Nocticadia

Lilia learns from Mel after failing to log into her student portal that Gilchrist told Mel about Lilia’s betrayal. Mel followed Lilia, took a picture of her and Devryck having sex in the car, and posted it on her blog.

Dean Langmore arrives to tell Lilia that she’s been expelled. Her things are packed, and on the way from the dorm, she punches Mel. She’s then taken to the ferry, though Langmore expresses his remorse. Lilia goes back to the apartment with Conner.

Two hours before Lilia’s return, Devryck searched a low-income area on the mainland. He accepted a sex worker’s services with the intention of testing his new theory on her: that the Noctisoma effects on autoimmune disorders can be stabilized by using the black rocks in conjunction with the toxin.

Devryck is desperate for a new test subject, and he’s killed before; however, he thinks of Lilia and feels guilty. He receives a call from Langmore that Lippincott has expelled Lilia, so he sends the sex worker away and heads to Lilia.

Conner tells Lilia that he hasn’t seen Angelo in two weeks. In her room, she finds a letter stashed in the back of her mother’s painting of her home on Dracadia. It’s a letter to Lilia written shortly before Vanessa died.

The letter explains Vanessa’s regret at hiding her past from Lilia and discusses how she met with Lippincott—whom she doesn’t name—after her mother’s funeral. He owned her childhood home after the bank foreclosed on it. She describes him as cruel and untrustworthy, warning Lilia to stay away from him.

Angelo arrives at the house and attacks her. He says that someone from the school is paying him to kill her but that he wants to sexually assault her first. He beats her when she fights. He drugs her and then cuts her face. Lilia suddenly remembers more details of Vanessa’s death.

Angelo was the man who appeared at the door on the day her mother died. Lilia was barely conscious when Angelo took Vanessa—who had survived the expulsion of the worms—and killed her, making it look like a death by suicide. Angelo claims that Lippincott paid him to kill Vanessa, but Angelo didn’t mention Lilia’s existence to Lippincott in case he needed something to blackmail Lippincott with.

Devryck knocks at the door. Angelo covers her mouth, so she knows that the only way to alert Devryck to her presence is to make Angelo cry out. He threatens to kill whoever came through the door, but after struggling free, she manages to grab a trophy and hit him over the head with it. She then faints.

Lilia awakens with Devryck at his childhood home. She recalls learning about Angelo killing her mother but also recalls the memory of holding her mother under water first, having been afraid of Vanessa killing her and Bee. She feels responsible for Vanessa’s death, even if she didn’t ultimately kill her.

Devryck assures Lilia that she did what was necessary to protect Bee. He then shows her the stitched wound on her face, which horrifies her. He says that he forced Angelo to call Lippincott, who hired him, and assure the provost that Lilia was dead. Angelo is severely hurt, but Devryck won’t say where he is.

Devryck receives a phone alert that someone tried to enter his lab on campus. He promises to return soon, reassuring Lilia that she is beautiful despite her wound.

Devryck rushes to his lab, hoping to inoculate Lippincott with the Noctisoma in exchange for trying to kill Lilia. He also suspects that Lippincott was involved in having Caedmon killed since he was one of the original men involved in the Crixson Project.

However, Lippincott is already there, drunk. He says that Mel accused Devryck of attacking her with a knife to retrieve files about the project. She claims that it happened the night he saved Lilia from Angelo, and a video shows him doing so. Devryck recognizes Caedmon, alive.

Lippincott drinks whiskey laced with Noctisoma but then threatens to kill Devryck unless he turns over his research. Mel’s father, the school chairman, wants Devryck arrested, something that Lippincott can’t risk because of the activities of the Rooks. Devryck says that a computer failsafe will delete all his research if he’s killed. He then asks Lippincott about Lilia.

Lippincott poisoned her with the berries in the gala—Lilia’s survival of which astounds Devryck—and believes that she’s now dead. He also admits to infecting Vanessa and says that Spencer is actually the son of his wife and Devryck’s father, Warren. Lippincott is Lilia’s father because he wanted to cheat as revenge on his wife. He didn’t want to have Lilia killed, but Gilchrist realized their connection and blackmailed him over it.

