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A Court of Silver Flames Chapters 27–40 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas A Court of Silver Flames chapter summary contains full spoilers.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 27
Nesta and Gwyn talk before training about the Dread Trove, and Gwyn confirms that even Merrill’s research has turned up nothing useful. When Gwyn asks whether there’s another way to find it, Nesta lies and says no, avoiding any mention of scrying.
After the session, Nesta asks Cassian to stop by Emerie’s shop in Windhaven and drop off a gift she put together. He delivers the tea and spices and passes along Nesta’s standing invitation for Emerie to join their training. Emerie is moved by the gesture, but she turns down the offer, saying that she isn’t ready.
When Nesta heads up to the training ring the next day, she finds Cassian and Gwyn already there, with Emerie standing beside them. Emerie showed up after all.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 28
Cassian notices early in the session that Emerie’s clipped wings are throwing off her balance. Emerie tells him her father did the clipping, and because she fought back, the damage ended up far worse than it might have been. Cassian offers to bring in a healer, but Emerie refuses, and Nesta redirects the group back to training.
The three women warm up to each other fast. Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie bond over romance novels, and Emerie promises to bring some books to the next training session.
When Rhysand arrives to take Emerie home, he and Nesta have a brief, wordless standoff. Rhysand telepathically warns Nesta to be kind to Gwyn, and Nesta shuts him out. Cassian stays close to keep the situation from escalating. Before leaving, Emerie tells Nesta she plans to return, admitting that the earlier confrontation and the gift of tea and spices made her realize fear had been holding her back from experiencing more of the world.
Cassian tells Rhysand telepathically that baiting Nesta was unnecessary and that she needs to build these friendships on her own. Rhysand concedes. On his way out, Rhysand makes a pointed remark about what Nesta and Cassian have been up to in the House. Cassian is unbothered by the comment.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 29
Nesta wakes from a nightmare about her father’s death and ends up walking the House’s stairs in the middle of the night. The House offers her scrying tools, but she turns them down, still too frightened by her last encounter with the Cauldron.
Meanwhile, at the River House, Amren gives Nesta one week to attempt a scrying on her own before bringing Elain in to do it instead. Cassian objects but ultimately accepts Amren’s deadline.
Three new priestesses show up to training shortly after, inspired by Nesta’s public stand against Merrill. Watching them push past their own fear finally convinces Nesta to try scrying herself, with Cassian nearby in case anything goes wrong.
The attempt falls apart. The memory of the Cauldron floods back, and the fear becomes too much for Nesta to bear, so she gives up and spends the rest of the evening alone in her room.
That night, a nightmare takes hold, and Nesta’s power breaks loose as an icy silver flame that shatters her windows. Cassian and Azriel reach her first, and Rhysand uses his ability to enter Nesta’s mind and pull her out of the nightmare.
Afterward, Rhysand tells the group that the failed scrying had essentially triggered the nightmare. He also reveals that Nesta’s power is “pure death.”
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 30
Nesta wakes from a nightmare about the Cauldron and finds Cassian asleep in the chair beside her bed. He had clearly spent the night keeping watch. They have quiet breakfast before Nesta heads to training.
When Emerie notices that Nesta seems off, Nesta admits she’s been having bad dreams. Gwyn quietly confesses that she struggles with the same thing, and the small moment of honesty lightens the mood.
Later, Cassian meets Rhysand at the river house and finds him in a terrible state. Rhysand tells Cassian that the baby has wings. Because Feyre had taken a fully Illyrian form on the night of conception, the child inherited Illyrian traits, and their healer has forbidden Feyre from shape-shifting for the rest of the pregnancy. The danger that restriction poses during labor goes unspoken but hangs over everything.
Azriel arrives already knowing the news and raises a harder concern. When word of Feyre’s pregnancy spreads, Tamlin is likely to take it badly, and with war threatening and alliances fragile, that fallout could become a real problem. The three agree that Lucien needs to go to the Spring Court and stay there, both to manage Tamlin and to keep them informed. Rhysand resists the idea of handling Tamlin carefully but comes around enough to let Azriel reach out to Lucien.
Cassian then pulls Rhysand outside to burn off the tension.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 31
Cassian shows up to dinner bruised and battered after sparring with Rhys. He tells Nesta that the healer has discovered the baby has wings, which would make the birth extremely dangerous for a High Fae woman. Feyre doesn’t yet know how serious the situation is. Rhysand plans to seek out Miryam and Drakon for answers, while Mor discreetly contacts the other courts. Nesta agrees to try scrying again, and Cassian insists that Rhys, Amren, and Azriel be present for the scrying.
