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Cursed City Chapters 18–26 Summary
This Kate Golden Cursed City chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Cursed City Chapter 18
Viv and Fiona appear before the Elders to name Caspar Harlock as the High Thane. The Elders tell them to stay quiet while they deliberate.
Refusing to stay silent, Viv pushes back and lets slip that she knows confidential details about Edgar Driscoll. To recover, she admits she was involved with Reid Graveheart and that he was her source. The Elders reveal they already suspect Reid of collaborating with the turned dean.
The lead Elder then demands to see Viv’s back, suspecting she carries the syrabraxa mark. A concealment spell has been hiding her scar, but the magic is already fading. She cuts the inspection short and walks out before the Elders can sense the mark.
In the hallway, Viv runs into Landon, who waits outside the door with a sealed case. She senses blood inside it and gets a strange flash of imagery tied to Deacon. She can’t figure out why Landon would be bringing anything connected to Deacon to the Elders.
Once she’s alone with Fiona, Viv shares that her aeon senses flagged the Elders as deviants. She theorizes that the Elders have no intention of stopping Caspar because they need him as a threat to keep their authority intact. Fiona tells Viv to trust the system. Viv agrees to her face, but she’s already decided she must handle everything on her own.
Cursed City Chapter 19
Viv, Sophia, and Penny spend the day combing every corner of campus for Reid and come up empty. Back in their dorm room, the conversation drifts to Sophia’s casual situation with Landon and her stubborn reluctance to pursue anything real with Peter, then turns to getting ready for the Valentine’s Day party.
Viv wants no part of it. Missing Reid while everyone around her celebrates love feels like too much, and she says so. But Penny and Sophia push back, admitting they’re genuinely frustrated with Reid for leaving Viv without answers for so long. Their frustration gets to Viv more than the party itself does, and she gets dressed and goes.
At the Marksmen house, Vivian makes a beeline for the drinks and ends up alone on the back porch, working through a bottle of vodka in the cold. Landon wanders out and joins her, and they talk more honestly than Vivian expected. He mentions that when he’s struggling, he goes to watch the sunrise from an old watchtower on the far edge of campus, one that dates back to when Harker occupied a hidden monastery and has never made it onto any official map of the grounds.
That detail stops Vivian cold. The watchtower is the one place she and her friends never searched. She’s certain Reid is there, and she bolts from the party to find him.
Cursed City Chapter 20
Viv climbs to the top of a campus watchtower looking for Reid. She calls out for him but gets no answer and accepts that he isn’t there. Drunk and emotionally unraveling, she hears footsteps on the stairs. The newcomer is Deacon. They bicker and nearly come to blows, and Viv realizes that Deacon hadn’t just been passing through. He’d actually come looking for her.
Before anything can escalate, a group of Citadel hunters floods the room. Their leader, Landon, deliberately directed Viv to the watchtower to isolate her. He reveals that the Elders still suspect Viv might be an aeon and sent him to extract the truth without interference from her classmates or the dean.
Landon orders his men to restrain both Viv and Deacon in iron chains and tells the pair they’re being taken somewhere to determine whether Viv is really an aeon. Viv plays along, quietly tells Deacon not to hurt anyone, and promises she has a plan.
Cursed City Chapter 21
Landon and a group of Citadel hunters march Viv and Deacon through the Fickle Thicket in chains. Along the way, Viv secretly presses a fragment of Dawnmere’s wing against her scar to hide her true nature.
Viv and Deacon are brought to a moonlit lagoon where three mermaids are waiting. Landon wants the mermaids to expose Viv and Deacon for what they truly are and orders the pair into the water. Deacon pushes back, and Landon presses a silver knife to Deacon’s throat until Viv convinces him to cooperate.
Once in the lagoon, the mermaids signal for Viv and Deacon to undress. Viv complies, and with the fairy magic still holding, Landon sees nothing to confirm that she’s an aeon. While in the water, Viv notices Deacon’s skin glowing silver and catches a glimpse of severe scarring across his back. The mermaids clearly know who Deacon is and address him by several names, one of them Cernunnos.
Then the fairy magic gives out. Viv’s scar lights up and exposes her true nature. Landon shouts in triumph and takes off for the Citadel while his men move in to seize her. The mermaids close in as well. Deacon grabs Viv and tries to haul them both out of the lagoon, but something underwater coils around the pair and pulls them under.
Cursed City Chapter 22
Mermaids drag Viv to the bottom of a dark lagoon. One of them gives her a flower that allows her to breathe underwater, then delivers a cryptic message before releasing her: “The band lights the attic.” Viv surfaces with no idea what it means.
When Viv breaks the surface, the lagoon is still, and the four Citadel hunters on the bank are dead, each with a puncture wound through the chest. Deacon steps out from behind a tree in one of the hunters’ uniforms. He killed them to protect Viv, and because he used her silver daggers, the deaths will be pinned on her rather than on him.
