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Crown of Midnight Chapters 32–41 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas Crown of Midnight chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 32
Celaena wakes up back in her room, the sedatives finally out of her system. Fleetfoot is curled up beside her, though the dog’s warmth does little to help. When Philippa arrives with food, she accidentally reveals that Celaena slept through Nehemia’s funeral while locked away in the dungeon. Celaena stays in bed for days after that.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 33
A slave girl has survived six months in the mines of Calaculla, far longer than anyone before her. Adarlan’s forces killed her entire family, and she has been holding on for one reason only: Princess Nehemia is working in the capital to free their people, and the girl intends to live long enough to see it happen.
Then word tears through the tunnels that Nehemia has been assassinated. The hope the girl had been surviving on collapses. As her overseer lifts his whip to strike, she quietly names her dead one by one, places her own name at the end, and buries her pickax in him.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 34
Ress updates Chaol on Celaena, who has barely left her rooms since Nehemia’s death. She sits by the fire all day, refuses to speak, and hardly touches her food. Chaol orders his men to keep watch on her without blocking her path, wanting to be the one to face her when she finally comes out.
Across the castle, Dorian deals with the political chaos Nehemia’s assassination has set off. He and Roland fight back in council against sending more troops into Eyllwe, and Dorian sends a personal letter of condolence to Nehemia’s parents.
That night in his tower, Dorian turns over what happened the night Nehemia died when he somehow used an unknown power to stop Celaena mid-strike. He tries to repeat it by moving a pen with his mind and gets nowhere. Dorian starts to wonder whether, with Nehemia gone, he’ll ever understand what he’s capable of.
Meanwhile, Celaena works things out on her own. She figures out that Nehemia’s killer came from outside the palace and had no connection to the king. Celaena pins it on Grave, a savage assassin she knows from her time competing for the title of King’s Champion. She rises from her chair.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 35
Celaena arms herself in secret, raiding a hidden tomb beneath the castle for weapons and taking the sacred sword Damaris before slipping out through the sewers under cover of darkness. She makes her way to the Vaults, a criminal underground haunt, and pays a barkeep with stolen jewels to give up Grave’s location.
From there, Celaena tracks Grave to a tavern, and when she calls out his name, he bolts. He leads her on a chase through the city slums before ducking into a dead-end alley, where he turns to fight. She disables him almost immediately, slashing his legs out from under him and pinning both his arms to the wall with daggers.
Cornered and in agony, Grave tries to deny any involvement in the princess’s murder, but Celaena keeps the pressure on until he finally breaks and promises to tell her who hired him.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 36
Celaena storms into the king’s council room with a severed head and drops it before Minister Mullison. She explains that Grave, Mullison’s champion, confessed to killing Nehemia on the minister’s orders before she killed him. Celaena also hands the king a list of around fifteen names, presenting them as traitors she hunted down herself. The king praises her and doubles her pay, and guards haul Mullison off to the dungeons.
Afterward, Celaena visits Archer, who’s still recovering from an earlier arrow wound. He reveals that Nehemia had been secretly working with the resistance movement all along and asks Celaena to take on that role as a spy inside the castle. Celaena informs him of Mullison’s arrest, gives him five days to leave Rifthold, and makes clear she’ll kill him herself if he fails to comply.
Meanwhile, Chaol meets his father for the first time in ten years. The Lord of Anielle urges him to come home, warning that Anielle will need a capable heir if Eyllwe rebels and the mountain clans rise with them. He also takes jabs at Chaol over Celaena and his failure to protect Nehemia. Chaol refuses, suggests that his father send his younger brother Terrin for training instead, and warns him to leave Celaena alone before walking out.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 37
Celaena packs up Nehemia’s belongings and, while sorting through her desk, finds an older copy of a book she’d seen in Davis’s office. Inside, she discovers a Wyrdmark warning against trusting someone connected to the Royal Seal, and the back cover bears the same riddle Nehemia had once dismissed as meaningless. It becomes clear that Nehemia had known Davis all along and had lied about the riddle.
Following a hunch, Celaena goes to the tomb and figures out that the eye-shaped pommel of the sword Damaris is what the riddle points to. She holds it up to the hole in the wall and reads a hidden poem describing three powerful objects made from a mysterious Wyrd stone, with vague hints about where each is hidden. Mort then accidentally lets slip that Nehemia had visited the tomb before, which deepens the sense that Nehemia had been keeping secrets all along.
As Celaena makes her way back up the stairwell, Elena’s ghost appears and offers her comfort, telling Celaena that Nehemia is at peace.
