Buckle in... spoilers ahead. Celaena has been in Wendlyn for a few weeks, in the city of Varese for ten days, and has already decided she won’t be doing the job she was given by the king - to kill the King of Wendlyn and his son and steak their naval defense plans. Instead, she’s tormented by the loss of Chaol, who she finally gave the key to her biggest secrets and left in Rifthold; and of Nehemia, whose people she has made a vow to free. She’s still haunted by some of the last words she ever heard from Nehemia, as Nehemia called Celaena a coward. And so, Celaena spends her day drinking and spiraling. She’s given up the plan she had to free the people of Ellwye for Nehemia, destroy the Wyrdkeys, and kill the King of Adarlan. First, she needed to find Queen Maeve (who was alive when the Wyrdkeys were first created) and find out what she knows of the keys. But that was before Celaena saw how beloved Galan Ashryver was of his people, how they cheered when he passed. Before she knew that together, Galan and Nehemia could have done so much more than she could ever do. The spiraling started when she realized that the world would never know what the two of them could have accomplished since Nehemia is dead, murdered while Celaena was distracted. Of course, now Celaena will also need to find a way to protect Chaol’s and Nehemia’s families from punishment when the king realizes she’s failed to complete her mission. If only she could stop drinking. Celaena is feeling disgusted with herself after being mistaken as a vagrant when she hears a laugh from down the alleyway. She sees a full fae male warrior and suddenly she feels something other than disgust… fear. He tells her he’s taking her where she has been summoned, she believes that to be to Doranelle and Queen Maeve, and that she can call him Rowan. Meanwhile, in Rifthold, Chaol is also struggling with the knowledge he now has of Celaena’s true identity and of Dorian’s secret powers, and he’s constantly stressing about keeping those secrets hidden. When Aedion Ashryver, one of the king’s generals and Celaena’s cousin, is called back to Rifthold, Chaol is grateful that Celaena is already gone. One look at the two of them together and there would be no mistaking who Celaena was, the two cousins could be twins. Dorian is looking at Aedion very closely, and Aedion is being an ass like normal, when Chaol feels Dorian’s power start to cool the air and decides to get Dorian away. He noticed that Aedion also wears one of the king’s black rings, which Chaol believes gives the king control over the wearer, like Perrington and Roland. And as if he doesn’t have enough to deal with, Chaol is supposed to go back to Anielle with his dad in a few weeks. Manon Blackbeak is in Fenharrow and men have finally come to kill her, believing they can kill the pretty Crochan witch that has been living amongst them. But Manon is only posing as a Crochan witch, her iron teeth and nails grow out as she kills the three men. She’s here to hunt down any Crochan witches in the area as heir to the Blackbeak Witch-Clan. Too bad she hasn’t found any yet. Dorian is called to his father’s chambers where Dorian asks about Aedion. The king explains that he made Aedion a general in Terrasen because Aedion is angry and afraid, and he has already lost so much. He does not want to kill his own people, but Aedion knows the king would not hesitate to do just that, and that fear helps Aedion to keep the people of Terrasen in line. Also, the king wants Dorian to entertain Aedion this afternoon. He and Aedion go for a walk in the gardens where Aedion trips Dorian, who cuts his hand on a rose bush. At the end of their walk, Dorian’s hand is still bleeding, so he goes down to see the healers. He meets Sorscha - who has secretly been in love with Dorian for years. Who has been working in the castle and who healed him, Chaol, Celaena, and Fleetfoot after Celaena opened the portal – not to mention various other suspicious injuries. Sorscha assures him that the healers sometimes “forget” to write things down, especially if the injuries are particularly strange. Rowan leads Celaena toward Doranelle on horseback, silently. They reach an outpost called Mistward, which Celaena estimates is about halfway to where Queen Maeve sits in Doranelle. Imagine her surprise to find Maeve waiting for her in Mistward. Maeve briefly tells Celaena that she did not want her parents to marry since mixing the bloodlines of Brannon and Mab could be volatile, but that Evalin had promised to allow Maeve to see her daughter once she was born, a promise that Evalin broke. This is the first time Maeve has seen Celaena, even when she went LOOKING for Celaena in her special way. She wants to see Celaena use her magic, but Celaena won’t. Maeve agrees to tell Celaena about the keys but only if Celaena can hone her magic and prove she is worthy of the answers. She can stay here and train until Rowan believes she is ready, then Celaena can come to Maeve in Doranelle for her answers. Maeve introduces Rowan as a prince, descended from Maeve’s sister Mora as Celaena is descended from their other sister, Mab. Rowan gives Celaena a small room in Mistward and tells her she starts training the next day, and she’ll be helping in the kitchens. Manon is summoned by her grandmother. She stands with twelve other witches around her, her coven, known as Manon’s Thirteen. Manon leads her own coven and is her grandmother’s heir, her grandmother is the High Witch of the Blackbeak Clan. She and her coven accompany her grandmother as she meets with a duke. Manon can smell a man in one of the two prisoner carts and a woman in the other, both smell people wrong somehow. As they walk away, the meeting over, her grandmother gives Manon instructions. Send three members of her coven in each direction: south, west, and east. Gather all the Blackbeak covens and tell them to meet in the Ferian Gap, which leads to the Western Wastes - the original lands of the witches before the land was cursed and the Ironteeth were driven out by a Crochan Witch Queen. In fact, tell any of the other Ironteeth clans they come across to gather. The King of Adarlan has made them all an offer: fly his wyvern for him and when they have completed his task, the witches can keep the wyvern to hunt down any other Crochan witches and take back the Western Wastes from the mortals who now claim it. Celaena’s training starts. In the morning, she is able to wash up and Rowan shows her to the kitchens where she meets two Demi-Fae, Fae with mortal mothers with Fae fathers, named Emrys and Luca. She introduces herself as Elintiya. After the breakfast rush but before she starts on the mountain of dishes, Celaena finds out that most people in Mistward or the other outposts don’t ever make it to Doranelle, although anyone with more than average talent is taken to Maeve. There just aren’t many of those people anymore. Although some who can shift decide to stay at the outposts instead of Doranelle anyway, like Emrys’ mate Malakai. Rowan is one of Maeve’s six trusted warriors, and reportedly the meanest of them, so Celaena is going to be in for it. Luca can’t read the old language, but he’s heard that Rowan’s tattoo that starts on his face and likely travels down his chest, spells out the names of the people Rowan has killed. The witch clans gather in the pass, the Blackbeak clan being the last to assemble fully. After a few tense days of breaking up fights between members of the different clans, the three High Witches and the fifty most powerful clan leaders meet. Manon, heir to the Blackbeak clan, sees Petrah, heir to the Blueblood Clan - clan of mystics and religious zealots; and Iskra, new heir to the Yellowlegs clan - who keep their teeth and nails on display at all times (the old heir got promoted after Baba Yellowlegs was killed - though none of the witches knows by whom). Manon notices that the black bridge connecting the two mountain peaks smells wrong, like the duke’s prisoners, though no one else seems to notice. They cross the bridge and meet five men on the other side. Inside these caves, the men breed, raise, and train wyvern for the king. The men bring out a bull wyvern, Titus, and Manon sees talons on his back legs and poisonous barbs at the end of his tail. She decides right then that Titus will be hers. After she cleans all the dishes, Rowan starts training Celaena. He takes her to an empty area and tells her to shift, but she’s never learned to control her shifting. He tries to goad her into shifting by fighting her but gets nothing. He pins her and tells her she’s a coward who has hidden for ten years while innocents were slaughtered, the word coward finally gets a reaction from Celaena, but not the one he wants. Instead, she falls into a deeper well of despair and can’t even stand up again. When she’s recovered, he takes her to the barrow-wights, tombs of faeries with iron doors made to keep the wights inside. But some of the doors are missing. If she doesn’t want to learn, then she can go into the barrow and face the wights instead. If she makes it to the other side, Rowan will take her to Doranelle. Celaena starts to walk through, passing barrows and sometimes feeling like something inside is watching her. She does not run, believing that whatever is watching might enjoy the chase. But when she gets toward the edge of the barrow-wights, she sees something different: a man, but not immortal. Something terrifying. She feels something breathing behind her and decides to run after all. As she turns to flee, she turns into the memory of finding her parents’ bodies. she walks past that memory directly into the memory of finding Nehemia‘s body. She feels the man wrap his