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Heir of Fire Chapters 36–46 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas Heir of Fire chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Part 2: Heir of Fire
Heir of Fire Chapter 36
Ren thanks Aedion for saving his life at the opium den, but the conversation grows uncomfortable when Aedion points out that Ren and his grandfather have no home or money. Ren brushes it off but admits he’s not sure he’s fit to be a lord anymore or that his people would even want him back. Aedion tells Ren that a lord who gave up everything for his people would still be worth following.
Tension rises when Ren asks Aedion if he wants to be king. Aedion deflects, saying the only thing he’s working toward is seeing Aelin again and knowing she survived.
Later, at a packed tavern, Aedion and Chaol drink with soldiers recently rotated home. Aedion works the room with ease while Chaol watches, unsettled by how naturally the soldiers fall in line behind him and by what it might mean once Aedion and Aelin are together.
During a drinking contest, a commander named Jensen describes five years at a remote outpost called Noll, where a black stone tower stood off-limits to soldiers, and he mentions a similar tower at Amaroth. Chaol connects both to the clock tower in the glass castle. He believes the three form an equilateral triangle tied to the spell-suppressing magic. To test the theory, Chaol needs Dorian.
Heir of Fire Chapter 37
Manon and the Thirteen spend two weeks in hard training, and while the coven grows stronger, Abraxos remains too weak to attempt the Crossing. Abraxos’s wings need reinforcing, and Manon decides the only solution is Stygian spidersilk, which means flying deep into the Ruhnn Mountains to bargain with the spiders.
On their days off, Manon and Abraxos make the journey alone. A storm catches them and forces them to shelter overnight on an exposed mountainside. By morning, Abraxos has curled his wing around Manon to keep her warm through the worst of the storm.
Once the storm clears, Manon and Abraxos find the spiders’ caves. Manon opens negotiations with the lead spider and asks for ten yards of silk. The spider demands Manon’s beauty, specifically her coloring and features, which the spider wants for herself. Before any agreement can be reached, Manon holds up a silk swatch and claims to spot a flaw, drawing the spiders toward the cliff edge for a closer look.
Abraxos suddenly sweeps his tail and knocks the spiders into the ravine. Manon loads the silk into her saddlebags, and she and Abraxos take off from the cliff.
Heir of Fire Chapter 38
Manon secretly has spidersilk grafted onto Abraxos’s wings to reinforce them, then brings Abraxos to attempt the Crossing. When the moment comes, Abraxos panics and refuses to move no matter what Manon does, so she gives up and orders Abraxos locked away until he’s ready to try.
As Manon walks away, Iskra seizes the chance to humiliate her further by taking a whip to Abraxos. When Manon hears Abraxos cry out and sees the blood, she turns around and launches herself at Iskra. The two fight brutally until Sorrel and Asterin drag Manon off. Manon leaves Iskra with a threat she clearly intends to carry out.
That night, Iskra gets punished by her mother in front of everyone, including two lashes for what Iskra did to Abraxos. Manon declines to deliver the lashes herself.
The next day, the Blueblood heir Petrah stops by Abraxos’s pen with a goat leg and says her own wyvern Keelie wanted to share it with him. The visit turns into a pointed exchange about whether wyverns actually understand their riders. Petrah leaves without pressing the point, and Manon throws the meat away.
Heir of Fire Chapter 39
The night after their encounter with a creature in the lake, Celaena helps Rowan re-ink his wrist tattoo, touching up the parts Rowan cannot reach himself. They talk while she works. Rowan explains that he picked up tattooing from a commander in the war camps who used to ink battle stories onto his own skin.
Celaena, in turn, opens up about her cousin Aedion, who was like a sibling to her growing up and later became a general under the king. She has no idea where Aedion’s loyalties stand now and would rather keep it that way.
Rowan asks Celaena why she won’t reclaim her throne. Celaena admits her crown would only trap her further, just as everything else in her life already has. The word triggers something in Rowan, and he notices the scars circling her wrists.
