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Empire of Storms Chapters 39–50 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas Empire of Storms chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Empire of Storms Chapter 39
Aelin reveals to her companions that the amulet she’s been secretly wearing is the third Wyrdkey, something Aelin has known since Wendlyn. She lays out her plan to trick Lorcan into bringing them the other two keys and explains that they need to find the Lock somewhere in the Stone Marshes of Eyllwe, the only object that can neutralize the Wyrdkeys and stop Erawan for good.
Then Aelin summons the spirit of Elena using Wyrdmarks drawn in her own blood. Elena tells them that the Lock was created by her mother, the fire goddess Mala, who gave up her mortal life to forge it. Elena admits she used the Lock to seal Erawan in his tomb rather than for its original purpose. It has sat forgotten in a sunken city in the Stone Marshes ever since. Elena also reveals that Mala’s divine blood flows through both Aelin and Dorian, which explains the extraordinary power Aelin and Dorian carry.
Aelin decides that their next move is to sail for the Stone Marshes immediately, while Rolfe takes his fleet north toward Terrasen.
Three days into the voyage, a wyvern appears on the horizon carrying an unconscious and badly wounded Manon. Just as the wyvern comes within reach of the ship, Manon slips from the saddle and falls into the sea.
Empire of Storms Part 2: Fireheart
Empire of Storms Chapter 40
Elide is working as a fortune teller while Lorcan performs as a swordsman on a nearby stage. Lorcan’s act draws most of the crowd away from Elide’s tent, leaving her with almost no customers for most of the night.
When the performance wraps up, Lorcan wanders into Elide’s tent, and the two fall into an unexpectedly personal conversation. Lorcan jokes about how much money he made selling his own shirt. Elide pushes back on Lorcan’s unusually good mood, and somehow the conversation shifts to Elide admitting she’s never been with anyone. Elide starts to explain why, but screaming cuts her off before she can finish.
Lorcan heads outside and quickly realizes the camp is under attack by four large winged creatures sent from Morath. Lorcan also realizes the creatures came looking for Elide. He steps in before the creatures can start searching the carnival and tells them no one matching Elide’s description is with his group.
The creatures offer gold for the girl and identify her as Elide Lochan, niece of the Lord of Perranth. That’s when Lorcan understands that Elide has been lying to him about who she is the entire time. He denies knowing her anyway. But the ilken, having traveled far and found nothing, announce they’re hungry and prepare to attack.
Empire of Storms Chapter 41
Elide hides in a secret floor compartment beneath a wagon and waits out the attack in cramped silence. When the noise dies down, she tries to sneak out, only to find Lorcan already sitting in the wagon, bloodied from the fight. Lorcan confronts Elide about lying to him.
The two finally open up to each other. Elide reveals she’s the Lady of Perranth, that her uncle Vernon is Erawan’s most powerful lieutenant, and that she’s carrying something for Celaena Sardothien on behalf of a woman imprisoned at Morath. She also tells Lorcan about her mother’s death protecting Aelin Galathynius, the decade Elide spent locked in a tower by Vernon, and her eventual escape from Morath.
Lorcan, in turn, tells Elide he’s over five hundred years old, blood-sworn to Queen Maeve of the Fae, and that he came there without Maeve’s knowledge, which means Maeve may come looking for him.
Elide and Lorcan settle into an uneasy truce. Lorcan decides not to steal the object from Elide and tells her that two caravan members, Nik and Ombriel, suspect Elide and Lorcan aren’t ordinary travelers but will stay quiet. The caravan hurries to pack and move on before nearby villagers can pin the attack on them. Elide walks off into the dark without a word, and Lorcan is left wondering what exactly he’s doing.
Empire of Storms Chapter 42
Manon wakes up on a ship, wounded and chained, to find Aelin watching over her. Aelin acknowledges the life debt between them but is blunt about Manon’s situation. Abraxos is safe and resting on the deck. But Manon is a prisoner, and any trouble Manon causes will get her killed.
A few days later, Dorian is on watch when Manon wakes again. He tells her that Abraxos flew directly to their ship, that Manon fell into the water before they could reach her, and that he jumped in to pull her out. Aelin and Rowan spent a week healing Manon, which included reopening the wound to clear out iron shards someone had left in her gut.
Manon warns Dorian not to use her as leverage with her grandmother, who has already cast her out. She explains she lost her title and her Thirteen after she refused to execute her Second and raised her sword against the Matron. Manon asks Dorian to find out whether the Thirteen are still alive and offers her loyalty in return. She also asks him to tell Aelin that a young woman named Elide Lochan is alive and looking for her.
