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A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapters 70–82 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas A Court of Wings and Ruin chapter summary contains full spoilers.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 70
Rhysand obliterates a massive section of Hybern’s army, splitting the enemy forces in two. Azriel follows with a second strike that widens the gap, signaling the Illyrians to descend. Hybern counters with a hidden aerial legion carrying faebane-tipped arrows that cut straight through magical shields, forcing the Illyrians to rely on metal ones instead.
Then a horn sounds from the north. Three armies crest the horizon together: Beron’s forces, Tamlin’s soldiers, and a mortal host under Jurian. Eris appears to explain that Tamlin physically dragged Beron into the fight. Beron’s sons immediately begin winnowing through Hybern’s lines, torching every faebane stockpile they find and eliminating the enemy’s most dangerous weapon.
With Hybern scrambling to respond, Feyre’s group moves toward the Cauldron. Nesta suddenly doubles over and starts screaming Cassian’s name. Cassian breaks away from the Illyrian ranks and flies toward her. Seconds later, the Cauldron fires a massive blast directly into the airspace the Illyrian legion had been holding, the exact position Cassian had just left. The blast turns a thousand soldiers to ash in an instant.
The group realizes that Nesta somehow sensed the strike before it came and pulled Cassian out of its path. Before anyone can process what happened, the Cauldron fires again, this time into Hybern’s own lines, and the blast wipes out the Bone Carver.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 71
The Cauldron destroys the Carver and many Illyrian soldiers, and the battle turns against the alliance. Cassian lands to check on Nesta, who can barely hold herself upright, but Rhysand pulls him back to the front. Azriel, not yet fully recovered, heads straight into the fight, so Rhysand sends him to lead the northern flank.
Feyre and Amren consider crossing the battlefield to destroy the Cauldron, but a second Hybern armada cuts off any escape from the west. Their army is now caught between two enemy forces. Rhysand tells Feyre telepathically to run if everything falls apart, then sends Cassian south and Azriel north.
Then a blast of horns comes from the east. A massive fleet appears, with thousands of winged Seraphim soldiers flying above a huge armada. Their leader, Drakon, greets Rhysand and explains that he and Miryam had been hidden on the island of Cretea behind a glamour for three centuries and had no idea anyone was trying to reach them.
The ships below carry a human army that Feyre’s father spent months building after he uncovered the human queens’ betrayal. He found Queen Vassa and rallied forces alongside her. Then Lucien directed them to arrive at the right moment. Feyre’s father named his three ships after his daughters, and he stands at the helm of the lead ship, the Nesta, as it bears down on Hybern’s fleet.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 72
Feyre and Nesta are stunned to see their father’s ships arrive to join the battle. Their father had been gone for months without a word, having left in secret to find help for his daughters. A firebird suddenly tears through Hybern’s fleet and reveals herself to be Vassa, the human queen whose curse is broken.
Drakon places his forces under Cassian’s command. Rhysand tells him that Jurian is fighting on their side, which unsettles Drakon, though he accepts the news and goes to rally his troops.
When Feyre and Amren prepare to move toward the Cauldron, Nesta steps in with a plan. She’ll use the power she absorbed from the Cauldron to convince the king that she’s about to wield it against him, allowing Feyre and Amren to reach it uncontested.
Rhysand refuses. Cassian’s instinct is also to refuse, but he changes course and volunteers to go with Nesta and keep her alive. He tells Rhysand that this is his chance to give something back after everything Rhysand quietly endured for fifty years. Rhysand can barely bring himself to agree, but he lets them go. Nesta sends a message of gratitude to their father through Elain, and she and Cassian leave to set the trap.
Meanwhile, Rhysand moves Elain to safety at the rear of camp, says a brief goodbye to Feyre, and throws himself into the worst of the fighting. Feyre and Amren cloak themselves and run.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 73
Feyre and Amren fight their way through the battlefield toward the Cauldron, which sits atop a hill swarming with Hybern commanders. Amren tears through magical wards as she and Feyre advance, and they scale the cliff face to avoid the guards posted along the path.
At the base of the hill, Stryga is waiting for them. Stryga creates a diversion by turning on the guards herself, pulling the guards’ attention away and giving Feyre and Amren the opening they need to push forward.
The King of Hybern then appears on the path. Feyre and Amren press flat against the rock, and he passes right by them, focused on Stryga and the surge of Nesta’s power in the distance. The king walks up to Stryga, and after a brief exchange, he kills her and throws her body to the naga-hounds below. He then winnows away toward Nesta.
