House of Flame and Shadow

The Middengard Wyrm attacks Bryce’s group, drawn by the blood trail left by Bryce’s wounded hands—wounds that she’s purposefully been reopening. Bryce abandons Nesta and Azriel to fight it, but their pretend cries of pain purposefully lure her back to act as Wyrm-bait. However, when the Wyrm absorbs Nesta’s magic, she is forced to put on the Mask—a long-lost item she’s recently found that can reanimate the dead. Reanimated dead help Nesta kill the Wyrm.

As Bryce, Nesta, and Azriel forge ahead, Nesta mentions she’s seen the eight-pointed star somewhere else, “no place good” (161).

In the Asteri prison, Ruhn enters the shared mental space Lidia has been creating through telepathy, speaking to her for the first time since his capture. He informs her that Bryce is not in Hel. Lidia is positive that Bryce is alive: Rigelus has mystics searching for Bryce, which probably means that he worries she might endanger the Asteri. Ruhn ends their communication by telling Lidia he is only sharing information out of necessity and that she is dead to him.

In Prythian, Bryce, Nesta, and Azriel reach a large, narrow chasm too narrow to fly across. At Bryce’s urging, Azriel directs his shadows into the star on her chest, charging her up like a magic battery. Bryce successfully winnows (or teleports) them across the chasm. On the other side, they see new carvings depicting the Cauldron, which Nesta and Azriel explain is the creator of all life in their world. Nesta admits that the Cauldron created her: She herself is Made (or magically created) High-Fae; the Cauldron also created the Dread Trove—a collection of recently rediscovered Fae magical artifacts scattered around Prythian. Bryce wonders if Luna’s Horn, brought to Midgard by her ancestors Theia and Pelias, was also Made by the Cauldron. They approach a wall engraved with the eight-pointed star that opens to Bryce’s magic.

The star door is a portal that transports Bryce, Nesta, and Azriel to the Prison. They reach an arena-sized cavern with the star in the floor’s center—where not long ago, Nesta found another item of the Dread Trove—the Harp, which allows people to move between places or worlds and stop time. Bryce discovers that carvings on the floor depict the constellations of Midgard and believes the Harp was left there for someone like her to find.

When Bryce steps onto the star in the room’s center, a hologram of a High Fae appears: It is Silene, the daughter of Rhysand’s distant ancestor Theia. Silene’s hologram tells the story of the Daglan/Asteri who enslaved the High Fae for 5,000 years. The High Fae paid an annual Tithe—handing over kernels of their power to strengthen the Daglan and limit themselves—until Theia secretly amassed immense forces that overpowered the Daglan.

The hologram next shows Bryce the story of Silene’s parents, Theia and Fionn, the first High King and High Queen. Theia used her time serving the Daglan to learn about their “deadly instruments of conquest” (194), which are the Dread Trove’s four objects of catastrophic power—the Mask, the Crown, the Harp, and the Horn. Theia slowly stole them away and hid them with Fionn. The last was the Cauldron, a benevolent object from their lands that the Daglan had stolen and used for destructive purposes. Fionn pulled the Starsword from the Cauldron and he and Theia used the Daglan’s own weapons to defeat them.

Afterward, Theia and Fionn formed a new court—the Dusk Court—and had two daughters: Silene and Helena. As Fionn faded with age, he advocated for Helena to inherit the crown. Theia and her general, Pelias, did not agree, so they arranged for a kelpie to drown Fionn in a bog. Theia then claimed the Starsword and Truth-Teller. With the Dread Trove also in her possession, Theia became all-powerful but was still greedy for more. Convinced by Pelias—who was secretly allied with the Asteri ruler Rigelus—to conquer new worlds, Theia opened a portal to Midgard using the Horn and the Harp. As her people crossed over, they found Midgard occupied by other would-be conquerors, enslaving the native human civilizations. Theia, paranoid, hid the Harp and the Horn in a liminal space only she could access.

The hologram now shows Theia’s people waging war on Midgard with other kinds of Vanir, including shape shifters with elongated canines who answered to Rigelus. Silene and Helena were sent by Theia to inspect the Eternal City, where they learned that Rigelus and his companions were not Fae, but the Daglan. With this knowledge, Theia used the Harp and the Horn to open a portal to a world known to have defeated the Daglan: Hel.

In the Asteri prison, Baxian bites off Ruhn’s hand, freeing him from one of his shackles and allowing him to reach an iron poker across the room with his feet, but they’re interrupted by the arrival of Rigelus and his minions.

In Lunathion, the Viper Queen sells the dragon-shifter Ariadne to a mysterious bidder and instructs Ithan to fulfill their deal by fighting Sigrid—the wolf-shifter Ithan recently freed—to the death. Ithan wants to avoid hurting Sigrid, but when it becomes clear she is intent on killing him first, he defensively beheads her.