Later, Celaena goes to Nehemia’s grave behind the royal mausoleum and sings an ancient lament. Chaol has followed her and watches from a distance. When she half-turns to acknowledge him, he says only her name and walks away, silently accepting that their relationship is one of the consequences of his choices.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 38
Celaena brings Fleetfoot out to the game park, and the dog keeps staring back at the palace, still waiting for Nehemia.
Back inside, Celaena wanders into the library and runs into Dorian, who’s been hunting for books on magic. Fleetfoot causes chaos by stealing a scroll from the librarian, and Celaena cheerfully misdirects the man to keep her dog out of trouble. It’s the first moment of genuine warmth Celaena has shown since Nehemia died, and she even apologizes to Dorian for how she’s been acting.
Chaol is also in the library looking for answers about the funeral song Celaena sang at Nehemia’s grave. From the mezzanine, he spots Celaena and Dorian together, then moves on to question the head librarian. The librarian explains that Terrasen’s nobility once sang their funeral laments in the language of the Fae, in secret, and that nearly everyone from those noble houses was wiped out in the king’s slaughter.
That’s when it clicks for Chaol. He realizes Celaena is Terrasen nobility. Her family was killed by the king, and she ran to the Assassins’ Keep because it was the only place she could hide. Chaol understands that if she ever reclaimed that identity, she could become a force capable of challenging Adarlan itself, which makes her far more dangerous than he ever imagined.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 39
Celaena spends part of the night on a rooftop watching Archer’s townhouse while a secretive gathering happens inside. She barely recognizes most attendees, but a young man with twin swords stands out. After the meeting, the man and Archer argue in the doorway before the stranger leaves with a rude parting gesture. Celaena considers following him but returns to the castle instead.
That evening, Celaena turns up at Dorian’s tower for dinner, not entirely sure why. His rooms are warmer and messier than she expected, stacked with books he refuses to let anyone organize. When Dorian asks what brought her there, she tells him she has nowhere else to be. He doesn’t take it as an insult. They share a quiet meal, and she falls asleep on his couch. Dorian thinks about how much she has lost—Nehemia and Chaol—and what that grief must feel like.
The following afternoon, Celaena returns to the tomb, convinced she’s missing something that connects the riddle to Nehemia, Elena, and the rebel movement. Mort suggests she would need a seer to make sense of it. His comment gets her thinking about ancient beings who may have kept their abilities after magic vanished. Celaena admits her plan is probably not a good one.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 40
Celaena seeks out Yellowlegs, hoping the old woman can explain a riddle she found in a tomb. She pays six gold coins in total, some for answers to her own questions and the rest to buy the witch’s silence about Dorian, who’d visited before her and whose secrets Yellowlegs was willing to sell.
To avoid revealing too much, Celaena pretends the riddle came from a friendly wager. Yellowlegs sees through the lie but takes the money and answers anyway. The riddle describes three ancient objects called Wyrdkeys, carved from a Wyrdgate by demonic creatures known as the Valg. The Fae eventually stole the Wyrdkeys back and sent them across the sea to be hidden. Holding all three grants control over the gate and, by extension, the entire world. Even one key makes its holder extraordinarily dangerous.
That last detail unsettles Celaena. She begins to wonder whether the king already possesses a Wyrdkey and whether that explains how he conquered the continent so quickly.
On her way out, Celaena draws her daggers and moves to kill Yellowlegs before the witch can sell what she knows about Dorian. Yellowlegs anticipates the attack, vanishes among the mirrors, and gets behind her. The witch swings a heavy chain into the side of Celaena’s head and brings her down.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 41
Late at night, Chaol digs through the royal library’s genealogy records, trying to piece together Celaena’s real identity. He compiles a list of Terrasen noble houses she might belong to, but after all his searching, he’s still no closer to an answer.
The next morning, Chaol meets Dorian on a balcony for a private conversation. Dorian tells him Celaena is managing and hasn’t brought up Chaol at all. Their talk turns tense when Dorian reveals he saw how Chaol felt about her from the very beginning, even before anything happened between them.
Chaol urges Dorian to find a way to free Celaena from her contract with the king. Dorian agrees the situation is unjust but says his father is far too unpredictable to approach about it, and he warns Chaol to reconsider where his loyalties stand.
Elsewhere, Celaena wakes inside Yellowlegs’s wagon, restrained and stripped of every weapon she carried. She works herself free and finds a long-handled ax mounted on the wall. Yellowlegs attacks with a chain, and the two fight through the wagon, smashing mirrors along the way. Celaena takes real damage during the struggle but eventually gains the upper hand and kills Yellowlegs by decapitating her.
Afterward, Celaena decides no one can know what happened and turns her attention to the large oven in the corner of the wagon.