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A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapters 31–39 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas A Court of Thorns and Roses chapter summary contains full spoilers.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 31
Feyre spends the ball close to Nesta, who keeps unwanted attention away. The next day at lunch, their father casually mentions plans to buy the Beddor property, and Elain explains that the entire family died in a house fire. Feyre is shaken, remembering that she once gave Clare Beddor’s name to Rhysand as a cover, and she immediately suspects the deaths were no accident.
Shortly after, Feyre warns her family that something dangerous may be happening in Prythian. She tells them Clare’s family was murdered because of her. She urges them to post guards, keep watch near the wall and the forest, and sail south without hesitation if anything seems wrong. Feyre also shares what she knows about faerie weaknesses: iron is useless, but ash wood works.
Feyre gears up, takes the horse and supplies Elain prepared, and heads north. After two days of moving along the invisible wall, she finds a gate marked by a pair of mossy stones and crosses back into Prythian.
When Feyre reaches Tamlin’s estate, nothing feels right. The iron gates stand forced apart. Inside, the manor lies in ruins. Tapestries are shredded, the chandelier lies in pieces on the floor, and every window has been blown out. She calls for Tamlin and Lucien, but the house remains silent. Feyre sinks to her knees in the wreckage, alone.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 32
Feyre returns to the ransacked manor and finds signs of a fight but no bodies, giving her hope that Tamlin and Lucien are alive. She runs into Alis, who confirms both men survived. Alis reveals that Amarantha has taken Tamlin prisoner to her court Under the Mountain.
Alis explains that Amarantha was once the King of Hybern’s most lethal general, and after the war, she spent fifty years pretending to be a peaceful courtier in Prythian. She eventually earned the High Lords’ trust, drugged them at a party, and stole their powers. She has ruled Prythian for forty‑nine years and is building an army to invade the human world.
In addition, Alis reveals the curse Amarantha put on Tamlin. The only way to break it was for a human girl who had killed one of his men out of pure hatred to then fall genuinely in love with him before the forty‑nine years ended. Feyre realizes she was that girl and that she failed to say what she felt in time. With the curse unbroken, Amarantha came and took Tamlin.
Although Alis warns her that no human who enters Under the Mountain ever comes out alive, Feyre insists on going to face Amarantha. Alis agrees to take her there.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 33
Feyre gears up before leaving, taking only a bow, a full quiver, and two daggers. Alis guides her through the dark woods to a hollow between two hills, where a narrow cave mouth opens into the earth, an ancient shortcut into Amarantha’s domain.
Before they part, Alis warns Feyre to avoid the wine, stay out of any bargains unless there’s no other choice, and trust no one, not even Tamlin. She struggles to speak about a part of the curse Feyre doesn’t yet know, managing only to tell her to pay close attention to what she hears around her. Feyre, in turn, asks Alis to take her nephews across the wall if things go badly and to find her sister Nesta, who will take them in.
Then Feyre enters alone. The cave is pitch black and freezing. A faint glow eventually leads her to a crack in the rock that opens onto a torchlit underground corridor. She slips through and moves quietly down the passage until something grabs her arm. It’s the Attor, the creature from her nightmares. She’s already been caught.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 34
The Attor drags Feyre into an enormous throne room and throws her to the floor before Amarantha. Tamlin sits beside the queen, showing no recognition or emotion, which tells Feyre the curse has already taken hold. Feyre declares she has come to claim Tamlin as the one she loves.
Amarantha reveals that an innocent girl, Clare Beddor, was tortured and killed after Feyre gave Rhysand Clare’s name to divert suspicion from herself and her family. Clare’s body has been left on the cavern wall as a grotesque display, and the sight shakes Feyre badly. Even so, she refuses to back down.
At that point, Amarantha offers a bargain: if Feyre completes three tasks, one at each full moon, Tamlin will go free. Feyre demands that his curse be broken entirely and his court freed permanently. Amarantha agrees, then adds a second option. Feyre can solve a riddle at any point to break the curse instantly, though a wrong answer means death on the spot.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 35
Feyre wakes up in a dungeon cell, badly beaten, with a broken nose and a swollen face. She tries to hold herself together and assess the damage.
Lucien sneaks in to check on Feyre. She tells him she came back because she loves Tamlin and had to tell him. Lucien grows frustrated but heals most of her injuries before slipping out ahead of a guard rotation.
After some indeterminate stretch of time, Feyre is dragged to Amarantha’s throne room. Amarantha demands her name, and when Feyre refuses, she has Lucien seized and orders Rhysand to assault his mind. Feyre gives in and tells her.
