The final chapters of Rose in Chains tie together some narrative threads while leaving others for Soto to explore in the next novel in the trilogy. After Briony kills Cohle at the end of the first half of Part 3, she experiences guilt and struggles to maintain control over her thoughts. Though her oppressors use violence without compunction to maintain their power, Briony is not used to wielding power in this way, and she realizes in this moment that she’ll have to get used to it without losing her moral compass in the process—foreshadowing an internal conflict to come in future installments of the series: “She’d have to understand what killing a person did. What murderers feel. Because that’s what she was. Her pages shivered, and she silenced them” (409). Briony labels herself a murderer for killing Cohle, displaying her high standards of morality when it comes to killing. She does not view her actions as justified, even though Cohle would’ve reported Briony’s magic to Mallow, who would’ve in turn massacred Briony and the entire Hearst family. Briony saves herself and the Hearsts, which is necessary for the rebellion against Mallow.

The burgeoning rebellion occurring in Hearst Hall highlights The Importance of Hope in Seemingly Hopeless Situations. While Briony laments her status as a killer, Serena attempts to assuage her guilt, saying, “You’ve had a very hard twenty-four hours, and I know that taking a life twists your heart, but I want you to know that you have never been more brave to me than now” (426). Serena is glad Briony killed Cohle not only because Cohle was attempting to harm Toven but also because Cohle posed a threat to the entire family. Serena is the advanced mind magician that Briony assumed Toven was, but her ability to see the future as a seer doesn’t diminish her capacity for hope, as she tells Briony, “I have not yet seen the future that I most wish for, but I am hopeful. I think a world where we both have choice again is possible” (427). Serena’s mind magic has not yet shown her a world without Mallow, but she still considers it a possibility for the future. Serena also groups herself in with Briony, as she too has limited choices under Mallow’s tyrannical reign, demonstrating the intersection between ideas related to hope and gender throughout the novel. The Eversun women are not the only ones to suffer under Mallow’s regime; Bomardi women also face persecution on the basis of their gender and magical ability.

Mallow’s character becomes more complex in the final chapters as Briony realizes that Mallow’s relationship to the dragon is not real, shattering the illusion of Mallow’s power: “Now that Briony was questioning whether the dragon would fully bond to her, Mallow didn’t seem so terribly powerful. She was just a clever, enigmatic liar” (435). Mallow’s painful brand of mind magic is the result of Mallow poorly teaching herself how to enter minds, not a sign of her bond to the dragon. The inauthenticity of this magic calls attention to The False Dichotomy Between Intellect and Emotion in relation to Mallow’s demagogic rhetoric. Mallow denigrates the Eversuns by claiming that their mind magic is inauthentic while telling her own people that “we are the true magic” (47). Briony’s realization that Mallow’s own magic is deeply inauthentic calls this dichotomy into question, setting the stage for Briony’s continued rebellion against Mallow and against Bomard in the rest of the trilogy. Now that Briony has identified the flaw in Mallow’s armor, her weakness, and has found out that Rory is alive, her hope for a different future blossoms.

However, this hope does not extend to her relationship with Toven. After her encounter with Mallow, after Toven says they can never be romantic again, Briony watches as “she licked her lips, and when his eyes dropped to her mouth, she pushed back the hope that he would ever kiss her again. This wasn’t a love story” (438). Briony explicitly thinks that she’s “pushing back” against the hope of being with Toven, illustrating that her hope is now for the restoration of Evermore and the liberation of those suffering under Mallow’s oppression. Though the novel falls into the romantasy genre, Briony’s insistence that this narrative is not “a love story” shows where her priorities lie going into the second book in the series.