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Heir of Illusion Chapters 18–27 Summary
This Madeline Taylor Heir of Illusion chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 18
Thorne tracks Ivy to MASQ and refuses to cross the enchanted threshold, making clear he expects her to leave with him. Darrow promptly shoves Ivy into the hallway and slams the door. Della scolds Ivy on her way out, and Ivy meets Thorne in the alley.
The two argue over the imbalance between them, each demanding the other share information first. The tension shifts into something else before Nolan, a baker and Morwen’s fiancé, calls Ivy’s name from across the alley. Ivy deflects quickly and steers Thorne away, and the argument resumes.
Ivy loses her composure and screams her questions at Thorne. He shuts her down, pointing out that she, of all people, has no business worrying about who gets killed. Thorne then takes off.
Back inside, Darrow offers Ivy one question as a peace offering. Ivy asks about his reaction to the mention of falling stars, and Darrow reveals that almanova means “soul of the star” in the old language.
Three days pass with no leads on Darby or the sword. Unrest spreads through the city, and the king orders a sweep of every home and business, including the wealthier districts, a sign he’s getting desperate.
That night, Huxley summons Ivy to the king’s chambers. Ivy creates an eidolon and sends it in her place. She reflects that the eidolon has kept her going since Leona died.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 19
Unable to sleep, Ivy heads to the training facility to burn off her frustration, working through the punching bag and throwing blades at dummies until a panic attack overtakes her. She steadies herself, then summons her eidolon, which leaves her nose bleeding.
Thorne appears out of nowhere and tackles Ivy, and the two end up in a tense, charged moment before he spots the blood and the mood breaks. Thorne explains that the guard outside had simply fallen asleep, which is how he slipped in unnoticed. He then offers a genuine apology for how he acted during a previous encounter, citing the pressure he’s been under to track down the whisperer.
The conversation shifts to Ivy’s eidolon. Thorne tells her he finds the real Ivy far more compelling than the double. He suggests giving the eidolon a name and asks for her middle name. The moment Ivy says Rose, something shifts in Thorne and he goes cold without explanation.
Suddenly, Warrick rushes in with news that Darby has been spotted at the docks.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 20
Remy’s soldiers search the port for two hours without finding any trace of Darby. Growing suspicious, Ivy tracks down Branson, the guard who filed the report, and discovers he never actually saw Darby himself. Branson got the tip from a stranger in uniform whose name he doesn’t even know. The description Branson gives matches a red-haired figure Ivy spots slipping into a nearby alley. Ivy recognizes Kipps, a guard she knows, and she takes off after him.
Soldiers cut off the far end of the alley, trapping Kipps. He responds by grabbing a bystander and pressing a blade to her throat. Kipps rants about a voice that compels him, then looks at Ivy’s collar and warns her she’ll hear it too. Before anyone can act, Kipps slashes the woman’s throat and then his own.
Ivy catches the woman as she falls and tries desperately to stop the bleeding, but she’s already beyond saving. Holding her, Ivy slips into a memory of Leona’s death and loses track of where she is, calling the dying stranger by the dead queen’s name.
Thorne brings Ivy back to the present. Remy asks Thorne to take her away, and Ivy goes without argument, asking only that the woman’s young daughter be kept from seeing what happened.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 21
Ivy and Thorne escape the busy marina for a quiet cove. Thorne cleans the blood off Ivy’s face, and the unexpected tenderness leads both of them to open up in ways they haven’t before. Ivy admits she blames herself for the death of Leona, who was like a mother to her.
Thorne shares something equally painful. When he was eight, his father held his mother prisoner and kept her emotionally subdued through an enchanted potion administered by a hired enchanter. One night, while guards brutalized Thorne, his mother broke through the fog of the tonic long enough to take her own life so he could escape.
In the chaos, Thorne’s shadow abilities surfaced for the first time, and he killed everyone who’d held him and his mother captive. He carried his mother’s body to a nearby cliff and flew them both to freedom.
The conversation ends abruptly when a charming fae named Griffen shows up and tells Thorne he’s urgently needed back on the Fifth Isle. Thorne orders Griffen to escort Ivy home safely, promises Ivy he’ll return in time for the upcoming ball, and flies off.
Ivy has no intention of being escorted anywhere. She uses her ability to vanish and slips away down the beach, leaving Griffen laughing behind her.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 22
Ivy watches from the edges of a grand ball as Bridgid commands the room, with rumors swirling that the king is about to propose to her. Ivy’s brother Bellamy finds her after years apart, but their reunion barely gets started before their father, Lord Pomeroy, shows up and pressures Ivy to stop Baylor from choosing Bridgid as his bride. Ivy agrees, though she has no intention of following through.
Remy pulls Ivy away to bring her to the king, warning her to be careful about who she trusts. Baylor greets Ivy warmly and hints that something big is about to happen that night.
Then the Gods begin arriving. Selim, God of Accords, and Cassandra, Goddess of Divination, come first. Shortly after, Foley, the Heir of Life, makes his entrance. Foley immediately rubs everyone the wrong way, treating Ivy like an object and drawing a sharp insult from her in return. Cassandra steps in before the exchange escalates further.