arm around her waist, she elbows him and runs away, seeing Rowan at the edge of the field and desperately trying to make it to him. When she gets to him, she feels the magic flooding her body as she shifts and then passes out. She wakes up in the woods, having been carried there by Rowan. He reiterates that she has no control and asks what she saw within the land of the barrow-wights. She won’t tell him about her memories, so Rowan explains that he does not know what the man was. It was something he’s never seen before. He takes her back to Mistward and shows her to the bathing chambers, where she can clean up before going to bed. She’s expected in the kitchen in the morning. Chaol meets with his father. He requests more time before joining his family in Anielle, citing the need to find an adequate replacement for Captain of the Guard, which is a real concern but not his primary focus. Celaena told him that the rebels Asher and Nehemia were with were looking for a way to break the king’s hold on the continent and Chaol wants to find a way to bring the magic back - for Celaena and Dorian. In addition, Aedion is acting strangely, never where he says he will be and throwing parties he doesn’t even attend, and Chaol wants to know why. His father points out that he could go to the king and have Chaol terminated but he won’t, knowing that Chaol will now owe him a favor. He gives Chaol two more months, no more. Sorscha is called to Dorian’s room to patch up his hand and split lip. He asks her where she’s from (a small village in Fenharrow) and she explains that her parents brought her to Rifthold before her village was burned, though her parents were later killed during the purge of immigrants in the city. Dorian apologizes for that and asks why she didn’t leave after they were killed. But she had nowhere else to go. He then asks why Sorscha didn’t turn him or his friends in for their previous activities, she tells him that the world needs better people. And they seem like better people. She fears she might have overstepped but the next day, Dorian sends a messenger to her to ask what her village’s name was. He wants to add it to his personal map of the world. The witches begin to train on the wyvern and continue to fight amongst themselves. When it comes to Manon’s coven’s turn to fly, they manage it spectacularly, cementing their previous position as best fliers, from back when they had brooms… and magic. After the day is done, her grandmother calls Manon in for a meeting. She wants Manon to lead all the Blackbeak witches when they fly to war, and when they have war games to decide who leads all the witch clans, she expects Manon to win that position as well. And when the war is over and the High Witches invariably turn on each other, she wants Manon to find a way to hold on to her control of the clans and become queen of them all. She gives Manon a warning. Make sure her second follows her everywhere. If someone managed to kill Baba Yellowlegs, none of them are safe. Celaena meets Malakai and continues to train with Rowan, and by train, I mean she sits in the cold wind while he demands that she shift, and she refuses to do so. Not that she could, even if she wanted to, her body is beaten both by hitting the stones during their fight and by shifting the day before and she cannot call to her power. That night, she finally decides to have dinner and sneaks down to the kitchen, just in time to hear Emrys start to tell tales of dark faeries. After the first story is done, they ask “Elintiya” to tell a story from Adarlan, but she says no and leaves, seeing a white hawk watching from the hallway. She knows that the hawk is Rowan in his animal form – all Fae have a second form, Celaena’s being her human skin. Dorian has taken to training with the guards and seeing Sorscha afterward. But this time, she asks him how Fleetfoot and Celaena are doing and talk turns to Fleetfoot’s injuries. She asks him what caused the injuries, and he gives her as honest an answer as he can. But then, Sorscha gets cold, and Dorian realizes he is losing control of his magic. Before he can leave the room, a cold rush of wind comes in - scaring Sorscha, slamming the door, and causing a small bit of ice. When Sorscha recovers from her fright, she covers for the prince by tipping over her table and ruining all her work. People are gathering in the hallway after hearing the commotion, which Sorscha explains was caused by her slipping and grabbing the table, knocking it over. When everyone disperses, Sorscha tells Dorian that she will not reveal his secret but maybe one day he will trust her enough to tell her more about it. Until then, she will start researching for possible ways to suppress it. Chaol goes to Aedion’s next party and follows Aedion as he slips away. He sees as Aedion meets with a cloaked figure in the slums of the city but quickly realizes that he was not as stealthy as he thought as someone threatens him with a dagger. It’s one of the rebels, who brings Chaol inside. Chaol sees the old man from the first time he was kidnapped, the younger man who guarded him when he was kept as a prisoner, and Aedion. He realizes that Aedion is not under the king’s thrall. Aedion explains that when the ring was given to him, he could tell through the senses gifted to him through his Fae heritage that the ring was not good. He had a replica made, which he now wears, and he threw the real one into the sea. Chaol realizes that Aedion is telling the truth at the same time he realizes that there’s only one way for him to leave here alive. Chaol tells the other that Aelin is alive, but he will only speak to Aedion about her. Aedion has been in Terrasen pretending to do the king’s bidding since Terrasen fell. His band of men (called the Bane) is full of rebels and sympathizers. Their battles are usually staged, ending with a field of dead that rise up and discreetly return to their families once the battle is finished and the sun goes down. Aedion came to Rifthold to track down the rebels working in the city and was surprised that he already knew them. Ren of Allsbrook, which is part of Terrasen, and his grandfather Murtaugh. Aedion knew them when he was younger but thought they were dead, in reality they had barely gotten away alive from the attack of Allsbrook when Terrasen was conquered. He and Chaol talk alone, Chaol tells him about Celaena. Aedion has never minded when people called him Adarlan’s whore, knowing that he was doing everything he could to protect the people of Terrasen, but hearing that his cousin and his princess, who he had sworn to protect, is still alive makes Aedion feel like an actual traitor. He and Chaol make a bargain. Celaena still can’t shift, and after she is done helping in the kitchens, she spends her days with Rowan… waiting to shift. Sometimes he makes her chop wood, other times he doesn’t. In the evening, they both continue to listen to Emrys tell stories. Until one day she decides to be proactive and asks to watch Rowan shift, to see how it’s done. He shows her, but he isn’t nice about it. When she gets mouthy, he traps her against a tree and bites her. That sets her off and she finally manages to shift again. She erupts with her wildfire, but Rowan quickly smothers it with his ice and Celaena shifts back to her mortal form. Rowan says he won’t bite her again; you don’t bite the woman of other males – meaning Chaol (he only did it because he thought it would spur her to shift), then tells her to shift again, but she doesn’t. He tells that she’s worthless, she’d be a bigger hero if she had actually died and become a martyr to her people, but she just stares ahead with empty eyes. He’s not saying anything that she hasn’t already said to herself. When they return to the keep, she decides that she’s going to leave, the whole thing is a giant waste of time. Rowan meets her as she starts to walk away into the woods and asks her if she always runs when things get difficult. She tells him that she made a vow to free her friend’s people, who can’t do it herself because that friend is now dead, and Rowan asks Celaena what about her own people. Who will free them? She responds that they’re better off without her and then walks past him. She repeats to herself several times as she walks that it was a good decision to leave, she later finds a spot to rest for the night in a small cave and makes herself a fire. It’s only when she’s woken in the night that she remembers walking to Mistward with Rowan and the rule that he had: no fires. Celaena creeps out of her little cave and off to the side, where she sees three figures looking around. Not human, not Fae, they’re skin-walkers. It starts to rain, and Celaena’s only hope is to run, hoping she can outrun the skin-walkers until dawn, they can’t abide sunlight. It’s quickly clear that her plan is not going to work, she’s not fast enough. She curses herself for wallowing too deeply and not paying attention when Rowan was talking, when he told her skin-walkers had been seen in the area recently. She’s grabbed and pulled behind a tree, she fights back until she realizes that it’s Rowan who had grabbed her. He tells Celaena that she needs to shift, or the skin-walkers will catch her. Shifting is their only chance of survival. She digs deep within herself but finds nothing. The skin-walkers get closer, and Celaena realizes that Rowan is willing to die with her. That he didn’t let her go out into the wilderness alone, even if she thought he had. She can’t be responsible for his death as well as her own and that thought makes her able to shift. Rowan gives her instructions. There’s a river nearby, run until you reach it. Do not stop. Do not look back. He gives