61 pages • 2 hours read
Brigid KemmererA Curse So Dark and Lonely
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A 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 11-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Harper”
Later, Harper falls into an exhausted sleep, waking to Grey tending the fire and keeping a watch in case the men who burned down the woman’s house come to the inn. Unwilling to sleep with that threat looming over her, Harper plays cards with Grey, who answers what questions he can about the curse. Every time the curse resets, Grey takes a girl from Harper’s world in hopes she’ll help break it. Some of the girls have died, and those who survived were returned to their world afterward. Harper asks Grey if only Rhen is cursed or if he is cursed too, to which Grey frowns and says, “The curse torments us all” (97).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Rhen”
Unable to sleep, Rhen goes out to the inn’s main room, where he is annoyed to find Grey and Harper playing cards. He sends Grey out to check the horses and sits across from Harper, who refuses to play cards with him. As soon as Grey returns, she goes upstairs to take the bedroom Rhen was using, and Rhen and Grey take up the cards. Rhen asks Grey how he got Harper to play, afraid that if he can’t establish such an easy rapport with her, there’s no hope of breaking the curse. Grey tries to explain that thinking of the future won’t help in the present and finally answers Rhen’s question by saying “I sat down and asked” (103).
Chapter 13 Summary: “Harper”
Back at the palace, Rhen gives Harper the key to her room, which has cleaned itself while they were gone. Rhen lets slip that the room belonged to his older sister before she died, and Harper is struck with sympathy, wondering what it must be like to live in “a place that resets over and over again—minus his family” (105). After bathing and relaxing, Harper explores the palace, finding a room filled with blood. Rhen arrives, guiding her away from the room and to the kitchen, where food cooks itself. Harper demands answers about the blood, and with a resigned sigh, Rhen says, “The blood you saw was mine” (112).
Chapter 14 Summary: “Rhen”
To explain the room of blood, Rhen offers the kingdom’s history. During his grandfather’s rule, a young enchantress tried to use magic to win the affections of Rhen’s father, for which Rhen’s grandfather had all the mages and enchantresses killed. Lilith avoided the punishment and came to Rhen’s 18th birthday celebration, seeking power and revenge. After spending the night with her, Rhen pushed her away, and she cursed him to suffer a monster until a girl fell in love with him, leaving out that the monster would be him. Harper works out that Rhen needs true love to break the curse and ends the chapter stating, “I'm not going to fall in love with you” (123), which is no surprise to Rhen.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Harper”
Harper packs bags full of the palace’s food and heads to the inn, nearly colliding with a man driving a wagon. As she helps him reload the crates that fell in the accident, Grey and Rhen arrive, thanking the man and paying him for the damages. Rhen asks why Harper didn’t seek his aid with bringing food to the inn, and she guiltily admits, “I didn't think you'd do it” (132).
Chapter 16 Summary: “Rhen”
On the way to the inn, Harper accuses Rhen of not even trying to help his subjects. Aggravated, Rhen explains that providing food to a few people will likely lead to fights and riots. In addition, it is not fair to determine who is most needy, and the people won’t come to the palace for easy distribution because they fear the monster. Harper argues that doing nothing is worse, and Rhen reminds her to mind the relationship between them of prince and lady. Harper rebuts that it’s more like kidnapper and kidnappee, and to prove a point, Rhen orders Grey to “[r]eturn Lady Harper to the castle. Bind her if necessary” (136). The next few moments are tense, until Rhen sends Grey and Harper on to the inn while he rides away.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Harper”
At the inn, Harper presents the food and is met with stunned silence, making her realize she has no idea how to handle the situation. Rhen arrives, and the group partakes in food and drink, though there is still tension in the air. Grey lets it slip that the royal guard has open positions, and the innkeeper rejoices because he’s always hoped his son might have a chance to be admitted. The family mistakenly believes that Harper and Rhen will marry, forming an alliance to help the kingdom, and Harper’s heart aches for their hopes because “they ran out of hope the very minute [she] swung at Grey with that crowbar” (144).
The discussion is interrupted by the arrival of men dressed like those who burned the house the night before. They are here to seize the inn in the name of the crown, but Rhen doesn’t recognize them. Before a fight breaks out, Harper pretends to be a princess, outraged by the threat of invasion and a disruption to an alliance with Emberfall. Grey plays along, threatening the men, who leave, and the innkeeper’s family bestows Harper with undying gratitude, which makes her uncomfortable since it was all an act.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Rhen”
The men were from a rival kingdom far to the northwest, ruled by a power-hungry queen. Their threats could be very real, which leaves Harper in a shocked silence. She wants to stay the night at the inn, and Rhen agrees, apologizing for his earlier attitude. Without thinking, he reaches out and tucks her hair behind her ear. Harper storms away, angry because she thinks he’s trying to seduce her. Rhen watches her go, amazed that, for a moment, he forgot the curse and remembered what it “was like to want to touch a girl” (157).