Viv and Deacon run. Deacon tells her to move into Fever Dream, where she would be safe from both the Brood and the Elders. She pushes back but eventually agrees, on the condition that her friend Penny and her dog come with her.
Once they’re clear of immediate danger, Viv asks Deacon why he’s working so hard to keep her alive. Deacon admits that someone important to him is being held prisoner by Caspar, and he wants Vivienne to use her demon-sensing ability to track the prisoner down. It’s a trade, not charity. They reach an understanding and make it back to campus just as hunters flood into the woods behind them.
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Cursed City Chapter 23
Viv and Deacon leave the Windsor on his motorcycle at sunrise. Viv calls Fiona to let her know she won’t be returning to Harker until she’s free of the syrabraxa. She then calls Sophia, who warns her to stay away because the Elders have sent out a school-wide alert naming Viv as a suspect in the deaths of four Citadel hunters. Viv tells Sophia to pack up Penny and Hound and bring them to Fever Dream.
Before heading there, Viv has Deacon take a detour to Shutterbug, a camera shop, where she picks up a developed roll of film from a camera Reid gave her as a gift. She’s hoping the photos hold some clue to Reid’s whereabouts, but she decides to look through them privately in case their contents turn out to be something she can’t handle in front of Deacon.
Viv and Deacon stop at Viv’s apartment so she can pack bags for herself and Penny. While Viv packs, Deacon wanders over to look at the photos hanging on her wall, and the two have an unexpectedly candid exchange. He also reveals a broader plan to eventually kill both his uncle and Finn once his arrangement with Viv has served its purpose. They leave for Fever Dream with her bags.
Cursed City Chapter 24
Viv arrives at Fever Dream on a quiet Sunday morning with Hound and Penny in tow. Deacon’s crew is already inside, and the atmosphere is surprisingly relaxed. Baz makes his unease about the arrangement known, but Deacon promises that no harm will come to anyone under Deacon’s roof.
Deacon takes Viv and Penny upstairs and shows them around the residence. Penny gets the guest room, and Viv ends up on the top floor. On the way, Viv spots two imposing doors and asks Deacon what’s behind them. The room turns out to be a private movie theater, and the discovery leads to one of their rare, easy exchanges where neither of them is at the other’s throat.
Viv then asks whether hiding her will create problems for Deacon. He explains that a longstanding arrangement involving his blood keeps the Elders away from Fever Dream and that Caspar has no logical reason to search for Viv there.
The mood shifts when the conversation turns to Odette. Viv asks to see what Odette looks like, hoping it will help her use the syrabraxa inside her to sense the woman’s whereabouts. Deacon pulls out a faded, hand-drawn portrait and asks Viv to try. They then thank each other, which feels like a small but meaningful shift in their relationship.
Cursed City Chapter 25
Viv is up late making tea and finally forces herself to look through two sets of developed photos she’s been putting off. She checks in briefly with Penny, who’s sketching the skyline, and mentions that Ward has been paying attention to her. Viv then heads to her bedroom to go through the pictures alone.
The first set, from Viv’s own camera, includes a shot of Reid on the subway that brings her to tears, a Halloween photo of Peter gazing at Sophia with barely concealed longing, and various shots of the city and their friend group.
The second set matters more. The photos from the silver camera Reid left her turn out to be a coded message. The images gradually close in on a restaurant in the Camelot District called Simon and Son’s, then end with a newspaper dated a Monday in January and a shot of the clocktower reading five o’clock. She spends hours trying to work out what Reid is pointing her toward but can’t fully crack it.
Around three in the morning, Viv goes looking for Advil and stumbles on Deacon alone in the gym, lifting a massive stone dining table until his fingers bleed. She watches for a moment, struck by how raw and private Deacon seems when no one is supposed to be watching, then slips back to her room.
Cursed City Chapter 26
Deacon is awake in the middle of the night after a workout, standing on his balcony and watching a stranger through a lit window across the street. Viv wakes from a dream unlike her usual nightmares. In the dream, Viv was inside Deacon’s head, feeling what he felt and seeing what he saw.
Viv pulls Baz aside privately and asks what he knows about the syrabraxa host from the 1700s. Baz tells her that, over time, the aeon’s ability to sense deviants became sharper and more specific, until strong enough feelings about a person would produce sleep visions showing that person’s location. Viv takes this as confirmation that her dream was real and decides she can use the same ability to find Reid.
Later, Viv heads down to Deacon’s office and shows him the photos Reid left behind. Deacon spots what Viv missed and tells her the clues point to a restaurant. He says they need to be there on Monday at five and that he’s coming with her.
On her way out, Viv realizes Deacon never sleeps. She mentions that she has nightmares too, and he quietly admits that his nightmares got bad enough that he stopped trying to sleep at all.