With the Cauldron suddenly unguarded, Feyre and Amren rush toward it. Feyre places her hand on the Cauldron as instructed. At that moment, Amren shuts the Book without reading from it and shoves it aside. Feyre realizes that Amren has deceived her. Amren never planned to use the Book to leash the king’s army. She had set a trap, and Feyre walked right into it.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 74
Feyre’s consciousness is pulled into the Cauldron and swept across the battlefield, where she sees their forces being overwhelmed. Rhysand shifts into a monstrous beast form, and Helion transforms alongside him. Before Feyre can take in more, the Cauldron carries her toward Nesta.
Nesta and Cassian wait in a forest clearing, ready to kill the King of Hybern on sight. The king arrives with Nesta’s father, a sword at his throat. Nesta’s father tells her he loves her and is sorry for everything, and then the king kills him. Cassian fights to buy Nesta time, but the king beats him, leaving him broken on the ground.
The king then uses Cassian’s pain as leverage, and Nesta refuses to abandon him. She picks up Cassian’s sword but is disarmed almost immediately. Nesta unleashes one last burst of power that sends the king crashing through the trees, but it drains everything she has left.
Defenseless, Nesta still won’t run. She kneels over Cassian to shield him with her body. Cassian tells her his only regret is that they never had more time together, and they share a quiet kiss as the King of Hybern moves in to finish them. At the last second, Elain appears and drives a blade through the king’s throat.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 75
Elain stabs the King of Hybern in the throat, and Nesta finishes him by wrenching the blade through his neck until his head comes free. Nesta lifts the severed head and stares at it in silence before letting it drop from her hands. When Elain spots their dead father nearby and screams, the Cauldron retreats and flings Feyre back across the battlefield.
Feyre comes to her senses beside Amren, who reveals that the spell she found in the Book was never about controlling the Cauldron. The spell was always an unbinding meant for Amren. If Feyre uses the Cauldron to release Amren’s true form, Amren will destroy what remains of Hybern’s army. Varian arrives and pleads with Amren to stop, but Amren tells Feyre and Varian that her years in that world have meant everything to her. She asks Feyre to tell Rhysand to leave out a cup for her, shares the spell, and steps into the Cauldron.
Then Feyre performs the unbinding, and Amren bursts free as a towering being of fire and light. Amren tears through Hybern’s forces on the battlefield, then moves out to sea and silences the enemy ships. By the time the last ship goes still, Amren has burned herself out completely.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 76
After Amren vanishes into the sea, Feyre notices something wrong with the shattered Cauldron. A void has opened within the broken pieces of the Cauldron and is spreading, threatening to unravel the world itself because the Cauldron is bound to existence. Rhysand arrives battered from battle, and Feyre lets him see the damage through their mental bond.
Rhysand urges Feyre to use his power to remake the Cauldron the same way she had acted as a conduit before. Exhausted as they both are, Feyre and Rhysand pour every last drop of their combined strength into the broken vessel, reciting Amren’s spell repeatedly until all three cracks fuse shut and the Cauldron is whole again.
When Feyre turns around, she finds Rhysand lying motionless on the ground. The bond between them is gone. He isn’t breathing. Rhysand is dead.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 77
Feyre finds Rhysand dead after he’d given everything he had left to prevent a greater catastrophe. She refuses to leave him, and Mor, Azriel, and Cassian eventually reach her, barely able to stand after the battle.
Thesan, who possesses healing magic, examines Rhysand and confirms that he can’t help. The other High Lords begin arriving one by one. Feyre demands that they resurrect Rhysand the same way they once brought her back from death. Each High Lord offers a fragment of his own life force, including a reluctant Beron, who only steps forward after Mor puts a sword to his throat. Drawing on her status as High Lady, Feyre figures out how to produce her own fragment of life force and contributes it as well.
The last piece comes from Tamlin. He shows no warmth and offers no words of comfort, but he tells Feyre simply to be happy and adds his spark to the rest.
Rhysand wakes up. He also reveals that Amren was present during the sealing of the Cauldron and was on the verge of passing on entirely, so he reached out to her and brought her back with him. Mor pulls Amren from the Cauldron alive, but Amren has changed. Her eerie silver eyes are gone, replaced by ordinary ones, and her powers appear to have vanished with them. She has returned as a normal High Fae.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 78
After the battle, Feyre, Nesta, and Elain return to the clearing where their father died. Feyre leaves Rhysand behind to help manage the wounded and rejoins her sisters. In the clearing, Elain tends to their father’s body and lays flowers on him. Feyre recites a prayer and cremates her father’s body with her fire.
