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Heir of Illusion Chapters 37–46 Summary
This Madeline Taylor Heir of Illusion chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 37
Ivy wakes from a nightmare where she was forced to marry Baylor in a royal ceremony, her body going through the motions while she was powerless to stop any of it. She comes to alone, realizing Thorne slipped out sometime in the night.
With no one she wants to see and nowhere particular to be, Ivy drifts through the palace halls and winds up outside Baylor’s office. As she arrives, Bridgid storms out looking furious and raw, and Ivy is surprised to find herself feeling sorry for Bridgid despite everything.
Inside, Ivy confronts Baylor in a way she never has before. She presses him on ignoring the anniversary of Leona’s death, demands to know whether he ever actually intends to remove her collar, and keeps pushing until he admits he had Leona killed because she had become an obstacle. Ivy tells Baylor she never loved him. He backhands her across the face, and she spits blood on his shirt.
Before anything more can happen, Remy arrives and cuts the tension short. He tells Baylor he has identified the Angel of Mercy, then turns and names Ivy as the culprit.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 38
Remy accuses Ivy of murdering her father and several others, telling Baylor he personally saw Ivy leaving Lord Pomeroy’s room with blood on her clothes and that witnesses can link her to the crimes.
Baylor seizes on the accusation as a chance to punish Ivy. He uses the collar to force her compliance, orders Remy to escort her to her chambers under guard, and warns her that she needs to decide soon whether she’ll cooperate or lose what little freedom she has left.
On the way to her room, Ivy tries to reach Remy, insisting he still cares about her and can fight the whisperer’s hold. Remy shuts her down and admits he was the one who killed her father. He pushes Ivy into her chambers and leaves her with a final warning that the whisperer is coming for her.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 39
Ivy wakes to find her maids, Alva and Morwen, dressing her for a forced wedding to Baylor. Both women have been corrupted by a shadowy figure called “the one who whispers,” so Ivy knows no help will come from them. They dress her in the late queen’s gown and carry on as if nothing’s wrong.
Rather than fight openly, Ivy uses her eidolon Rose to create a convincing illusion of herself as the bride. While Rose sits waiting, Ivy changes into dark, practical clothes, braids her hair, and arms herself with every blade she owns.
Then Baylor arrives, and the moment he enters the room, his hold over Ivy breaks. Baylor takes Rose by the arm and heads for the temple without suspecting anything, while Ivy slips past his guards into the hallway.
Ivy makes her way south toward MASQ, where she hopes Darrow can mask her location before Baylor tracks her through the collar. Thorne finds her in the palace gardens and lifts her into the air.
Sustaining both Rose’s illusion and her own invisibility drains Ivy quickly. With the connection about to snap, she uses her last reserves to direct Rose to attack Baylor at the altar. Baylor falls in the middle of the ceremony, and Rose vanishes. Completely spent, Ivy asks Thorne to take her to Della.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 40
Thorne brings Ivy, who’s in a severely weakened state, to Della in MASQ. Inside, Thorne, Darrow, and Della work to stabilize Ivy, giving her something bitter to drink. Darrow then performs an enchantment to block Baylor from tracking Ivy down.
When Nolan appears at the back door, Ivy watches him and catches Nolan staring at her collar, the same giveaway she has noticed in the other Forsaken. She tells the others what she has seen. Thorne knocks Nolan out, and the shadow snakes keep him pinned.
Ivy tells the group that Baylor will activate her collar soon and that no one can stop it. She also reveals that Alva, Morwen, and Remy have already been turned. Knowing she’ll be in too much pain to move once it starts, Ivy decides the safest place to wait it out is the crawl space beneath MASQ.
Thorne stays with Ivy while they wait, and she opens up about how frightened and alone she felt inside the palace. The two grow close, but before the moment can go any further, the collar tightens around Ivy’s throat and cuts off her air. Thorne holds her through it until she finally gets a breath back, only for it to clamp down a second time. Ivy warns him it’s only the beginning.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 41
Baylor spends hours torturing Ivy with her collar that repeatedly cuts off her air, giving her only a few seconds to breathe between each attack. Thorne holds her and counts aloud with her to help her get through it. Just after midnight, the attacks stop, most likely because Baylor is too drained and injured to keep going.
Since speaking hurts Ivy too much, she and Thorne communicate through hand squeezes. Ivy warns him the attacks will start again within hours. Della arrives with tea and passes along a message from Darrow that the tea will start mending the damage to Ivy’s throat right away. Thorne then learns that two of his council members, Griffen and Fia, have shown up after he summoned them through their shared enchanted tattoos.
Thorne reluctantly goes upstairs to meet Griffen and Fia, leaving Della with Ivy. The two women end up having an unexpected moment of reconciliation. Della admits she blamed Ivy for something that wasn’t Ivy’s fault and that she should’ve done more to protect her. Ivy apologizes in return, and she drifts off to sleep shortly after.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 42
Ivy wakes to find everyone crowded around with news. Nolan, badly beaten, tells her that someone is waiting at the location where he first saw Ivy. She realizes it’s the house in the Lowers where she was attacked and concludes that Darby is there.
