62 pages • 2 hours read
Jennifer L. ArmentroutA Light in the Flame
Fiction | Novel | Adult | 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.
Chapters 16-23Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Nyktos asks Sera to join him in his room. In bed, Nyktos asks Sera why she often holds her breath and experiences panic attacks. Sera does not give him a straight answer but knows that the habit is linked to her worrying. Holland has taught her breathing exercises to curb her anxious responses.
The next morning, Saion takes Sera around Nyktos’s palace. He tells Sera the story of Phanos, the Primal in whose court Saion first served. When the king of the city of Phythe ended the cruel annual games held in honor of Phanos, the vengeful Primal flooded Phythe and killed all its people. After the flooding of Phythe, Saion and Rhahar left Phanos’s court but were caught and brought to the Court of Dalos, where gods are sentenced. Young Nyktos inexplicably visited them in the cells the day before Phanos was to arrive to punish them. As he left, he patted Saion and Rhahar on their shoulders, taking their souls so that they belonged to him. Through this ploy, Nyktos ensured that Saion and Rhahar escaped sentencing from Phanos, as they were no longer Phanos’s to punish.
Chapter 17 Summary
Saion accompanies Sera to the pavilions where Nyktos is training. As Sera watches Nyktos spar with a guard, she is filled with a yearning to train herself. Sera asks Nyktos to fight with her. Nyktos and Sera spar as Nyktos’s guards cheer on. Sera surprises Nyktos with her deftness, and the two flirt and banter. Nyktos is jealous that his guards can see Sera’s body under her slitted gown as she fights. When Sera gains the upper hand on Nyktos, she asks him for three things: that she should be able to visit her stepsister in the mortal realm, that she should not have her suppers alone, and that Nyktos include her in his plans with Kolis. Nyktos agrees, and the bout ends.
Chapter 18 Summary
Nyktos invites Sera to bathe in his vast bath chambers. As Sera soaks in the tub, Nyktos sits on the ledge, watching her. When Sera accuses Nyktos of ogling at her, he counters that it is she who is inherently seductive. Sera fires back that Nyktos is trying to blame her for his desire. It is Nyktos who came into her bedchamber and made love to her in his shadow form. Sera is open about her physical attraction to Nyktos, but he is the one who wants to hide it. Sera gets up from the tub and says that she wants to be excused, but Nyktos tells her that she cannot leave yet.
Chapter 19 Summary
Nyktos tells Sera that she is right about his desire for her. He did ogle at her in the tub, and he entered her room that night. He admits to being plagued by memories of their lovemaking and fixates on how it would feel to touch her again. Sera asks him if he is thinking of having sex with her right now, and Nyktos says yes. Sera and Nyktos then have oral sex, with Sera finally calling him Ash. Later, Nyktos wraps Sera in a bath towel and takes her to bed. Nyktos lovingly counts the number of freckles on Sera’s face. Sera is quiet as she thinks about Nyktos’s thoughtfulness toward her, which is at odds with his supposed inability to love. Nyktos asks Sera why she is so silent since he is not used to her not speaking. Sera tells Nyktos that she has been quiet most of her life, in fact, because she was raised to be his Consort, veiled and chastened. She always felt like a ghost. Nyktos tells her that she has never been a ghost to him.
When Sera wakes up, Jadis is curled up at her feet, and Nektas is sitting by the foot of the bed. Sera feels embarrassed since she is undressed, but Nektas looks very happy at the intimacy that this suggests between Nyktos and Sera. When Sera asks Nektas about the whereabouts of Nyktos, the draken replies that Nyktos is in Lethe, the underworld. Sera feels like Nyktos never reveals anything about his professional business to her, but Nektas suggests that the reason is not that the Primal wants to sideline her. Nyktos has been guarded about his world because he does not want to force Sera to take on the responsibilities of his Consort unless her heart is in it.
Chapter 20 Summary
Nyktos joins Sera for supper, as he had promised her. He tells Sera that they will head to the mortal realm the next day to visit Sera’s stepsister, Ezra, now ruler of Lasania. In a few days, Sera and Nektas will go to the Pools of Divanash to get guidance about how to remove the embers of life from her. Sera is happy that Nyktos is honoring her wishes and agency.
Nyktos and Sera discuss his work as the Primal of Death. Nyktos tells her that the job is challenging and often leaves him conflicted. The night he came to her bedchamber, there was trouble at the Pillars. Many departed souls were refusing to cross the Pillars and receive Nyktos’s judgment, preferring to stay in the Dying Woods. However, the moment they would do so, they would become Shades, neither living nor alive. Shades are terrible creatures that must be destroyed, but Nyktos hates having to do that. Sera tells him that his conflict about taking life shows that he—and not Kolis—should be the true Primal of Life. His nature, rather than his destiny, makes him worthy. Nyktos reminds Sera that he is not as good as she thinks.
Chapter 21 Summary
Sera tries to convince Nyktos that there is goodness in him. Just because he has to deliver death as part of his job does not mean that he is inherently bad. Sera, too, has killed people and done so without feeling much remorse. In Lasania, she killed 14 people, most without qualms. Thus, Nyktos is no worse than her. However, Nyktos explains that a Primal, by nature, cannot be good or evil. A Primal does not experience remorse in the way humans do because such an emotion would sway the Primal and mar their objectivity. The reason why Sera could kill her enemies dispassionately is because she has the embers of life—pure, raw eather—in her.