Tension rises as Baylor waits for the God of Death, who’s supposed to attend as part of an alliance. When the doors finally open a third time, Thorne walks in, and the announcer introduces him as Killian, God of Death. Ivy has always assumed Thorne worked for the God of Death, so the revelation hits her hard. Thorne has been deceiving her the whole time.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 23
Ivy realizes that Thorne is actually Killian, the God of Death. Thorne uses his alliance with Baylor as leverage to claim a dance with her, and Baylor has no choice but to agree.
On the dance floor, Ivy asks Thorne about his deception and pieces together why Thorne never removes his gloves or gets too close. His bare touch is lethal.
The dance barely wraps up before Foley approaches Ivy with an unwanted comment. Thorne shuts Foley down, and Cassandra steps in to cool things before she slips back into the crowd.
Baylor then takes the stage and announces that Ivy is to be his bride. Ivy had no idea it was coming. The crowd closes in, and she starts to unravel, unable to breathe as the reality of what just happened sinks in.
The moment breaks when Lord Burgess drunkenly charges in, furious that his own daughter was passed over. Burgess publicly degrades Ivy in front of the entire court. Thorne pulls off one glove and presses his bare hand to Burgess’s face, dropping Burgess to the floor, then walks out without once looking back at Ivy.
Ivy’s father grabs her arm and tells her not to waste the opportunity. Her brother forces their father to let go. Ivy summons an illusion to make herself invisible and runs.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 24
Ivy returns to her room to find Thorne already waiting inside. They trade barbs, and the tension between them quickly shifts into something more charged. The two nearly cross a line together, but the moment ends abruptly when Huxley, a guard, knocks on the door to relay a message from the king requesting that Ivy come to his chambers. Thorne pulls away and leaves through the balcony without a word.
Still shaken, Ivy shouts through the door that the wine has made her ill and that she needs to rest. She asks Huxley to pass her apologies to the king. It’s the first time she has ever refused Baylor, and she knows it’s a risk, but she leaves that problem for the morning.
Ivy goes to bed with Thorne on her mind.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 25
Ivy, a young girl in a muddy, ruined dress, is chased by palace guards into her family’s dining hall, where she interrupts her father and his guests. Bellamy leaps to his sister’s defense, and Clara, their governess, comes running in moments later.
Tension rises when Ivy reveals that her near-drowning at the lake was no accident. She tells the room she woke inside a coffin buried underground and had to dig her way out. Everyone reacts with shock or horror, except King Baylor, who looks almost thrilled.
Baylor then announces he’s taking Ivy with him, adding that no one who witnessed the scene tonight can be permitted to survive. Guards drag Bellamy and Clara away, and a soldier beats Bellamy unconscious. Clara screams at Ivy to run before soldiers haul her out of the room.
Ivy tries to flee, but Baylor blocks her. Panic causes Ivy to lose control of her powers, and she vanishes from sight, which only makes Baylor more eager to have her. Baylor recognizes Ivy as a wraith, something rare and valuable, and carries her to a waiting carriage. As the carriage pulls away from the estate, screaming pours out from the house.
An adult Ivy wakes from this dream in a palace bedroom. She admits she spent years convincing herself the memory was nothing but a nightmare and only recently accepted that Clara and the servants were killed that night on Baylor’s orders. A man suddenly slips into bed beside Ivy and greets her as his fiancée.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 26
Baylor is in Ivy’s room uninvited and makes unwanted advances. Ivy stalls by telling Baylor she needs to bathe first, and Huxley interrupts before anything escalates, pulling the king away for an emergency. The moment Baylor leaves, Ivy falls apart. She screams into a pillow and rips it apart. Then she claws at the collar around her neck until she’s bleeding, and she collapses to the floor.
Thorne enters through the balcony to apologize for what happened between him and Ivy the night before. He takes one look at her bloodstained nightgown and the scratches on her throat and immediately grows furious. When Thorne smells the bed sheets and realizes Baylor had been there, he threatens to kill Baylor outright. Ivy begs him not to, though she can’t bring herself to explain the truth about the collar.
Instead, Ivy asks Thorne to take her away. He finds her cloak and a pair of gloves, bundles her up carefully so no skin touches his, and then carries her off the balcony and away from the palace.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 27
Ivy and Thorne are lying low at a secluded cove after a violent morning at the palace. Ivy tells Thorne about the enchanted collar around her neck. If Baylor dies while Ivy is still wearing it, the collar will strangle her to death, which is enough to stop Thorne from going after the king.
Then Ivy opens up about how she ended up in that situation. Her father tried to drown her when she was ten and left her for dead. Baylor found Ivy afterward and took her away, and she never went home again.
Over the years, Baylor used the collar to force Ivy’s body to carry out killings against her will. At some point, Ivy convinced herself she loved him. The breaking point came when Baylor asked her to kill Leona. Ivy refused, but she waited until morning to warn the queen. By then it was too late. Leona was already dead, and Ivy has carried the guilt ever since.
After Thorne drops Ivy off near the palace, Ivy walks back through the woods alone. Bellamy runs out to meet his sister, then Baylor appears behind him. Bellamy and Baylor tell Ivy that her father was found dead that morning with his throat cut. Whoever did it wrote the word “mercy” in his blood, a detail that points straight to Ivy’s hidden identity, the Angel of Mercy.