While Ivy wants to leave right away, Thorne suspects a trap, but Ivy explains that the collar is slowly draining her and the almanova is the only thing that can stop it. Thorne agrees.
Fia realizes for the first time that the sword can remove the collar, and Griffen is unsettled that Thorne never mentioned it. The two of them head upstairs to talk it over with Thorne.
Before Ivy can prepare to leave, Darrow pulls her aside. He warns her that his protective enchantment is tied to the building, so the king will be able to track Ivy the moment she steps outside. Darrow also apologizes for past wrongs, and the two manage to reach something like peace between them.
Ivy arms herself and learns that the rest of the group has already gone ahead on horseback. She and Thorne will fly instead, which will make her harder to track. They head up to the roof to go.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 43
Thorne flies Ivy over the city and spots horses crossing into the Dockside District, which tells him and Ivy that the moment they’ve been waiting for has arrived. He lands in an alley where the rest of the group is already waiting on foot, including Fia, Griffen, Della, and Darrow. The group quickly clashes over how to handle the Forsaken. Thorne wants them killed without hesitation. Ivy disagrees but ultimately accepts the reality of what the night will require.
The group moves through the eerily quiet streets toward a gray house one block away. The Forsaken watch them through the gaps in boarded windows on every side, then pour out into the street all at once, surrounding the group and funneling them toward the house.
Grell Darby steps onto the porch and offers a deal. If Ivy is handed over, the rest walk free. Thorne refuses outright. Darrow pulls Ivy aside and quietly tells her that if everything falls apart, she must run and make sure the enemy never gets the collar.
The Forsaken move in to attack, but Thorne throws up a ring of fire that drives them back. Ivy says she needs to get inside the house, and before anyone can figure out how, Fia shouts a warning as arrows fall from above.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 44
The group is pinned down by arrows. Thorne throws himself over Ivy and takes a graze to the leg, while Della is struck in the shoulder. Darrow uses enchanted powder to stop Della’s bleeding and numb the pain for both her and Thorne.
With the enemy bearing down, Thorne drops the fire barrier he’s been using as cover so the group can scatter and fight on more even terms. He sends Fia after the archers while the others push into the Forsaken.
During the fighting, a mendax catches Ivy and pulls her into an illusion of a quiet, happy life back home. Calum appears, kills the mendax, and snaps her out of it. He tells Ivy the neighborhood mortals have come to defend their home and admits he always knew who she really was. Shortly after, the old woman Ivy had previously shown mercy to stabs Calum from behind and kills him. Ivy kills the woman immediately, then forces herself to leave Calum’s body and keep moving.
Ivy fights her way around to the quieter side of the house, climbs a trash bin, and hauls herself through a second-floor window. Inside, she finds Remy, her former mentor, now turned Forsaken.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 45
Ivy finds Remy propped against a wall with an arrow lodged in his chest. He warns her off at sword point, but a scream from downstairs cuts their tense exchange short, and she runs to investigate.
Thorne stands over Grell Darby’s body, holding the almanova. His eyes are cold and empty when they meet Ivy’s, and he moves toward her with clear intent to harm. Ivy speaks to him and reaches for him both physically and emotionally, and the effort of resisting the sword’s hold costs him enormously. When Thorne swings the blade, it severs her collar instead of taking her life, and her years-long captivity ends. The exertion leaves him barely conscious on the floor.
Baylor arrives before Ivy can reach Thorne and picks up the sword. He reveals that he’s the Heir of Illusion and a blood descendant of the almanova’s original creator, which is why the weapon holds no power over him. Baylor shifts into his true monstrous form to execute the defenseless Thorne, but Ivy steps between them and takes the blade through the chest.
After pulling the sword free, Baylor runs. Ivy collapses into Thorne’s arms with a wound to her heart, and he begs her to hold on as her heartbeat fades.
Heir of Illusion Chapter 46
Ivy wakes up in an unfamiliar bedroom with a sore back and no memory of how she got there. As her mind clears, she starts piecing things together. Thorne killed Darby with the almanova before using it to free her collar, and then Baylor drove a sword through her chest. Ivy knows she should be dead, and the realization forces her to finally stop lying to herself about two other times she died and somehow came back.
Before Ivy can process the truth of her survival, Thorne and a group of others storm in. Thorne is cold and guarded in a way she hasn’t seen since early on, and a man named Clyde insists they check her back for some kind of mark. Thorne gives her a blunt ultimatum, and she reluctantly lifts her shirt, revealing a large red tattoo shaped like wings covering most of her back.
Everything unravels from there. Thorne admits he’s been impersonating Desmond’s son and was never actually Death’s biological heir. He then tells Ivy that her soul has been tethered to her body, something only Desmond himself could’ve done, and only for one specific person. Thorne tells her she’s the Heir of Death and that her ascension has only just begun.
Disclaimer: This is an Heir of Illusion summary. The original work is the property of Madeline Taylor and Slowburn.
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