The next afternoon, the group gathers at the river house around a large map with a bowl of scrying tools. Nesta and Rhysand exchange a silent understanding that Nesta won’t let Feyre see how much she knows about the birth. Nesta starts scrying for the Mask and grabs Cassian’s hand to keep herself anchored as she falls into a trance.
The room gets dangerously cold, and Nesta becomes completely unreachable. Her mental shields are too strong for Rhysand or Feyre to break through. Something inhuman takes over Nesta’s expression, and she won’t release the stones and bones. Cassian kisses her to bring her back, and it works. She lets go and returns to herself.
The stones have fallen on the Bog of Oorid in the Middle. Amren tells the group it’s an ancient, evil-ridden place that no one willingly enters. Nesta and Cassian decide to head there the next morning.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 32
The morning before the mission, Rhysand and Feyre both push to join the group but end up staying behind. Nesta argues that she has to go since only she can sense where the Mask might be hidden. Azriel winnows Nesta, Cassian, and himself into Oorid, and the place immediately unsettles all of them. Even Azriel, who isn’t easily rattled, flinches at it.
As the three fly over the bog, Cassian and Azriel tell Nesta what might be living there. Kelpies, shape-shifting water creatures that drown their victims. Witches twisted by magic who survive on young blood. Lightsingers who lure people in with familiar faces before killing them.
Nesta asks questions, and the group keeps moving, searching for any trace of the Mask. When they pass through a dense patch of mist, she suddenly senses something nearby. Cassian looks back to signal Azriel and discovers that Azriel is gone.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 33
Cassian spots Azriel’s Siphons glowing in the mist and dives toward him, only to find Azriel surrounded by Autumn Court soldiers and badly wounded from an ash arrow through his wing. Cassian refuses to land in the middle of a fight with Nesta in his arms, so he finds a high branch on a dead tree nearby, leaves her there, and tells her firmly to stay put no matter what.
Then Cassian heads back and joins the fight, cutting through the soldiers while Azriel keeps going despite his injured wing. Back in the tree, Nesta waits. Time stretches on with no sound and no sign of Cassian or Azriel, and the silence of the bog starts to wear her down. She can’t stand the not knowing, so she ignores Cassian’s orders and slowly works her way down from the tree, branch by branch, until she reaches the ground.
Nesta walks to the edge of the black bog water and tries to figure out whether she can wade through it to reach Cassian. A soft female voice in her head tells her to run, but she pushes past it. She looks down at her reflection in the still water, and staring back at her is a pair of dark eyes that aren’t her own.
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A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 34
Nesta is frozen with terror as a kelpie drags itself out of the black water in front of her. Even with a voice in her head urging her to run, she can’t make herself move. The creature grabs her and hauls her under the surface.
Meanwhile, Cassian and Azriel have just finished off a group of soldiers flying Eris’s insignia, sparing two as prisoners. The surviving soldiers are behaving oddly though, vacant and strangely passive, which makes Azriel wonder if the men could be the missing soldiers Eris mentioned earlier.
That’s when Cassian realizes he left Nesta behind. He flies back to find her gone, with no trace of where she went except her scent stopping at the water. He calls out for her, but the bog swallows the sound.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 35
Nesta is dragged underwater by a kelpie and, though she panics at first, manages to stab the creature with her dagger. The kelpie’s grip loosens, but it quickly pins her to the riverbed floor. With her air running out, the creature presses its mouth to hers and breathes air into her lungs to keep her alive and suffering longer. The kelpie uses this close contact to systematically strip her of every weapon she’s carrying, and the cycle repeats each time she’s on the verge of drowning.
As the kelpie hauls her through the dark water, Nesta tries to reach her magic. A glowing golden disk rushes toward her outstretched hand, and she realizes it isn’t her power at all but something else entirely. The kelpie doesn’t notice. She grabs the disk, and before the creature can react, she gets the Mask onto her face.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 36
When Nesta puts on the Mask, its ancient power flows through her, letting her feel the thousands of dead warriors buried beneath the bog. She summons enough of the warriors to deal with the kelpie, and the risen dead drag the creature down and tear it apart while she watches without mercy.
Back on the surface, Cassian and Azriel are wading through the black water in a panic. Cassian shouts her name, fearing the worst. Then they notice a golden glow coming from below and spears breaking through the water one after another, followed by an entire army of skeletal soldiers in ancient armor rising from the depths.
The dead kneel, and Nesta surfaces among them holding the kelpie’s severed head. Both Cassian and Azriel lower their heads before her instinctively, recognizing a force far beyond ordinary power standing in front of them.
