QUICK LINKS: Starside Recap by Chapter 1–9 | 10–18 | 19–28 | 29–36
Starside Chapters 37–48 Summary
This chapter-by-chapter summary of Starside by Alex Aster contains spoilers.
Starside Chapter 37
Vander confirms he’s a bloodbane and orders Aris out of the room, admitting her racing pulse makes it difficult to hold back. She cleans up, changes into a lilac dress, and gets Raker to tie the back after threatening to ask Vander instead.
Soon after, Vander gathers the most sympathetic heirs to discuss Aris’s cause. They keep circling a prophecy they refuse to name, and when Aris asks whether she might be connected to it, their silence is answer enough.
Most leave without committing, but Magnus reaffirms his invitation and gives Aris a diamond necklace. Lord Rodin swears his oath, the most valuable since his estate sits closest to the Land of the Gods. The heir of House Drake offers his invitation in exchange for consideration of his hand, and Aris agrees.
Before Aris and Raker leave, Vander gives her a Starside steel scabbard that prevents anyone else from summoning her sword. He warns that portaling will drain her significantly and tells them to move quickly before the other heirs inform their gods.
At the gates, Raker tells Aris the necklace marks her as claimed. She tears it off. They portal straight to House Rodin, where the attendants are visibly frightened.
After Aris and Raker draw a rough map of the remaining journey, she slips away alone. A blacksmith in the Traveling City once hinted that one of the Great Houses might have someone who could identify her sword, and Aris suspects it’s there. She follows heat and hammering to a forge below the stairs.
The blacksmith tries to send Aris away until he glimpses her blade. His expression shifts, and he says he’s seen it before. He tells her to return at midnight and shuts the door.
Starside Chapter 38
Aris goes to Raker’s room to have him untie her dress. When the fabric tears away, he sees the scars on her back and demands to know who did it. She tells him he did.
Two years earlier, Raker caught Aris trespassing on a training ground and handed her over to his guards despite her begging for mercy. His men threw her in a cell and carved their names into her back. Stellan found Aris near death and negotiated her release.
Raker says he didn’t know his men would do that. Aris doesn’t let him off the hook, tells him the names are still there on her skin, and that she hates him just as much as he hates her. Then she takes her dress and walks out.
At midnight, Aris slips down to the forge. Lord Rodin waits with a room full of knights. He never abandoned his god and has already sent word. The God of Death is on his way.
Aris draws her sword, but the blade stops cold before it reaches Rodin. The guest oath she swore prevents her from harming him or his men. She’s surrounded, and her only weapon is useless.
Raker appears, hurls his sword through the room, and takes off one head after another until every guard is dead. He throws it one final time past Aris’s throat and kills Rodin, who held his blade at her pulse.
Aris drops to her knees and is sick. Raker offers his hand, and she spits at his feet. He offers it again, and she takes it.
Starside Chapter 39
Aris and Raker flee House Rodin before the God of Death arrives. The next morning, Raker tells Aris he remembers the night in the rain, that he ordered his men to put her on the streets rather than throw her in prison, and that he didn’t know what they did after. He apologizes. She says it doesn’t matter. He tells her she does. She says she’s made peace with dying at the end of the quest and keeps walking.
In the desert, a creature drags Aris under the sand. She surfaces into illusions that blame her for everyone’s deaths and nearly gives in. A memory of Stellan’s voice ignites fury in her, and she screams her reason into the sand until the illusions collapse.
Aris finds Raker still trapped, fighting with his eyes shut. She drops her sword and reaches for his face. His blade settles at her throat. She says she sees past the blood, the mask, and the worst of what he’s done, that she isn’t leaving, that he makes her want to survive beyond her revenge.
Blood runs down Aris’s neck. She says she wants Raker and wants to find out what life could look like when the quest is over.
Raker opens his eyes and drops the sword. Aris throws her arms around him, and they sink into the sand.
Starside Chapter 40
Aris and Raker reach an oasis after crossing the desert. They bathe, rest in a nearby cave, and continue the next morning.
