67 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah J. MaasA Court of Silver Flames
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 25-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Blade”
Part 2, Chapters 25-30 Summary
When Nesta arrives for training in the morning, Gwyn is already there. She explains that she learned some rudimentary exercises during her earlier years as an acolyte. Nesta asks why she wants to train if she already knows these techniques. Gwyn says that she never again wants to feel powerless. Despite Nesta’s concerns, the training goes well.
The following day, Cassian must go to Windhaven for a secret meeting with Eris, and Nesta goes with him. She takes the opportunity to call on the female shopkeeper named Emerie. The two had become acquainted during Nesta’s initial training sessions on the mountain.
When Nesta enters the shop, Emerie is being bullied by her male cousin Bellius, but Nesta drives him off. The Illyrians treat females very badly, and Emerie had her wings clipped by her father early in life to keep her from flying. Nesta shares lunch with her and talks about her father, who was a wealthy merchant in the spice trade. Emerie is intrigued because it is so hard to get spices delivered to the mountains. Nesta invites her to join the training at the House of Wind and says someone could winnow her there and back, but Emerie hesitantly declines.
During this same time, Cassian is consulting with Eris, who tells him his father, Beron, knows nothing about the Dread Trove. Apparently, Briallyn doesn’t completely trust the Autumn King, who is her new ally. Eris promises to conceal the Trove information from his father, but his contemptuous attitude toward a low-born brute like Cassian annoys the warrior. That night, Nesta notices Cassian is moody and upset by Eris’s contempt. Realizing how hurt he is, Nesta offers consolation. This evolves into another sexual encounter, with Nesta performing fellatio on Cassian. Shortly after they finish, Azriel accidentally interrupts their further amorous activities. Nevertheless, Nesta has managed to lift Cassian’s gloomy mood, and he is grateful.
The following morning, Cassian notices the friendly interaction between Gwyn and Nesta during their training and sees a softer side of Nesta. Later, when Cassian goes to Windhaven on an errand, Nesta sends spices, tea, and salt as a gift to Emerie. She reconsiders the offer to train and consents to attend the next session. The following morning, Emerie appears on the rooftop. While Gwyn is graceful in learning the training routine, Emerie is awkward. Cassian explains that her broken wings have thrown off her balance. He is furious at the Illyrian males who still practice this barbaric custom.
That night, Nesta is able to walk 3,000 steps down the staircase before her legs give out. The house provides her with a glass of water and then produces bones and stones to hint that she should begin scrying for the Dread Trove. Nesta is too terrified to try for fear that the Cauldron might be able to sense her. Meanwhile, the Inner Circle is holding a conference at the river house. Amren tells Cassian that they will only give Nesta one week to try to find the Trove by doing research. After that, they will insist that Elain scry for it instead.
Three days later, at the library, Nesta confronts Merrill, Gwyn’s bad-tempered boss. Unlike everyone else, Nesta isn’t afraid of the scholar and warns her off with a brief show of her dark power. Their altercation doesn’t go unnoticed. The next day, three more formerly timid priestesses join the group training on the roof.
That evening, Nesta attempts to scry for the Trove. Cassian stays beside her to offer moral support, but her thoughts keep drifting back to the terror of her experience in the Cauldron. Eventually, she gives up. That night she has a terrible nightmare. She feels that the Cauldron has found her, and she is being drawn back into it. As she screams in her sleep, it becomes impossible to wake her.
Azriel and Cassian rush to her aid, and Rhys winnows in to break the trance. After rendering Nesta calm though unconscious, he is visibly shaken by what he has seen. Rhys himself experienced the horror that Nesta felt while she was being made in the Cauldron. He says that he sensed her power, and it was “pure death” (326).
The following day, Cassian and Azriel go to confer with Rhys, who has received some bad news. Since his son was conceived while Feyre had taken Illyrian form, the baby will be born with wings. The palace healer says that this might make the delivery fatal. Another problem arises should Feyre’s former lover, Tamlin, hear about the baby. Cassian points out, “Learning of Feyre’s pregnancy might make him crumble again. With a new war possible and Briallyn up to her bullshit with Koschei, we need a strong ally. We need the Spring Court’s forces” (332).
Part 2, Chapters 31-37 Summary
That evening, Cassian tells Nesta about the potential dangers if Feyre delivers a child with wings. She might not survive, though Rhys is scouring the kingdom, looking for healers who could help. Nesta volunteers to scry for the Trove again, this time at the river house where she will be protected. She goes into a deep trance that turns the room cold and frightens everyone. Only Cassian’s kiss revives her. On a scrying map, Nesta points to a location called the Bog of Oorid, a terrible place that even the Fae fear. Rhys says, “The Middle is a place where wild magic still dwells and thrives and feeds” (345). Nesta believes that is where the Mask is hidden, so Cassian and Azriel agree to accompany her there.
When the trio begins their search the next morning, Nesta feels the unsettling energy of the place. As they fly over the bog, Azriel disappears into the mist. Cassian realizes that his companion has been attacked by a party of Eris’s soldiers, his wing shot with an arrow. Cassian takes Nesta to wait in the top branches of a tree so that she will be safe while he goes to rescue Azriel. She waits half an hour. When the two winged soldiers don’t return, she fears they are dead and crawls down from her perch. She knows she will have to wade through the bog to find them, but something crawls out of the water to meet her. It is a flesh-eating kelpie.
