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 21-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “Harper”
Alone, Harper looks at the pictures of her family, her phone’s battery dropping to 5%. She realizes how little the number means in terms of how long the battery will last. It’s similar to how Rhen doesn’t know how long he’ll suffer with the curse, and she realizes it’s “some kind of miracle it hasn't broken him” (179). Harper looks at pictures until the phone dies, and her cries of frustration bring Rhen running to Harper’s room. Harper is sure his concern is false, and she slaps him across the face.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Rhen”
Through a closed and locked door, Harper tells Rhen about her life—her mother’s cancer and her brother running jobs to pay off bad creditors. In return, Rhen shares his desperation to break the curse and how it has taken everything from him, offering nothing in return. This exchange marks the first time Harper truly believes Rhen, and she opens the door so they can play cards and talk. The game is quiet, but even so, it feels more alive than anything has in a long time. Alone with Grey, the palace was cold and empty, but “this inn, this moment, is not” (188). Harper proposes a deal—if Rhen asks Lilith to send her home, she’ll help him break the curse.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Harper”
Rhen agrees, but instead of breaking the curse, he asks Harper to travel at his side and pretend she’s a princess here to form an alliance and bolster Emberfall. Harper is taken aback, but that doesn’t stop her from seeing how earnest Rhen is about the request. She feels like she’s finally seeing the real Rhen because he has “stopped talking about being cursed by something—and he's started talking about doing something” (196).
Chapter 24 Summary: “Rhen”
Later, Rhen tells the innkeeper a made-up story about Emberfall’s royal family taking refuge in Harper’s kingdom to hide from the monster, which is actually a weapon of the invading kingdom to the northwest. Later, he discusses his plan to bolster the kingdom with Grey, and the conversation works around to the curse and the many seasons Rhen has stayed in the palace, letting the kingdom fail. Grey sees Rhen’s actions and decisions as the best he could have done at the time. By contrast, Rhen believes he has done nothing but fail and that he does not deserve Grey’s loyalty, to which Grey responds, “Deserved or not, you have it” (210).
Chapter 25 Summary: “Harper”
The next day, Harper, Rhen, and Grey return to the palace, meeting up with the man Harper nearly collided with the day before. When Rhen sent Grey and Harper ahead to the inn, he doubled back to ask for the man’s assistance distributing food. Rhen tells him the same story about the monster and the kingdom to the northwest, asking him to keep it a secret. Harper doesn’t understand how they’ll keep this plan a secret if Rhen keeps telling people, to which Rhen cheekily replies, “Have you no sense of how gossip works?” (213). At the castle, Rhen and Grey help the man load his wagon, and he leaves, saluting Grey. The man was a lieutenant in the army up until a year ago, and Harper orders Grey to hire him if he’s still a decent soldier.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Rhen”
The woman Harper rescued comes to the palace to be a lady in waiting for Harper, bringing her children. As Rhen watches Grey and the lieutenant spar, Lilith appears, and Rhen carefully delivers Harper’s request to discuss going home, feeling like he’s arranging “a meeting between a mouse and a lion” (221). Lilith agrees, and while Grey fetches Harper, Lilith brings pain to Rhen like she did when Harper first arrived.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Harper”
Hearing Lilith wants to meet, Harper wars between feeling glad to go home and guilty for leaving Emberfall to its fate. In the training arena, she and Grey find Lilith standing over Rhen, who coughs up blood. Suddenly, the state of Harper’s family doesn’t seem so concerning because even if they are suffering, “the unknown can't compete with what she's doing right in front of me” (229). Harper throws a knife at Lilith, who retaliates by slicing a deep cut across Harper’s cheek. Before she disappears, she relays that Harper’s mother and brother are still alive but not doing well.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Rhen”
Rhen and Grey work with Harper’s lady in waiting to stitch the wound and bring Harper to Rhen’s bedchamber for rest. Though Harper is fine and will recover, Rhen can’t bring himself to leave her side while she sleeps. He’s amazed at how she defended him against Lilith, and his heart aches at the curse’s cruelty to “present [him] with a girl with the fierceness to stand at [his] side—yet with a home and family she needs to return to so badly” (235). When Harper wakes, she is dismayed to learn Lilith wasn’t a dream and that the enchantress has hurt Rhen like that many times before. The two will proceed with their plan to save Emberfall, passing Harper’s new scar off as a minor injury Harper sustained in a confrontation with the monster.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Harper”
In preparation for her first visit to a major city at Rhen’s side, Harper lets her lady in waiting do her hair, which reminds her of her mother and makes her cry. The woman holds Harper until she calms and then thanks her for her bravery and kindness, saying she’s always amazed that “when the world seems darkest, there exists the greatest opportunity for light” (246). The gown Harper wears for the occasion is elegant and lovely, making her wish she could cover the new scar on her face until her lady in waiting says the injury is a mark of bravery.