After that conversation, Manon retreats into a deep, purposeless sleep. Manon eats and drinks when she has to, but otherwise, she lets the days pass, grieving everything she has lost.
Empire of Storms Chapter 43
After surviving an ilken attack, the tension from that night between Elide and Lorcan is still unresolved. When they reach a small plains town, Elide slips into a series of dockside taverns and works the room, drawing merchants and sailors into conversation to pick up news about Aelin. The information she gathers leads her to a single conclusion. The queen is headed to Banjali in Eyllwe.
Suddenly, Lorcan senses soldiers closing in, and the two bolt for the river docks. They seize a barge by force, and Elide talks the boatman into steering them through the city gates by promising him safe release on the other side. Once they’re clear of the city, Lorcan kills the boatman anyway.
Elide is furious. In the middle of the argument, Lorcan notices something strange about the item Elide has been carrying. He then forces open the amulet he’d been holding. Lorcan had believed it was a Wyrdkey that Aelin and Prince Rowan had given him. But the amulet turns out to be a fake stuffed with nothing but a ring and a mocking note from Aelin.
The confrontation between the two turns uglier. Lorcan reveals that the queen Elide has been searching for is actually Celaena Sardothien, a trained assassin who spent years killing for profit and pleasure. Elide fires back, telling Lorcan that his bitterness toward Aelin seems more like jealousy from someone deeply lonely. She demands that Lorcan put her ashore. He refuses.
The river has already turned south toward Eyllwe, and Lorcan tells Elide that he now has his own reasons to find Aelin and will take Elide there himself. Both are furious, and neither is willing to admit what that arrangement means. They continue downriver.
Empire of Storms Chapter 44
Aelin wakes from a nightmare with fire magic erupting out of control from her body. Rowan grabs Aelin’s face and forces her to focus until she pulls the magic back under control.
Once Aelin is calm, Rowan admits he panicked because he didn’t know how to reach her and feared that Deanna had possessed her again. Aelin tells Rowan she doesn’t want him apologizing for who he is and that his voice was what pulled her back. She also brushes off the political pressure to marry into a foreign alliance for the sake of the war, saying she only needs what she and Rowan already have.
Meanwhile, Manon wakes up chained in a cabin with her head finally clear after days of hazy despair. She’s thinking about escaping and finding her coven when Dorian comes in and asks whether she caused the magical surge. The two talk about witch magic, specifically the Yielding, a suicidal power release in which a witch incinerates herself to destroy her enemies.
Manon and Dorian’s conversation drifts into flirtation, and Manon more or less invites Dorian to stay. He leaves, then comes back. But instead of following through, he gives Manon a single light kiss and walks out, leaving her furious.
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Empire of Storms Chapter 45
Aedion thinks about Dorian and Manon, and Lysandra offers a theory about why someone who has survived what Dorian has might find himself drawn to something dangerous and unlike anything Dorian has known before. The conversation then drifts to Elide, who’s apparently alive but making her way through the wilderness alone, and Aedion privately turns over what he plans to do to Vernon when the time comes.
Later on deck, Dorian asks whether Manon really needs to stay locked up. Aelin isn’t thrilled but agrees to a compromise in which Manon gets some limited freedom on the ship, supervised at all times and kept in wrist restraints. The negotiation gets tense when Dorian pushes back a little too hard and implies Aelin isn’t exactly in a position to judge his choices, given her own situation with Rowan. Gavriel steps in and defuses the situation before it gets worse.
Aelin then leads the group down to Manon’s cabin to follow through on the agreement. When they arrive, Manon looks at Fenrys and tells the group that he’s not who they think he is. Before anyone can process what Manon means, Fenrys moves on her.
Empire of Storms Chapter 46
When Fenrys suddenly lunges at Manon, Aelin and Rowan quickly restrain him. But the Fenrys in the room isn’t really Fenrys. The illusion peels away to reveal Erawan’s Bloodhound, a pale and monstrous creature that had been impersonating him all along. The real Fenrys is elsewhere on the ship, unaware. Aelin tries to burn the creature, but her fire dies. The Bloodhound tears open a porthole to escape. But the real Fenrys arrives and pins the creature to the floor with arrows.
Before anyone can kill it, the Bloodhound drops a braided leather band on the floor. The band belonged to Asterin, Manon’s Second. The creature announces that Asterin is dead, then reveals to everyone that Manon is the last living Crochan Queen. Manon goes after it in a fury and pins it down. But the Bloodhound keeps throwing details about Asterin’s final moments in Manon’s face. Dorian snaps the creature’s neck with his magic before Manon can, which doesn’t go over well with Manon.
