53 pages • 1 hour read
Stacia StarkA Court This Cruel and Lovely
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 25-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
Prisca wakes to find Lorian by her side. She was unconscious for two days, during which time Lorian cared for her and investigated what happened. He tells her that Caraceli was behind the poisoning. Prisca asks him not to kill the woman, preferring to find another way to silence her rather than drawing more attention to herself. They then talk about the rumors that speculate about a potential relationship between the two of them. Lorian confesses to being jealous of Thol, and the talk turns sexual, although he insists on waiting until Prisca has fully recovered. He also receives a letter from his brother, who expresses interest in Prisca’s time-altering powers, but Lorian brushes off the missive.
Once Prisca is well enough, she returns to the dungeon to provide food for the prisoners, and Demos expresses his frustration at being unable to protect her. Afterward, Prisca goes to see Lorian, telling him that she knows where the amulet is. She promises to obtain it for him in exchange for his help with the escape of the prisoners. Lorian reluctantly agrees to consider it. The conversation takes a turn when he presses her to admit her desire for him, and they soon become intimate. However, Lorian stops before long, leaving Prisca frustrated.
Chapter 26 Summary
Auria visits Prisca, and they discuss the castle gossip about Prisca’s connection with Lorian. Prisca returns to the dungeon to continue strategizing with Tibris and Demos about the upcoming breakout. However, the two men argue, and Demos reveals his frustrations over not having the chance to know his sister for most of their lives. Before leaving the dungeons, Prisca and Tibris also investigate the tunnel leading to the market.
Lorian later demands that Prisca tell him where the amulet is, but Prisca pushes back, worried that once he has what he wants, he might abandon them. Lorian proposes a fae blood vow to ensure mutual trust, to which Prisca reluctantly agrees. Afterward, seeking a distraction, the two of them have sex.
Prisca continues with her plans for the next few days, although she is distracted by thoughts of her interlude with Lorian. However, he then delivers the bad news: the king has filled in the tunnel, jeopardizing their entire mission. With the original plan ruined, Prisca comes up with another plan and convinces Madinia to help her.
Chapter 27 Summary
Prisca and Madinia talk to Davis, the man responsible for controlling the king’s magical horseless carriages. Unaware of their true intentions, Davis shows them how he controls the carriages via a large map and a magical stone. While Davis is distracted by Madinia, Prisca memorizes the map. Prisca is then cornered by two other ladies to the queen, who comment on her rumored relationship with Lorian. While they talk, Prisca realizes that she has been seeing an entirely different version of Lorian than everyone else has; in his political subterfuge, he has fully convinced them that he is really a prince.
While disturbed by this discovery, she remains focused and meets with Tibris to share the news about the tunnel. She then consults with Vicer and tells him about her new plan. While he pronounces the plan too dangerous, she refuses to give up. Back at the castle, Telean pledges her support. Meanwhile, Marth questions Lorian about his decision to involve Prisca in the plan. When Prisca finally visits him, they have sex again.
Chapter 28 Summary
Prisca wakes up on the morning of the Gods Day ball, sick with nervousness. She knows that if her plan fails, they are all doomed. She heads outside to walk and clear her mind. Later, when her maid, Daselis, tells her that it is time to prepare for the ball, she also asks if she should warn the servants to stay away from the castle. Prisca realizes that the maid knows more than she has let on. Prisca decides to trust her. She tells Daselis to keep the servants away and offers to help get Daselis’s family out of Lesdryn. As they prepare for the night, Daselis says that if Prisca is going to humiliate the king, she should look her best.
Chapter 29 Summary
Prisca finishes preparing for the ball. Telean has made her a black and silver gown that conceals her weapons. Prisca and Daselis coerce the other maid, Erea, into helping them by pointing out that the king will use his truth-seekers to discern that she knows about the plan.
At the ball, Prisca, Madinia, and the others wait for the right moment to execute their plan. The king is not yet present and is said to be feeling unwell. Once everyone is in place, Prisca uses her power to freeze time, and this allows her, Lorian, and the others to free the prisoners from the dungeons. As the rest of them escape to the carriages, Prisca returns to the ballroom and kills the king’s assessor.
Meanwhile, Lorian leads the prisoners to safety, fighting off the guards who are attempting to stop the carriages. During their escape, Demos confronts Lorian as to why he isn’t trying to get Prisca to leave as well. In the process, Demos reveals that Prisca is the heir to the hybrid kingdom. Lorian realizes that his brother knew this; her heritage is the reason why his brother has been so interested in Prisca’s magic. They reach the city walls, only to find guards and stone hags waiting.
Chapter 30 Summary
After killing the assessor, Prisca heads to the queen’s chambers to retrieve the amulet from its place in the mirror. However, she is confronted by Auria, who reveals herself to be both a spy for the king and a “null,” someone immune to magic. She intends to imprison Prisca, but Madinia arrives in time to knock her out. The two women then raid the queen’s rooms, taking her jewels to fund the rebellion before escaping toward the city walls. As they hurry through the streets, they learn that the slums are burning due to an attack on the rebels’ stronghold, but they are unable to stop. At the wall, they find the king, his guards, and the stone hags gathered, along with Lorian and the prisoners. The king has Farrow executed, causing Madinia to break. Prisca charges toward the waiting crowd and throws the amulet to Lorian. Upon catching it, his true form is revealed; he isn’t a hybrid as Prisca assumed, but a true fae. He is the Bloodthirsty Prince who destroyed Crawyth and killed her birth parents. Lorian joins efforts with his mercenaries, who are also fae, and they unleash their powers on the king’s forces. Galon warns Lorian that he cannot kill the king yet. The king flees with his remaining guards.