Before Devryck can acquiesce to Lippincott’s threats on his life and download data from his computer, he receives an email from Spencer.

Lilia explores the mansion and eventually finds Angelo screaming and restrained in the basement. His arms, eyes, and tongue have been removed, and his stomach was cut open. Sickened, Lilia leaves but stops when Angelo’s screams fall silent. The plague doctor figure leaves the room where he was, clearly having just killed him.

Gilchrist arrives as Lilia flees the house, suspicious as to why Lilia is on the island. Devryck suddenly appears from inside the house, confusing Lilia. He kisses Gilchrist and accepts a computer chip with all the files on the Crixson Project. He then threatens her with a knife and brings her to the living room.

He says that he’s going to force Gilchrist to answer questions about the Crixson Project, but he will kill Lilia if she tries to flee. He forces Gilchrist to admit that Vanessa had a natural resistance to Noctisoma, which helped her fight off the original infection. Lippincott had her killed.

Later, the missing student Jenny Harrick was snooping. Mel was sleeping with Lippincott and learned that Jenny, her friend, had learned too much about Dracadia’s secrets. Mel told some of this to Spencer while drugged, something that Gilchrist forced Spencer to do to get more information.

Devryck is satisfied with Gilchrist’s secrets and says that he’ll have sex with Lilia in front of her, but Lilia realizes when he removes his shirt and reveals tattoos that it’s actually Caedmon. He wants to take her somewhere, but she asks him to release Gilchrist first.

He tells Lilia that Devryck maimed Angelo but that Caedmon finished him off. The plague doctor costume that he’d been wearing to stalk her around campus belonged to Devryck, whom he harbors animosity toward for belonging to the Rooks. Lilia learns that Angelo was in hiding because of Caedmon, who also killed the CEO. Caedmon slashes Gilchrist’s tires and forces Lilia onto his motorcycle to go to the university.

While Lippincott drinks infected whiskey and complains drunkenly about Gilchrist—all with Devryck held at gunpoint—Devryck secretly opens Spencer’s email. Spencer found encrypted video footage of the Emeric Tower lab from the night Jenny died. He sent it to Devryck before scheduling a campus-wide email with the video that is set to go out that evening.

In it, Jenny arrives at Devryck’s lab; however, the part cut from official records is that Mel shows up after, argues with Jenny, and then knocks her unconscious. Lippincott comes to her aid. Jenny has a file, which Mel and Lippincott throw into the incinerators for cremating corpses, along with Jenny. They burn her alive.

Devryck pretends that his computer has crashed to stall for time and asks about the missing video footage. He asks what files Lippincott destroyed. Amid an argument, Lippincott reveals that the files showed that the women had been infected with Noctisoma.

However, Lippincott also says that he was meant to be a lead researcher on the study. When he impregnated Vanessa, he was kicked off the project, and he infected the subjects with real Noctisoma parasites instead of just the purified toxins as payback. This is why he never reentered scientific research. The rumors from the study ended up being pinned on the Bramwells.

Devryck wrestles the gun from Lippincott and forces him to admit that he had Caedmon kidnapped. Devryck implies that he poisoned Lippincott with parasites, but Lippincott flees when Rooks members arrive. They’re trying to kill Devryck for supposedly threatening Mel, whose father is a society member.

Devryck flees but gets shot in the shoulder, and he drives toward his mansion. He stops to find Gilchrist on the road, who fled other masked men at the mansion with guns. She enters the car and tells him to head back to the university.

Caedmon briefly stops on the way to the university. He threatens again to kill Lilia when she asks why he’s upset with Devryck. At the university, Caedmon explains that he’s there to kill Lippincott for kidnapping him, but he also says that Lilia should leave Devryck. Caedmon has been stalking her and feels that she deserves someone better.

