Jump to Chapter Recap of Heir of Illusion: Chapters 1–9 | 18–27 | 28–36 | 37–46
Heir of Illusion Chapters 10–17 Summary
This Madeline Taylor Heir of Illusion chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 10
Baylor uses a magical collar to strangle Ivy nearly to death, then releases it and apologizes. Ivy pretends to forgive him.
Ivy proposes that Baylor accept Thorne’s terms as a way to spy on Thorne. Baylor agrees, but only if Ivy stays away from the sword and reports whatever she learns. She agrees to both conditions, though her real plan is to find the sword and keep it from either man.
Before Ivy leaves, Baylor shows her a drawing of the almanova and warns her never to let it touch her skin. She notices the rubies on the sword look strikingly similar to the ones on her collar but keeps that observation to herself. Baylor hands her a note for Kaldar, who’ll grant her and Thorne access to the tunnels, and warns her not to trust anything she hears down there.
Ivy finds Thorne waiting in the hallway, and they head to the dungeon together. Thorne notices her bloodshot eyes and the bruises on her arms. Ivy brushes him off, claiming the marks are from sparring practice. Thorne offers to deal with whoever hurt her, and she cannot tell whether he means it or is simply trying to get her to open up.
At the dungeon, a guard’s voice cuts in.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 11
Ivy finds Kaldar in the dungeon, and his smug expression makes it clear he overheard at least part of a conversation he wasn’t meant to hear. Ivy and Kaldar trade their usual barbs before she produces a letter from the king assigning her to hunt down the stolen sword.
Kaldar is furious because his own role amounts to standing watch over a door. He opens a hidden passage with a blood spell and lets Ivy and Thorne through, pulling the door shut hard behind them.
Ivy and Thorne descend a long, narrow stairwell into the tunnels below. The atmosphere unsettles Ivy enough that she’s glad not to be alone. As they walk, they talk, and Thorne knows Ivy can summon an eidolon, while Ivy knows Thorne is a reaper. Neither presses the other about it, and neither has told anyone else.
At a junction, Ivy feels a strange, almost involuntary pull toward a staircase leading upward, and the collar around her neck grows warm in a way she can’t explain. Thorne draws her attention back, pointing toward faint voices coming from the other direction. Ivy follows him but can’t shake the feeling that the staircase hides something the king doesn’t want revealed, something that goes beyond the sword they were sent to find.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 12
Ivy and Thorne come across a group of soldiers clearing a cave-in, and among them is Remy. He grows immediately wary of Thorne, though Thorne silences most of the room by revealing the mark of Death on his hand. Remy draws Ivy aside, and she walks him through their assignment, deliberately leaving certain details out.
Remy shows Ivy a tunnel map Kaldar gave him. Together they notice the collapsed section isn’t on it and that the tunnels have only one known way in or out. That means the thief Grell Darby is probably still inside, unless the collapse hides a second exit nobody knows about. Suspicion also falls on a young soldier named Kipps, who insists the cave-in happened the year before, though the stone looks far too fresh for that.
Once the debris is cleared, Ivy volunteers to go through first as the smallest person there. Remy reluctantly agrees. Thorne steps in as second despite Remy’s objections.
The crawl through is hard and disorienting, but Ivy makes it out into a larger cavern with an underground river. Thorne follows shortly after. Before Remy and the rest of the soldiers can come through, the tunnel gives way and leaves Ivy and Thorne trapped on the wrong side.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 13
Ivy panics when the tunnel collapses, convinced Remy is trapped on the other side. Thorne pulls Ivy back before she can dig at the rubble and risk bringing more rocks down. Thorne sends a shadow snake through the debris, and it reports that the tunnels beyond are clear and that survivors were spotted making their way out. Remy is safe.
Moving on, Ivy and Thorne discover three dusty canoes on the riverbank. Fresh drag marks in the dirt suggest Darby already took one and paddled out before them. Ivy and Thorne launch their own canoe and head downstream.
Suddenly, a tentacled creature surfaces and yanks Ivy out of the boat. The creature drags her to the riverbed and hauls her toward a giant squid-like monster lurking in an underwater hole. Nearly out of air and unable to break free, Ivy summons her eidolon and sends it after the creature while she makes a desperate push for the surface.