The one exception to the no-emotion rule happened for Primals when they began to fall in love with mortals. Once love entered the picture, other emotions like hate and jealousy followed, making the Primals too subjective. The Arae intervened and made the object of the love of the Primals their weakness: the ultimate weapon to be used against them. Thus, the Fates hoped to dissuade Primals from emotion. Sera now understands why Nyktos had his kardia removed. Later, Nyktos asks Sera if she meant what she said in his office before Attes’s visit: that she wants them to satisfy each other’s desire. When Sera says yes, Nyktos touches her. They have sex, and Sera realizes that there is something different about their lovemaking. This isn’t desire fueled by rage or by Nyktos’s blood but is pleasure for pleasure’s sake.
Chapter 22 Summary
The next morning, Nyktos and Sera head for Lasania. As they enter the keep, Sera notices people get startled. Nyktos tells her that it is because they sense his aura of death. It does not bother him since their fear is a natural response. Sera meets Ezra in the Great Hall, where she has just finished a Town Hall meeting. Ezra is overjoyed to see Sera but shies away when she recognizes Nyktos, addressing him as “Your Highness” (289). Nyktos puts her at ease.
On her way out after seeing Ezra, Sera runs into her mother, Queen Calliphe. Calliphe is shocked to see Sera alive, as she had assumed that Sera failed in her mission to kill Nyktos and died. Nyktos asks Calliphe why she allowed Tavius near Sera even though she knew that her stepson was capable of harming her. Calliphe apologizes, but Nyktos tells her that she should thank Sera, as it is at her insistence he has spared Calliphe’s life.
Chapter 23 Summary
Back in the Shadowlands, Nyktos takes Sera to a stairwell at the back of his office, which leads to a deep underground stone pool in the center of a chamber. Nyktos says that he carved the pool not from magic but with his own hands, with the help of his friends. The pool is the place he visits to quiet down and relax. Sera is puzzled that Nyktos would visit her lake when he has such a pool in the Shadowlands. Nyktos replies that he went to the lake because he knew it was hers.
Chapters 16-23 Analysis
In this middle section, the narrative builds the relationship between Sera and Nyktos, each gaining a deeper understanding of the other. One of the distinctive features of the Sera-Nyktos relationship is that despite the power imbalance that exists between them, their relationship does not suffer. For instance, when Sera calls out Nyktos for placing the burden of his desire on her, Nyktos does not deny her charge. Instead, he admits that it is not she who is seducing him; he fixates on her of his own accord and thinks of her sexually all the time. The sexual encounter that follows this admission is depicted in raw, graphic terms to emphasize the growing bond between Sera and Nyktos. As sex with Nyktos is linked with Sera’s self-acceptance, she notes that when they are intimate, she is “just…[her]self. Not the Consort. Not an assassin or a weapon” (251). Sera’s observation illustrates how the text portrays sex and romance as life-affirming and linked with The Quest for Identity and Self-Acceptance.
Nyktos’s acknowledgment and recognition of Sera is a recurring motif in the text, whether it be in the form of him declaring before his court that Sera is very powerful or calling her “Liessa,” or “Queen.” In Chapter 21, Sera and Nyktos have intercourse for the first time in the book. The encounter is depicted as different from previous ones because it is not fueled by the heat that follows a feeding. As Sera describes it, this is “pleasure for the sake of pleasure. And it [i]s […] a first for [them]” (279). This marks a newfound honesty between her and Nyktos.
These chapters also explore questions about good and evil and provide answers to Sera and Nyktos’s propensity for violence. While Sera is filled with empathy for the wounded and dying, she is also capable of murder and harm, as she notes to Nyktos. Similarly, Nyktos is compassionate yet violent—the God of Death who sentences souls to hell or heaven. Nyktos also frequently threatens people with death and dismemberment, such as when he tells Attes that he will rip his eyes out for leering at Sera. The inner contradictions in Sera’s and Nyktos’s natures can be explained by their godhood. Divinity itself makes them objective about life and death, enabling them to deliver justice without the pangs of conscience. While this is an important quality in a Primal, Sera wonders if the price of divinity is too high. The narrative does not answer this question at this point but foreshadows that it will come up again later in the novel.
The story of Phanos illustrates the theme of The Corrupting Influence of Power. Saion recounts how the god flooded an entire city with tidal waves because its king refused to propitiate him: “Everything and everyone within Phythe were taken into the sea” (224). Phanos’s response to Saion and Rhahar’s defection shows how even the gods do not have complete free will and choice in the text’s universe. In the highly hierarchical and power-hungry world of the nine courts (of the gods), any independent action can lead to punishment, torture, or death. Thus, Saion and Rhahar were taken to the Court of Dalos to be sentenced, where Nyktos had to use strategy and roundabout tactics to rescue them. Saion’s recounting of Nyktos’s intervention is significant because it shows Sera that Nyktos, like her, does not have absolute power. He, too, has to play by the rules of his world, which humanizes Nyktos and makes Sera empathize with him.
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