Part 1, Chapters 10-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of physical abuse, emotional abuse, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, sexual violence, rape, sexual content, illness, and death.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary
Helena spends her days alone in her room, trying to channel her resonance and musing on what she can remember of the past. She tries to remember alchemy principles she once knew, including the properties and uses of lumithium alloys.
During Aurelia’s solstice party, a man named Erik Lancaster appears in Helena’s room unannounced. Kaine intercedes, warning Erik to leave Helena alone. Helena vaguely remembers Erik from the Institute. After the men leave, Helena sneaks out of her room and overhears Aurelia making out with another man. Helena quickly moves on, afraid Kaine will see her memories of Aurelia. In another room, she eavesdrops on Kaine communicating with the head of the Guild Assembly, Fabian Greenfinch. An argument ensues, and Kaine kills a whole family. Later, she overhears Aurelia complaining to another man about her inability to convince Kaine to sleep with her. She witnesses an argument between Aurelia and Kaine, too.
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary
Kaine finds Helena snooping and suspects her of searching for weapons to hurt herself with. They get into an argument about Helena’s captivity, Luc, and the Eternal Flame. She still doesn’t understand why Kaine is valuable to Morrough. Then Aurelia finds them together and gets upset.
Another day, Helena wanders the manor and discovers a room filled with commemorative plaques. One is etched with Enid Ferron’s name. She muses on the place of women in Paladian society.
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary
Helena has a dream where she’s talking to her friend Lila Bayard. She wakes abruptly, desperate to see Lila again. Later that day, Helena has a session with Kaine. As he tries to access her memories, she is overcome by longing for Luc.
That afternoon, Dr. Stroud visits. Upset by Helena’s emaciated state, she demands that Kaine feed her better, emphasizing her value to Morrough.
Helena feels lonelier by the day. She keeps replaying her dream of Lila, missing her friends. Then one day she remembers Lila’s brother, Soren. She is desperate to understand his relevance to her story.
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary
Helena wanders the manor in search of a weapon. Kaine finds her just as she’s secreting a knife. A fight ensues, but Helena can’t defeat him.
In the middle of the winter, Fabian is attacked. He survives, but Mandl is killed. Fear spreads throughout Paladia. Mandl was an Undying and shouldn’t have died; the people fear that more Undying will be killed, too. Helena is heartened by the news, convinced it’s a sign the Resistance is still alive.
One day, Kaine leads Helena into a dark tunnel, bringing her to Morrough. She is shocked by how awful he looks. Morrough reiterates his desire to access her lost memories, blaming Kaine for making so little progress with her. When Morrough performs a transference session, he determines that Helena is the animancer who erased her own memory in “an attempt to escape” (190). Kaine apologizes for failing to determine this sooner, swearing allegiance to Morrough and promising to keep Helena from the Eternal Flame.
Afterwards, Kaine informs Helena that she was responsible for the bombing of the West Port Laboratory at the end of the war. Helena is shocked and confused but tries to hide her feelings. Instead, she confronts Kaine for having allegedly killed Principate Apollo, Luc’s father, when he was 16. Kaine explains what happened without getting upset. Then Helena has a revelation. She now understands that the Undying are the source of Morrough’s power. Morrough is afraid because he knows the Resistance figured out how to kill the Undying. Morrough derives his strength from the stolen souls of the Undying, and as they die, Morrough weakens.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary
Helena loses and regains consciousness after telling Kaine what she knows. She showers, trying to piece together her memories. Afterwards, she studies herself in the mirror. She looks physically healthier, but there is no spark in her eyes. That evening, Kaine finds her and resumes their conversation about Morrough and the Undying; he confirms that Morrough is weakening.
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary
Kaine starts to pull away from Helena, only visiting during transference sessions. During the sessions, she muses on who Kaine really is and what he really wants. When she is alone, she ruminates on why she would have wiped her own memories.
In early spring, Aurelia hosts an equinox party. Helena sneaks around and eavesdrops on the attendees’ conversations. She is horrified by the wartime atrocities they discuss, fearing for the safety of the women at Central. Later, Erik barges into her room and attacks her, sinking a needle into her neck.
Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary
Erik apprehends Helena and tries to rape her. Kaine appears and intercedes. After Erik leaves, Kaine stabilizes Helena.
The next day, Aurelia visits Helena while Kaine is away from Spirefell. She tells Helena about her and Kaine’s pasts. Aurelia’s parents had her specifically so they could marry her to Kaine, desperate for an alliance with Kaine’s guild. Aurelia insists she has tried everything to be a good wife, but Kaine has pushed her away. She is furious with Helena for stealing Kaine’s attention, too. She warns Helena that Kaine is always watching her with the dismembered eyes placed around the manor. Then she attacks Helena and tries to gouge out her eye—convinced Kaine won’t be able to save Helena. Suddenly, the house animates itself and attacks Aurelia, saving Helena.
Part 1, Chapter 17 Summary
Helena is shocked by Spirefell’s power, realizing Kaine has charmed it. Then Kaine appears and insists she guide him through the procedure to restore her eye. Although sick and shaken, she gives him instructions.
