58 pages • 1 hour read
Hannah Nicole MaehrerAssistant to the Villain
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 49-60Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 49 Summary
Chapter 50 Summary
Meanwhile, Trystan has narrowed down the list of spy suspects to a single person: Tatianna. This makes him feel ill. As he goes to talk to her, he hears Evie screaming in Tatianna’s chamber, and he breaks down the door to find Evie crumpled on the floor while Tatianna holds the enchanted dagger, but all is not as it seems. Because the dagger absorbed some of Evie’s blood when the blacksmith stabbed her, the only way to make her unhealed wound stop hurting is for Evie to expose herself to the pain. Blade arrives; he needs Trystan’s magic to keep the office standing because the guvres are having sex and causing a ruckus. Trystan goes with Blade, leaving Evie screaming from pain due to her exposure to the dagger. Trystan isn’t sure whether he can “keep his power from eviscerating someone” (289) until her ordeal is over.
Chapter 51 Summary
By the end of the day, Evie has made great progress with the dagger. As Tatianna mixes a pain potion for Evie’s father, Trystan’s sister reveals that the blue ink the spy bought from her allows its user to read anything that was ever written using ink from the same pot. She also drops the name of a customer, which Evie recognizes as a name from her father’s stories. Feeling sick, Evie realizes that her father is the spy. He has been using the ink to spy on her. Evie grabs a sedative from Tatianna’s stash, planning on how best to use it.
Chapter 52 Summary
At home, Evie finds her father cooking. She gives him the sedative, telling him that it is a pain potion. She then goes to his office and finds a long letter signed “with love” from Nura Sage, her mother.
Chapter 53 Summary
After the guvres finish having sex, Trystan returns to his office. He and his sister work out that Evie’s father bought the special ink and has been spying on them since Evie started working for him. Panicked at the idea that Evie is now alone with him, Trystan leaves for Evie’s village. He is unsure what he’ll do when he gets there but has murderous intentions toward her father.
Chapter 54 Summary
Evie finds copies of her notes for Trystan in her father’s desk, alongside a letter to the king. Her father admits to working for the king, planting the bomb that almost killed her, and accepting money from the blacksmith in exchange for Evie’s company. His confession leaves Evie reeling with the magnitude of his betrayal. In addition, her father was never ill. He only faked the sickness so that he could continue the king’s work undetected. The sedative starts to work, and Evie’s father crumples, rasping out that Evie has ruined her life by working for a monster. Through tears that she doesn’t want to let fall, Evie tells him, “We’re all monsters in the end. At least mine lives in the light” (312).
Chapter 55 Summary
Trystan reaches Evie’s house, relieved to find her alive and unharmed. While gulping down half a bottle of wine, Evie fills him in on her father’s betrayals. Trystan tries to comfort her and realizes that he is terrible at doing so, but despite his awkwardness, Evie starts to smile, making him think, “I can’t be that bad, then” (317).
Chapter 56 Summary
Evie asks why the king wants the mated guvres, and Trystan reveals his backstory and mentions that baby guvre venom is rumored to have all-powerful healing properties. Trystan learned this when he was apprenticed to the king 10 years ago. At that time, the king included Trystan in his counsel, seeing him as a tool for his plans. When it became clear that Trystan’s magic was too dangerous, the king had him thrown in the dungeon. After a month spent in complete blackness, Trystan used his magic to escape, but that month destroyed part of him. As he states, “I was trapped with the darkness, and it was trapped with me” (322).
Chapter 57 Summary
Trystan continues to relate his history. He slaughtered all of his guards before escaping into the dawn of a new day. Staring at the sunrise, he felt himself come back together and vowed that “if the king believed me a villain...that was exactly what I would become” (324). The men Trystan tortures on a daily basis are sent by the king to kill him, and Trystan doesn’t understand why the king has also used Evie’s father as a spy. The mention of Evie’s father sends her into a panic attack, and she asks Trystan for a hug. He obliges, feeling like he can die content now that he has gotten the chance to hold her.
