Prince of Swords

The second installment of the Arcana Academy series picks up immediately after the first book. In the fantasy kingdom of Oricalis, where magic is channeled through tarot cards and tightly controlled by the crown, Clara Chevalyer is captured by Prince Ravin, the firstborn heir and the Major Arcana of Death, a legendary card that can kill anyone whose true name its wielder knows. Ravin reveals that Clara's sister Arina, long believed dead, is alive and imprisoned in Halazar, the island prison. Clara is transported there, where Warden Glavstone subjects her to relentless torture: beatings, starvation, and repeated magical healing so he can begin again. Clara endures in silence, sustained by the knowledge that Arina is below her and by a secret: a golden Death Major card hidden in her corset, which she swapped for a forgery in the previous book.

After an indeterminate stretch of captivity, Prince Kaelis, the second-born prince and Clara's love interest, arrives at Halazar with her former crew from the Starcrossed Club, a small resistance group: Gregor, Twino, Ren, and Jura. Disguised in the armor of Stellis knights, the crown's enforcers, they break Clara free. Kaelis heals her and gives her a new deck of cards. Clara kills Glavstone and insists they descend to the deepest dungeon, where she finds Arina: emaciated, scarred, and unresponsive. Clara realizes that Arina may be the Star, the Major Arcana Kaelis needs to summon the World, a card capable of remaking reality through a single wish.

Clara frees every prisoner and casts two powerful cards simultaneously to collapse the bedrock beneath Halazar, sinking the entire prison. The crew escapes into tunnels beneath Eclipse City, but Emilia Ventall, the eldest daughter of Clan Tower's High Lord, pursues them with Stellis knights. When Emilia's soldiers capture Jura and demand Clara's surrender, Jura casts a Queen of Cups, a healing card, far beyond her ability. The card reverses in a catastrophic magical backfire that kills Jura and collapses the tunnel. Kaelis finds the devastated Clara and urges her toward Arcana Academy.

Instead, because Gregor trusts them and they claim to have Arina, Clara follows two masked strangers who identify themselves as Worldkeepers, members of an ancient order that guards the World card. Worldkeepers retain their memories when reality is remade. Their leader is Vaduin Thornbrow, Clara's former professor. Vaduin reveals that Clara's mother, Laylis Chevalyer, was the last surviving Worldkeeper from the world before King Naethor's wish and rebuilt the order. Laylis also knew how to ink the vessel card, the blank card upon which the World must be imprinted before casting. Vaduin proposes a deal: Clara will search the academy for the vessel's missing ink ingredient in exchange for the Worldkeepers' protection.

Twino and Ren leave the fight to build a peaceful life together. Clara brings Arina into the academy through a hidden passage and settles her in an abandoned wing. After overhearing that Ravin plans to deploy the Hierophant, a Major who can sense other Majors, Clara recognizes she must become unrecognizable. She and Kaelis first travel to Fate Hearth castle using a Chariot card, a teleportation tool, where Clara gains the allegiance of the Hierophant, an elderly man named Alphos, and Elorin, the High Priestess Major. Clara overhears King Naethor say that the Arcanum Chalice, a magical artifact fueled by sacrificed futures, is wavering in strength. Back at the academy, Kaelis remakes Clara's face and body through magic and surgical methods over an agonizing two weeks, rendering her completely unrecognizable.

Clara assumes the identity of Sophie Veillgar, a professor of wielding. Sorza, the Justice Major whose innate power detects deception, sees through the disguise immediately but becomes a committed ally. Clara divides her time between teaching, researching the vessel's ink, tending to Arina, and deepening her relationship with Kaelis. Arina's recovery proves agonizing: She alternates between catatonic stillness and violent episodes. Clara recruits Thal, the Sun Major, whose card removes all pain. Under Thal's long-term care, Arina gradually begins to confront her trauma.

Clara discovers that the vessel's missing ingredient is fragments of reversed cards, tarot cards whose magic has gone catastrophically wrong. Gregor brings her a reversed card fragment unmistakably inked in Kaelis's style, proving he has wielded reversed cards despite denying it. Clara pockets the evidence but chooses to trust him. When Kaelis discovers one of his golden Majors is Clara's forgery, he blames the Magician Major serving Naethor. Clara presses Kaelis about why Naethor allows him near the font of the World, the magical spring tied to World magic, and forces a devastating confession: Naethor made Kaelis sacrifice three futures to the Arcanum Chalice. One was meeting Clara and falling in love, another was casting the World, and the third was ruling as king beside her. Because he sacrificed the future of casting the World, only Clara can make the wish. Using the Hanged Man Major, Kaelis shows Clara his memories of these lost futures, and she glimpses the vessel card's complete design.

Clara travels to the Stone Citadel, the Worldkeepers' mountain stronghold, and successfully inks the vessel card. During a nighttime visit to the wishing pool where she grew up, Kaelis proposes, and Clara accepts, telling him her true name and declaring her love. She also learns that Lord Moreus Ventall, Clan Tower's High Lord, is her and Arina's biological father, and that her mother was killed by Lady Helena Ventall, Lord Moreus's wife, out of jealousy rather than on the king's orders.

Catastrophe strikes when Emilia and Leigh Strongborn, Ravin's wife, lead a massive assault on the Stone Citadel. Ravin seizes the vessel card. Clara kills Leigh, and Kaelis unleashes reversed-card magic openly, annihilating soldiers with purple-black flames. Gregor dies in the battle, devastating Clara. Vaduin then reveals that Ravin is not real: He was created by Naethor's wish. In the original kingdom, Naethor and Queen Elari had only one son, Kaelis. At the ruins of Clan Hermit, Kaelis confesses he is "void-born," meaning he wields reversed cards more easily than normal ones. The destruction of Clan Hermit was an accidental eruption of this power. Clara accepts him completely.

Clara inks a second vessel using the font inside the academy and arranges for Arina, Thal, and Sorza to be inducted as Worldkeepers. Arina performs a tarot reading for Clara that reveals disturbing visions of destruction and violet flame, but Clara dismisses the warnings. At a party, Clara kills Liam, her former love, at his insistence, since he cannot guarantee he would keep her true name secret under Ravin's torture. Lord Ventall then betrays Clara to Alor Ventall, Emilia's successor and Clara's student, who publicly identifies her as Clara Graysword.

Clara and Arina flee to the font. Clara inks the vessel while Arina simultaneously inks her golden Star card. King Naethor arrives with Ravin, Cael (the Emperor Major, who controls others' bodies), and Judgment (a Major who can revive the recently dead). Kaelis arrives and destroys Cael with reversed magic. Arina kills Ravin. Naethor uses his Death card on Kaelis, but Kaelis survives, his void-born nature protecting him. Naethor places the final golden cards. Clara wrests the vessel free and lifts it to the font's statue. Abandoning her planned wish because of Arina's warning, Clara makes a hasty wish: to restore the world as it should have been before Naethor's wish.

Reality shatters and reforms. Clara awakens in the academy, now a royal palace, wearing coronation robes. Kaelis stands before her but does not remember her or the previous world. At the coronation, he announces his claim as heir to Queen Elari Revisan. Then his reversed-card power erupts. Purple-black flames consume the assembled nobles. Clara screams for him to stop, but Kaelis regards the massacre with serene satisfaction. Clara notices his shadow shows a separate figure: the Fool, a mysterious force connected to the academy's depths. A mocking laugh echoes in Clara's mind as she realizes her wish has unleashed something catastrophic.