Chapters 25-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use and sexual content.
Sebastian angrily quizzes her about her relationship with Finn, asking if Brie loves him. She admits to friendship only. He accuses her of spending time with him only to spy on him for Finn, whom he (unlike Finn) considers an enemy. Rather than admit the full truth, she tells him that she has manifested powers and that Finn is helping train her. Sebastian admits that he is jealous. Brie insists that she is trustworthy. They kiss and caress one another. Sebastian asks her to promise that she will stay in Faerie with him, but Brie only offers the present, which causes him to pull back. He offers to plan the trip to the seaside palace so that they have time for “making love and connecting” (300). Brie frets that she will need time to search for the book. Sebastian leaves, asking her to think about how she views her future.
Brie uses her shadow powers to explore the palace. She accidentally encounters Sebastian kissing one of the other women, which shocks her. She feels wounded that, after refusing her offer to have sex with him, he was entangled with another potential bride. She wants to confront him but knows that if she does so, it will ruin her chances to search the Serenity Palace.
Brie runs into Riaan, who insists that if Sebastian was kissing someone else, it was because he is jealous of her relationship with Finn. Riaan argues that the “ultimate show of trust between a human and a faerie” is to “share a life-bond” (305). He urges her to consider bonding with Sebastian, though Brie knows this is impossible while she’s working with Mordeus, as the bond would help Sebastian know her location.
Upset, Brie drinks faerie wine until intoxicated. She dances with Riaan, who calls her the “future queen,” though Brie alludes to having secrets that she cannot reveal without “[losing her] sister forever” (307). Pretha, disguised as Emmaline, drags her away from the party. She tells Brie that she has been drugged and takes her through a portal to the rebels’ new base.
Chapter 26 Summary
Pretha is exasperated and Finn is amused at Brie’s cheerful intoxication. She cuddles against Finn and admits that she was jealous when she saw him kissing the tribute. She asks to kiss him, but he rejects her advances, given her drugged state. He guides her into a cold shower to lower her elevated temperature while Brie admires his tattoos. She laments that she “[wants] to be wanted. With no strings, no expectations” (314). Finn kisses her neck but refuses anything further.
Chapter 27 Summary
When Brie wakes up the next morning, she is hungover and embarrassed about her pleading. Finn teases her about propositioning him the night prior. He explains that her wine was dosed with another drug and offers her an elixir to counteract the drug if she ever encounters it again. She asks him about Isabel, whom he admits was a mortal woman whom he loved before she died. He tells her that Sebastian will take her to the seaside palace that evening.
Over breakfast, Brie explains that Riaan urged her to go bond with Sebastian after she’d consumed the drugged wine. Finn notes that Brie’s stance on bonding—that she cannot do so while she is working to save her sister—is different from her previous assertion that she would never bond. Finn reminds her that “bonds have consequences” (323).
They are interrupted when Pretha enters, panicked because Lark has scraped her knee. Pretha admits that Lark has a condition that makes her heal “like a mortal,” something that has affected all Unseelie fae for the past two decades. They age like mortals, as well. This condition means that using magic shortens their lifespans; this is why Finn uses his magic sparingly and Pretha dislikes Lark using her precognition. Pretha trusts Brie despite fearing that she “may give [her] heart and [her] life to the wrong prince” (325). Pretha indicates that she is somehow magically bound from revealing more. (In the next chapter, Brie learns that this is part of Arya’s curse that stops Unseelie from accessing magic.) Pretha urges Brie to continue her quest for Mordeus. Brie confesses that she struggles with her affection for both Sebastian and Finn, but Pretha insists that “in the end,” Brie “will have to choose” (327).
Chapter 28 Summary
Brie summons Bakken to inquire about the condition afflicting Unseelie fae. Bakken explains that 20 years prior, Oberon and Arya were reunited after Oberon’s banishment to the human realm. In that time, however, Oberon had fallen in love with a human and rejected Arya. In response, Arya cursed Unseelie to have mortals’ healing and lifespans; if Unseelie wish to use magic, they must take humans’ life force to do so. Brie is horrified, particularly by the implication that Finn killed his tribute to heal himself. (She confirms this at the end of the novel.) The curse left Unseelie too weak to hurt Seelie, but magically bound Seelie are unable to hurt Unseelie. This left the Great Fae War unfinished. It has also prohibited the fae from speaking of the curse, though goblins are exempt. Bakken contends that the curse is designed to punish humans as revenge for losing “King Oberon’s heart” (331).
