A Torch Against the Night

Days before Rathana, Helene Aquilla arrives at a boathouse at Kauf Prison to confront the Warden again. She finds him with Harper and several hidden guards. Helene demands Elias’s release, but the Warden refuses. He reveals that he knows of her supernatural healing abilities and offers a trade: He will spare Elias if Helene allows him to study her power.

Helene recalls a prophecy warning of the Commandant’s plan to stage a coup. Forced to choose between her mission of finding Elias and the Empire, she decides her duty to stop the coup is more important. Helene abandons the hunt for Elias, resolving to save the Empire instead. She departs with Harper for Antium to warn the Emperor.

In the wilderness outside Kauf, Laia struggles with Keenan’s betrayal while she spends her days tracking Helene’s movements around Kauf. She is discovered by Harper, who cryptically tells her she is the only one who can save Elias. Laia finds Helene and persuades her to provide a map of the prison.

Laia returns to her cave, throws away all of Keenan’s possessions, and practices her invisibility power. After several days, she is surprised to be joined by Afya, who has come to honor her vow to help Elias. Laia confesses her failures, but Afya’s encouragement strengthens her resolve. She focuses on her primary mission: freeing her brother, Darin.

During the three days before Rathana, Elias coordinates a breakout from his cell. Tas acts as a courier, passing messages between Elias and Laia, who lives in the cave and scouts the prison unseen. Meanwhile, prison authorities begin a mass execution of Scholars.

On the morning of Rathana, Tas starts a large fire as a diversion. Elias picks his cell lock, dons a guard uniform, and frees Laia’s brother, Darin, who is unconscious from torture. As they try to escape, they are confronted by a guard named Drusius, whom Elias kills. They are soon trapped in a corridor by a locked door and the spreading fire. Overcome by smoke and poison, Elias collapses and awakens in the Waiting Place, where the Soul Catcher welcomes him. He realizes that he has truly died this time.

On the morning of Rathana, Helene, Harper, Faris, and Dex arrive at the Imperial Palace in Antium. They inform Emperor Marcus Farrar of the Commandant’s plot. As they speak, the Commandant, Keris Veturia, appears, magically transported there by the Nightbringer.

The Commandant calmly denies the accusation of treason but shocks the court by admitting that she poisoned her son. Enraged that Helene has defied him and abandoned the search for Elias, Marcus declares her a failure as Blood Shrike and orders his guards to seize her entire family.

Laia uses her invisibility to infiltrate Kauf Prison during the Rathana chaos. She witnesses Scholars being executed and spreads blue-fire oil to help the diversionary fires grow. She then signals Bee, a young enslaved girl in the kitchens, to start another blaze.

During a lapse in concentration, Laia’s invisibility fails, and the Warden glimpses her. Using the fires as a pretext, the Warden organizes an evacuation but gives a secret order to seal the interrogation block, trapping Elias and Darin. Laia races to the location and breaks the heavy lock, only to find the stairwell beyond consumed by a wall of fire.

In the Waiting Place, Elias refuses to accept his death. Shaeva informs him that the realm has chosen him to be her successor as the Soul Catcher, a role that has the power to resurrect its bearer. Elias agrees to take her place in exchange for being returned to his body. He undergoes a painful ritual that binds his soul to the Waiting Place and is reborn at his moment of death, his body healed and free of poison.

Elias awakens in the burning stairwell. Filled with new strength, he grabs the unconscious Darin and Tas and charges through the wall of flames, carrying them to safety.

In the throne room at Antium, Emperor Marcus executes Helene’s mother, Mater Aquilla, and her older sister, Hannah. Before his own execution, her father, Pater Aquillus, gives Helene the family’s ceremonial necklace, making her the new Mater of Gens Aquilla.

To save her last surviving sister, Livia, Helene is forced to consent to Livia’s marriage to Marcus. As arrangements are made, the Commandant taunts Helene with a line from a prophecy: “First, you will be unmade” (267). Later, Marcus makes it clear that Livia’s safety now depends on Helene’s unwavering obedience.

Laia stares at the wall of fire when a legionnaire attacks her. Before he can strike, Elias appears and saves her, assuring her that Darin and Tas are safe. After an embrace, Laia returns his scims to him. The group makes its way into the main prison yard amid the riot.

Elias tells Laia to use her invisibility to unlock the pens holding Scholar prisoners. As she struggles with the lock, the Warden grabs her from behind. His touch breaks her concentration, causing her invisibility to vanish and leaving her captured.

Elias feels the pull of the Waiting Place but resists it, focusing on the fight. He attacks a group of soldiers, sending Tas to distract the Warden. From inside the prison pen, a Scholar named Araj leads others to help Elias break the lock. The freed prisoners surge into the yard and overwhelm the Warden, allowing Laia to break free. Tas grabs Laia’s fallen dagger and kills the Warden.

The group—Elias, Laia, Darin, and Tas—escapes under a closing portcullis. They rendezvous with Afya at a boathouse on the River Dusk and flee in a canoe. As they paddle to safety, Elias tells Laia that he must explain what has happened to him.

One month after the events at Rathana, Helene has adopted her ruthless public persona as the Blood Shrike. She receives a secret offer of an alliance from Cook. She also receives a letter from Emperor Marcus ordering her to hunt and destroy the Commandant, using her sister Livia’s safety as leverage. Harper reveals to Helene that he is Elias’s half-brother, sharing the same father, although he doesn’t know the man’s identity.

Helene visits the Imperial Palace to see Livia, now Empress, who tells her that she believes Marcus is being haunted by the ghost of his brother, Zak. Overwhelmed, Helene accepts her new identity as Blood Shrike, concluding that her former self is gone.

Several weeks after the escape from Kauf, the survivors shelter in a cabin in the Free Lands of Marinn. The Scholars who escaped from Kauf, led by Araj, depart for the city of Adisa, and Tas goes with them. Afya also leaves to return to her tribe. Laia remains to care for Darin, who is still in a coma. Elias divides his time between his duties as the Soul Catcher in the magical Forest of Dusk and his life with Laia.

One night, while watching a meteor shower, Elias and Laia share a passionate kiss. The sentient Forest reacts with a jealous burst of energy that forces them apart. They go inside the cabin, where a voice speaks Laia’s name. They turn to see that Darin is finally awake.