Celaena two daggers and they’re off. When she stumbles, getting used to her Fae body, Rowan helps her stay upright and keep going. A fourth skin-walker comes out of the woods, but Rowan cuts it in half. Celaena can see that it isn’t dead, just waiting to be put back together. She can hear the skin-walkers getting closer, she can hear them taunting her, but she can see the break in the trees, and she keeps running with Rowan just ahead of her. One of the skin-walkers tells her that the river won’t save them, and Celaena realizes what she must do. As she jumps, Celaena yells at Rowan to shift into his hawk form, then she explodes with wildfire as the skin-walkers follow her over the edge and down to the river. She incinerates them, and the forest on either side of the river also catches fire. Once she’s on shore and back in human form, Rowan is putting out the fires in the forest, she asks why her shifting is so important to him. He explains that shifting scares her, it takes away her control, and control is everything. Without control, she could burn herself up or hurt the people around her. But today, she did not immediately release her fire when she shifted, like she has in the past. Today, she used her fire on purpose well after the shift, although she still released too much at once. She realizes that he’s right and when he tells her to come back to Mistward and continue to train, she follows him. Manon and the other witches select their wyvern mounts. Asterin, Manon’s second, chooses a stealthy female while the Blueblood heir chooses the biggest female. Iskra and Manon both want Titus, but when they bring Titus out, Iskra tells Manon to go get him if she wants him so badly and pushes her into the pin with the wyvern. Manon grabs the ledge and breaks her fall; she hurts her ankle but doesn’t die (always a good thing). That’s a short-lived relief; not only has Titus seen her, he sees her as easy prey, she needs to get to the gate where the wyvern enter and exit the pit. She runs for it but doesn’t make it to the gate, Titus swings his tail at her and throws her to the other side of the space, right in front of the bait wyvern that is chained to the wall. Titus snaps at the other wyvern, indicating that Manon is HIS snack, but the bait wyvern looks at Manon differently. Not as if he wants to eat her, but like he wants a chance at Titus. She grabs her sword and breaks the wyvern’s chains, he goes for Titus immediately and is holding his own against the massive wyvern, even though the barbs on his tail have been removed. Manon makes it out of the gate while Titus is distracted but turns to watch what happens. The bait wyvern is fighting smart, but Titus is uninjured, and his barbs are intact - the bait beast will not be able to hold him off forever. Manon makes a split decision, running back into the pit and cutting off Titus’ tail, allowing the bait beast to kill him. She claims the beast as her own, naming him Abraxos. He has never flown, and his wings have been badly damaged, but she knows that Abraxos wants this as badly as she does. She gets a lot of flak from her grandmother, but deep down, Manon knows she’s made the right choice. Chaol takes Aedion to Elena’s tomb where they can speak without being overheard. He tells Aedion everything he knows about the king and Wyrdkeys and Celaena and what she’s done… and what she is. Problem is, Dorian has been searching down in the tomb for answers of his own and comes down while they’re talking, he overhears everything. He is furious that neither Celaena nor Chaol trusted him with this information, but Chaol thinks it’s okay to tell Aedion. Even if Dorian’s safety is one of the reasons Chaol sought out the rebels, it hurts that Chaol wouldn’t tell him. And Dorian is torn about where his loyalties lie, knowing that Celaena will want retribution against his father. He does not agree with his father, he doesn’t even like his father, but he’s still his father and can he just stand aside as they plan for his removal and possibly his death? Dorian promises not to reveal their secrets but wants nothing else to do with their arrangement. After seeing Chaol, Aedion meets with Ren and Murtaugh. He has not yet revealed to them where Aelin currently is or who she is posing as. They discuss the Terrasen court - or what remains of it. There is Ren, plus the Lord of Suria, Sol, and his younger brother Ravi. Plus, four more that Murtaugh and Ren have heard are still alive but constantly move around to avoid detection. Countless children of the families of the court who disappeared in the first few weeks after Adarlan’s conquest, who may be in hiding, or may be dead. That is all that is left of Orlon’s, now Aelin’s, court. If they’re going to rebuild it, they better get to work. Celaena starts to thaw emotionally, even smiling at a few faces she recognizes in the hallways of Mistward, shocking them before they smile back. During training with Rowan, she asks what the ruins are that they use as a training space - an abandoned temple of Mala: Goddess of Light, learning, and fire. He thought it might help her to be there, and her magic does behave a little differently while she’s there, but she still can’t shift on command. The next day, he takes Celaena somewhere new. To see a body, found near a river. A body drained of life, mouth frozen in a scream, with no visible wounds other than dried blood coming from the nose and ears. Celaena recognizes the smell on this body – it matches the smell of the creature she saw at the barrow-wights. Rowan explains that they don’t know what that creature is, but they’ve found three other bodies like this one. Yet none of the dead have been reported as missing. They were all found in the woods, near the water. Celaena explains about the memories the creature made her see and Rowan tells her that when she was running towards him, Celaena was pale, and her freckles were gone. Perhaps it wasn’t just fear that made her that pale, but that the creature was feeding off her fear, draining the life from her. They burn the dead woman’s corpse in a gesture of respect. Chaol and Aedion meet again, this time in Celaena’s old apartment that she’d left to Chaol. It’s Aedion’s turn to talk. He explains what happened when the magic disappeared. He was already imprisoned but he felt a tremor when it happened and through the window, he saw birds rushing away. Then a second push, and he saw birds from much further but not flying. It was as if they had been pushed by some unseen force. And just like that, magic was gone. Ren and Murtaugh had similar experiences though they were much further south than Aedion. And they’ve found a merchant recently who spoke to them about his own experience. He was with the Lord of Xandria when it happened, and in the Red Desert they felt three waves instead of two. One from the north. One from the southwest. And the final wave from inland. Dorian and Sorscha continue to work together, Sorscha has found a forgotten workroom that she uses for their experiments. They discuss the iron doors that they used to use on the jail cells to contain magic users before the magic disappeared. Dorian theorizes that the iron in his blood may make it so he cannot access the magic for too long or else he passes out. This gives Sorscha an idea, Dorian takes a large dose of iron and then tests his magic. It makes him physically sick, but the magic does not come. They’ve found a way to keep it in check! In his excitement, Dorian kisses Sorscha, which he has wanted to do for some time but has refrained. She acts embarrassed afterward and he does not repeat the act though he wants to, he thinks that maybe she doesn’t. Respectful! Good on you Dorian. Manon sets people to watch Iskra and her coven. Then, she starts working with Abraxos. On the first day they work together, Manon scratches one of the mortal men who handles the wyvern that decided to test her. When she licks his blood from her nail, it tastes terrible: foul and wrong. Just like how this place smells. But she knows that some of her coven have been bleeding the men and they haven’t mentioned anything about the taste. She introduces Abraxos to a saddle, then has iron barbs made to replace the ones that had been removed from his tail, and iron teeth to replace any lost or broken ones. Soon she will fly with him, hopefully they will have enough time to practice before the war games. We meet a few more of her coven. There is Asterin, her second, and Sorrel, her third, as well as the twins Faline and Fallon, her Shadows (what she calls her spies) Edda and Briar, the beautiful, disarming Vesta, and Lin, who will tear your face off if you use her full name (it’s Linnea). Rowan takes Celaena to a village of healers who administer to anyone who makes the trek there, Fae, Demi-Fae, or mortal. The next day at dawn, the two of them leave for an overnight trip. Rowan tells Celaena that they are going to run to a village twenty miles away, the closest village to where another body was found. Celaena will need to shift to make the run. Rowan tells her to use the anger that she feels toward whatever creature is killing these people and make herself shift. She is finally able to reach inside of her and find her magic, forcing a shift, and she doesn’t lose control of her fire either. They will run through the woods to the village, and she feels herself rum faster than she’s ever gone before, realizing that this Fae body is not something to be afraid of. But when they get to the village, none of the villagers want to speak to two Fae. After having villager after villager refuse to speak to them or answer their questions and shopkeeper after shopkeeper close their shops in their