Then Nesta removes the Mask, and the dead immediately sink back into the water. She goes limp at the same moment, and Cassian pulls her to shore before she slips beneath the surface. On dry ground, she clutches the Mask to her chest and shakes violently until she finally passes out.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 37
The group brings two captured Autumn Court soldiers to the Hewn City dungeons for questioning, but the men are clearly under some kind of enchantment. The soldiers are aggressive and blank, and Rhysand can’t get into their heads. Feyre objects to torturing men who may have no real control over themselves, so the group calls it off and sends for Helion to break the spell instead.
Back in the palace above, the group finds Nesta sitting alone with the cloth-covered Mask. Amren explains it can’t be destroyed and that most who have worn it could never take it off, but Nesta managed to remove it because her power and the Mask’s share the same dark source. Azriel suggests Briallyn sent the soldiers to Oorid to retrieve the Mask. The group decides to lock the Mask away and have Helion teach Nesta how to ward it.
Alone in her room afterward, Nesta reflects on what wearing the Mask felt like. The total absence of emotion wasn’t frightening. It was a relief, and Nesta knows that’s exactly why it’s dangerous. She’s the only person who can access the Mask, which also makes her the only one who can be tempted by it.
Cassian brings dinner, and he and Nesta sleep together. Afterward, Cassian leaves quickly with a breezy comment, and Nesta is left staring at the door, unsure whether the encounter meant anything to him.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 38
During morning training, Emerie quietly asks Nesta whether she slept with Cassian, having noticed the charged looks between them. Nesta neither confirms nor denies it, but her reaction makes the answer obvious. Cassian catches Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn talking and orders them back to work.
Gwyn mentions a Valkyrie mental discipline called Mind-Stilling, which she came across while summarizing a book for Merrill. The discipline is used to settle the mind and hold steady under pressure. Nesta is immediately drawn to the idea and asks Gwyn to get a scribe to copy the relevant chapter. Gwyn has already done it. Nesta makes Gwyn and Emerie swear to keep it from Cassian.
When Cassian comes over, Nesta questions their training pace and asks when they’ll get to real weapons. He walks her to the weapons rack and teaches her the eight basic cuts and blocks with a wooden practice sword.
The other women stop to watch. The movements start to feel instinctive, and Nesta pours years of old anger and helplessness into each thrust and block. Cassian watches with something knowing in his expression, as though he understands what the sword means to Nesta.
When Cassian stops calling out commands, Emerie and Gwyn cross the ring to join him and Nesta. Cassian already has wooden swords waiting for Gwyn and Emerie.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 39
Nesta finishes her library shift and runs the stairs obsessively, all the way down six thousand steps and back up. The recent kelpie encounter shook her badly, and she refuses to let herself be that vulnerable again.
The next day, Cassian shows up to the training ring to find the priestesses already waiting in the rain, three new faces among them. The group has gotten too big for one instructor, so Cassian decides to bring in backup.
Azriel joins the following morning to help with the newer priestesses while Cassian focuses on Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn. Cassian teaches the three women a pressure point technique that can knock someone unconscious, and there’s a playful, flirtatious exchange between him and Nesta before they get back to sword work.
After the lesson, Nesta and Gwyn warm up in a quiet corner of the library and attempt a Valkyrie meditation technique from Gwyn’s research. Nesta finds it harder than expected, and painful thoughts about Elain keep breaking through. Nesta pushes past those thoughts, and by the end, she experiences something that feels entirely new to her. She finds a rare stillness and sense of peace she’s never had before.
A Court of Silver Flames Chapter 40
Cassian takes Nesta to a blacksmith’s shop on the western edge of Velaris to watch a blade being made. The blacksmith is reluctant at first, but Nesta’s unexpected courtesy wins him over. She listens to the forging process, then asks to try the hammering herself. Her first attempts are rough, but she finds her footing quickly. She works her way through a common sword and then a dagger, and by the time the blacksmith brings out a great sword, something in Nesta has clicked. She goes at it with a kind of fierce, focused abandon that surprises even Cassian.
The next day, after sword training in the cold rain, Nesta spends the last stretch of the session punching a padded wooden block. She hits it for more than twenty-five minutes while Cassian watches. Lucien arrives partway through, clearly unsettled by the sight. When Nesta finally stops, she walks past both men without a word.
Cassian examines the block after Nesta leaves and finds a scorched mark at its center, still faintly glowing yet ice-cold to the touch. A moment later, the block falls apart into ash. Lucien says, “Mother spare you all.”