60 pages • 2-hour read
Fearless
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Chapters 42-59Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 42 Summary: “Paedyn”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and substance use.
The next day, Lenny escorts Paedyn to the Bowl, the arena where the Trials take place. Facing the roaring crowds, Paedyn nervously spins Adam’s ring on her thumb. Lenny gives Paedyn his sword before the Trial begins, begging her to survive.
Paedyn enters the arena. Kitt silences the crowd and announces that the battle will be a fight to the death with an Elite. Paedyn turns in horror to see that she’s facing off with Kai.
Chapter 43 Summary: “Paedyn”
Paedyn begs Kai not to fight her, but he won’t listen. He instigates the battle, and their fight begins. Paedyn fights back but doesn’t know what to do. She needs to save the Ordinaries, but she can’t bear to imagine killing Kai. She feels herself giving in as Kai attacks her.
Chapter 44 Summary: “Kai”
Kai silently begs Paedyn to fight back.
Chapter 45 Summary: “Paedyn”
The crowd roars as Paedyn and Kai continue battling. Finally, Paedyn fights back and pins Kai. She’s overcome by sorrow as she feels her dagger thrust into his chest. While dying, Kai tells her that he’s ready to go. She begs him not to die and demands that someone find a Healer. No one responds. She screams out in agony, clutching his dead body.
Chapter 46 Summary: “Kai”
Kai is overcome by anguish.
Chapter 47 Summary: “Paedyn”
Paedyn wakes up in her room, horrified to remember that Kai is dead. She thinks it was only a dream until she sees blood all over her body. She asks Ellie what happened, and Ellie confirms that the battle was real.
Chapter 48 Summary: “Paedyn”
Paedyn takes a bath, watching the water turn red. When she gets out, someone knocks on the door. She’s shocked to see Kai alive. She throws herself at him, demanding to know what happened. Thrilled that he’s alive, she tells him she loves him. He professes his love, and they share a passionate embrace.
Chapter 49 Summary: “Kai”
Kai and Paedyn confront Kitt about the Trial. He explains that he had another Wielder (an Elite with Kai’s same level of power) pose as Kai. The man was also an Illusionist and could don Kai’s features. Kitt drugged and locked Kai in his chambers to keep him from the Bowl.
Kitt arranged the Trial this way because Wielders are the most powerful Elites; the Elites would only accept Paedyn as their queen if they knew she could defeat someone like Kai. He couldn’t have the real Kai fight because he knew that Kai would sacrifice himself for Paedyn and Kitt couldn’t bear losing his brother. Kitt then leads Kai and Paedyn to the dungeon where he brought the Wielder’s body. Paedyn realizes that he is Adena’s former lover, Mak.
Chapter 50 Summary: “Paedyn”
Sitting with Mak’s body, Paedyn realizes that he wanted to fight her to avenge Adena. He didn’t mind dying because then he could join Adena in the afterlife.
Paedyn gets dressed for the celebratory ceremony. Studying the material, she sorrowfully realizes that Adena will never see her in it. Then, Kai enters, begging to see Paedyn one last time. They embrace before parting ways.
Chapter 51 Summary: “Kai”
Kitt presents Kai to the court, revealing that he didn’t die after all. The crowds protest, insisting that Paedyn can’t be queen because she didn’t kill him. Paedyn stands up for herself, listing all the reasons why she’s fit to rule. She even shows her “O”-shaped scar to the crowd and claims her identity as an Ordinary. Kai looks on in pride as the court collectively bows.
Chapter 52 Summary: “Paedyn”
Paedyn drinks with Kai and Kitt. They discuss the successful Trials and the upcoming wedding. After Kai leaves, Kitt remarks on how attached Kai is to Paedyn. She tries protesting, but to no avail. The conversation shifts to Iris, whom Kitt still blames himself for killing in childbirth, and the future of Ilya.
Chapter 53 Summary: “Kai”
After visiting Myla, Kai joins Kitt and his cousins Andy and Jax in the kitchen. They eat sticky buns and make jokes. Kai enjoys the easy banter.
Chapter 54 Summary: “Paedyn”
The day before her wedding, Paedyn meditates on her upcoming royal role. That evening, she wanders the corridors and discovers the courtroom prepared for her wedding. Overwhelmed, she races out of the castle and to the willow, where she finds Kai. They embrace each other and have sex, spending the entire night together.
Chapter 55 Summary: “Kai”
Kai and Paedyn wake up under the willow. They kiss and say their goodbyes. Kai is sad while watching her go.
Chapter 56 Summary: “Paedyn”
Paedyn dons her wedding dress and studies herself in the mirror. She tries to adjust to the person she sees staring back. Kitt stops by and slips Iris’s jewelry box into her room, asking her to choose a jewel to wear to the wedding.
After he leaves, Kai slips a note under the door. Paedyn is overwhelmed by emotion after reading Kai’s profession of love and goodbye. Then, Calum arrives to bring Paedyn to the courtroom. They leave before Paedyn has time to don Iris’s jewels.
During the ceremony, Paedyn realizes that she can’t marry Kitt. She wonders what he’s feeling and if he really wants to go through with it. He says his vows, and she hesitantly says hers. Afterward, she feels dizzy, realizing what she’s done.
Chapter 57 Summary: “Kai”
Kai spends the day under the willow, unable to make himself attend the wedding. He cries for her, unsure what to do with his sadness. Realizing that he can’t be without her, he races to the castle to stop the wedding.