Chapter 19 Summary: “Harper”
Overwhelmed by pretending to be a princess and what happened with Rhen, Harper hides in the stables. She misses her family terribly, and as her phone battery grows low, threatening to take away her ability to see even pictures of them, she’s struck by the idea that “here is real, and there is not” (160). Grey arrives and is surprised when Harper tells him she’s scared because she seems so confident. Needing something to distract her from worries of home, Grey shows her how to throw knives, revealing more of his humor and caring in the process. Harper asks if Grey believes Rhen is worth protecting despite the curse and its consequences, to which Grey responds, “Time will tell” (168).
Chapter 20 Summary: “Rhen”
From his room in the inn, Rhen watches and overhears Harper’s question and Grey’s answer about whether Rhen is worth protecting. Lilith arrives to taunt him, letting slip that she is not the only enchantress left in the kingdom. She disappears, and Rhen notices Harper has greatly improved at knife throwing, which gives him an idea to assemble a partially trained unit of protectors so he can travel the kingdom and let his people know he hasn’t abandoned them. When Grey asks what they’ll do if Rhen’s life is truly in danger, Rhen solemnly replies, “That's why I have you” (177).
Chapters 11-20 Analysis
Chapter 11 introduces a love triangle between Harper, Grey, and Rhen. Love triangles are a common trope of young adult science fiction and fantasy, but Kemmerer’s triangle is more light-handed than most, featuring Harper getting to know each young man and finding her way into different relationships with each. Up until this point, Harper’s relationship with Rhen has been difficult, made so by her defiance and his arrogance. By the end of the book, it appears that Rhen and Harper will end up together, making the main point of Harper’s relationship with Grey to provide insights into Rhen. Grey also provides contrast to Rhen. Having been raised to believe he is above everyone else, Rhen doesn’t know how to relate to people. Grey was raised as a commoner, and he finds it much easier to understand others. The ease with which he and Harper get along is a stark contrast to the trouble Rhen and Harper experience trying to find common ground, and the different sides of this triangle show the different ways in which relationships can grow.
Starting with the card game in Chapter 12, Kemmerer explores the similarities and differences between Grey and Rhen. Rhen’s upbringing gives him a bird’s eye view of the world. He sees people and situations from above, which allows him to plan and influence situations toward the outcomes he desires. While this strategizing makes him affective in planning how his kingdom will fight in the rest of the book, it is of little help in love, shown by how he fails to win over Harper in these chapters. By contrast, Grey is more in-the-moment, saying and doing what feels right. His ability to adapt is reflected in his approach to cards as well. While this ability does not let him organize for the future like Rhen, it does give him an advantage in connecting to Harper. Despite their differences, Rhen and Grey are both fiercely protective and selfless, demonstrating different aspects of the theme The Benefits and Drawbacks of Loyalty in terms of the different ways people may make sacrifices.
Harper starts to change in these chapters. As an outsider to Emberfall and the palace, she sees opportunity where Rhen sees problems. To her, the palace’s endless supply of food is a way to feed the people, and the inn is a place to show Rhen’s subjects he hasn’t given up on them. In Chapter 17, Harper realizes she’s out of her element and that a willingness to help is not a suitable substitute for a lack of understanding. She didn’t believe Rhen’s words in the previous chapters, thinking he was only making excuses to avoid his people because he thought himself above them. Faced with the inn and the people within, however, Harper begins to see the complexities of ruling and making decisions that affect an entire nation of people. The theme of The Burden of Leadership is clearly at play. Harper’s character growth is forced to accelerate when the men attack, and she lies about her status as a princess. Up until now, she has treated Emberfall like a kingdom from a fantasy book where everything works out at the end because the author wrote it that way. The events of Chapter 17 make it clear that Emberfall is real and that her actions have real-life consequences.
Chapters 13 and 14 offer context to the events that led up to the story’s present and show how Rhen’s past has brought him to where he is now. Rhen blames himself for the curse and the state of the kingdom because he didn’t realize that Lilith was an enchantress. He believed all magic users to be dead because his grandfather had them destroyed, and his arrogance coupled with his unshakable belief in his family’s ultimate power didn’t let him think anyone could have escaped a death order from the crown. The room of blood in Chapter 13 is the room where Lilith punished Rhen for shunning her advances; the room now remains that way as literal a reminder to Rhen of what Lilith is capable of but also as a more metaphorical reminder of what his actions caused. This kind of psychological torture is part of how Lilith manipulates Rhen to take the blame for something she is really responsible for. To break the curse, Rhen must find a girl who will love him, which harkens back to Beauty and the Beast. Later in the book, Lilith makes it clear that she intended for herself to be this girl, meaning she either does not realize or does not care that her actions will have ruined any chance of Rhen being able to love her.
The final chapters in this section show Grey and Harper growing closer as Rhen becomes more and more frustrated at his own lack of results. The draining battery on Harper’s phone in Chapter 19 becomes the catalyst for her involvement in the affairs of Emberfall. Grey teaching her to throw knives is the first in a line of ways she acclimates to Emberfall’s world, and it furthers the relationship between her and Grey, showing how Harper trusts him with details of her life and fears. For Rhen, watching Grey teach Harper is eye-opening because he sees how Grey’s talent and patience may be used to protect the kingdom. This moment marks when the dynamic between Rhen, Grey, and Harper begins to change, even though none of them are yet aware of it.