In Prythian, the hologram continues. One of the Princes of Hel, Aidas, answered Theia’s call; since defeating the Daglan in Hel, he had sought to cast them out of other worlds as well. Theia then learned from the humans of Parthos that the Daglan poisoned Midgard’s water, infecting it with parasites. The ritual of the Drop was fabricated as a way for Vanir to gain immortality through giving up a kernel of their power; now, the Daglan harnessed and fed on the kernels of power released in this way. If a Vanir refused the Drop, the water parasites would suck the immortality from the Vanir’s veins, forcing them to age as humans do.

Though Theia and Aidas raised an army 60,000 strong, they were overpowered by the Daglan, now led by the turncoat General Pelias. When Theia played the Harp, an eight-pointed star appeared on her chest, allowing her to transfer her magic to her daughters. Theia then gave Helena the Horn and Silene the Harp and Truth-Teller, with instructions to open a portal and leave. The sisters opened the portal now known as the Northern Rift, but while Silene returned to the Dusk Court with the Harp and Truth-Teller, Helena stayed behind with the Horn to defend their people. In the battle, Pelias beheaded Theia with the Starsword.

Silene closed the portal, carved a map of the cosmos into the floor, and began transforming her former palace into the Prison. She spent decades hunting down the Daglan’s remaining monsters and trapping them inside. Eventually, she returned to Prythian, married the High Lord of Night, and bore a son with powers of shadow, mist, and starlight. She erased her court’s history from the world, so this knowledge has long since been lost; her latest descendant, Rhysand, is unaware of his ancestral history.

In the Asteri prison, Rigelus extracts a portion of Hunt’s lightning powers and stores them in quartz—a conduit for magic. Rigelus gives the Hammer and the Hawk—two of the Triarii that are with him—the choice to kill either Ruhn or Baxian in the coming days. Meanwhile, Lidia is given permission to inject a healing potion into Hunt and Baxian under the guise of preparing them for more torture. She hopes two days will be enough time for their wings to regrow.

In Prythian, Azriel and Nesta learn that the Horn—now known to be one of the artifacts from the Dread Trove—is tattooed into Bryce’s back. Realizing that Bryce might bring the Asteri directly to their world, Azriel flies for reinforcements while Nesta distracts Bryce. Bryce feels magical power in the stone beneath her—it is where Silene placed all of her own power and that she got from Theia. Bryce draws the power into herself, transforms the Prison into its former palatial glory, and traps Nesta and Azriel inside.

In the Asteri prison, Lidia summons an enslaved hag to the catacombs where Irithys resides. In exchange for being freed from her shackles, the hag removes the enslavement mark binding Irithys’s power. In turn, Irithys burns the hag to ash and agrees to trust Lidia. Lidia informs Irithys about the plan to free Ruhn, Hunt, and Baxian. Then, Lidia asks Irithys to severely burn her so Lidia will be able to lie about Irithys’s escape to Rigelus and the Triarii.

In Prythian, the floor beneath Bryce, Azriel, and Nesta gives out, revealing a secret chamber where a clear quartz sarcophagus contains a dark-haired female. She asks if Fionn sent them and agrees to answer Bryce’s questions if freed from her coffin. Bryce grants the request.

In Lunathion, Ithan is ashamed for killing Sigrid. The Viper Queen fulfills their deal by releasing everyone, including Tharion. However, Sigrid’s fire sprites—Rithi, Sasa, and Malana—burn the Meat Market to the ground in vengeance before escaping with them.

In Prythian, the woman in the sarcophagus is an Asteri named Vesperus, the Evening Star. She reveals that many of the worlds conquered by the Asteri have a kill-switch. For this world, it is the Cauldron: If the Cauldron is destroyed, Prythian will also be destroyed. Vesperus then reveals that Prythian has a firstlight core, hidden in the misty places where the veil between worlds is thinnest (firstlight is one of the types of magic Fae use). Bryce believes such places on Midgard are The Bone Quarter and The Northern Rift. As Vesperus begins to summon firstlight from beneath them to attack, Nesta plunges Ataraxia, the sword which can kill the unkillable, through her chest.

When Ataraxia fails to kill Vesperus, Bryce summons Truth-Teller and the Starsword to her, charging them with her magic and plunging both into Vesperus. The blow weakens the Asteri enough for Nesta to behead her with Ataraxia, which she imbues with her silver flame.

In Lunathion, Ithan’s group reaches the dock and boards the waiting boat that’ll take them to the Depth Charger. Ithan transforms into a wolf and returns to the city, where he intends to “make it right” (264).

In Prythian, fearing she’ll be taken and interrogated by the Night Court, Bryce instead opens a portal back to Midgard, taking Starsword and Truth-Teller with her.