Chapter 58 Summary: “Paedyn”
After the wedding, the crown feels heavy on Paedyn’s head. Kitt commends her for doing well, reminding her that they’ll have their second wedding, in the slums for the Ordinaries, soon. They part ways.
In her room, Paedyn removes the crown and looks through Iris’s jewelry box, deciding to wear her jewels to the second wedding. Inside, she finds a note in a familiar hand asking Iris to meet her in the rose garden. Paedyn realizes that Iris “had a lover” (457).
She’s even more surprised when a photo of Iris drops out of the box: The woman starkly resembles Paedyn. She tears through the box, finding more and more letters. She realizes that the handwriting belongs to Calum and recalls Calum telling her that she looked like her mother (although Paedyn never knew her mother). When Calum knocks on the door, she confronts him about everything and demands that he tell her the truth.
Chapter 59 Summary: “Paedyn”
Calum admits that she is his and Iris’s child. He says that he was happy to obey Edric and banish her because he resented her for killing Iris. He also feared that Edric would discover that she wasn’t his.
A battle between Paedyn and Calum ensues. Because Calum, an Elite, is a Mind Reader, Paedyn fills her head with insulting thoughts, riling him. Finally, she knocks him unconscious and races to Kitt’s chambers.
Interlude 6 Summary: “Edric”
When Paedyn was 18, Edric saw her again. He was still furious with her for killing Iris and sought to use her for his own devices before killing her. He decided to get her to lead all the Ordinaries into the Bowl by using her friendship with Kitt.
Chapters 42-59 Analysis
The obstacles that Paedyn faces in these chapters intensify her journey to self-empowerment as she continues to be confronted with difficulties that illustrate her Personal Growth Through Challenge. In the third Trial, for example, Kitt forces Paedyn to fight Kai to the death. Paedyn and Kai aren’t actually facing off, but Paedyn doesn’t know this. In the Bowl, she’s forced to choose between her loyalty to Kitt, Ilya, and the Ordinaries and her loyalty to Kai. In killing the Wielder whom she believes to be Kai, she chooses to sacrifice her desires for the sake of the greater good. This sacrifice, however, results in a positive outcome, as Paedyn proves herself to the Elites without actually losing her lover. As Paedyn’s wedding day approaches, she’s forced to confront the truth of her new leadership position: Although she still feels like an Ordinary girl fighting for survival, “[a] queen stares back at [her] in the mirror” (439). The image of her regarding herself in her crown and wedding dress conveys Paedyn’s personal growth. She no longer looks like a lost, innocent child; instead, “[s]he looks lethal. Formidable. And, oddly, she doesn’t look like a stranger” (439). In this scene, Paedyn finally recognizes her own growth and begins to accept her new identity and royal role without minimizing her power and prowess. The same is true when Paedyn stands up to the court after the Trial and goes through with the wedding despite her hesitations. She makes decisions that align with her beliefs and takes action accordingly. In doing so, Paedyn exhibits her innate strength of character and capacity for evolution.
Paedyn’s discovery about her biological parents is a plot twist that alters the stakes of her story and develops the theme of Confronting Grief and Trauma to Move Forward from a new perspective. Throughout the entirety of the novel thus far, Paedyn has believed that the biggest obstacle to her happiness is marrying Kitt and that the biggest obstacle to Ilya’s peacefulness is her love for Kai. When she opens Iris’s jewelry box, however, she’s faced with another network of conflicts. She is confronted with several revelations that challenge her perception of herself and the world around her. She learns that Iris and Calum are her parents, that she was born to Elites without powers, and that Edric and Calum banished her because she was an Ordinary. Paedyn has just started the process of confronting and overcoming her trauma over Adam’s and Adena’s deaths, and these discoveries disrupt her progress. Her internal monologue during the scene where she makes the discoveries conveys the intensity of her shock:
Everything is happening so fast, like the inevitable trip before a fall. My thoughts blur, all bleeding into one another. The past comes racing toward my current present, overlapping to create one clear conclusion. […] My head swims. […] Each breath grows shallower. […] A flood of unanswered questions pours into my reeling mind, making me dizzy. Confusion creeps into every thought, every moment spent with Calum (459).
Paedyn’s use of figurative and sensory language illustrates her emotional experience. Diction like “fast,” “blur,” “bleeding,” “overlapping,” “swims,” “shallower,” “flood,” “pours,” “reeling,” “dizzy,” and “creeps” affect a harried, disorienting atmosphere. Paedyn’s emotions are so overwhelming that she feels as if she’s tripping and falling. She doesn’t know how to make sense of what she’s learned; this information upsets her sense of her identity and her place in the world around her. Suddenly, nothing she believed about the present is true because the past isn’t what she thought it was. These dynamics capture the entanglement of the past and the present and how Paedyn must understand her personal history from a new perspective to understand herself.
This plot twist also tests the power of love by altering the parameters of Paedyn and Kitt’s relationship, Paedyn and Kai’s relationship, and Kitt and Kai’s relationship. Throughout the novel, Paedyn and Kai have been devoted lovers despite their circumstantial challenges. Paedyn and Kitt have been close since they were young and have been bound via their new marital arrangement. Kitt and Kai have also been loyal to one another as brothers and childhood best friends. Once Paedyn learns the truth of who she is, it fundamentally changes all the relationships in this triangle. She’s unsure of who she is to Kai and Kitt and who they are to her and each other. The characters’ shadowy personal histories upset their sense of truth and loyalty in the present and foreshadow coming conflicts between them.
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