Chapter 27-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 27 Summary: “Adelina Amouteru”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, child death, graphic violence, illness and death, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.
After a day of hiding in the catacombs, Adelina asks Violetta about her powers. Violetta admits she knew she had powers from the time she was young and used them to hold Adelina’s powers back for Adelina’s good. Violetta was not holding them back on the night their father died; she released them for good as Adelina went to the execution stand. Adelina demands Violetta try to take her illusion powers to show her; Violetta does. It scares Adelina, and she demands them back. Violetta says she is glad their father is dead. Adelina realizes that Violetta’s power can trump that of all the other Elites.
They hear a ruckus in the square above. There, Teren announces the death of the king to a large crowd. Then, he reveals a prisoner: Raffaele. Adelina feels to blame. Teren says all malfettos are banished; anyone turning one in will be rewarded; anyone hiding or helping one will be executed. He then tells the Reaper to turn himself in or watch Raffaele die. Violetta can sense that four other Elites are hidden in the crowd. Enzo steps out of the crowd and challenges Teren to a duel to the death the next morning. Teren accepts.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Adelina Amouteru”
Violetta helps steer Adelina to a university, a hiding place of the Daggers. In a small room, Adelina and Violetta rest on cots while the others wait impatiently for answers. Adelina explains halfway about Teren, saying he threatened to kill Violetta at the Spring Moons festival. Enzo tells them all—including Adelina—that the next morning, he will kill Teren while his patrons’ mercenaries help rescue Raffaele. He calls it “[waging] war” and asks for Adelina’s help. She wonders if their kiss was real and says yes. Adelina explains Violetta’s powers, and Enzo appreciates the new help.
Later, as Violetta sleeps, Enzo fetches Adelina, and the two talk in his room. He wants the real truth, but instead, she asks if he will eliminate her after winning his war. He insists he will not hurt her. He tells her he and Teren sparred as children, as Teren’s father taught Enzo to fight. Realizing she heard his talk with Dante, he tells her that Daphne Chouryana was an apothecary in training who would sell cosmetics to help malfettos cover their markings. Adelina asks if he loved Daphne, but all he will say is that as a royal he never could have married her. He kisses Adelina passionately and asks her to stay. She falls asleep uneasily in his arms.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Adelina Amouteru”
The next morning, Adelina uses illusion masks over her face and Violetta’s as they enter the square. A pool of water has been set up with a stone path lined with Inquisitors going across it. Teren arrives and challenges the Reaper to show himself. One of the Inquisitors in the line steps out. Adelina removes the illusion disguise; it is Enzo. He takes off his Dagger mask when Teren insists; everyone sees it is the prince. They agree to battle, and Teren tells no one to interfere. Teren quickly shows he is better and stronger at fighting with knives. Adelina drops the mask illusions, cloaks herself and Violetta with invisibility, and pulls her sister nearer to the fighting platform.
At a signal from Enzo, arrows take out the two Inquisitors holding Raffaele; two balinas, with Gemma riding one, fly out of the water. Gemma steers them to Raffaele and rescues him. Lucent sends a driving wind to knock over several Inquisitors. Violetta pulls away Teren’s powers, and Adelina makes Enzo look exactly like Teren. When an army of Inquisitors arrives, they do not know who the real Teren is.
Violetta cannot hold Teren’s powers at bay for long. When she tires, Michel collects her and takes her to safety. The square is a chaotic, raging war. Adelina tries to help Enzo, but she cannot hold his illusion or her invisibility much longer. When her invisibility falters, Teren charges at her, cutting her across the chest. She falls and strikes her head. When she gets up, her fury and darkness drive her to hold Teren and make him feel terrible pain, like she did with Dante.
She realizes too late that she should not be able to hold Teren immobile—Violetta is not there to remove his powers. It is instead Enzo that she is hurting. She lets him go, but Teren stabs him through before he can stand. Adelina is horrified at her mistake and its dreadful outcome. Enzo dies. She tries frantically to kill Teren, but his power to heal himself prevents any damage. He tells her she belongs with him and thanks her for her help. Lucent rescues her with a wind that swoops her onto a balina.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Teren Santoro”
Teren feels a moment of sadness that Enzo had to die but knows the world is better without him.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Adelina Amouteru”
Adelina wakes, wounded, days later in an estate. Raffaele sits nearby, and the other Daggers stand on guard watching her. Lucent demands to know if she killed Dante. Adelina tries to say it was an accident. Raffaele allows her to explain. Adelina tells the entire truth but senses that they do not trust her.
Raffaele reminds her of the gemstone test. He says he realizes now that her passion is a dark sort, it is making her darker and bitter, and it feeds her fear and fury. Raffaele admits he told Enzo to kill her long ago. Adelina is shocked and betrayed. Hurting, she still tries to make amends, bringing up an elite whom Rafaele once said could raise the dead. Raffaele rejects this idea; Adelina can tell he does not think Enzo loved her. She begs Raffaele not to disown her, but he says she and Violetta will have to leave. She tries to tame her fury, but it swells. The others leave; she feels that she is “truly gone” as she plots to use her powers without them and form her own society if she must.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Adelina Amouteru”
The introductory quote is the Rose Society initiation pledge by Adelina.
