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Kissed by the Gods Chapters 50–61 Summary
This Caty Rogan Kissed by the Gods chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 50
Leina is deep in the Veil, a shifting, unstable dimension she has been training in for months, with Vaeloria at her side. When she pushes further into it, the Veil resists violently and nearly throws her off balance. She spots a still, soft silhouette in the distance that radiates a strange, familiar warmth, but it dissolves before she can reach it. A second source of that same warmth draws her forward, and she and Vaeloria are flung out of the Veil into the Weeping Forest, far from where she intended to land.
There Leina finds Leo playing in the snow with a girl named Bri. The siblings’ reunion is emotional, but what unsettles Leina almost immediately is that Bri greets Vaeloria by name with easy familiarity, as though they’re old friends. This should be impossible for a child with no reason to know either of them.
When Leina tries to go with Leo to a nearby camp to find Seb, Bri stops her because the Veil is already pulling her back. Before Leina goes, Bri tells her not to fear the Veil. Bri then sings a lullaby Leina recognizes from her own childhood, and warns her to be wary of hammers. Bri’s father Aelric suddenly crashes through the trees with his sword drawn. Leo gets one last hug in before the Veil drags Leina away.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 51
Leina returns from the Veil worn out and guarded. The Elder senses she’s hiding something about where she went but lets it go, ordering her to rest and resume training with Ryot. That’s when she finds out Ryot has been back from Selencia for some time already without seeking her out.
Before Leina can process it, Ryot storms into the clearing and throws a stolen journal at the Elder’s feet. It belonged to the first veilstrider and came from Elandors Veil. The journal reveals that veilstriders leave their physical bodies behind when they cross over and that the first veilstrider wasn’t lost to the Veil at all. He was stabbed while his soul was on the other side.
Leina refutes what Ryot said, since she and Vaeloria always cross together. They work out that Vaeloria, being born of the Veil, carries Leina’s body and soul through at the same time. The real danger comes when Leina crosses during sleep, because she goes alone and her body is left unprotected. The Elder takes it seriously and releases Leina into Ryot’s care, telling her to move to a private room in the Stormriven hall with a cover story about needing space to study her gift.
Once the Elder is gone, Ryot tells Leina what he found in Selencia. It’s bad enough that starting over is the only real option. A full accord session has been called in fourteen days, and Princess Rissa will stand with them to present their findings.
When Leina moves closer to Ryot, he steps back and tells her they need to train.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 52
Leina drags herself back to her room after another rough day in the sparring ring with Ryot, bruised and exhausted. Her friends show up at her door to bring her to the Crimson Feather for the first night out she’s had all winter. She agrees to go, and since she has nothing suitable to wear, Thalric volunteers to walk her to Elowen’s room to borrow something.
On the way, Thalric opens up about his relationship with Nyrica and the decade they spent apart after both presented at the Synod. He also mentions offhand that Ryot slept outside Leina’s door the night before.
At Elowen’s, Leina borrows a beautiful green and gold silk gown, and while she’s getting ready, she picks up a pair of scissors to cut her hair the way she has since her former love Alden died. But she puts the scissors back down. She decides she’s ready to let go of her grief.
Leina and Thalric head out to join the others.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 53
Leina arrives at the Crimson Feather with Thalric, where they meet the rest of their group inside. When the two of them cross the room, everything goes quiet because no one there has ever seen a female Altor before.
A pompous nobleman named Daimor Chasen approaches Leina. He shows off his brooches, including a beetle symbol she recognizes from an earlier encounter tied to oath‑binding magic. When he touches her scar without permission, she slaps his hand away, and guards escort him off.
A more agreeable man named Roran Chasen introduces himself as a distant cousin of the king. Nyrica and Thalric warn Leina that Roran’s gift lets him influence other people’s will, so she keeps her mental defenses up. She enjoys Roran’s company anyway. They play two truths and a lie, then dance together. Ryot comes up in conversation, which rattles Leina more than she’d like.
When Leina mentions a headache, Roran suggests they go somewhere quieter and leads her to a private bedroom. He kisses her, and when she tries to pull back, he uses his gift to coerce her into staying. Her mental defenses break it. She draws a dagger, backs him against the wall, and turns their two truths and a lie game into a threat. Before Roran can leave, Ryot bursts through the door.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 54
Ryot walks in to find Leina with Roran, a man he’s hated for years. Before Roran can get a word out, Ryot grabs him by the throat. Leina talks Ryot down, and he lets go, but when Roran tries to speak, Ryot kicks him in the throat and crushes his larynx. He drags Roran out and hands him off to Nyrica to find a healer. On his way back in, Ryot runs into Thalric, who warns him that pursuing anything with Leina will change everything and that once he takes that path, there’s no undoing it.
Back in the room, Leina demands to know why Ryot stepped in when she’d already handled it. He admits he was jealous when he heard she was there with Roran. He cups her face and tells her she undoes him completely and that he has no composure around her. She replies that composure has never been something she needed from him. He asks her to tell him to leave. She doesn’t. They kiss.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 55
Leina and Ryot finally act on their attraction, kissing as he carries her to the bed. When he notices how much of her silk dress revealed to everyone downstairs, jealousy takes over and he tears it off her. She smooths things over by reminding him that he’s the only one who gets to see her in that way. He goes down on her until she climaxes, then draws her on top of him, making clear he wants them to continue together.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 56
Ryot and Leina sleep together. Partway through, he pauses to confirm she took a contraceptive tonic, and she has. Afterward, they lie languidly until a knock at the door signals they need to return to the Synod. He tells her their relationship has to stay secret, and she already knows, nodding toward Nyrica and Thalric as people who keep the same kind of confidence.