Chapter 58 Summary
After gathering supplies for herself and her sister, Evie goes back to the manor with Trystan. During the ride, she regrets not kissing him at her house, thinking that “they’d stood there together for what felt like forever and yet still not long enough” (328). Suddenly, she remembers that she forgot her notebook, and they head back, but the king and his guards arrive and capture Trystan.
Chapter 59 Summary
In the confusion, Evie drops her satchel, which contains the dagger that wounded her. The king’s guards bind Trystan. The blacksmith is among them, and the king orders him to kill Evie as the others toss Trystan into a carriage and drive away, leaving Evie to say “a quiet goodbye to the man who had become the focal point of her heart” (334). Alone with the blacksmith and two other guards, Evie fights for her life, managing to get close to her satchel before the blacksmith pins her. As he chokes her, Evie grabs the dagger and slits his throat.
Chapter 60 Summary
Chapters 49-60 Analysis
These final chapters wrap up several loose ends while leaving unsolved mysteries to be explored in the sequel. The identity of the office spy is revealed to be Evie’s father, and this betrayal adds considerable depth to Evie’s character, for when she confronts him, she learns that nothing in life is certain and that true villains often masquerade as heroes. This deeply traumatic experience also ushers her a bit further toward the side of overt “villainy” herself, for she becomes even more firmly aligned with Trystan and his goals. In addition to spying on her, Evie’s father has also plotted to give her to the blacksmith and has kept the secret of her mother’s whereabouts to himself. Though the man professes to be on the side of good, he is in reality an apt representation of The True Definition of Evil, for just like the unthinking villains of fairy-tale lore, both his actions and motivations are fueled by a callous dedication that prevents him from seeing any perspective other than the one the king wants him to see. If he has noticed that Evie has been happier since she started working for Trystan, he refuses to acknowledge this because his image of Trystan as the terror of the land is unmovable. This single-minded attitude shows the pitfalls of refusing to accept other perspectives. Evie’s father doesn’t know that the king has nefarious plans, and he doesn’t care because he cannot and would not believe that the king could do anything to harm his people. Thus, he carries out his orders no matter what, ultimately putting himself, his family, and the kingdom in more danger.
The dagger takes on even greater symbolic importance in these climactic scenes, for Evie’s struggles with the dagger and her eventual ability to use it prove that she is gradually overcoming her past traumas and developing a new sense of inner strength. While she is initially rendered immobile and nearly unconscious by the pain of the dagger’s proximity, she knows that the only way to overcome the pain is to face the weapon and symbolically confront her past. Thus, she forces herself to endure the pain because she wants to be free of the dagger’s effects. Her swift progress shows that determination is a primary ingredient in successful growth, and when the blacksmith attacks her in Chapter 59, the dagger becomes a symbol of her past and her future. The weapon’s proximity still causes her pain, but she now sees how to learn from and overcome that pain. Killing the blacksmith with the dagger breaks the power that it has because she has eliminated the object of her pain. Similarly, Evie’s decision to mirror Trystan’s habits and hang the blacksmith’s head from the office ceiling shows her newfound strength and foreshadows the villainous character that she will become as the series progresses.
The events of Chapters 56-58 represent the final moments of happiness before the plot twists that foreshadow the hardships that Evie and others will face in the sequel. After dealing with Evie’s father, Evie and Trystan bare their souls to one another, sharing the things that have brought darkness to their lives and deepening their relationship to a new level. As Trystan reveals how cruelly the king used him and discarded him, his so-called villainous acts take on a nobler significance, for it is only the hidden villainy of the king that has prompted him to become a villain himself. Trystan became a villain because he was determined to fulfill the role that the king gave him. However, Trystan also became a villain because he knew that doing so would give him the ability to work against the king. Thus, his villainy is more a matter of choice than of fate. This dynamic mirrors the decisions that Evie makes at the novel’s close, for she, too, has been twisted by the decisions others have made for her, and in light of those betrayals, she also chooses to embrace a measure of villainy. However, the events and betrayals have also made her stronger. If she wants to get Trystan back and stop the king, she needs to choose to become a villain, and she ends the novel knowing that although she might be villainous, she is not evil.