faces, Celaena finally manages to charm one of the shopkeepers by buying some food. Then she buy some books. After a while, the shopkeepers realize that they are not there to do anything nefarious, just to investigate. Unfortunately, none of them know anything anyway. They didn’t even know anybody was missing and they haven’t heard of anything strange happening. Although, one fisherman did find a bunch of knives in the river, he threw them back as an offering to the sea God. That night, Rowan and Celaena sleep in the woods, and Celaena has a dream of her parents and Aedion. It is a memory of one time when she lost control in the library and burned some books. Afterward, she had overheard her parents discuss training her to use her magic, but her mother refused to let her train for fear of Maeve. The next morning when she wakes up, Rowan tells her to light the fire with her magic. She manages to light the fire - and the surrounding area of the woods as well. But, on the plus side, she did not shift back to a human when she did it. Sorscha fine tunes Dorian’s dosage of iron and they make it into a tonic he takes daily. When she delivers it, he tells her he wants to thank her for her help. Feeling reckless and maybe a little selfish too, she kisses him. Chaol and Aedion leave the palace separately to meet Ren and Murtaugh, and Chaol reveals that to get Celaena to Wendlyn, he had to agree to go back to Anielle. Aedion tells Chaol that he doesn’t know who his father was, his mother never told anyone and now she’s dead, but at least he doesn’t have Chaol’s father. That’s when they see Ren stumbling toward them, bleeding from a chest wound. Ren tells them eight men cornered him, he killed two and managed to escape from the others, but they have followed him. Aedion asks Chaol and Ren to hide behind some barrels where they won’t be seen, and he proceeds to fight better and more gracefully than anyone Chaol has even seen before. Aedion kills all six men and reveals the sigil on their cloaks, the royal symbol of a wyvern. But Chaol does not know these men. Aedion goes further, telling them that the eight men were not alone. Others are going door to door right now, looking for Ren. They’re going to need a place to hide. Ren tells them where to go, an opium den where the madam is familiar with him. She takes the three of them upstairs and they quickly bind Ren’s wound and dress him in clean clothes. She tells Chaol that the men are already next door and passes them three opium pipes, using makeup to make their look sallow - the rest of the act is up to them. Both Chaol and Aedion play their parts, convincing the king’s men that they are high, and the king’s men do not realize who they really are. Once the men move on, the madam cleans and stitches Ren’s wound closed. They’ll need to move Ren soon. In the meantime, Murtaugh arrives and tells Chaol and Aedion everything they know about the day magic disappeared. They believe it was a spell in three parts. One wave forming a line from Rifthold to the Frozen Wastes. One from the Frozen Wastes to the Deserted Peninsula. And the last back to Rifthold, creating a triangle. All three points of the triangle are now occupied by the king’s soldiers. Chaol asks where they can move Ren so he can recuperate but there’s nowhere for them to go. Ren and Murtaugh have been homeless and on the run for a decade. Chaol lets them use Celaena’s apartment. Manon is given an ultimatum by her grandmother. Get Abraxos in the air or get lost. The next day, she takes Abraxos to the plateau and she’s told by the handlers to go off the east side - it’s where they train the new wyvern that have never flown before. The west side to an untested wyvern means certain death. But Abraxos is stubborn and not interested in flying today, so Manon is forced to jump into the saddle and force him to his feet. He’s so shocked that Abraxos starts to rear up and panic, backing closer and closer to the eastern edge until his foot goes off the edge and they fall. At the very last moment before hitting the ground, Abraxos opens his wings and flies for the very first time. That afternoon they fly in formation with the Thirteen. Celaena’s training turns to controlling her fire now that she can shift at will. And the next time she listens to Emrys’ story hour, she requests stories about Maeve. Maeve was one of three sisters: Mab who turned into a swan, Mora who turned into a hawk, and Maeve, who was too wild to settle on one beast. While her sisters took mortal husbands and gave up their own immortality, Maeve never took a mate. There is a tale that there was a warrior long ago that Maeve loved, but he died before he could give her his ring, and that ring was later lost. Maeve has never come close to having a mate since then. As they listen, Celaena sees a giant wild cat approach, Rowan goes to meet him. When the wild cat takes his Fae form, he asks Rowan for a favor and Rowan disappears inside with him. Celaena wonders what they’re doing and decides to take the warrior some dinner. She sees Rowan tattooing the other warrior in his room. He demands that she leaves and follows her afterwards. They argue and Celaena gets upset, he left her downstairs alone and she has no one else. He explains that there is nothing he can give her. Nothing that he wants to give her. And as soon as she’s done training, he can be rid of her. She is nothing to him and he does not care. She walks away thinking about how nice it would have been to have someone know all her secrets and still not hate her. She had thought Rowan might have been that person. She sinks back into herself. In the kitchen the next day, Emrys shows her a new gift he got from Malakai. A dagger from Ellwye, like Nehemia’s, and being reminded of her friend breaks Celaena. She screams at them to leave her alone, that she doesn’t care about them, and runs away. When Rowan comes to find her later, after he finishes tattooing the names of the men the Fae warrior has lost onto the warrior’s back, he only finds Emrys in the kitchens. Emrys asks what Rowan is doing to Celaena. Why he keeps breaking her down when she needs someone to lift her up. Emrys once knew Evalin and he liked her, she fought for the Demi-Fae. Celaena could be the start of a better world, if she were only given the chance. Rowan finds Celaena and tells her to come with him, he thinks he’s finally beginning to understand her. He takes her to a cave that is littered with weapons, a lake sits in the center of the cave. Rowan has frozen the lake; Luca is now sitting in the middle of it with a chain around him that is submerged in the ice at the other end. She needs to shift, get to Luca, and find a way to free him without losing control. It’s rough, but with Rowan reminding her that she is in charge of her magic, not the other way around, Celaena gets to Luca and melts a small hole in the ice that’s just big enough to pull the chain out. As she finishes pulling the chain out, she realizes something Rowan did not. This lake was not empty. Something is coming to the surface, something big and with a lot of teeth, and it has seen them. She yells at Luca to run. It takes him a minute, but eventually Luca does just that. She gives Luca a head start then follows. Rowan keeps freezing the ice, so it stays thick beneath their feet as they run, which is good because the beast is trying to break it and is nearly succeeding, causing the ice to shudder so hard that Celaena and Luca are thrown from their feet. When she gets closer to shore, Rowan throws Celaena one of the discarded swords (guess we know now what happened to the wielders) and she scoops it up as she runs. When she unsheathes the sword, it’s beautiful - she can tell just from a glance - and a ring tumbles out of the sheath. She manages to snatch the ring from the ice without stopping and grabs Luca by the back of his shirt, towing him off the lake and out of the cave, safe from the monster in the water. The beast screams in rage but cannot pursue them. Celaena sends Luca ahead to Mistward and turns on Rowan. She gets a couple good hits in, telling him to never again endanger another person for her training. She’s already lost enough people, including Nehemia - who orchestrated her own death and chose to leave Celaena alone to spur Celaena into action. When she’s done, Celaena sees that she burned Rowan on his wrists where she grabbed him, through his shirt to his skin, which is now blistering. She apologizes but he tells her never to apologize for defending others. They go back to Mistward and Celaena forgets to shift back to human form, revealing her secret. But it’s okay, everyone already guessed. She and Rowan get a talking to from Emrys, and he tells them what he knows of the beast in the cave. A warrior who once stayed in that cave later came through Mistward. He had learned that the beast is from a different world. It was once cursed by a powerful warrior, though the warrior’s name has since been forgotten, he carried a golden sword and wore a golden ring - probably a coincidence and not at all related to the sword Celaena took and intends to keep. The warrior took one of the beast’s eyes and cursed him to forever live below the mountain. That night, Celaena takes Rowan a salve for his burns, still feeling bad about hurting him. He tells her that his tattoo tells the story of his greatest shame: when he lost his mate Lyria over two hundred years ago. She had been pregnant and killed while Rowan was out pursuing glory, he was not there to save her. After her death, Rowan went mad for a decade until Maeve sought him out. He made a blood oath to her, partly thinking that he may die in her service and rejoin his mate. He still hasn’t