Grey arrives to escort Harper to the waiting carriage. The situation has been tense between them since the confrontation with Lilith, and unable to stand it anymore, Harper asks if he’s mad at what she did. Grey assures her he is not and that he only wants her to trust that he’ll protect her. She retorts that she doesn’t trust him to protect her because he watched Lilith torture Rhen and did nothing. Grey responds that Rhen ordered him not to interfere, and if it were up to Grey alone, he would defend Rhen until death. Grey swears to do so for Harper because his “duty is to bleed so [she does] not” (250).
Chapter 30 Summary: “Rhen”
At the city, Rhen greets his subjects and is impressed by how Harper slips into her role as warrior princess. The people have mixed reactions to Rhen, some happy and others suspicious. Those who have remained loyal bow and proclaim their allegiance, and while Rhen has been greeted this way many times, “it is the first time it has ever meant so much” (259). Rhen strolls through the marketplace, making generous purchases and trying not to think about all these people dying if he fails. At an archery target, he shows Harper how to shoot a bow, and the two draw closer and closer until something hits Rhen in the midsection, knocking him down.
Chapters 21-30 Analysis
These chapters continue to explore the parallels between Rhen and Harper. In earlier chapters, Rhen and Harper butted heads because they are both stubborn and defiant, each thinking their way is the better one. Here, they start to see the situation from the other’s perspective, building on the theme of How Misconceptions Lead to Misjudgments. Harper sees the similarities between their situations in Chapter 21, likening the uncertainty of the curse to not knowing how much longer her phone will keep its charge and realizing that not knowing is worse than anything else. Rhen’s comment about gossip in Chapter 25 is meant in gest, but it holds truth. Rhen knows better than Harper that presenting the truth as a juicy rumor is the best way to make it spread quickly. Later in Chapter 25, Harper takes it upon herself to start building a presence of soldiers and servants at the palace, despite Rhen’s protests. All of these actions are Rhen and Harper doing what they believe is best to bolster Rhen’s plan and break the curse. Both of their ideas are right in their own ways; these individual strengths don’t make any one idea better than the others.
Rhen’s idea to save the kingdom becomes a topic of debate for him and Grey throughout the rest of the book. Rhen believes he is doing too little, too late, but he insists that he has to try doing something after doing nothing for so long. By contrast, Grey sees Rhen’s past actions to protect the kingdom as noble. Those actions are the reason Grey has remained loyal. The Benefits and Drawbacks of Loyalty are at work in their relationship. Rhen judges himself harshly based on inviting Lilith’s curse and the hardship that has befallen the kingdom as a result. He doesn’t see how much he’s changed, only that he has not yet broken the curse. He does not think of himself as worthwhile or deserving of loyalty. A benefit of loyalty, in regard to Rhen’s low self-perception, is that loyalty is not based on how a person views themselves. Grey, and later Harper, are loyal to Rhen based on how they view him. Though Rhen has not broken the curse, the fact that he’s willing to try and to protect those affected by the curse makes him someone worth following to Grey and Harper. Rhen needs this reassurance to continue on his character arc and journey.
Rhen and Harper’s relationship and understanding of one another grows in these chapters. Following the card game in Chapter 22 when they share their fears and hopes, the two begin to tolerate each other and work as a team. Seeing the threat of the northwest kingdom makes both of them realize they can’t do nothing while they have the power to do something, and they are united by a cause and a shared desire to protect. The theme of The Burden of Leadership begins unfolding here, encompassing Harper as she takes on some of Rhen’s burden by becoming involved. The dangers posed by the other kingdom and the curse give them both something to focus on, and the sense of purpose they both experience gives them the confidence to face both external threats and one another. This growth is made more real in Chapter 27 when Harper sees how Lilith treats Rhen and is on the receiving end of Lilith’s torture. For all his faults, Rhen has proven himself to be a loyal and caring person, and Harper can’t bear to see him suffer for Lilith’s amusement. Harper’s bold willingness to stand up to Lilith and give up a chance to go home inspires Rhen and furthers the romantic subplot between him and Harper. If Harper can face pretending to be a princess, learning an entire new world, and torment from Lilith, Rhen sees no reason he can’t fight to overcome the curse and protect his people.
The many threats to Harper and Rhen expand in these chapters. Lilith reveals she has information about Harper’s family, which allows the enchantress to deliver both physical and emotional abuse. Lilith also divides Grey, Rhen, and Harper when she isn’t present, such as in Chapter 29 when Harper questions Grey’s loyalty because he didn’t save Rhen from Lilith’s torture. Even if Rhen ordered him to stand down, Harper can’t understand how someone sworn to protect Rhen could stand by while Rhen suffers, and only Grey’s steadfast assurance that he is there to bleed so she and Rhen don’t makes her understand that respecting someone’s wishes is its own form of loyalty. The mixed reactions from the people in the city show what Rhen is up against in terms of making his plan to protect the kingdom work—before he can protect them, he must convince them he truly will keep them safe. The attack in Chapter 30 comes from those in the crowd who are suspicious, and it leaves Rhen fearful that he will never gain the trust of the people in time.
