateral damage of these inhuman appetites, setting the stage for future conflict.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. Question: Why does Sabine refuse the gilded lily’s invitation to enter her house, despite being overwhelmingly hungry? Answer: Her refusal is driven primarily by pride and the desire to win Matteo’s game. She is certain he would sense the “failure” on her, and she refuses to give him that satisfaction. The promised prize—the arcane knowledge of how to claim any place as her own—is more valuable to her than immediate feeding.

  2. Question: How does Matteo’s treatment of Alessandro during the game parallel the lesson he is teaching Sabine? Answer: Matteo abstains from Alessandro’s blood and even his bed to “avoid temptation,” mirroring the restraint he demands from Sabine with her prey. This parallel illustrates his philosophy that control means knowing your limits and avoiding scenarios that test them. It also highlights the lonely, ascetic dimension of his existence, as certain “urges” must be managed in isolation from his mortal partner.

  3. Question: What is the significance of the memory Sabine revisits, of being a girl named María holding a cherry in her mouth? Answer: The memory is a metaphor for her current struggle. As a human girl at the end of a season, she tried to savor the last fruit by resisting the urge to bite down, but could never last. This memory frames her current ten-day fast not as a new challenge, but as a very old one, now attempted with a predator’s sharpened senses. It connects her present vampiric hunger to a deeply human experience of wanting to prolong a fleeting pleasure.

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