recovered from Lyria’s death, and maybe he never will. But perhaps he and Celaena can try to find their way out of their grief together. Word has gotten round that Aedion and Chaol are “drinking buddies” but before meeting Chaol one night, Aedion checks on Ren. Ren gets vulnerable and tells Aedion that he’s not sure if his people will ever accept him again, if he could lead them after the things he’s done, but Aedion thinks they would be proud of Ren for fighting for his people and for his queen. Ren asks if Aedion wants to be king, but all Aedion wants is to see Aelin again at least once. Aedion meets with Chaol at a bar where Aedion quickly becomes a favorite of the other patrons. After a while, he announces that he’ll pay the full tab of whoever has traveled furthest to be there, a man comes forward from Noll - in the Deserted Peninsula. The man tells the two of them that he was just released from service in Noll and called back to Rifthold. He tells them that the locals in Noll hated the soldiers because years before, the king had taken a legion and sacked a temple at the top of the volcanoes that were sacred to the locals. He tells them that it is dark in Noll all the time, and the people and soldiers get terrible headaches, and some of the soldiers even go mad from those headaches. Officially, when the headaches break someone, that person would be killed with an arrow, but in reality, they would hit themselves in the head with a rock until they died. As if their heads hurt too much to deal with, as if they just wanted to release whatever was inside. The story makes Chaol think of the headaches that Roland and Kaltain Rompier would complain about. The soldier tells them about the black tower with no door that the King had built, that all the soldiers were there to protect - for whatever reason. He tells them that he knows there is a similar tower located in Amaroth, he heard soldiers from there talking about it. Including the black tower in Rifthold, that marks three towers in the three locations that they believe mark the three points of the triangle. Manon trains with her Thirteen, teaching their wyvern and learning from them. She gives an order - neither the witches nor their wyvern to eat food raised on the mountain, the sheep are ruined just like the men. They quickly outpace all the other covens, but Abraxos’ wings still are not as strong as they need. She gives the rest of the Thirteen two days off to take care of their needs and blow off steam, while she goes to seek out the Stygian spiders. She wants to use their silk to mend Abraxos’ wings. She finds four spiders and asks them for ten yards, it is brought out to be inspected. The spider in charge offers a barter: Manon’s beauty in exchange for the silk. Manon requests to inspect the silk herself and brings it out of the cave to the cliff in order to see the silk in the light. When the spiders get too close to the edge, Abraxos sweeps them off the cliff and they take the silk. They repair Abraxos’ wings but when Manon tries to get him to make the crossing, Abraxos is terrified and refuses. Other witches, including Iskra, are watching but Abraxos will not move, so Manon tells the handlers to lock him in a cell where he will be miserable. As Manon walks away, Iskra decides to give Abraxos a lesson in following orders and gives him two lashes from a whip. Manon snaps and attacks Iskra, eventually being drug away by Sorrel. Luckily, Iskra survives the attack. The next day, Manon finds Abraxos and finds Petrah in the hallways of the wyvern stables. Petrah heard that Manon’s coven don’t allow their wyvern to eat the food provided by the handlers, so Petrah’s wyvern asked Petrah to bring Abraxos a goat haunch. When Manon says the wyvern don’t talk, Petrah just asks if she’s sure about that. Manon doesn’t let Abraxos eat the goat leg, not trusting Petrah. Celaena helps Rowan to fix his tattoo after his wrists heal from her burns and they ask each other questions while she works. Rowan’s parents are dead, he has no siblings but a ton of cousins. Celaena’s mother almost died when she was born, so she has no siblings and only one cousin, whom she loved like a sibling. Rowan asks if Aedion would fight with or against her, but Celaena doesn’t want to ever find out, secretly she thinks Aedion must hate her. Rowan asks why she wants to free the world from the King of Adarlan and save the people of Ellwye but won’t take up her crown and save her own people. Her crown is just another set of shackles that she doesn’t want. Rowan asks why she stayed with Arobynn for so long and the answer is twofold: 1. She wanted to be anonymous and 2. She wanted to be able to hurt her enemies one day. At the end, Rowan and Celaena decide they’re still figuring out their relationship, whatever it is, and agree to give each other the space to do that. Chaol goes to Dorian, who just snuck Sorscha out of his room (they spend their nights together, but they haven’t slept together yet). Chaol needs Dorian’s help with some tests. Dorian calls Chaol out, saying that Chaol still sees his magic as a problem, and would still change Celaena if he could - and that is a problem. The world has changed, their relationships have changed, Chaol needs to keep up. Dorain knows what he’s decided about Celaena, and he hopes that Chaol will choose the same when it comes time - regardless of whether Chaol is in Anielle or Rifthold, or elsewhere. Later, Chaol meets with Ren and Aedion as they wait for Murtaugh to return, he’s been near Skull’s Bay for the last few weeks. Return Murtaugh does, with bad news. The pirates in Skull’s Bay have been hearing a strange roaring noise and some even saw a beast on one of the islands around the bay. A beast shaped like a man, but pale and wearing a black collar that controlled it somehow. And it was terrifying. They believe that the creatures are being made there on the island, that there’s more than one of them, and that a Captain Narrok took some with of the creatures with him when he left to go to Wendlyn. Even worse, Murtaugh would bet that they’re being made in more places than just that one island. Later, Aedion and Chaol sit by themselves and Aedion echoes what Dorian told Chaol earlier. Chaol has not yet chosen a side, wanting to sit in the middle and hope for the best, but hopefully Chaol will choose to fight for what is right whether he is in Rifthold or in Anielle. The next morning, Chaol finally tells the king that he’s returning to Anielle. Celaena keeps working on controlling her fire, never reaching anything close to the end of her magic but exhausting herself, nonetheless. As she trains, Rowan tells Celaena stories of his life and through them, Celaena slowly comes to hate Maeve. When Beltane comes, Rowan tells Celaena to keep three fires at the festival burning steadily all night. Two fires should burn low to allow people to jump over them, as is tradition, one fire needs to be a huge bonfire. He stays next to her the whole time, to make sure she doesn’t lose control and to keep her steady, but he doesn’t realize how tired she is. She starts to burn out - her magic starts to roast her from the inside, and she has no idea - being beguiled by the flames. He forces Celaena to release the Beltane fires and quickly realizes she cannot stop the fire within her from burning. Rowan quickly finds some healers at the celebration, and they carry her to the baths within Mistward. They put her in the cool water, but her body is so hot that it makes the water boil. Rowan uses his power to keep it cold so Celaena can get the fire out of her. When she’s no longer in danger of burning but still in a great deal of pain from the burning that was already done, he and the healers get her a tonic. When Rowan comes back in, he sees the scars on her back from Endovier for the first time and she finally tells him that she was enslaved for a year. Rowan turns and leaves without a word. Celaena believes he thinks the worst of her, that she deserved everything she got in Endovier, but he is furious instead. Maeve knew about Celaena’s enslavement and did not tell him, and he said unforgivable things to a woman who had been through so much. I would argue that you maybe shouldn’t say terrible things to people regardless of knowing their backstory, but that’s just me. He flies toward Doranelle to demand answers from Maeve but quickly comes to his senses. He can demand answers, but Maeve doesn’t have to give them, and she has his blood oath. If she believes he is getting too involved, she could deny his return to Mistward. And Rowan needs to protect Celaena. So, he turns around and goes to Celaena’s room, where he finds her shivering in her bed. He takes her to his room instead and sleeps next to her, tucking her into the quilt and asking her to tell him how she was sent to Endovier and how she got out. She talks until she falls asleep. She will stay in his room from now on, he will get her a cot so she can sleep on the floor. Spoiler alert: she never gets a cot. While recovering from her near burn out, Celaena asks if there’s only two options when the magic ends: burn out or death. Rowan tells her he’s seen a few examples of carranam, a bond between two compatible Fae in which one can send their magic to the other to replenish it, as long as they’re sharing a blood connection at the time. Carranam are incredibly rare because it’s difficult to find someone compatible, you don’t even know if you’re compatible until you test it out, and it takes an immense amount of trust that your carranam will not take your magic by force. After days of being coddled in Rowan’s room, he finally has Celaena come out and practice again. He explains that she was nowhere