Above water, Thorne has already burned a second squid and dives in after Ivy. The eidolon is torn apart mid-fight, and the pain of losing it drains what little strength Ivy has left. Ivy passes out just as Thorne reaches her.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 14
Ivy wakes in the canoe after nearly drowning, coughing up water while Thorne watches her. His shadows circle beneath the boat to protect them. Ivy thanks Thorne for pulling her out, and he deflects with a casual remark about the alliance. They talk briefly, and Ivy mentions she drowned as a child and that her necklace was a gift from the king. The moment turns awkward when she reaches toward Thorne’s hair, and he grabs her wrist, warning her never to touch him. They return to rowing in silence.
Eventually, Ivy and Thorne reach a shoreline near the cave’s exit and find Darby’s abandoned canoe. Blood inside tells them he escaped wounded. Thorne wants to question Darby’s wife immediately, but Ivy argues they’ll get more from her in the morning. They agree to meet at the pub at sunrise. Once outside the cave, they spot soldiers on horseback in the distance. Thorne unfolds his wings and takes off, leaving Ivy to reach the soldiers on foot.
Later, Ivy relives a childhood memory of being held underwater by someone who condemns her existence. She fights, then exhaustion takes over, and she stops struggling. The last thing she registers before losing consciousness is her brother Bel reaching for her. Ivy wakes up gasping, stares at herself in the mirror, and runs through a list of reassurances she knows are lies.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 15
Ivy meets Thorne outside a pub in the Lowers, and they walk to the Darby house. Along the way, Ivy feels an unexplained pull toward a run‑down building, her collar heating up as it did in the tunnels the night before. She spots a shadowy figure in an upstairs window before the figure vanishes.
Reluctantly, Alice Darby opens the door and lets Ivy and Thorne in. Thorne summons shadows to frighten Alice into cooperating, but Ivy cuts him short and sends him to search the kitchen while she questions Alice herself.
Alice tells Ivy her husband changed after a reassignment six months ago. He grew cold, erratic, and at times violent. One night, Alice heard her husband yelling at no one in an empty room.
Thorne returns with proof that Darby had been at the house two nights earlier. He found bloodied rags Alice had hidden instead of discarding. Alice admits her husband showed up in the middle of the night, sopping wet and badly hurt, and kept insisting she come with him somewhere. When Alice refused because of the children, Darby grabbed her wrist and tried to force her out the door. Their young daughter ran downstairs in tears, and Darby let go, then left without looking back.
On the way out, Ivy slips Alice the address of Della’s establishment so Alice can find steady work and provide for her children.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 16
Ivy and Thorne leave the Darby house and piece together a useful clue. Because Darby was badly wounded when he visited his wife, he couldn’t have gone far before stashing the almanova sword. The weapon has to be somewhere close.
Thorne summons a shadow snake to follow Darby’s blood trail, and it leads them straight to a rundown gray house Ivy had already noticed and felt uneasy about. Ivy and Thorne split up and break in separately.
Inside, Ivy finds a disturbed old woman on the upper floor, singing an ominous rhyme about death and destruction. The woman doesn’t see Ivy at first, but rainwater dripping from Ivy’s clothes gives her away. The woman attacks with a knife and cuts Ivy’s arm before Thorne intervenes and pulls her off.
Ivy and Thorne try to get information from the old woman, but she’s too far gone. Ivy leaves a few coins, and they head back out. Thorne found only dried blood inside his half of the house, which means Darby already moved on.
After regrouping, the two agree to split up again. Thorne will go back to question Darrow, while Ivy says she’ll check with local healers. Once Thorne is out of sight, Ivy wraps herself in an illusion and slips away north toward somewhere else entirely.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 17
Ivy breaks into Darrow’s room at MASQ and presses a dagger to his throat to force information out of him. She asks about the almanova, shows Darrow an illustration of the stolen sword, and admits that her collar has been acting strangely, warming up and pressing oddly against her skin. When Ivy mentions that a woman they found was muttering about falling stars and warning that someone was coming for her, Darrow visibly loses his composure.
Darrow tells Ivy the almanova is far more than a magical object. He explains that it’s alive, with its own consciousness and desires. Simply being near the almanova is enough to start hearing voices, and anyone who touches it loses themselves to its control entirely.
Later in the conversation, Darrow reveals that the storms battering the city are connected to Baylor taking the throne, which was never meant to happen. He adds that the Goddess of Illusion and her descendants are the only ones immune to the almanova. Darrow then calls those under its influence the Forsaken and warns Ivy not to trust anyone who has come into contact with the sword, no matter how well she knows them.
Afterward, Darrow makes clear he has no intention of getting involved and plans to stay hidden at MASQ until things resolve themselves. His parting warning is that the sword is just as aware of Ivy as she is of it. Suddenly, an unidentified voice joins their conversation.