It is evening. Adelina and Violetta must leave the next morning. Adelina tries to be bold, but resentful thoughts invade. She furiously attacks her hair, chopping it roughly off with the one dagger she still has. Violetta tries to stop her, pulling Adelina’s anger and power. Adelina harshly demands her powers back. Violetta relinquishes them but swears that she can protect Adelina, as she always has. Adelina finally realizes that her sister cares sincerely about her; she holds Violetta, cries, and crafts a comforting illusion: a childhood in which her face is not scarred, her mother is alive, and her father is kind. When she lets the illusion go, she settles again into thinking about finding other Young Elites and forming her own society to seek vengeance against Teren.
Epilogue Summary: “Maeve Jacqueline Kelly Corrigan”
The Crown Princess of Beldain in the Skylands, Maeve, has seven older brothers. Six of them stand watching while she carries out the third execution of the day. A nobleman who stabbed his wife in the back now begs for mercy. She tells him if he can run to the far end of the bridge before she counts to 10, he can have freedom. He does not make it. She shoots arrows into his legs, and when he falls, she lets her white Beldish tiger finish him off.
Her brother, Augustine, brings a letter from Kenettra. It is from Lucent, her lover before Lucent was banished. She learns of Enzo’s death and the Head Inquisitor’s murder of the king. She was a significant patron of Enzo’s, desiring trade between their countries once he reclaimed his throne. She planned to use this open door of “trade” to take over Kenettra. Her secret plans are now ruined, and she is disgruntled.
Her brothers go to their dying mother the Queen, but Maeve does not want to hear about the need to marry and produce a daughter right now. She instead visits a small, guarded manor house to the side of the palace. Inside, in a shadowy bedroom, she greets her seventh brother, Tristan. He greets her distantly; it hurts to recall how different he has grown. She reflects on the terrible accident in the forest with Lucent and Tristan, Tristan’s death, and her role in traveling to the Underworld to bring him back from the dead. Others assumed he never really died, but she told her society of Elites the truth. Tristan seemed normal for a few years, but now he would kill anyone in her way.
She tells him she is heading to Kenettra and that he will come too.
Chapter 27-Epilogue Analysis
In the lead-up to the climax, the author does not reveal details of Enzo’s plan to duel; the author withholds how he intends to kill Teren and rescue Raffaele to increase suspense and tension. Instead, the narrative focuses on a last tranquil scene between Enzo and Adelina in which he shares intimate details with her and seeks comfort in her presence and kisses. His actions reveal that Enzo sincerely wants Adelina to be a part of his life, and her tentative trust in their future together gives hope for a happy end. The irony here is two-part. First, despite Enzo’s heartfelt honesty, Adelina maintains secrecy about her role as a potential spy for Teren. This completes the development of the theme of The Impact of Secrecy on Power, Corruption, and Redemption. Keeping this secret corrupts her attempt at redemptive sleep, and a nightmare of Teren demonstrates her fear of his power.
Second, and more importantly, the strongest situational irony in the story occurs the next morning as Adelina’s fury and power, which she has worked so hard to control and which Enzo relies upon in his quest to take back his throne, inadvertently but directly leads to Enzo’s death. Unlike her toying with Dante and unintentionally killing him, Adelina wants Teren to die and leans into his pain with all her strength. Her horror at realizing it is Enzo she is hurting, followed immediately by his violent death, is the dark plot twist that thwarts a traditional happy end to the tale. Adelina’s grief and guilt prompt her candid honesty, ironically too late, in revealing the blackmail to Raffaele.
While the novel’s plot climaxes with Enzo’s death, there is also a high point of suspense regarding Adelina’s character arc. This occurs when Raffaele banishes her; Adelina has a moment’s chance to learn from her choice to keep impactful secrets and devote herself to a productive and kind path, but instead, her bitter resentment at being used inspires the desire to form her own society. The brutal “execution” of her hair, physical proof of her malfetto status, symbolizes what she perceives as a failure to find enough goodness in herself for a life on the side of justice and righteousness. She bemoans losing herself to the dark evil within; but when Violetta offers to control the dark intentions she cannot control, Adelina cannot accept goodness from the outside either: She demands her power back, and when it comes, she feels “life and freedom” (341). After wavering throughout the story between light and dark, Adelina ultimately comes of age in rejecting hope of rejoining the Daggers and turning more fully toward vengeance in The Journey to Understanding and Fulfilling One’s True Purpose: “I will turn us against Teren with such fury that he will beg for forgiveness. […] I will be unstoppable” (344). This decision marks Adelina’s embrace of her darkness, signaling a break from her past self, as the very bitterness and rage she previously tried to suppress is what fuels her journey to power.
An involved epilogue with several new characters serves as a new path, branching the story into a new direction to continue the series. It broaches connections with the events in Kenettra in the form of questions: Will Maeve try to raise Enzo from the dead? How successful will she be? Why was Lucent exiled? The epilogue also connects thematically with its revelation that Tristan would fiercely kill at her briefest command; Maeve’s choice to bring her brother back from the Underworld reawakens the theme of The Concept of Monstrosity and Society’s Role in Creating It, something upon which Lu can build as the series continues.
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