53 pages • 1 hour read
Travis BaldreeLegends & Lattes
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 25-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
The rest of the night passes with Viv in a stupor. The town looks on, and students from Ackers cast a spell to keep the shop’s flames away from other buildings. Tandri offers Viv a place to stay. Viv thinks about Arcane Reciprocity, and the pair watches as the fire burns itself out by dawn; nothing is left of the shop. Viv borrows a bucket from Laney so she can cool a path of ashes and enter the shop. This task is tedious, as she is burned and weak, but she manages to get into the shop and check under the flagstone: The Scalvert’s Stone is gone.
Lack delivers fresh clothing for the women, and Viv catches a glimpse of the Madrigal in the crowd of onlookers. Viv begins to fade, not noticing that she’s sitting, then slowly losing consciousness. She spots Thimble watching as she blacks out. When she wakes, Cal has arrived with a pony-drawn cart. Cal, Thimble, and Tandri get Viv into the cart and take her to Tandri’s place. Tandri cleans Viv and gets her into the fresh clothes before tucking her into bed.
Viv wakes in pain. Tandri gives her water and encourages her to sleep more, but Viv needs to return to the ruins to check one more thing. She digs Blackblood out, and it’s warped from the flames, missing its grip, and cracked with a pearlescent sheen. She feels she’s truly lost everything, leaving the sword among the ashes.
Chapter 26 Summary
Viv sleeps on and off for the next few days at Tandri’s house. Cal comes to visit, and she wakes to see him. He launches into a list of what needs to be done for rebuilding. Upset, Viv declares she doesn’t have the money to rebuild, and even if she did, the Scalvert’s Stone is gone. Cal says the odds are just worse, but Viv has handled worse. She checks her lockbox to see what’s left of her savings. She laments that she saved for years and now everything is gone. Viv feels herself becoming overwhelmed with anger and pain. She lashes out at Cal and Tandri, threatening to leave Thune, to which Tandri flinches. Cal leaves.
Tandri comforts Viv, touching their foreheads. She reiterates what Viv said when they escaped the fire—that they hadn’t lost everything. She kisses Viv’s cheek. Viv considers her succubus powers but suppresses the thought because she knows Tandri better than that. They kiss and embrace.
Eventually, Viv and Cal get to work cleaning the ruins. Pendry shows up to help and refuses payment; he proves an excellent stonemason, as it’s his family’s business. The group’s supplies seemingly come from nowhere. Viv is uncertain how she’ll afford them, or how Cal is affording them. Tandri keeps everyone fed and hydrated while they work; Thimble also brings baked goods every lunch. The shop is rebuilt with stones, and the kitchen will be rebuilt large enough for a second oven. Hemington offers to ward the shop against fire. Viv realizes she truly hasn’t lost everything that the Scalvert’s Stone attracted.
Chapter 27 Summary
As the shop begins to take shape, more supplies are delivered. The large man delivering them cannot say where they’re from and refuses payment; Viv realizes they’re from the Madrigal. Pendry, Amity, and other volunteers show up. While the shop is under construction, Viv sleeps on Tandri’s floor.
One day, Durias stops by to express his happiness that Viv is rebuilding. Tandri makes a comment about the Scalvert’s Stone never influencing Viv’s fortune, which piques his interest. He explains that the Stone’s power is misunderstood: Rather than bringing fortune, it attracts kindred spirits. Before leaving, Durias congratulates Viv and Tandri. They ask if he means to congratulate the rebuilding, and he realizes he’s misinterpreting time as he does with his chess games.
Roon and Gallina deliver two ovens a few days later, surprising Viv once again; Tandri sent for them. The pair doesn’t care about the Scalvert’s Stone, and haven’t seen Fennus in a while. Gallina pulls Viv aside and offers to take some of Fennus’s fingers, but Viv shares what Durias said: The Stone attracts like to like. She feels Fennus will attract other condescending people, a suitable punishment.
Chapter 28 Summary
The shop’s reopening approaches, and Thimble is excited about his new kitchen. He hugs Viv when he sees it. The morning before opening day, Tandri is already out running errands when Viv wakes up. Viv goes to the shop where she accepts a few shipments, which must be assembled upstairs. She has her old coffee machine, only slightly worse for the wear, set up in the new shop. She brews herself a cup and relaxes for the first time since the fire.
Cal and Tandri haul in something large and clunky, wrapped in paper. When Viv opens it, she finds the original shop sign, now with the remains of Blackblood mounted to it. Tandri felt she didn’t have to discard something that reminds her of who she was. Viv cries and hugs her friends.
On opening day, there is already a line outside the shop, despite the cold weather. Hemington comes in with the morning rush, earlier than his usual time. The shop-related anomaly he was studying is gone, but he missed the atmosphere. He tries a hot coffee. Pendry returns to perform on a new stage he built himself. The Madrigal visits to congratulate Viv on rebuilding, and Viv thanks her. Durias returns as well, and assures Viv and Tandri that things will continue to work out.