near the end of her power when she almost burned out, but she let the magic take control and do what it wanted instead of the other way around. It’s time for Celaena to learn how to shape her magic, how to fight with it. They’ll start with defense. Her goal is to make a shield of fire to stop his ice daggers as he throws them. It takes her all day, but she finally gets it. Then she progresses quickly, even deciding to practice on her own. Manon is told by her grandmother that a Crochan witch was caught spying - by Iskra (shame on Manon). She also tells Manon that she and Abraxos WILL make the crossing the next day. And that if Manon doesn’t win the war games, her grandmother will kill her. And I thought my grandma was bad! While Manon and Abraxos prepare to make the crossing, every witch comes out to watch. Abraxos refuses to move again, this time not out of fear but out of anger and issues a growl of challenge to Manon’s grandmother. The other Thirteen prepare to fight their way to Manon, should her grandmother give the death order. The witches hear a thrumming start deep inside the mountain, the bait beasts below encouraging one of their own - Abraxos. The Thirteen, then the rest of the Blackbeak clan, begin to clang with the wyvern. When Petrah starts clanging as well, the Bluebloods follow suit. Manon mounts Abraxos and they successfully make the crossing. Suck it grandma! Rowan takes Celaena to see another body, the third since she almost burned out, although she wasn’t allowed to visit the other two. This one, though, fought back against whatever killed it. They can tell by the state of his fingers and fingernails. When Celaena cleans underneath one fingernail, she finds a black substance that she immediately recognizes by its smell. She smelled something similar in the hidden crypt in the palace at Rifthold, where she and Dorian trapped the beast that was once a person. Had there been more of those beasts, were the others released into the world and that is why she only found one creature among all those doors? She burns the body and that night; she and Rowan stay out to hunt for whatever is killing the Demi-Fae. As they wait, Celaena does some thinking. She is slowly coming to terms with the fact that her relationship with Chaol is over. She asks Rowan if it’s true that when you find a mate, you’d rather hurt yourself than physically hurt your mate, Rowan confirms that it is. But when Celaena found out that Chaol had kept information from her and Nehemia was dead, she nearly killed him. She would have killed him, if Dorian hadn’t stopped her. She knows deep down that she and Chaol aren’t mates, but she asks Rowan for his opinion anyway. When he asks if she wants the truth, she decides that she doesn’t. Not yet. They stay in the forest overnight and scout the area in the morning. They find an entire legion of Adarlan’s soldiers - two hundred men and three of the creatures. Rowan takes his hawk form and does some up close reconnaissance, even entering a cave the creatures are using for something. Captain Narrok is in that cave. He’s no longer a man, but a monster wearing the man’s skin. He and the other creatures have been capturing the Demi-Fae and experimenting on them until they die, then dumping their bodies. Celaena believes they brought their ships as close to shore as they could then swam through the reef to avoid detection, it’s probably why all those weapons were found in fishing nets. The host of soldiers is heading straight for Mistward to either capture the Demi-fae or kill them all, she and Rowan rush to get to the outpost first, they will need to prepare. As they leave, Rowan senses one of the creatures nearby. The creature shows up behind Celaena. It wears an onyx collar around its throat. She whirls to stab it with her daggers, but the creature recognizes her as the one who got away from him before - her magic gutters and she drops the daggers. She’s enthralled by the creature immediately. As Rowan tries to pull her away, recognizing the creature as a fight they can’t win, Celaena fights against him. Rowan bites her and the pain brings her back to herself; the two of them run - but they won’t be able to outrun the creature. Celaena has an idea… they separate with Rowan leading the creature on a wild goose chase as Celaena searches for other creatures in the forest, she’s looking for something specific. She finds the skin-walkers and leads them straight to the king’s creature. Celaena and Rowan climb a tree and wait until the screaming from the ensuing fight stops. They believe the king’s creature was killed but its body is gone, the skin-walkers will have taken it to use. They alert Mistward of the coming army and the creatures that come with it. That they’re controlled by the king and more may be coming. The fortress prepares as best they can, laying traps and making sure the wards are working properly, evacuating everyone possible and willing to go, making sure the hidden tunnel beneath the fortress is able to be used, and calling for aid from Wendlyn - who promises to send however many they can. But Rowan does not ask Maeve for help. He does not think she would send it; she may even call him back to Doranelle so he cannot help either. Celaena tells Rowan that Maeve does not deserve him and even if he won’t admit that, she thought he needed to hear it, at least. But Rowan is bound to Maeve, so there’s no point in telling Rowan that Celaena wishes she could keep him with her... forever. The next day, Celaena gets terrible news. A slave girl in Calaculla killed her overseer and started a riot. The king sent soldiers in; they killed every person inside. He then sent soldiers to Endovier and did the same. She is too late to save any of them. The king announces what he’s done and shocks everyone around him. Dorian is desperate to send Sorscha away for her own safety, finally understanding Chaol’s motivations with Celaena, but she asks him to come with her. He’s afraid of what will happen if he leaves the palace, leaving his father unchecked by anyone and his brother to become king one day, and he wants to help those in Rifthold fighting against his father. Sorscha refuses to leave, choosing to stay and fight with Dorian. Chaol continues to plan to go to Anielle, he will try to find out the king’s plans in that area and fight from there. Aedion grieves his people killed in the camps. So do the commoners of Rifthold. When the orchestra performs that night to a packed theater, they wear all black and play the songs of each country that lost people when the labor camps were purged. The next day the theater is shut down and none of the performers or the conductor are seen again. Rowan tells Celaena that Wendlyn isn’t sending troops to Mistward after all. She’s not surprised. Terrasen had asked them for aid too, and they didn’t come then either. But Rowan reveals that the king has attacked Wendlyn too, they can no longer spare the soldiers. So, the residents of Mistward continue to prepare. Anyone who refuses to leave but who won’t be fighting travels to the healers’ camp to help there. And Rowan calls for the other Fae warriors sworn to Maeve. He doesn’t know how many, if any of them, will come. Celaena claims him as her friend, officially. Rowan wakes Celaena up. He did a sweep of the perimeter and saw Narrok’s soldiers on their way, avoiding all the traps laid for them. He thinks that Mistward has been betrayed. When the creatures arrive, there are three of them. Two that Narrok brought and the one that they believed the skin-walkers killed. That’s disappointing, and it does not bode well. If one of the creatures could not be brought down by several skin-walkers, what chance do they have to defeat three of the creatures? Then someone announces that the king’s forces are using the secret escape tunnel to come into the fortress, they’ve definitely been betrayed. Rowan is needed in the tunnel, but Celaena remembers that when she used her fire in the barrow-wights, the creature balked from it. She’s going to try to buy them some time. And to do it, she’s going to meet the creatures outside the wards. She fights them - all three of them at once - with her fire and with the golden sword she took from the cave. But the creatures recognize both and they call her out. She’s neither Athril, who previously wielded Goldryn (the sword), nor is she Brannon, who once wielded the wildfire. And that’s when Celaena realizes - these are not creatures made by the king. These are creatures who have fought and seen these weapons before, back when the Valg had originally broken into this world through the Wyrdgate and were banished by Maeve, using their own power. And later, when the demons who’d been trapped rose up and were again defeated by Elena and her father Brannon. These are the Valg, once contained but freed by the king, who foolishly believes that he can control them. Celaena fights for as long as she can, when she starts flagging, she sees something that gives her strength. Five Fae soldiers: a black wolf, a white wolf, an osprey, the giant cat she saw before, and a very tall Fae male – Maeve’s other sworn warriors. Using her wildfire, Celaena makes a bridge for the Fae warriors through the Valg’s darkness, so they can get into the fortress and help. They join Rowan in the tunnel (Mistward was betrayed by the scout leader Bas, who is now dead), Rowan runs to find Celaena as soon as he sees the other warriors. He sees Celaena near the gate and she is not doing well. He prepares to go help her but is stopped by the cat, Gavriel, and Rowan sees one of the creatures pull Celaena into his arms. Her flames go out and the darkness swallows her. All Celaena sees is darkness and