After stepping out briefly, Ryot asks Nyrica to find Leina something to wear since her dress is ruined. When he turns back, Leina is unconscious on the bed. Her pulse has dropped to almost nothing, and she’s gone cold to the touch. He holds her, reassures her quietly, wraps her in a sheet, and draws his sword.
Ryot stands guard over Leina’s body while praying to the gods to protect her in the Veil, where her consciousness has apparently gone.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 57
Leina crosses into the Veil alone this time and struggles from start to finish. When she finally pushes through, Bri is already waiting.
Bri tells Leina to calm down because her fear is unsettling the Veil itself, something Leina had no idea was possible.
Leina asks what Bri is doing there. Bri explains that her parents have always forbidden her from sharing what she sees and hears, but she’s breaking that rule now because keeping quiet means everyone dies. Leina swears she’ll never tell anyone about Bri or her gift.
Bri says she needs to show Leina something and reaches out to touch her. The moment she does, Leina is pulled into a vision of a battlefield, ash and blood everywhere, draegoth cutting through bodies, Kher’zenn flooding past broken barricades, faravars dropping from the sky, and someone she loves screaming. A face forms and mouths a single word she can’t hear but knows in her bones. Run.
Leina returns to herself in the Veil, shaking. Bri is panicked and apologizes, saying she only meant to show her part of it.
Bri then warns that the vision is what awaits everyone if Leina doesn’t go to Aish in time to warn them the Kher’zenn are on their way.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 58
Leina wakes after a day and a half unconscious and in the Veil, and the first thing she does is warn Ryot and the Elder that the Kher’zenn are planning to strike Aish before pushing into Faraengard and Selencia. Ryot argues the Kher’zenn have never been able to reach Aish geographically, but Leina is adamant that this time they’ve found a way.
Outside, Vaeloria is so desperate to reach Leina after the long separation that she beats her wings hard enough to shatter the infirmary window. The Elder takes this as his cue and announces they’re all riding for Aish immediately. Ryot tries to block Leina from going, pointing out she just woke up and isn’t even dressed, but she shuts him down, grabs her boots and daggers, and walks out to find the rest of her things.
Before Ryot can follow, the Elder stops him and tells him that he wants Princess Rissa brought along and the full cast assembled at the galehold.
Ryot absorbs what the mission actually means, since the Crown and the Synod haven’t had any contact with Aish in nearly a thousand years, and Aish has never allowed outsiders through its borders.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 59
The group flies to Aish to warn its people that the Kher’zenn are planning an invasion. They land outside the capital, Amarune, and are immediately met by armed Aishan soldiers who have no interest in welcoming them. Aruveth, their commander, accuses Faraengard of being entirely self‑serving and dismisses the warning outright, arguing that geography and the season make a Kher’zenn attack impossible. He starts to leave.
Leina rides forward and calls Aruveth back. She reveals she’s Selencian, which catches him off guard and changes the mood of the encounter. The Elder then points out that the last veilstrider appeared during the previous great invasion and that the unusual surge of gifted warriors across kingdoms is a sign something catastrophic is approaching.
Aruveth sends a message into the city via a trained messenger bird and receives a reply almost immediately. Whatever it says changes his mind. He formally welcomes the group into Aish, though he singles out Princess Rissa with a pointed warning that any betrayal will be met with lethal consequences. The group takes flight and heads for Amarune.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 60
Ryot and his companions find themselves at a banquet in Aish, badly outnumbered by their armed and watchful hosts. They agree to keep their heads down and avoid trouble.
The mood shifts when Leif openly wonders if Aishan Altor are permitted to have families, a question that visibly shocks their hosts and lays bare how differently things are done back home.
Everything changes during Aruveth’s toast, when he marks the occasion as the first time the three peoples have stood together since a massacre nearly a thousand years ago. Faelon dismisses it outright, insisting Selencia has never had Altor of its own, but the rest of the group has already started connecting the dots. The horror on their faces speaks for itself.
Aruveth clears the hall and then asks the group what they believed the annual Collection of Selencian boys had actually been.
Leina collapses under the weight of the truth and cries out names in anguish. Ryot crosses the room to reach her, but she scrambles away in terror and screams at him to stay back. In that moment, he understands what she sees when she looks at him now, and the devastating realization that he’s been on the wrong side of history the entire time hits him hard.
Kissed by the Gods Chapter 61
Leina wakes in the middle of the night, still reeling from the revelation that her brother, Levvi, and Alden were murdered. She heads for the door intending to take a walk in the garden below but finds Ryot asleep on the floor outside her room.
Startled, Ryot jumps up and draws his sword before realizing it’s Leina. She pulls him inside and immediately goes after him about Rissa, demanding to know what’s really going on between them. Ryot tells Leina that she means everything to him, and something in her breaks open. She collapses against him sobbing, finally letting herself grieve without pretending to be fine.
When Leina steadies herself, she asks Ryot to lower his mental defenses. He does it without hesitation, and she feels everything he’s been holding back, including a love so fierce it nearly overwhelms her. She opens herself in return and lets him feel the fear, the longing, the grief, and the love she hasn’t said out loud. They share a deep kiss until the distant sound of trumpets cuts through the quiet, interrupting them.