Rose in Chains is a 2025 dark romantasy novel by author and playwright Julie Soto. Soto is also the author of novels Forget Me Not, Not Another Love Song, and The Thrashers. The novel is the first in Soto’s Evermore trilogy, which follows the relationship between former classmates Princess Briony Rosewood of Evermore and Toven Hearst of Bomard as a war between their countries shatters Briony’s family and nation, resulting in the people of Evermore being enslaved and auctioned by the people of Bomard. Rose in Chains explores themes related to power, vulnerability, loyalty, hope, and gender dynamics through the lens of a magic-based fantasy society.

This guide is based on the 2025 Grand Central Publishing Kindle Edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide include depictions of sexual violence and harassment, rape, death, graphic violence, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual content, cursing, gender discrimination, bullying, pregnancy loss and termination, substance use, suicidal ideation, and enslavement.

Plot Summary

Briony Rosewood struggles to accept her twin brother Rory’s death as a battle rages between Briony’s nation, Evermore, and the neighboring nation of Bomard. Rory was supposed to be the Heir Twice Over, the prophesied savior destined to end the war. The Eversuns of Evermore practice mind magic, while the Bomardi of Bomard practice heart magic. The Eversuns look down on heart magic as outdated and barbaric, while the Bomardi view mind magic as manipulative and conniving. This conflict was stoked by Veronika Mallow, a Bomardi woman who rose to power by denigrating the Eversuns and their mind magic, spurring Bomard to invade Evermore and threaten the entire continent.

Briony and her best friend Cordelia Hardstark try to escape the castle, and Briony rescues a maid from being sexually assaulted. Briony and Cordelia get separated as a tunnel collapses, and Briony hides in the closet as Toven Hearst searches for her. Toven pretends not to see her, but she’s captured and taken to a dungeon with the other Eversun women. Larissa says they will be auctioned off to the highest bidder and enslaved as heartsprings, or wells of magical power for their enslavers.

Briony remembers the Bomardi boys fantasizing about enslaving Eversun women during their shared school years. The Bomardi and Eversun students were educated together, alternating locations between Bomard and Evermore. Briony often intentionally made herself look incompetent to make Rory appear more competent, even boosting his magic using her own powers. The tension between the Eversun and Bomardi students was palpable and escalated with each year, culminating after Mallow’s rise to power, when the Bomardi invaded the school, sparking the war. During this invasion, Toven and his father Orion allowed Briony to escape to safety. Toven and Briony shared romantic and sexually charged moments throughout their school years, even dancing together at a state event, though they never acted upon their feelings, and Briony isn’t certain Toven ever had feelings for her.

When Briony and other women are taken to bathe, they attack Gains and Lag Reighven, a man who wants to enslave Briony and sexually abuse her. One woman, Velicity, escapes out the window. Briony fails to use heartstop to kill Reighven. The other women are captured, and Briony is brought to Mallow, who takes her voice away and threatens to kill Briony and the other women if she rebels again. Gains instructs nurses to cauterize Briony’s fallopian tubes and check whether she’s had sex, as virgins will be worth more at the auction. A nurse cauterizes one of Briony’s fallopian tubes but not the other. They confirm Briony’s virginity, and she is appraised, for her powerful magical ability and virginity, at 30,000 gold. Briony returns to the dungeon and tells the other Eversuns they are “not alone” by spelling out the words with grapes.

Canning Trow, a Bomardi noble, takes several Eversun women to experiment on for his elixir, which he intends to use to force the Eversun women into sex to initiate Sacral Magic. This form of magic can strengthen the heartspring bond via sex, but the sex must be consensual. Briony learns more about the heartspring bonds and realizes she inadvertently formed one with Rory when she boosted him during their school years and beyond.

The Bomardi take the Eversuns they have enslaved to the auction. After a failed escape attempt, Briony is auctioned to Reighven and his name is magically tattooed on her arm. However, after Briony is put in a closet with Larissa, she watches as the tattoo is changed to Toven’s name. Larissa also has Toven’s name on her arm.

Before Larissa enters Hearst Hall, Toven’s friend Finn Raquin pours acid on Larissa’s arm to melt her tattoo and takes her away before assuring Briony that she’s safest at Hearst Hall. Briony looks for an escape until Toven finds her. He tells her to come inside, but Briony tries to flee across the boundary and is painfully shocked by her magical tattoo. After she slowly recovers, Toven takes her to see Mallow. He reminds Briony to be careful, because Mallow has ultimate power over her. At Mallow’s castle, Mallow reads Briony’s mind, searching for hints about the location of Briony’s cousin Finola, a competent fighter. Mallow finds Briony’s memories of having feelings for Toven, and Briony is ashamed. When they return to Hearst Hall, Briony refuses to tell Toven what Mallow found. Toven shows Briony to her comfortable room and leaves her alone after telling her that she can ask the house for whatever she needs.

Breakfast magically appears, but Briony struggles to eat. She asks the house for a list of where her friends went, and the list of her friends’ names and their enslavers’ names appears. Serena, Toven’s mother, takes Briony for a walk and insists she eat, explaining that there are no servants because the house is built of magical Starksen stones that allow the house itself to provide anything its residents want. Briony eats a little before noticing a page of The Journal, a publication with news about the continent. Later that night, Briony finds her door unlocked and sneaks down to read The Journal, finding out that her friend Sammy Meers has emancipated himself, alongside Didion and Velicity. Orion arrives home and escorts Briony back to her room.

