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Crown of Midnight Chapters 42–50 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas Crown of Midnight chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 42
After killing Yellowlegs, Celaena returns to the tomb, and Mort warns her that the claw marks on her neck aren’t ordinary wounds. He also tells her the Yellowlegs clan will likely muster the other Ironteeth clans and demand answers from the king, which puts her in a dangerous position.
Celaena spends time in the tomb trying to make sense of the riddle on the wall before heading back to her rooms to sleep. On the way, she changes her mind and collects every ancient blade she can carry instead.
Back in Celaena’s chambers, Chaol lets himself in while she’s gone and rifles through her papers. He finds her will and discovers she’s left everything she owns to him. When Celaena walks in and catches him reading it, she tells him flatly that she has no plans to change it.
As Chaol processes what it means, he realizes the will is actually proof Celaena never intended to betray the crown. If she died a traitor, her assets would go to the king, not him. He knows he was wrong about her. She tells him to leave, and after he goes, he barely makes it to a broom closet before breaking down.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 43
Celaena visits the gaming room and stands at the pianoforte, but grief over Nehemia’s death keeps her from playing a single note.
An hour lanter, Celaena makes her way to a hidden staircase in the library, where she uses a spell from a book called The Walking Dead to get past a sealed iron door. On the other side, she discovers a long underground hallway lined with numbered iron cells, and each successive passageway spirals her further beneath the earth.
The sixth passageway shows clear signs of violence. One cell has been destroyed from within, its door warped outward, with deep gouges scarring both the stone and iron. Bones litter the floor inside.
Celaena continues through two more gates and finds a spiral staircase leading upward. At the top, she enters the base of a tower built from shimmering obsidian shot through with greenish veins, the same material she recognizes from the rings worn by the king, Perrington, and Cain. When she touches the stone, a painful shock jolts through her and briefly causes the Eye of Elena to flare before going dark.
A thunderous boom rolls through the tower, and Celaena realizes she’s standing inside the clock tower.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 44
Dorian spots Celaena entering the library armed, with her hair tied back. He knows that means she’s headed for trouble, so he follows her into a hidden catacomb beneath.
Below, Celaena is already fleeing the clock tower and moving through a dark underground passage. She extinguishes her torch to avoid becoming an easy target, but something attacks her in the dark. She wounds it and runs.
By that point, Dorian has made his way deeper into the dungeon, and he and Celaena cross paths just as the creature bursts through an iron door behind them. They run and reach the final door separating the dungeon from the library, where they hold it shut against the creature. Celaena tells Dorian to find a book called The Walking Dead upstairs, and it appears on a table as though left for him.
Back at the door, Celaena uses her own wounds to mark a binding spell around the doorframe. They open the door, and the creature freezes at the threshold. Celaena kills it, destroys the body, and seals the door. Then they slip away to Dorian’s chambers through the servants’ passages.
In his chambers, Celaena and Dorian discuss what happened, though she keeps her suspicions about the king to herself. Dorian confesses he has magic, explains it first surfaced when he lost his temper, and mentions he’s been looking into other magic users among Adarlan’s noble families. They agree to keep the secrets between them and watch over the sealed door.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 45
Celaena rushes to the dungeon to check on Kaltain, but the cell is empty. A guard tells her the duke took Kaltain to Morath.
The news pulls together a thread Celaena has been turning over in her mind. Kaltain, Roland, and the creature she killed under the library all seem to have been deliberately placed where the king needed them, and all suffered from the same worsening headaches.
Celaena begins to suspect the king is using the Wyrdkeys to warp people and other beings into something monstrous, and she knows she needs to find out how many keys he already has.
The next night, still unable to sleep, Celaena goes back down to the sealed library door. She tests it thoroughly and satisfies herself that nothing is getting through. While cleaning creature blood off her fingers, she finds a scrap of paper in her pocket with the words “Ah! Time’s Rift!” scrawled on it from when she was trying to solve the tomb riddle.
It sparks a new idea. Everything in the tomb is arranged in reverse, the natural order deliberately scrambled, which means the inscription at Elena’s feet probably wasn’t meant to be understood the way it first reads. The real meaning might be right there in the open, just disguised by the same inversion.
Certain now, Celaena knows who can tell her if she’s right.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 46
At Elena’s tomb, Celaena checks the compartment hidden in the crown where the first Wyrdkey was supposed to be. It’s empty. Mort tells her the king found it when he was young, long before she began looking.
Celaena works out that the king has been using the key’s power for his own purposes, most likely to cut off magic across the kingdom while keeping his own intact. She and Mort consider whether the king might have a second key, and they reach the same conclusion. The king probably doesn’t have all three yet, because if he did, the world would already look very different.