Brie trades more of her hair for information about how to break the curse. Bakken explains that Brie has two paths, one that ends in her death and one where she lives. To end the curse without dying, she must kill Arya.
Sebastian knocks, and Bakken vanishes. Riann told Sebastian that Brie witnessed him with another woman; he apologizes. He has sent the girl home, as he does not feel for her as he does Brie. She admits that she was drugged the night prior; Sebastian accuses Finn and his allies, fearing that they attempted to pressure Brie to bond with Finn. Brie puzzles over why both princes discourage her from bonding the other. (She later learns that this is because bonding one of the princes would kill her and sacrifice Oberon’s crown to him.) Sebastian suggests that Finn might seek to bond her to access her power and highlights the rarity of humans with magic. He reiterates his interest in bonding with her. They transport to the summer palace.
Chapter 29 Summary
Brie is amazed by the sea, which she’s seen only once before. She weeps, thinking about Jas. Sebastian explains that Mordeus’s “essence” is hiding Jas, so they can only find her if Mordeus dies. Brie accidentally reveals that she knows that the Seelie cannot harm the Unseelie. She is vague about her source of information and tells him that she no longer thinks either court is unilaterally good or bad. She suggests that “maybe the Unseelie who seem evil are just trying to make the best of a bad situation” (342).
Sebastian references Jalek’s assassination attempt and realizes that Brie already knew. Brie cites ignorance of Jalek’s plans but admits that she doesn’t disagree with Jalek’s opposition to the camps. Sebastian contends that Arya is putting her own people first to stop them from being “overrun” by Unseelie fleeing Mordeus. He urges her to learn about Finn’s “catacombs in the Wild Fae lands” (343), which he insists will change her opinion of Finn. Sebastian frames the curse as Arya’s “sacrifice,” something that ended the Great Fae War (a contrast to Bakken’s characterization).
Sebastian frames Oberon and Arya’s story as one where “the golden faerie princess” was “seduced by King Oberon” (344). They fled to the human realm to explore their forbidden romance; there, their power moved the sun and moon, creating an eclipse. Arya’s parents eventually discovered their affair and locked all portals between the human realm and Faerie, leaving Oberon stranded in the human realm and the lovers apart. Humans were left without the sun due to Oberon’s presence, and they “sacrificed innocents in an attempt to appease their gods” (344). Oberon’s power waned until he could not glamour himself. Humans attacked the revealed fae king; only one human woman offered him care and safety. The two fell in love. During Oberon’s absence, Mordeus took over Unseelie. Arya wanted Oberon to marry her so that they could unite against Mordeus, but Oberon refused since he was faithful to his human love, something Sebastian sees as selfish.
Brie admits that she traded her hair to Bakken to get information about the curse. Sebastian cautions her that Bakken likely has an ulterior motive. Sluagh approach, so the two hasten inside, but Sebastian will not reveal who died in this location to create the Sluagh.
Sebastian gives Brie a dagger laced with iron, which is the only weapon that can kill Mordeus. He urges her to keep it with her at all times. Riaan told him that Brie has secrets related to Jas, and Sebastian knows that Brie replaced the Mirror of Discovery with a false replica. He tells her that the dagger will also kill Finn and claims that Faerie should be ruled by one monarch. He takes her to the library and shows her the Grimoricon; Brie pretends not to recognize it. The book is linked to Arya’s life, so Sebastian urges Brie not to touch it. Brie is conflicted between risking Sebastian’s affection if she causes his mother’s death and her conscience if she doesn’t help dethrone Mordeus.
Over an opulent dinner, Brie laments how easily she had grown accustomed to luxuries after a lifetime of poverty. She worries about her sister’s health and safety. Sebastian gives her faerie wine and urges her to relax for a while.