Toven takes Briony to the library and shows her books about creating mind barriers. Briony studies until Toven leaves on a mission for Mallow. Briony later gets a note from Serena: Toven was injured, so the family will be gone for a few days. When Toven returns, he reveals that he was badly injured by Finola, who nearly killed him before Orion killed her. He and Briony argue, and Briony accidentally reinjures him when she uses magic to push him back against a tree. Briony realizes she still has access to her magic. He takes several days to heal, and Briony apologizes. Toven tells her she has access to heart magic because of her previous heartspring bond with Rory, which is one of the reasons Toven has not completed the heartspring bond with her. She also has access to her mind magic because the Hearsts have stopped giving her the magical herb that suppresses her powers.

Toven takes Briony back to the library for more mind barrier books, and there they find Canning, Finn, and Liam Quill. Canning uses magic to make Briony spill whisky on her dress, then demands she strip to her underwear. Toven is powerless to stop it, and he licks whisky off Briony’s neck before telling her to leave. Briony bathes, and afterwards Toven enters her room and explains that he must now take Briony to the next party at Biltmore Palace, Briony’s childhood home, or risk others becoming suspicious.

At Biltmore, Briony is horrified by the Bomardi’s sexual abuse against the enslaved Eversun women. Toven barely touches Briony until she sits in his lap to avoid harassment by Canning, but the other women are not so lucky. Briony sees the maid she rescued from the castle. Briony accidentally explodes a glass with her magic, and Canning demands the women pick up the glass beneath the table. The women all hold hands in solidarity for a moment. Toven and Briony watch Canning duel another Bomardi after he uses his elixir to force his heartspring Jellica into Sacral Magic. Canning wins the duel, but he drains Jellica badly. Briony finds out that Cordelia was husked—drained of all her magic—by her enslaver Cohle during a duel. Before Toven and Briony leave, Briony sees her other cousin Phoebe eat a grape, a callback to Briony spelling “not alone” with grapes in the dungeon.

Briony wants to go back to Biltmore to see Phoebe and the others, but Toven refuses. Briony enters his room the next week and finds him with Larissa, whom Toven previously said was dead. Larissa wants to learn mind magic to change her appearance so she can attend Biltmore, either as Briony or as the recently captured daughter of the president of the nearby nation Southern Camly. Briony agrees to teach her but refuses to allow her to attend Biltmore in her place. Larissa learns slowly, and in return, Larissa teaches Briony how to behave flirtatiously with Toven so people believe they are having sex and engaging in Sacral Magic, when in reality they are not. Toven gets Canning’s elixir banned from Biltmore.

Toven takes Briony to Biltmore again, and he behaves awkwardly when Briony tries to kiss him in front of the others. Canning offers to tell Briony where Cordelia is in exchange for a kiss, and Briony agrees, though Canning then reveals that Cordelia is frequently moved around the continent. The maid kisses Briony in front of Toven in what Briony assumes is an attempt to arouse the men, but Briony later finds a note that reads “no dragon, don’t Worry” tucked into her collar. Briony is confused because “Worry” was her childhood nickname for Rory, which only a few people know. Toven is angry that Briony kissed Canning, and she’s angry that he’s so stiff and awkward. They agree to have dinners together to practice their casual physical touch and get more comfortable with each other, and Briony stays up all night trying to decipher the note from the maid.

Toven takes Briony to Biltmore again, and she tucks a note that reads “safe, Biney” into her collar for the maid to find. Though she and Toven are more physically comfortable together, Briony is horrified when Mallow demands they stay for a show. Mallow has caught the maid and her brother helping the rebellion, and she sentences them to death by cannon. Briony watches in horror as the maid and her brother are shot, and Toven tries to guide her through making a mind barrier to cope with the trauma. Before they return to Hearst Hall, Ilana, the enslaved hostess of Biltmore, takes Briony’s note from her collar.

Briony becomes determined to take down Mallow. Serena, Orion, and Toven visit Briony’s room in the middle of the night and warn her that Mallow is sending someone to check Briony’s virginity, hinting at the continued suspicion about the nature of Briony and Toven’s relationship. The Hearsts perform an ancient Starkish ritual to remove Briony’s virginity from her body. The next morning, Cohle and Reighven arrive with nurses to examine Briony. The nurses do not find her virginity, though they see that her second tube was not cauterized. Before they can cauterize it, Serena knocks Reighven unconscious and demands they stop. Serena battles Cohle while Toven and Briony try to subdue the nurses.

Cohle almost kills Toven before Briony uses heartstop to kill him, preventing him from telling Mallow that she still has her magic, which would get the entire Hearst family executed. Briony is haunted by killing Cohle, but she takes his body back to the house and to Serena. Serena reveals that she’s also a powerful mind magician, and she guides Briony through replacing Reighven’s memories and those of the nurses with a false narrative justifying Cohle’s death.

Toven comforts Briony, and they kiss passionately before Mallow arrives the next morning. Mallow searches Briony’s mind, and Briony realizes she’s looking for memories about Rory, meaning that Rory is likely still alive. She also realizes that the dragon is not properly bonded to Mallow, meaning Mallow is not as powerful as she seems. The novel ends with an epilogue revealing that Rory is hiding in the dragon’s cave. The dragon wants to keep him safe and hates Mallow, who made a false promise to make the dragon a mate. Rory receives Briony’s note and wants to help her.