Lucien arrives shortly after, still bloodied from the battle. He checks on Elain and offers his condolences. Feyre pulls Lucien into a hug. He tells Feyre that Vassa is there and will want to talk once things settle. Vassa is under a curse that turns her into a firebird during the day, and Feyre and her sisters’ father was the one who negotiated Vassa’s presence at the battle.
Nesta stays behind at the cremation site while Feyre and Elain walk back to camp with Lucien. On the way, Lucien mentions that he heard Elain made the killing blow. Elain quietly corrects him, saying that Nesta delivered the killing blow. Elain then invites Lucien to Velaris, and he accepts. Lucien fills Feyre in on how he tracked down Vassa and found her already marching with Feyre and Elain’s father, and how Miryam and Drakon had independently made their way to join the fight.
When Feyre enters her tent to change, she finds Rhysand already inside with Prince Drakon and Miryam.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 79
Feyre meets Miryam and Drakon and learns that Jurian survived the battle because Mor convinced the couple not to kill him. Feyre then asks Miryam and Drakon to take the Cauldron back to their hidden island of Cretea before any of the other High Lords can lay claim to it, and they agree.
A day later, Feyre organizes a meeting at her family’s ruined estate, bringing together High Lords, generals, and human leaders. When Tamlin arrives and sees Lucien dressed in Illyrian leathers, he walks past Lucien without a word, and Lucien lets him go without trying to stop him.
The last to arrive is Vassa, who tells Feyre that Feyre’s father was like a father to her as well. She asks Feyre to break the curse, and Feyre says she’s willing to try. Vassa also warns Feyre that the remaining human queens will likely try to disrupt any peace talks.
Feyre convinces a reluctant Nesta to join her, and the two sisters walk into the room together. Feyre addresses the crowd and announces that she wants to renegotiate the Treaty between humans and Fae.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 80
During the lengthy peace meeting between Fae and humans, Feyre tells her full story to everyone in the room, including Tamlin, and holds nothing back. Miryam and Drakon follow with their own account, and several others share theirs, some far darker. The High Lords argue over whether to build a new wall but reach no agreement, and the gathering breaks up with plans to reconvene.
As the crowd thins, Feyre has a brief exchange with Jurian. He mentions that Queen Vassa has offered him a place in her court, though he’s unsure whether to accept. When Feyre asks Jurian whether real peace between humans and Fae is possible, he says he believes it is, and that answer is enough to give her hope.
Days later, the court returns to Velaris. At the town house, Amren makes a dark joke to Nesta about not keeping the king’s head as a trophy, and Elain’s dry response makes everyone laugh.
Feyre then sends Tamlin a brief note through Lucien to thank him and wish him well.
When Feyre asks her sisters what’s next, Nesta simply goes upstairs alone. Feyre and Elain agree that Nesta needs time and space before either sister tries to reach her. Elain says she wants to build a garden, and Feyre agrees.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 81
Rhysand slips away to the kitchen while the others laugh and drink in the sitting room. He stands at the window listening, and when Feyre’s laugh reaches him through the bond, he feels it like a physical thing.
Cassian and Azriel find Rhysand, and Cassian asks why Rhysand is keeping to himself. When Feyre’s laugh sounds again, Rhysand looks at his brothers and sees that they understand without needing an explanation. Azriel says quietly that it’s real, and the three of them share a drink and clink their glasses together.
Mor calls out asking for food, and Rhysand smiles, draws his brothers close, and leads them back to the sitting room.
A Court of Wings and Ruin Chapter 82
After the chaos of the battle, Feyre and Rhysand finally get a quiet moment alone together on the rooftop. They briefly discuss whether Amren will remain Second of the Court of Dreams. Rhysand then tells Feyre that he heard her calling to him while he was dead and that her voice was what drew him back. They make a bargain to face death together when the time comes, and matching tattoos appear on both their arms to seal it.
Rhysand then lifts Feyre into the air and flies her over Velaris before encouraging her to call up her own wings. She does, and the two of them fly side by side through the night sky above the city.
Disclaimer: This is A Court of Wings and Ruin summary. The original work is the property of Sarah J. Maas and Bloomsbury Publishing.
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