Unaware of Nesta’s plight, Cassian helps Azriel slay the war party, keeping two alive as prisoners to interrogate later. Azriel points out that something is wrong with the soldiers, who seem to be in a trance. After securing their prisoners, the two go back in search of Nesta.
She continues to struggle while the kelpie drags her under the water. As it pulls her deeper down, she sees the skeletons of its other victims and then notices a bright object lying on the bottom of the bog. Grabbing at it, she realizes that it is the Mask. Without hesitation, she puts it on and instantly commands the dead army under the water. They rise to do her bidding and kill the kelpie. As Cassian and Azriel call for her at the edge of the water, she emerges on the shoulders of her minions, still wearing the Mask. She is holding the dead kelpie’s head in one hand. When she sees the two Fae, she peels off the Mask, and her army submerges as she falls unconscious.
Back at the river house, the leaders debate what to do with the Mask. Amren says it cannot be destroyed. When Azriel tries to interrogate the two soldiers, they don’t seem able to speak. Rhys then enters Nesta’s mind to hear the unintelligible language of the kelpie when it spoke to her. Rhys says the monster’s language is an ancient form of Fae speech that hasn’t been heard for 15,000 years. Later, Nesta retreats to a bedroom to rest and draw a bath for herself. She thinks about the relief she felt while wearing the Mask—a complete sense of detachment that allowed her to escape her dark emotions.
She is the only person who has ever successfully removed the Mask without dying. This is because she was Made by the Cauldron, just as the Mask was. Nesta thinks the Mask represents a great temptation to her since it allows her to escape her negative feelings. Cassian interrupts her solitude and brings her a tray of food. She initiates sex with him, and the two indulge themselves, ignoring that their encounters are no longer casual and their emotional bond for one another is growing stronger.
Part 2, Chapters 25-37 Analysis
This segment begins the part of the book entitled “Blade.” The name implies that Nesta has now informally graduated from the level of a novice to someone who is learning to defend herself from harm. She isn’t the only character to do so. Aside from Gwyn, shopkeeper Emerie also joins the training group. The theme of Overcoming Male Abuse is briefly highlighted in Emerie’s encounter with her bullying cousin and her account of her father mutilating her wings to keep her from flying. This is yet another demonstration of Illyrian misogyny. That not all Illyrian males feel the same way is proven by Cassian’s anger at the barbaric custom and his willingness to help Emerie overcome her awkwardness because of the injury.
In addition to Gwyn and Emerie, Nesta is joined by three more priestesses who want to participate in the training sessions. The growing ranks of female warriors offer a subliminal suggestion that the defenseless are learning to take care of themselves rather than relying on the charity of others. Nesta’s conversation with Gwyn during training highlights this fact.
‘Why did you sign up for this, then? […] If you already have mind-calming exercises you’re accustomed to?’ ‘Because I don’t ever want to feel powerless again,’ Gwyn said softly, and all those easy smiles and bright laughs were gone (273).
Of greater significance in these chapters is the introduction of the Dread Trove as a plot device. These objects drive the action forward since it becomes vital for the central characters to keep them out of the hands of the human queen Briallyn and her co-conspirator Koschei. Nesta is still ambivalent about finding the objects because of their associations with the Cauldron and her traumatic memories of it. When the house silently prompts her, she recoils.
Bones and stones—for scrying. ‘I can’t,’ she rasped. That breeze knocked the bones together, their clicking like a question thrown into the stairwell. Why? ‘Bad things happened the last time. The Cauldron looked at me. And took Elain’ (309).
Nesta’s unwillingness to revisit her own worst fears is echoed in her distaste for the task of finding the objects in the Trove. At first, she refuses to scry for their location at all, and she procrastinates for days before attempting to do so. The initial try nearly drowns Nesta in her worst moments in the Cauldron as she experiences a terrible nightmare.
The Trove and the Cauldron are both related to the theme of Mastering Emotions, and Nesta’s reaction indicates just how far she is from emotional control. Every time she is confronted with an unpleasant past experience, she sinks beneath the weight of it. However, this segment also indicates a subtle shift in her perspective because Nesta doesn’t give up. She eventually succeeds in scrying from the Mask and pinpoints its location in the Bog of Oorid.
During Nesta’s frightening encounter with the kelpie, the novel briefly returns to the theme of Overcoming Male Abuse. Once Nesta puts on the Mask, she realizes she has power over her abuser. Her words are an indication that the hunted has become the hunter:
Though she had fought back against Tomas, against the Cauldron, against the King of Hybern, they had all happened to her. She had survived, but she had been helpless and afraid. Not today. Today, she would happen to him (369).
While Nesta briefly asserts her power by commanding her army of the dead to kill the kelpie, of far greater importance is her emotional reaction when she puts on the Mask. Symbolically, she is embracing her fears, and her reward is a sense of detachment. While she is repelled by the sensation of feeling nothing, at the same time, she is attracted to it.
She had become more, had become something that did not need air to breathe, something that did not understand hate or love or fear or grief. It had scared her more than anything else. That utter lack of feeling. How good it had felt, to be so removed (383).
For the first time in her life, Nesta can feel the contrast between her chronic inner turbulence and a sense of peace. She has gotten a taste of how it might feel to be in control of herself. She will pursue this sensation in a more constructive form in later segments.
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