Over the following days, Helena’s eye gradually heals. One day, Dr. Stroud checks in on her, unconcerned about the eye. She informs Helena and Kaine that Morrough has a new plan—for Helena to get pregnant with Kaine’s child. Helena was sterilized in her youth, but recent discoveries have made sterilization reversal possible. Morrough wants her child because she is an animancer. Helena is unsure if pregnancy, memory-robbing, or death is worst.
Part 1, Chapter 18 Summary
Helena and Kaine discuss the new arrangement. Helena is devastated, but an unfazed Kaine insists he needs to please the High Necromancer.
Over the following weeks, Helena and Kaine start having sex. Helena feels cold and alone after each coerced encounter.
Part 1, Chapter 19 Summary
One day, Dr. Stroud gives Helena a pill that will make her stop resisting Kaine’s rape. She is horrified that evening when she enjoys sex with Kaine. She feels ashamed of herself. Meanwhile, she keeps trying to make sense of what Morrough and Kaine each really wants.
Then one night, Helena finds Kaine drunk in his room. He greets her affectionately, insisting she has caused him emotional pain. Helena isn’t sure what to feel. They kiss.
Part 1, Chapter 20 Summary
Helena and Kaine share a passionate kiss. Helena is overcome by desire, but pulls herself away and flees to her room. Upset and ashamed, she repeatedly slams her head into the wall. Kaine finds and stops her. He reminds her she must survive and assures her she hasn’t been disloyal to Luc; he insists Luc and the Holdfasts didn’t value her the way he does. A furious Helena tells him she doesn’t want him.
Helena discovers that she is pregnant. She becomes so upset that Kaine sedates her.
Part 1, Chapter 21 Summary
Helena wakes in the room with Kaine. He gives her a book on maternity and reminds her to take care of herself, promising to protect the baby.
When Helena weakens, Dr. Stroud checks in on her. She tells Kaine why Helena is unwell; she has been using all her resonance to hide her memories from the High Necromancer. “The Toll” might also be taking its effect. The Toll is a divine punishment for healing; each healing takes something from the healer and requires atonement.
Helena wakes up in a panic. She is overcome by memories of terrible things people have said to her. She hears Jan blaming her for endangering the Eternal Flame, Kaine criticizing her for having sex with him, and friends accusing her of betraying them. Her mind breaks open and she feels like she’s falling.
Part 1, Chapters 10-21 Analysis
The longer Helena is in Kaine’s custody at Spirefell, the more complicated their relationship becomes. Their evolving dynamic introduces the novel’s theme of Love as a Catalyst for Personal Growth. When Helena first arrives at Spirefell, she regards Kaine as her enemy and vows to beat him the way she did when they were academic rivals at the Institute. Throughout Chapters 10-21, she attempts to secret weapons so she might either kill Kaine or end her own life to prevent him from infiltrating her memories. The more time they spend together, though, the more familiarity and warmth she feels between them. Changes in Helena’s understanding of Kaine signify changes in herself, as her black-and-white worldview begins to break down in the face of moral complexity. Though she once believed that Morrough and the Undying represented pure evil while the Resistance was purely good, Kaine’s compassion shakes this moral certainty. The more affection she feels for him, the more confused she feels about herself. This internal confusion amplifies the narrative tension and conveys the potential risks of caring for someone Helena has thus far perceived as a villain.
Helena’s determination to protect her mind from her captors furthers the novel’s theme of The Contested Terrain of Memory. Her late friends—particularly Lila and Luc—begin to feature in her dreams and fragmented recollections. Such flashbacks crush “Helena’s consciousness […] down to the brink of oblivion” (166). The few, fragmentary memories she has are full of grief. Feeling increasingly lonely, she has “neither the strength nor the will to keep resisting” Kaine’s invasions of her mind, and she is learning that her “suffering would not bring anyone back” (167). At the same time, if Helena gives in to Kaine, she fears her memories will empower him and weaken her. Her memories are all she has left of her fragile past life, and she is desperate to retain them to survive. Holding on to them is also her one remaining weapon against Kaine, and by extension Morrough. While Helena’s memories represent her identity, she recognizes that to her enemies, they also represent power. The more protective she is of her memories, the more likely she is to keep her allies alive and defeat the High Necromancer.
Morrough’s insistence that Helena and Kaine give him a child alters the narrative stakes and tests Helena’s strength. Her internal monologue after hearing the arrangement conveys how this forced pregnancy is related to the novel’s theme of Reclaiming a Fragmented Identity:
What was she going to do? Try to argue that her memories were more valuable than a pregnancy? If she had to choose one or the other, what was worse? Cooperating with Ferron’s extraction of the Eternal Flame’s secrets, or letting herself be raped to produce the child Morrough needed for his own transference? (234)
Helena asks herself these questions because she is trying to understand where her values lie. She has historically regarded herself through the lens of the Eternal Flame, the Resistance, and her relationships with the Holdfasts. She is terrified of betraying these loyalties and appeasing Morrough, because it is a reflection on her as a person. The prospective baby is also an extension of Helena herself; she does not know if she is willing to give up a part of herself to her enemy.
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