At that point, Amarantha presents a riddle, promising that solving it will immediately free her, Tamlin, and the whole Spring Court. Feyre can’t work out the answer on the spot, so Amarantha sends her back to her cell to think.
Feyre spends two more days in the dungeon, turning the riddle over in her mind and getting nowhere. When the full moon finally rises, the guards come for her.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 36
Escorted into an underground arena, Feyre sees Amarantha seated on a platform with a captive Tamlin. Amarantha announces that Feyre’s first task will test the depth of her love. The Attor drops Feyre into a muddy trench below, and Amarantha releases a giant blind worm with rows of razor teeth that prowls the labyrinth beneath the arena floor.
Feyre runs. She squeezes through a gap too narrow for the worm and falls into a pit that proves to be the creature’s den, littered with bones. Trapped, she builds a makeshift ladder from the largest bones to climb out. Before she does, she sharpens and plants bone spikes across the floor directly beneath the pit opening as a trap.
Covering herself in foul-smelling mud, Feyre reasons that a blind creature must hunt by scent. She cuts her palm to draw it in with the smell of blood. Lucien shouts a warning just as the worm bursts through a wall behind her, and she runs, swinging around sharp corners using bones she had wedged into the walls earlier. She leaps into the pit, and the worm follows, driving itself onto the spikes.
At last, Feyre climbs out and hurls a bone at Amarantha’s feet, spattering mud across her white gown. As the guards drag her away, she realizes a bone fragment has pierced straight through her forearm.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 37
Feyre is locked in a dungeon. Her arm is badly broken, with a bone fragment pushing through the skin, and the wound keeps bleeding. She can’t keep food down, and a fever is setting in.
Rhysand materializes out of the shadows and examines the injury. He tells Feyre bluntly she’s dying, then offers to heal her if she agrees to spend time at the Night Court with him every month. She refuses, even after he grabs the bone fragment and twists it to make his point.
When Rhysand turns to leave, Feyre stops him. Lucien has been punished by Amarantha and is in no position to help, and Feyre knows waiting any longer could cost her the arm or her life. She haggles the terms down from ten days a month to one week, and they shake on it.
Rhysand heals Feyre instantly. When she comes around, she finds her entire left hand and forearm covered in a permanent black tattoo, which he explains marks bargains in his court. On his way out, he lets slip that he never did it out of kindness toward her. He wanted to get at Tamlin, and she gave him exactly what he needed.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 38
Feyre is put to work scrubbing a marble hallway with nothing but a bucket of filthy water, making the task effectively impossible. Just before she breaks down, the Lady of the Autumn Court slips through a door and silently swaps the dirty water for clean, settling a debt she owes Feyre for saving Lucien. The hall gets done, and Feyre is taken back to her cell.
The following day, guards lock Feyre in Rhysand’s bedroom and tell her to sort lentils out of a heap of ash in his fireplace before he returns. She’s still at it when Rhysand walks in. He tells her the household tasks are probably Amarantha’s idea, meant either to wear Feyre down or to prod at him. When Feyre asks if he knows the answer to Amarantha’s riddle, he shuts her down and explains that Amarantha’s commands hold over all of them, himself included.
Feyre asks Rhysand about shape-shifting, and he gives her a brief, unsettling demonstration, producing bat-like wings and talons before pulling them back. He then cleans her up with magic, fixes the fireplace, and compels the guards to leave her alone and stop assigning tasks. Afterward, she’s escorted back to her cell.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Chapter 39
Rhysand arranges for Feyre to receive meals while she tries and fails to solve Amarantha’s riddle.
About four days in, two shadowy Night Court servants take Feyre from the cell, bathe her, cover her body in painted designs, and dress her in a nearly transparent gown. Rhysand tells Feyre the paint is meant to show him if anyone touches her. He then brings her to a Midsummer celebration and publicly announces their bargain before Amarantha and Tamlin, who grips his throne but keeps his expression carefully neutral.
Feyre had been warned not to drink the faerie wine, but Rhysand compels her to anyway. She wakes the next morning sick and remembers almost nothing. Lucien checks on her and fills in the gaps, telling her Rhysand kept her dancing for him all night. He also clarifies that Tamlin’s silence around Amarantha is a deliberate choice to protect Feyre, not the result of any spell.
The same routine plays out night after night. Feyre is painted, dressed, drugged, and paraded through the throne room.
Just before Feyre’s second trial, Rhysand warns it may be her last. That evening, Amarantha orders him to interrogate a Summer Court faerie who attempted to escape. Rather than leaving the prisoner mentally broken as she intended, Rhysand reads his mind, appears to quietly protect whoever else may have been involved, and kills him quickly before handing Feyre a goblet of wine.