two beds. One bed containing the bodies of her dead parents, one holding her dead best friend. Her pain slowly grows, becoming overwhelming. She can hear Nehemia call her coward. She replays their last terrible conversation. She sees Chaol’s look of disgust when he saw her Fae form. She sees all the people she’s killed. They form a line, whipping her like she was whipped in Endovier. Then Nehemia takes a turn with the whip. Then Sam. All the people she’s killed. All the people she didn’t save. The Valg princes continue to feed off Celaena’s worst memories, but they only take little sips as the Valg prince within Narrok’s body instructs them. They can’t kill her; she’s a treasure the king will want. Celaena relives the first time she met Dorian - when he came with his father to Orynth, the capital of Terrasen. The King of Adarlan had stared at Aelin during the initial introductory meeting, to the point that Aelin’s father made a comment about it. Then later at dinner, the king continued to stare. During the dinner, Aelin started to feel as if something was burrowing in her brain. It was so painful. She reached out to her mother for help, but the thing wheedled and wheedled until Aelin lost control of her power, turning into a tower of fire. Her mother had to use her own gift of water to put the fire out, a gift that Celaena inherited but has been unable to access. After Aelin’s fire is extinguished, she looks at the king, who is looking back at her - this time he is smiling. Aelin’s parents take her to their country manor, for her own safety and the safety of everyone else. They are joined by Lady Marion, her mother’s best friend, but Marion’s husband and daughter Elide stay behind in Orynth. That night, Aelin’s mother gives her an amulet to protect her and help her sleep, clasping it around her neck. The Amulet of Orynth, an heirloom of Terrasen passed down through generations. That night there is a storm, though only Aelin is woken by the storm. She creeps into her parents’ bedroom and closes their open window for them, stopping the rain from continuing to pour in, before climbing into their bed herself and sleeping between them. She thinks the water from the rain has made their bed wet, but she realizes in the morning that they are dead, their bed is soaked in their blood. They were already dead when Aelin went to their room. Marion finds their bodies first (it’s her scream that wakes Aelin). Marion takes Aelin downstairs as the rest of the household goes for help or flees. Marion is with Aelin as a man comes to the house, Marion is the one who hides with Aelin and gives Aelin her instructions: run to the footbridge at the river and go to the next farm, hide there and wait for a member of the court to find her. Do not come out for anyone she does not know. Marion pushes Aelin out the back door but stays to meet the man, to buy Aelin some time. Aelin starts to run but turns around and watches as the man kill Marion. He then comes after Aelin, who runs (helped by some of the small folk) and gets to the footbridge just before the man cuts her down. The man is on horseback, he won’t be able to follow her onto the bridge without leaving his horse. She jumps onto the bridge but plummets into the river instead, the man already cut the bridge down. Aelin is washed up miles away and found, nearly frozen, by Arobynn, becoming Celaena. It is Marion’s sacrifice that Celaena hides from, even now. That is the sacrifice she cannot talk about, the death she cannot get over. Marion gave up everything: her husband, her daughter, her own life, to save Aelin and she would be so disappointed with what Celaena has done with her life. Celaena is lying at the bottom of her own soul, she has nothing left to hide but she sees the past version of herself. Princess Aelin holds out a hand to Celaena, encouraging her to get up. Aelin is joined by Sam and Nehemia, her parents and great uncle, all encouraging Celaena to get up. When the Valg princes realize that something odd is happening, they turn back to Celaena, and her parents and great uncle turn against her again. But Celaena has had enough. She grabs onto Aelin’s hand and stands up. Rowan is being held back by Lorcan and Gavriel. He is desperate to get to Celaena, he is starting to hear his dead mate call to him, screaming for mercy from the darkness of the Valg princes, but he knows that the sound is not real and is still willing to go into the darkness to find Celaena. As the three of them watch the spot where Celaena disappeared, Rowan’s friends debating on knocking him out to stop him from rushing outside of the wards, a golden glow rises from the dark. Celaena - having come through her darkness less broken than when she went in. All three of the princes are there now. She unleashes her full magic and incinerates two of them. Rowan can tell that she’s close to reaching the end of her magic, causing her to burn out, and breaks free of the other warriors to run to her. He and Celaena have bonded during their time together and he cuts his hand, knowing that they are carranam and willing to give her his power. His wind and ice will do nothing to the Valg, let Celaena use his power to wield her wildfire. She cuts her hand as well, and they clasp their bleeding hands together as Rowan claims her, too, like she did for him. She uses Rowan’s power to kill the last two princes, although not before Narrok sends a vision of the future that she cannot block. When she’s done, only the onyx collars are left. Chaol finds Dorian with Sorscha in her workroom and he asks for Dorian’s help. Chaol tells both Dorian and Sorscha everything that he knows about the king and the Wyrdkeys. He and Dorian conduct an experiment in the tunnels below the palace. Chaol sets up three small crystals equidistant apart in a triangle with a bowl of water in the center. He sprinkles lines of sand between the crystals. Dorian connects the crystals with his power and freezes the water in the bowl. Much simpler than what the king did, surely, but the same basic principle of how the king froze magic. When Dorian knocks over one of the crystals, the water ripples back to a liquid. Could it be that easy to break the spell? They realize that the space between the crystals, the lines of the triangles, cut through the dead islands, the Ferian Gap, and Morath. The dead islands: where Narrok’s creatures were raised. Morath: where the king send Kaltain and Roland and anyone else with magic in their blood. And the Ferian Gap, where there have been rumors of wingbeats of some huge creature - and where Nehemia sent guards that never came back. Where we know, though Dorian and Chaol do not, that the Ironteeth clans have congregated for their wyvern. Celaena recovers, and Rowan’s friends slowly leave. Last is Gavriel, who warns Celaena and Rowan to be ready. By the time they come to Doranelle, the others will have already given their reports to Maeve, and they cannot lie to her. Rowan takes Celaena to a pool where she thinks about the Amulet of Orynth. She knows that she had it on when she went into the river the night her parents died, but she’s always believed she lost it in the river. But now, she thinks that the amulet protected her on her long journey down the river, making sure she didn’t drown. She believes that it holds the last Wyrdkey, been used by generations of Terrasen’s rulers to protect their people. A Wyrdkey, which only gives power, it is up to the wielder to decide how to use it. The King of Adarlan has chosen to use it to for his own gain, while Terrasen’s rulers had always chosen to do good - although she doesn’t believe they knew about the Wyrdkey. She believes that Brannon had the amulet made and then placed the key within it, never telling another soul. The amulet, which Celaena now believes Arobynn took from her when her found her on the riverbank. Celaena tells Rowan the full story of Aelin, including Marion’s sacrifice, and she summons a droplet of water. She’s finally able to face herself and call her mother’s magic. It’s time for them to go to Maeve. Celaena is ready to become Aelin again. Before they leave for Doranelle, she tells Emrys and Luca that when she reclaims her lands, the Demi-Fae will have a home there. That they and Malakai, as her friends, will be a part of her household should they wish to join it. Sol of Suria has sent a hesitant message to Ren, inviting him to visit as an old friend and testing the waters. Ren, Aedion, and Chaol are discussing their plans when Murtaugh shows up and tells them that Aelin has returned and killed some of the king’s creatures. He will leave for Suria now, Ren will stay in Rifthold. Murtaugh will make sure that every corner of the country knows of Aelin’s return, encouraging them all not to give up. Aedion is happy to hear about Aelin but knows he will be watched even closer now. Dorian, as her friend, is terrified for Aelin but stays close to his father, knowing that Aelin will need all the help she can get when she eventually returns to Rifthold. He’s prepared to give her any help that she needs. It takes several days but Aelin and Rowan eventually reach Doranelle and see Maeve, who is flanked by the twin wolves. Maeve tells Aelin nothing of value about the Wyrdkeys. They cannot be destroyed, only put back into the gate, which Aelin already knew, and Maeve does not know how to put them back. Maeve does not know where the keys went either, only knowing that Brannon had taken them from her and took them across the sea to hide them. She does tell what she knows about the Valg princes, which again isn’t much, but points out that the king is likely opening the portals for small periods of time right now. Long enough for a prince