The realization brings little comfort. Celaena is still overwhelmed, and her thoughts keep pulling back to Nehemia. She decides to attempt to open a portal to the realm of the dead, partly to learn what Nehemia knew about the keys and partly because she never got to say a real goodbye. She takes Damaris and leaves the tomb to find a room with enough space to cast the spell.
On the other side of the castle, Dorian wakes from a dream in which Gavin, the first King of Adarlan, warns him that someone is about to cross a line that puts the castle and a friend’s life in danger. Dorian doesn’t stop to question it. He gets dressed and runs.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 47
Celaena cuts her arm and uses her blood to draw Wyrdmarks on the wall, shaping them into a portal. She reads a spell from a book, and the marks ignite one by one until the wall opens into a dark void. She calls out for Nehemia and gets no answer.
Then Fleetfoot bolts down the stairs and rushes straight to the portal instead of to Celaena, and Nehemia’s shimmering figure appears on the other side. Celaena breaks down and starts apologizing, but Nehemia stops her. Nehemia warns Celaena never to open the portal again, because next time something far worse will be waiting. She says goodbye to Fleetfoot, then turns back to Celaena one last time.
Nehemia tells Celaena she knew her death was coming and ran toward it, because it was the only way to set things in motion. Nehemia also tells Celaena that she was one of the people who kept her going through the darkest years of her life. Then Nehemia walks into the void and disappears.
Celaena begs Nehemia to come back, but the portal stays dark and empty. Then she realizes Archer has been watching the whole time.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 48
Celaena finds Archer in the underground passages. He tells her that Nehemia showed him the way in and that he has been coming down nearly every night since her death. While trying to close the portal, Celaena spots a tattoo on Archer’s wrist that matches a drawing Nehemia left her as a warning. The warning was about him all along.
Keeping Archer talking, Celaena learns that he planted the riddle in Davis’s office, that the king likely holds at least one Wyrdkey, and that Nehemia had broken from the movement shortly before her death to expose them. Pretending to agree with Archer’s plans, Celaena draws out his admission that he arranged Nehemia’s murder, framed Councilman Mullison for it, and kidnapped Chaol to isolate her.
Once she has what she needs, Celaena stabs Archer, but the blade catches his shoulder instead of his heart. In the struggle, her hand grazes the portal stones, and a creature steps through.
Meanwhile, after waking from a dream warning him that Celaena is in danger, Dorian goes straight to Chaol. Together, they uncover the secret passage behind the tapestry in Celaena’s room. At the bottom, they discover Celaena unconscious, Fleetfoot wounded but still standing guard over her, and a demon creature looming nearby while Archer chants from a book against the far wall. Chaol hurls himself at the creature.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 49
The demon had knocked Celaena unconscious after Fleetfoot distracted her. When Celaena comes to, Chaol is fighting the creature, and Dorian is at her side. Dorian uses raw magic to blast the demon into a wall, revealing a power far beyond ordinary sorcery. Celaena tells him the portal needs to be closed and calls out to Archer to hand over the book, but Archer panics and runs off with it, cutting off their quickest way to shut it.
With no book and more demons threatening to come through, Dorian pulls Celaena toward the stairs while Chaol stays back to hold off the creature and cover their retreat. Just before they get clear, they realize Fleetfoot has been left behind with an injured leg. The demon seizes the dog and hauls her through the portal, and Chaol goes in after her without hesitation.
Breaking free from Dorian, Celaena follows Chaol through the portal. She finds Chaol on the ground, unarmed, shielding Fleetfoot with his body after the demon destroyed his sword. She attacks the creature with blue flame and forces it back, placing herself between it and Chaol. As she does, something about her visibly changes. Her features sharpen, and her ears shift into points. Watching her, Chaol understands what she is. Celaena is Fae.
Crown of Midnight Chapter 50
Celaena shifts into her true Fae form and unleashes her magic against a demon creature to buy Chaol and Fleetfoot time to reach the portal. When the creature proves too quick to overpower directly, she drives Damaris into the ground and lets her power tear the earth apart, forcing the demon back. She shifts back into her mortal body, and Chaol pulls her through to safety.
On the other side, the portal remains open. Celaena has nothing left to close it, so she asks Dorian to help. He cuts his arm, and she uses his blood to trace the closing marks across the glowing symbols until the portal goes dark.
With that done, Celaena turns her attention to Archer, who fled down the stairwell while the battle raged. Still furious over what Archer did to Nehemia, she pushes past Chaol and goes after him.