Celaena deflects, saying Arobynn left them during training, and she doesn’t offer more than that. She explains why she stayed with Arobynn at all. She wanted to vanish from the world and from herself, and she discovered she had real talent for the kind of work he trained her to do.
At the end, Rowan tells Celaena he’s still working out what’s happening between them and asks her to extend him the same patience she expects for herself. Celaena agrees.
Heir of Fire Chapter 40
Dorian and Sorscha have been secretly meeting in his bedroom for weeks. Before Sorscha slips away one morning, she tells Dorian her greatest wish is a morning when she could stay without sneaking out.
Chaol shows up shortly after, and he and Dorian have a tense conversation. Dorian confronts Chaol about his complicated feelings toward Celaena, accusing him of only loving parts of her and resenting what she truly is. Dorian tells Chaol he has no right to wish she were someone different, and the only real question left is whether he considers himself her enemy or her friend.
Meanwhile, Aedion, Chaol, and Ren wait at a hidden apartment for Murtaugh to return from Skull’s Bay. The news Murtaugh brings is grim. Narrok‘s fleet has left the Dead Islands, and Pirate Lord Rolfe‘s pirates reported seeing a collared, inhuman creature on the rocks there before it disappeared. Murtaugh believes creatures like that were manufactured on the islands and that Narrok has since sailed for Wendlyn, deliberately timed to coincide with Celaena’s mission there.
Once Murtaugh and Ren leave, Aedion turns on Chaol for refusing to commit to either side. Chaol won’t budge, citing his loyalty to his people and his promise to his father. Aedion tells Chaol his fence-sitting is fear, not principle, and that everyone around him has moved on. The next morning, Chaol tells the king he’s heading back to Anielle.
Heir of Fire Chapter 41
Celaena settles into a steady routine, spending her mornings as a scullery maid and the rest of her time training with Rowan to control her fire magic.
When Beltane arrives, Rowan assigns her to tend three bonfires throughout the celebration, with the outer two kept low for jumping and the middle one burning as high as possible. Celaena holds them steady as the night begins, but the music pulls her in too deeply, and she pushes past her limits without realizing it. Rowan cuts off her air to break her grip on the fires before she causes serious damage.
Even then, the heat doesn’t leave Celaena. It keeps burning through her from within, and Rowan carries her through the woods to the baths. The water boils off her body, so Rowan and the healers work together, freezing the bath again and again until her temperature finally drops.
Once Celaena is stable, Rowan leaves to fetch a tonic. When he returns, he catches sight of the scars covering her back. Rowan asks who caused them, and Celaena tells him she spent a year as a slave in Endovier. He goes very still, then turns and walks out without a word.
Heir of Fire Chapter 42
Rowan flies off after seeing the scars on Celaena’s back, guilt and anger driving him almost to the Cambrian Mountains before he turns back. He realizes Celaena is likely assuming the worst about his disappearance, just as she’s assumed the worst about him all along.
Back at Mistward, Celaena takes a tonic from the healers and soaks in the bath before collapsing into bed, too cold and drained from the magic to even change her clothes. Rowan returns during the night, carries her up to his room without a word, and settles her in front of a warm fire. He tells her she’s staying with him from now on, though he makes it clear the bed is only for one night.
Once they’ve settled, Celaena explains why she never told Rowan about her enslavement. Rowan asks her to tell him everything. She walks him through her years in Rifthold, losing Sam, her first whipping in Endovier, and how Chaol eventually gave her a path to freedom. She drifts off mid-story, her hand still in his. When she wakes before dawn, Rowan hasn’t let go.
Heir of Fire Chapter 43
Celaena spends a day in bed recovering from nearly burning out her magic, with Rowan fussing over her more than she thinks necessary. While Celaena rests, they discuss Fae magic. Rowan explains the protective instinct males have toward the vulnerable and mentions carranam, a rare bond that allows two compatible Fae to share power in desperate moments.
Rowan then brings up Celaena’s scars. Celaena shares that she kept herself sane in Endovier’s punishment cells by repeating her own name, and she keeps the scars as a reminder of her vow to free the slaves there.