Chapter 30 Summary
In her bedroom, Brie and Sebastian kiss. She confides that she “doesn’t deserve [him]” (355), privately thinking about how he will despise her when he learns that she has been working with Mordeus. She invites him into her room, enjoying the simple moment between them without worrying about larger Faerie politics. They confess their love for one another. They have sex, even though they both recognize that this does not mean that they will be together permanently.
Brie wakes, feeling as though she can’t breathe. The Banshee sits atop her, chanting her name. She falls unconscious. She sees Lark, who tells Brie that she has three paths, though “the Banshee’s call is clear” in all of them (363). She hears Sebastian calling her name from a distance as Lark declares that Mordeus “will be true to his word” and advises her to “choose [her] path wisely” (363). (This foreshadows how Brie manipulates the terms of her original deal with Mordeus to secure Jas’s freedom.)
Chapters 25-30 Analysis
In this portion of the novel, Brie learns various faerie histories from different characters while also sharing her own story in varying ways depending on her audience. She gives Sebastian an incomplete explanation of her relationship with Finn, while Riaan gives her another tailored description of what a life-bond between a fae and a human might mean, emphasizing the good and leaving out the cost. Brie’s own occlusion of the truth further illustrates the overlap between appearances and reality in Faerie—and how knowledge of both of these versions of the world is a valuable tool. The variability between different versions of different tales—such as the narrative of the history between Oberon and Arya, for example—only partially reveals the truth of the tales themselves.
What the telling of these stories reveals more clearly, the novel contends, is the stakes of the teller. When Sebastian shares the story of Oberon’s “seduction” of Arya, he shows that he allies with his mother more than he claims, as he puts in notable effort into making her seem sympathetic while omitting how, in a quest for vengeance, Arya cursed an entire nation of fae. This again shows how, in a novel where misinformation is weaponized and spread, what a person says is frequently shown as less important than how they say it. The method of telling reveals more than what is told.
Given these mysteries and conflicting information, the role of goblins as keepers of knowledge proves vital to Brie’s choices as she moves through the complex politics of the faerie courts. In Chapter 28, Bakken tells Brie all the information she lacked about the curse that Arya cast on the Unseelie, as well as the true rapport between Arya and Oberon. Goblins are presented as apolitical figures that lack stakes in the court politics that divide the Seelie and Unseelie. This disinterest in power games makes the goblins a useful tool, while their self-interest prevents them from being fully cast as a deus ex machina. Bakken does not volunteer information precisely when Brie needs it. Instead, she must learn enough information to ask the relevant questions—and then must decide that she has enough context for the answer to make it worth the cost of her hair to ask. This leaves Brie still in charge of this flow of information, something that gives her the agency that she often lacks in the face of her desperate circumstances and the active manipulation of those around her.
In Chapter 29, Brie articulates her new understanding of morality in Faerie, one that has been stripped of the previous prejudices that she held against the fae. Her new vision erases divisions between humans and fae and Seelie and Unseelie when determining validity and ethics of motives—something that the fae, especially Sebastian, seem to translate into value. Brie’s conviction that fae cannot be accurately characterized as good or evil according to their courts is framed as being all the more informed because she is an outsider. This outsider status both gives her greater reason to distrust the fae—who have largely kept secrets from and attempted to manipulate her—and greater distance from the ingrained in-group biases that the different courts experience. That Brie can overcome her experiences and prejudices to arrive at a more nuanced understanding emphasizes Sebastian’s failure to do so.
Though Sebastian claims to oppose the kind of thinking that led Arya to put Unseelie children into violent labor camps, he follows this with language that treats Seelie fae as an in-group that is being “overrun” by Unseelie fae, who are presented as being “other.” This language undermines his defense of his own moral stance. This position becomes all the more important when Sebastian reveals, in the final chapters of the novel, that he is actually Unseelie royalty and that he has taken the Unseelie crown. Though Brie ends the novel feeling betrayed by both Sebastian and Finn, Sebastian’s binary thinking about the value of the lives of members of different courts leaves her convinced that Finn would make a better Unseelie king than Sebastian.
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