In the aftermath, Lorian tells Prisca that she is the heir to the hybrid kingdom. While Prisca reels at this news, Demos steps between her and an arrow shot by a hidden guard. Tibris cannot heal the wound, and this forces Prisca to make a desperate deal with Lorian instead. She agrees to go with him to his kingdom in exchange for Demos’s life. As Demos is healed, Prisca accepts her fate but vows to make Lorian pay for what he has done to her family.
Chapters 25-30 Analysis
The concluding chapters of A Court This Cruel and Lovely serve as both the climax and resolution of this novel but also set the stage for future installments in the series by revealing the truth about Lorian and Prisca’s respective identities. In the lead-up to the escape attempt during the Gods Day ball, Prisca serves as the lynchpin in the rebellion’s plans—not only because of her powers, but also because she becomes the de facto leader of the group within the castle. In the midst of The Struggle against Oppression, she finally comes into her own and gains the self-confidence that she needs to navigate the increasingly ruthless world around her. She also begins to exercise her own ingenuity, for when their first escape plan collapses, she is the one who finds with an alternative route and overrides the doubts of Tibris and Vicer. By stepping into a leadership role, she takes on decisive new attributes that foreshadow the later revelation that she is the heir to the hybrid kingdom. Faced with The Implications of Identity and Heritage, she finally understands why her adoptive mother made so many cryptic comments about her future and why the mysterious “C” specifically has expressed interest in her time-stopping powers.
Prisca’s internal conflict between the person she was and the person she is becoming finally reaches a crescendo during the ball. While the others escape in the magical carriages, she is supposed to be retrieving the amulet for Lorian, but she first takes a serious risk by killing the king’s assessor. When she allows the assessor to feel the same fear as his victims before stabbing him and cutting his throat, Prisca reveals the existence of a dark, violent core that she has barely begun to acknowledge. As she notes to herself, there is “something in me awakening at the sound of his gurgles. Something vicious and deadly. Something that craved the blood of my enemies” (528). Significantly, this scene temporarily flips the standard dynamic between Prisca and Lorian, as he is now the one defending and supporting while she is the one giving in to the siren song of violence and vengeance.
These chapters are also where the relationship between Prisca and Lorian reaches its peak before a rapid collapse in the final pages. Her poisoning in Chapter 24 becomes the catalyst for the pair’s sharp pivot into actual intimacy. Lorian’s reaction to her near-death experience, as evidenced by his correspondence with his brother, includes talk of killing everyone in the castle. Thus, it is clear that while he does care about Prisca, even these tender feelings are couched in the language of cruelty and violence. Prisca, meanwhile, begins to trust him in the wake of his caring response to her vulnerability during her recovery. Up until this point, their relationship has been limited to sexual comments and the occasional heated kiss, but now, they finally express their desires physically, as depicted in several sex scenes. However, the tug-of-war power dynamics of their relationship remain a crucial factor as Lorian continues to assert dominance while also expressing his jealousy of her past with Thol. In response, Prisca demands openness from Lorian, challenging him not to withdraw or push her away. While their interactions still exhibit plenty of antagonism, the enemies-to-lovers trope has advanced considerably, pushing the two into a closer relationship.
However, although their conflict-plagued connection finally begins to reach an equilibrium, this mutual understanding is once again shattered by Prisca’s discovery of Lorian’s true identity as the “Bloodthirsty Prince,” the fae who destroyed Crawyth and caused the deaths of her parents in the process. Although Prisca was finally beginning to trust him, this revelation effectively destroys everything they previously built and makes her doubt every aspect of their partnership. As Prisca admits to herself, “It was my heart that had cracked open. It had broken so violently, I could have sworn I was bleeding out” (541). This passage confirms that Prisca has begun to fall in love with him, and the sudden knowledge that he is the one responsible for destroying her family shatters her—as does the realization that he has hid this information from her.
It is also important to note that the pair’s power is once again imbalanced and also shifts back into Lorian’s favor. He not only has the physical power to make the king and his guards flee, but he also offers to “gift” all the escaping hybrids with copies of the Gifting marks, and Prisca reluctantly agrees to this for their sake. Her acceptance of this aid indicates her bitter understanding that he yet holds the dominant position in the dangerous world that she has entered. Lorian intensifies this unequal power relationship by using Demos’s deadly wound as leverage to once again coerce Prisca into helping him. When he offers her a healer to save Demos if she agrees to go with him afterward, Prisca is forced to choose between her brother’s life and her own freedom. Lorian uses her love for her long-lost brother to wield a corrupt form of power over her, knowing that she has no choice but to comply with his demands. Given that A Court This Cruel and Lovely is the first novel in a series, this event foreshadows a tumultuous future between these two lead characters, implying that their relationship dynamic will inevitably shift again in the sequel.