to enter the world and inhabit a body. However, if he had all three keys, he could open the portal at any time and use the princes as well as lesser Valg demons - and they wouldn’t need living bodies to inhabit. He could raise an army of the dead for the Valg to possess. She tells Aelin that the princes are hard to kill but it’s not impossible, though that was how Brannon became king, after all. He has been born unclaimed by either mother or father, but the goddess Mala took a liking to him and blessed him with her fire. He used his wildfire to hold the Valg princes back and to eventually contain them, winning him his kingdom. But that is why he and all his descendants are marked with the strange mark that has glowed on Aelin’s forehead whenever she has fought the Valg. It is the mark of the unclaimed, though Maeve does not know why it glows. She does suspect that Aelin knows where the last key is, but Aelin remembers how Maeve said that Brannon “took” the keys from her. She notices that Maeve’s entire palace is made of stone, there’s not a twig in sight, to protect her from fire. Aelin refuses to tell Maeve her hypothesis about the key, so Maeve has the wolves turn to their Fae forms and calls Lorcan and Gavriel out, as well. The others hold Rowan while Gavriel whips him, until Aelin can’t handle it anymore and sets the world on fire. She doesn’t hurt anyone, but she shows Maeve how powerful she is. She reveals what she has pieced together of Maeve’s past. Maeve had a love, Athril, who was Brannon’s closest friend, and who died without ever giving Maeve his family ring. Aelin has discovered that Brannon and Athril went together to steal the keys from the Valg, but Maeve went to steal the keys from the two of them. They fought Maeve, and she killed Athril. Brannon took the keys and fled, disguising his tracks and his plans as best he could. He put Athril’s sword and ring in the cave with the lake creature, whose eye Athril had once removed. When Rowan found the sword, he knew who it belonged to and gave it to Aelin for her to barter with: for allies, for soldiers, for whatever she may need. Aelin decides to use the ring to barter for Rowan’s freedom, although she will be keeping Athril’s sword to use. Maeve is uninterested in giving Celaena what she wants - even for the ring that she has desired for so long. So, Aelin shows Maeve the vision Narrok sent to her. A vision of Aelin with all three keys, loved by her people. Maeve releases Rowan, who immediately pledges himself to Aelin (though Aelin does not require it and even tries to dissuade him before accepting him formally into her court). When Rowan is done pledging himself, they’re told to leave. Manon and the Thirteen fight in the war games with Manon leading the whole Blackbeak clan. All three clans have their own egg to protect while simultaneously capturing the eggs of the other clans. The Blackbeaks quickly take the Bluebloods’ egg and turn their attention to the Yellowlegs’ egg. The Blackbeaks open a path to the egg, but Petrah (with her coven) sweeps in out of nowhere and grabs the egg for herself. Manon, kicking herself, watches as Iskra’s wyvern wraps its jaws around the neck of Petrah’s wyvern. When Iskra’s finally lets go, Petrah is in her saddle unconscious and her wyvern, Keelie, is dying. Abraxos dives after Keelie to save Petrah. Manon jumps from Abraxos onto Keelie (using a move she stole from Asterin) and removes Petrah’s restraints. Tying Petrah to her own body, Manon jumps, and they are caught by Abraxos. She saves Petrah, not really for Petrah but to honor Keelie’s efforts to save her rider knowing that she was going to die anyway. In the end, the Blackbeak clan wins the war games, Manon is named wing leader of all the witches, and still her grandmother is furious that Manon saved Petrah instead of continuing as a killer with no heart - as they train all the Ironteeth witches to be. As a “prize”, the clan matrons bring the captured Crochan witch out for Manon to kill and to take her cloak, replacing her old stolen Crochan cloak - which has become disgusting in her time working with Abraxos. The Crochan tells Manon that the Crochans pity the Ironteeth and what their leaders have made them, saying that the matrons are using her as a reminder to Manon. When Manon looks at her grandmother, she knows that it is all true. She kills the Crochan anyway, a mercy after weeks of torture, and takes her cloak. That night, Manon rides off to be alone with only Abraxos for company. Chaol hasn’t told Aedion or Ren about the potential discovery that he made with Dorian, but even so, he starts working with Aedion on a plan to get Dorian and Sorscha out of town. Chaol will ask the two of them to accompany him for the first couple days of his trip to Anielle and use that time to convince Dorian not to return to Rifthold. Aedion warns Chaol to be careful, even in Anielle. The king will be suspicious of him when it’s discovered that Celaena is Aelin. Chaol makes suggestions for his replacement as Captain of the Guard, but the day before he’s to leave, both he and Aedion are called before the king. Dorian hears about this and rushes to Sorscha, desperate to get her out of the castle and to safety but he’s too late, Amithy grins as she announces that the king wants to see them, too. When they arrive, they are greeted by the king - with his secret police. The king knows that Chaol and Aedion have been meeting, though he doesn’t know why, and he knows that Dorian is somehow romantically entangled with Sorscha and that they’re possibly planning to run away together. He asks Dorian if he’s been working with the traitor, he asks why Aedion and Chaol have been meeting, but Dorian doesn’t know anything. Dorian does tell his dad that his city is a festering hole and calls him a bastard, which I approve of although perhaps it’s not the right time. The secret police have a sword to Sorscha’s neck, trying to illicit information from Dorian, and neither Chaol or Aedion are willing to fight back for fear of getting Sorscha killed. In fact, Aedion confesses to being the traitor. He protects Chaol, explaining that Chaol found out Aedion was working with rebels and has been blackmailing Aedion for information to give to his father - so that his father could at some point give it to the king to curry favors. The secret police put Aedion in chains, but then the king reveals the real traitor. It was Sorscha all along. She has been passing letters to a friend outside of the palace for as long as she has worked there and accidentally left one in her trash when she was interrupted by Dorian while writing it. One of the king’s informants found it. Sorscha explains to Dorian that she was never supposed to fall in love with him, but she did anyways. Dorian pleads for her life, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. His father has Sorscha killed. Aedion is then dragged away. Chaol and Dorian are both stunned, Chaol into inaction and Dorian into disbelief. Then Dorian starts screaming. Chaol grabs his sword, declaring that he will no longer work for the king. There is only one true king here, and that is Dorian! The king orders his men to kill Chaol and they almost succeed, but that is one death too many for Dorian. He unleashes his power to protect his friend. I’m so glad they’re friends again. It’s then that Chaol realizes that this was many traps laid in one. A trap for Aelin, who will undoubtedly come to save Aedion; a trap for Sorscha to be outed as a traitor; and a trap for Dorian to finally reveal his magic, which his father had suspected he had inside him. Dorian clears a path for Chaol, not expecting to make it out alive himself, but he tells Chaol that when he eventually returns to the palace, burn the whole thing down. Then Dorian and his father fight with their magic. His father has more power - since he has two keys - and he has had more practice, but the king doesn’t intend to kill Dorian. Once he has Dorian incapacitated, he brings out a collar instead. In the meantime, Chaol runs to Dorian’s room for Fleetfoot, who he carries to Elena’s tomb where he collects Damaris and the books about magic before using the secret exit. He tells Mort where he’s going, in case Aelin comes looking for him. Then he goes to the safe house where Ren is staying. He explains what happened to Ren. Ren is wracked with guilt, he was Sorscha’s contact, and they decide they need to free Aedion. Manon is sent with half of the Ironteeth host to Morath to help Perrington. They leave the next day and are to arrive secretly. The rest of the host will stay in the Ferian Gap under Iskra’s command, Manon’s grandmother will also stay in the mountains. Manon’s grandmother says there is still work to be done there. Chaol goes to the Avery River. He throws the sword that he used as Captain of the Guard into the river, with its golden hilt and eagle shaped pommel. He will never use that sword or hold that position again. Aelin has a plan, and Rowan does not like it. She plans to return to Rifthold as Celaena, track down Arobynn, regain the amulet and the Wyrdkey within it, make sure Chaol is safe and intends to remain that way (although she has given him up finally), and gather what is left of her court. None of this Rowan can help with, since he is conspicuous as Fae and since there is no magic, would be required to either stay in his Fae form or his hawk form for as long as they were there. So instead, Rowan makes it clear he does not like the plan - though he accepts it since Aelin is his queen - and he plans to go to Mistward to help them rebuild. Aelin gets on a boat. She is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, and she will not be afraid.