As he prepares to find the provost, he hands Lilia the computer chip with the secret files and tells her to run. She searches for Devryck, finding his office upturned. She finds the Jenny video on his computer and looks through Gilchrist’s digital files, which she realizes are the same files that Lippincott incinerated.

Lilia hears a noise and hides. Two men in plague masks find her.

Chairman Winthrop, Mel’s father, calls Devryck to say that the Rooks have Lilia at their hideout, The Roost. Devryck remembers that Caedmon—before his kidnapping—knew about the Rooks and hated them. Devryck’s initiation into the group and emulation of his father’s research must have felt like a betrayal, particularly after Warren refused to turn over his research to rescue Caedmon. He assumes that this is why he’s been threatening people while pretending to be Devryck.

Devryck arrives to find Lilia in the tank wherein an accused member was killed at the beginning of the novel. Lippincott has been killed by Caedmon, acting as Devryck; if the Rooks find Devryck guilty, they’ll kill Lilia.

Devryck defends Lilia by exposing Mel and Lippincott’s murder of Jenny and the conspiracy surrounding the Crixson Project, something Gilchrist discovered, as she was an administrator and note taker for the study at the time. Warren had suspected Lippincott of tampering with the inoculations, replacing the toxin with parasite larvae, so Lippincott used his connections to have Warren blamed.

The evidence supports Devryck, but the Rooks are unsure about what to do with Lilia because of her inside knowledge. Because Lilia made the discovery of the black rocks, making her research crucial, Devryck moves to have her initiated into the group and protected.

Knowing that her only other option is being killed, Lilia accepts the terms that the Rooks impose on her so long as she receives a scholarship for schooling and her mother’s childhood home.

Lilia is branded with the society’s mark. Devryck apologizes to her for lying about the society, but it would’ve been dangerous for her to know. They catch up on everything that happened and then drive to the mansion to pick up her things.

Lilia stays in the car while Devryck fetches her things. He finds Caedmon inside. The two argue about how Devryck followed in their father’s footsteps and worked alongside Lippincott to find a cure for his disease, while Caedmon never revealed to Devryck that he was alive.

They begin to physically fight. However, Devryck says “impervious,” something that Caedmon told him to say during seizures, which triggers an emotional catharsis for Caedmon. He cries, and the two hesitantly reconcile.

Caedmon explains that Angelo sold Caedmon off instead of killing him like Lippincott requested. He was sold to the sadistic group that the murdered CEO was in, and they tortured him over the years to become loyal and believe that Devryck was his enemy. Caedmon only began to question his new existence as a guard for that society when Lippincott attempted to sell Noctisoma research to the man who tortured him.

Caedmon pretended to be Devryck at the university to get revenge on those who’d wronged him, causing confusion about Devryck’s actions. The two apologize to each other, but Caedmon admits that he needs to leave again to mentally recover.

Lilia and Devryck study their developed elixir seven weeks later. They discuss how Vanessa was able to resist the effect of the toxin amid the first study because she often visited the local apothecary for black rock tea. However, when she returned later and saw Lippincott, she had no tea to save her from his attempts to poison her.

The research is going well. Devryck is free of seizures. As a Rook, Lilia was granted access to private texts in the library, where she learned that the island’s Indigenous people resisted Noctisoma infections through the black tea. The colonizers oppressed and killed them, though, thus losing the cure to history.

In Devryck’s office, she notes that he has promoted her to associate researcher and framed two moths she was fond of, which have passed. They then have sex, as she’s begun to recover from the trauma of being assaulted by Angelo. During sex, they admit that they love each other.

Lilia texts Bee, who will be coming to visit at Christmas. Their mother’s childhood home is being renovated, as is the Bramwell mansion. Lilia suspects that Caedmon won’t return to Dracadia.

Devryck confirms with a DNA test that Spencer is his half-brother, and Spencer reconciles with Lilia. Bee texts Lilia that she has a crush on her new English teacher, who she reveals through a photo is Caedmon.