Ilken then start landing on the deck. The group fights them off, and Fenrys takes a bad hit from the creatures’ poisoned claws. Aelin tries to heal him, but before she gets far, one surviving ilken lands and delivers a message. Erawan knows that Aelin has a Wyrdkey.
Empire of Storms Chapter 47
Rowan returns to find the ship in ruins. Fenrys is badly wounded, and the last surviving ilken mocks the group before heading toward the coast to report to Morath. Rowan grabs Fenrys’s bow and kills the creature with a single shot.
Aelin kneels over Fenrys to clear the poison from his wounds while Aedion stays close to steady her. The healing stretches into a longer conversation. Fenrys explains how he and his twin came to be bound to Maeve, and Gavriel joins the discussion.
Aedion asks his father whether the oath has ever cost him something real. Gavriel admits that he once wanted to leave Maeve’s service for Aedion’s mother. But Aedion’s mother had asked Gavriel to stay away, and he respected her wish. Gavriel tells Aedion that if Maeve had ever moved against Aedion or Aedion’s mother, he would have fought to get them both out.
By the time the healing is done, Aelin is spent. Rowan carries her below deck. Fenrys drifts off to sleep. Aedion takes the watch alone, his injured knee propped against the mast. After a while, Lysandra pads over in her ghost leopard form and lays her head in his lap. The two sit together in silence under the stars.
Empire of Storms Chapter 48
After a night of battle, the crew tends to the wounded and assesses the ship’s damage. Manon stays by her injured wyvern and refuses to let anyone near Abraxos.
Dorian approaches, and he and Manon talk about his magic and what it means to cross into monstrousness. Aelin interrupts to ask Manon about the ilken and what lies in the mountains. Manon shares what little she knows, then pushes Aelin to stop fixating on the group’s losses.
Manon then reveals that her father was a Crochan Prince, which makes her the last living Crochan Queen and the final heir of Rhiannon Crochan‘s bloodline. Aelin absorbs the revelation without much fanfare, and the two arrive at a grudging mutual respect.
The group then tries to make sense of why Erawan waited so long to act against them. When Fenrys mentions that Maeve’s allegiance has no price, Aelin goes very still. She asks Manon whether witches can see the future, then disappears below deck without explanation. Dorian and Manon conclude that Baba Yellowlegs likely slipped Aelin a veiled prophecy at some earlier point, and Aelin has only just begun to piece the prophecy together.
Below deck, Rowan finds Aelin locked in the bathroom and sick. Aelin asks to speak with Lysandra instead. Rowan finds Lysandra, then flies above the ship to clear his head. When the coast comes into view, Rowan sees dozens of villages in Eyllwe burning.
Empire of Storms Chapter 49
Elide and Lorcan have been giving each other the silent treatment for three days. When Elide’s period arrives, far heavier than usual, she has no choice but to break the silence and ask Lorcan to stop at the next town for supplies. He agrees, and they dock by nightfall.
At the town, Lorcan leaves Elide to handle her own shopping at a local inn while he goes off to buy food. On his way back to the barge, Lorcan’s instincts start firing. Rats pour out of the streets and throw themselves into the river, and he realizes with a jolt that the danger he’s sensing is already there. He rushes back, but Elide is nowhere to be found.
Back at the inn, someone had sent Elide to a back room to try on her new clothes. The moment she steps inside, the door shuts behind her, and she walks straight into something that feels wrong before she can even see it. When a candle lights up the room, Vernon is sitting at the table across from her, and an ilken creature is holding Elide in place while Vernon greets her with a slow, satisfied smile.
Empire of Storms Chapter 50
Vernon tells Elide that Lorcan has already left and that Manon is dead, then orders the ilken to drag Elide toward an iron box in the courtyard meant to transport her back to Morath. As the ilken force her toward the box, Elide snatches a knife from Vernon’s belt and turns it on herself rather than be taken.
Lorcan, who’s been hidden on a nearby rooftop and has weapons positioned at multiple points around the courtyard, knocks the blade away with a thrown hatchet and attacks the ilken. Elide retrieves the hatchet and kills one of the ilken herself. The last surviving ilken grabs Vernon and flees. Elide kills the final wounded ilken on the ground, but not before delivering a message to Erawan through the creature.
After the fight, Lorcan carries Elide through town to their boat, and they escape downriver. He tends to her injuries and confirms that Vernon lied about leaving. Lorcan then promises that he’ll always find her.
Afterward, Lorcan explains the Wyrdkeys to Elide, and she realizes the stone Kaltain gave her is one of them. Elide resolves to deliver it to Aelin as Kaltain intended. She then kisses Lorcan’s cheek and promises she’ll always find him too.