When Rowan pushes Celaena to reckon with her identity as Aelin, she refuses. Celaena explains that the rage bound up in those memories is too dangerous to touch while she has a mission ahead. Rowan accuses her of collecting scars as penance, and the conversation ends there. Rowan lies beside her in silence instead.
After a few more days of rest for Celaena, Rowan investigates another demi-Fae murder, confirms the killing fits the earlier pattern, and returns with chocolates for Celaena’s birthday.
Training resumes outdoors. Rowan pushes Celaena to shape her fire into controlled shields rather than throw power freely, and he hurls ice daggers at her until she produces one. Celaena immediately asks to go again. Over the following week, she progresses until she can hold multiple shields at once. She also slips out alone before dawn to practice at the ward-stones.
Heir of Fire Chapter 44
Training for the War Games has been going well, and Abraxos has already established his dominance by defeating another coven’s bull in a fight. Then Manon appears before her grandmother, who has discovered that Abraxos has never made the Crossing. Manon’s grandmother physically wounds Manon and gives her an ultimatum. Manon must attempt the Crossing the following day and win the War Games, or face the consequences.
The next morning, the entire mountain turns out to watch. Manon’s grandmother blocks Asterin and Sorrel from riding alongside Manon, leaving her on her own. When Manon tries to lead Abraxos forward, he stops and turns a threatening growl on her grandmother instead. The Thirteen move their hands to their weapons, making clear where their loyalty stands.
Manon manages to convince Abraxos to take the leap. Drumming rises from the wyverns locked below, and the Thirteen pick it up, followed by the rest of the covens, until the whole mountain shakes with the sound. Abraxos tears toward the edge and drops into the void. For a long, terrifying moment Abraxos falls, then his wings catch the air and carry Abraxos and Manon into the open sky.
Heir of Fire Chapter 45
Rowan watches from the battlements as Celaena sneaks out before dawn to train on her own outside the ward-stones. She’s been doing this for four mornings in a row, and Rowan can already see the improvement in how quickly she’s advancing.
A week later, Celaena and Rowan run out to investigate another demi-Fae body. This victim is different from the others because he clearly put up a fight. When Celaena scrapes residue from under his fingernails, she recognizes it as the same black, oily substance she once encountered in a dungeon beneath a royal library. Celaena believes the killer is one of the supernatural beings the king has been creating through the Wyrdkeys, using demi-Fae as host bodies.
Celaena fills Rowan in on everything she knows, including what Maeve has been keeping from her about how to stop them. They also wonder whether the bodies are victims the creature rejected as unsuitable hosts. Rowan tells Celaena to burn the body, and they search through the woods but come up empty.
Later, Celaena and Rowan hide out in a tree overnight. Rowan asks her for more details about the creature, and somewhere in the conversation, Celaena finds herself wondering whether Chaol was ever truly her mate, since she once came very close to killing him, and a real mate bond would have made that impossible.
Heir of Fire Chapter 46
Celaena and Rowan return to the latest site at dawn and pick up a trail to the cliffs, where they spot a worn path to a hidden beach. Someone has been using a gap in the reef to bring small boats ashore undetected. Rowan rules out exploring right away and tells Celaena they’ll wait until dark.
A rainstorm that night gives Celaena and Rowan cover to search the caves. Rowan slips inside in bird form to get a closer look and returns with a grim report. Two hundred trained soldiers are camped in a hidden coastal network, along with three supernatural creatures. The soldiers answer to General Narrok, who is one of the creatures himself, and the whole operation seems aimed at Mistward. The bodies Celaena and Rowan found earlier were likely experiments to test demi-Fae vulnerabilities before moving on the fortress.
Celaena wants to go in, but Rowan stops her. The camp is shielded by Wyrdmark wards that neutralize their magic, and engaging two hundred soldiers and three creatures without magic would be suicide.
Falling back into the woods, Celaena and Rowan catch the scent of one of the creatures headed straight toward them. They split up to trap the creature from both sides. The creature drifts closer to Celaena than planned and seems to sense her. Celaena glances out from behind her tree, and the creature is already gone.