Chapter 29 Summary
After closing, Viv, Tandri, Cal, and Thimble wrap up operations. Viv calls for everyone’s attention and makes a speech about how essential they all are to her and the shop. She says she feels undeserving of her friends, but now knows better than that. Finally, she presents them with paperwork for equal partnership in Legends & Lattes. Cal doesn’t want to sign because he doesn’t work there, but Viv insists because he built the place twice. She pours them all brandy, and they toast. She asks Tandri to stay when the men leave.
Viv takes Tandri upstairs, where there are now two bedrooms in the loft, both furnished with real beds. She invites Tandri to stay, and they kiss.
Epilogue Summary
Fennus, who has steered clear of Thune since the fire, returns to investigate Viv’s rebuilt shop. He’s surprised to find the shop more successful than before. He worries this means the Scalvert’s Stone is worthless. The Madrigal’s people spot Fennus and chase him onto a rooftop. He feels he has time to plan his next move, but Amity appears and leaps at him.
Chapter 25-Epilogue Analysis
The final chapters of the novel see the titular shop rise from the ashes of its former self with the help of Viv’s friends. Despite Viv’s hopelessness in Chapter 25, upon discovering that the Scalvert’s Stone is gone and Blackblood is ruined, Tandri, Cal and the shop’s regulars pitch in to rebuild. However, it is Tandri who takes the first step, who prevents Viv from giving up and solidifies their romantic relationship. In Chapter 26, Viv lashes out at Tandri and Cal when they suggest rebuilding. She believes “I spent my chance, and I can’t earn it back” (224). She has no money to rebuild, and feels hopeless without the Stone. When Cal leaves Viv and Tandri alone, Tandri calms Viv with physical touch and reminds her what she said the night of the fire, about not losing everything. This intimate moment leads to their first kiss.
The Value of Keeping the Right Company is most significant in these final chapters, as the people of Thune help Viv rebuild the shop, and the true nature of the Scalvert’s Stone is revealed. Despite Viv’s decision to rebuild, she remains uncertain about “how I’ll afford the stone and lumber for this, much less the labor” (226). However, help arrives in all forms. Pendry puts his training as a stonemason to use, refusing payment for his labor; Tandri and Thimble provide food for the building crew; Hemington casts a ward against fire; and “lumber and materials kept manifesting” (231), seemingly a gift from the Madrigal. All the characters who care for Viv dedicate their time and resources into building her shop better and stronger, as she did with the original livery. This group effort shows the value of community, of people supporting one another through good and bad times.
In Chapter 27, the true nature of the Scalvert’s Stone is revealed by Durias, the chess-playing, possibly time-traveling gnome. He reveals that the Stone’s “old song was a bit misleading” (233), referring to the rhyme that Viv referenced throughout the novel. He believes the Stone brings kindred spirits together. This reveal is foreshadowed by Viv’s references to the Stone when making new friends. This revelation transforms the Stone from a symbol of Viv’s dream to a collective dream. By possessing the Stone, Viv attracted like-minded people, people who have been misjudged for what they are or who seek change. These people prove allies to Viv in her time of need. Contrarily, Fennus, who has been nothing but condescending, will likely attract enemies now that he possesses the Stone—the novel ending with him being chased.
The theme of Choosing to Change One’s Path comes to a head when Viv grieves the ruined Blackblood. In Chapter 25, when she finds Blackblood among the shop’s ashes, cracked and warped, she acknowledges it “was the bridge [to her old life] burning away behind her, leaving her in a desolation” (221). Despite enjoying her new life, she kept Blackblood as a backup plan, a reminder of her old life. With the shop and her sword in ruins, Viv realizes she is mourning both her old life and new life. However, like Viv, Blackblood goes through a transformation. In Chapter 28, Cal and Tandri present her with a reworked Legends & Lattes sign, now adorned with the remains of Blackblood. Viv likes “Blackblood’s new incarnation, cut down to an icon of her former self” (241). This transformation symbolizes her honoring the past while leaving it for good, as she now lives by different principles.
Chapter 29 ends on a high note, as Viv acknowledges Tandri, Cal, and Thimble as equal contributors to Legends & Lattes, friends and partners. Viv goes so far as to invite Tandri to move into the shop with her, having refurbished her loft with proper beds as per Tandri’s advice. As she admires Tandri, lovestruck, she acknowledges “It was easy to see how one might mistake her nature for something purely sensual” (251). This observation wraps up the theme of Appearances and Misconceptions by showing Viv’s acknowledgement of appearance-based judgment, despite knowing it doesn’t tell a whole story.
