63 pages • 2-hour read
Finale
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Symbols & Motifs
Dreams
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes descriptions of physical and emotional abuse.
Dreams occupy a significant narrative and thematic role in Tella’s storyline in Finale. Most are the dreamscapes through which Legend visits and speaks with her. For Tella, these dreams become dangerously addictive, reflecting her yearning to be truly loved, not possessed or admired. For Legend, the dreams reveal his internal struggles. He fears losing his immortality and the self-control that this trait affords him, yet his repeated appearances in Tella’s dreams expose the depths of his feelings. What should be a landscape of controlled illusion instead betrays the truth. In one dream sequence, for example, Tella acknowledges the growing gap between illusion and reality, questioning whether the Legend who visits her at night is the same man who coldly distances himself by day. The dreams thus become a form of emotional double exposure; they reveal Legend’s love even as he resists admitting it, and he becomes most human in the space where nothing is supposed to be real. The dreams also deepen Tella’s conflict over whether to trust what feels real in a space that is inherently unreal.
Further complicating the matter are Jacks’s intrusions into Tella’s dreams, and these more ominous interludes serve as distorted reflections of obsession rather than love. The dreamscapes that Jacks designs often start with romantic or seductive overtones but quickly descend into moments of discomfort, loss of control, and emotional confusion. By inserting himself into this space, Jacks turns dreams into battlegrounds for control, and unlike Legend, whose dream visits are ultimately focused on connection, Jacks seeks dominance and possession.
The final person who enters Tella’s dreams is another of the Fates: the Maiden Death. Unlike the romantic and manipulative dreams of Legend and Jacks, the Maiden Death does not come to seduce or deceive; she comes with a warning. The dream forces Tella to confront the scope of her responsibility and pushes her into action, ultimately bringing all characters to the final confrontation.
Scarlett’s Magic
Scarlett’s magical abilities, which were established in the prior novels in the series, are further fleshed out here. Before, she was only able to see colors tied to her emotions. In Finale, her magic extends first to the ability to see other’s emotions, then to the ability to control the feelings of others. While the origin of her powers was a mystery in the other books, Finale reveals that her magic stems from the fact that her birth father is a Fate. As a result, her magic becomes a literal representation of the tension between the two halves of her nature, further contextualizing her struggle for agency and self-determination. Gavriel wants to unlock her power and make her like him: immortal and unable to love. This conflict escalates to the point where he orders her to remove Julian’s love and replace it with hatred in order to prove herself worthy. The scene brings Scarlett to the edge of becoming a Fate. However, although she is briefly tempted by her ability to become a Fate and step into immortality and emotional detachment, she ultimately rejects this path. Her decision not to use her magic therefore represents her emotional intelligence. Despite the undeniable power of her magic, The Power of Love is the core of her strength, which would be destroyed if she were to fully succumb to emotional manipulation.
Cages
Cages and prisons appear throughout Finale, whether literal or metaphorical. Tella wrestles with the invisible cage of her love for Legend, and she cannot help but desire him even though she knows that he cannot love her back without dying. Even Legend himself is imprisoned by his immortality: He cannot feel love without risking death, so he cloaks himself in illusions and power, choosing eternity over emotional intimacy. The Fates, who should be all-powerful, are bound by their creator’s whims—immortal, yet not free. Scarlett, in particular, is trapped by her connection to Gavriel and the fear of what she might become.
In a broader sense, cages are representative of Gavriel’s obsessive need for control, particularly over his daughter. When he has her kidnapped from Valenda, he keeps her in the Menagerie, a Fated location that was once a “kind of zoo full of magical chimeras and humans with animal parts […] and the woman in the cage” (206). Scarlett, too, briefly becomes something to be caged. Gavriel sees her not as an autonomous individual but as a valuable tool to be used for his own ends. The location is luxurious but deeply oppressive, and her imprisonment within it has both physical and psychological effects. A cage, literal or otherwise, is the fate that awaits everyone should Gavriel succeed in his plans to take the throne.
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