While Raker sleeps, Aris goes to refill their water and spots a familiar dragon descending in the distance. She goes to investigate and finds a paladian dagger stuck upright in the dirt, clearly meant to draw her in. Cadoc steps out before she can touch it.
Cadoc taunts Aris with Kira’s sword, claiming he hunted Kira down and broke her before taking it. Aris attacks him in a fury. She’s visibly stronger than she was at the start of the journey and begins destroying his weapons one after another.
Raker wakes and comes running, but Cadoc’s dragon charges at Cadoc and Aris. The force throws them onto its back as it takes off.
The fight carries on above the City on Fire. Aris has the edge until Cadoc draws Kira’s sword and uses it against her. She can’t let the blade shatter, and the fire below stirs memories she can’t shake. Her grip slackens, and she drops her sword. Before she can take it back, Cadoc kicks her off the dragon, and she falls into the flames below.
Starside Chapter 41
Aris regains consciousness in the burning city, her body broken from the fall. Stellan’s voice echoes in her memory, the same words that once pulled her back. Aris forces herself upright and walks out through the flames, where Raker runs toward her.
Cadoc still circles above on his dragon. Aris calls her sword to her hand and holds his gaze until he flees. Her body finally gives out, and Raker catches her.
Raker uses a necklace to summon Este, who restores Aris in a pool of broken starlight. The process is excruciating, and Aris loses consciousness before it ends.
When Aris wakes, Raker asks how she walked out unburned. She admits she’s been immune to heat since childhood, though she kept it hidden. She then tells him what she’s never told anyone, not even Stellan. A fire once destroyed her family home. Her parents burned to death trying to reach her and her sister through a locked door. Her sister died in her arms while she felt nothing.
In the flames, Aris saw a goddess she believes started the fire, and that moment is why she’s still alive. She tells Raker the quest will most likely kill her, and she’s at peace with that. Raker tells her she’s not alone and not the monster she believes herself to be.
Este then tells Aris that she can never return to the Traveling City. Leaving to help her means permanent exile. She says she has no regrets and believes Aris will be the one to change things. Este tells her to rest because tomorrow the quest ends.
Starside Chapter 42
After the City on Fire, Este’s nymphs lead Aris and Raker to a secluded cave for the night. A waterfall and a makeshift bed wait for them. Aris washes off the blood and ash while Raker stands in silence.
When Aris turns to face Raker, she says she’ll likely die the next day and asks for something she’s never asked for in her life. Resistance rises on both sides, the kind born of two people who’ve spent weeks trying to kill each other, but it gives way. They spend the night together. It runs on the same current of hostility and rivalry that has defined everything between them, and by the end, it becomes something neither knows how to handle.
When Aris wakes the next morning, Raker is gone. So is her sword. The betrayal she always knew was coming has finally arrived.
Starside Chapter 43
Aris barely has time to process what happened before three men from the Questral competition walk into the cave. They’ve been watching and waited for Raker to leave. They make it clear they intend to assault her and hand her over to a god, caring little about the condition she arrives in.
Without a sword and unable to summon Stellaris, Aris fights the challengers anyway, taking their weapons one by one. She kills the first two quickly and corners the third, the one most explicit about what he planned to do to her. He tries to bargain his way out, mentions a family, and offers information about the god who sent them. She kills him anyway and walks out of the cave drenched in blood.
Starside Chapter 44
Aris reaches the top of a mountain with no sword, no partner, and no way forward. She lifts her diamond necklace and calls out for her dragon.
Instead, the Astral Queen appears. Aris asks how Raker took her sword without killing her first. The Queen explains that a godsword bonds to the soul. When Aris let Raker in, she unknowingly gave him the ability to take it.
The Astral Queen then tells Aris something that changes everything. Aris and Raker’s swords were once a single blade, split long ago because the power they held together was too great. If Raker joins them again, the damage would stretch for centuries. That same bond also means Raker is a path she can follow directly to the gods.
Aris’s dragon finally appears in the sky. The Queen hands Aris a sword made of pure starlight, tells her that starting a journey and finishing one are very different things, and vanishes. Aris feeds the necklace to her dragon and climbs onto her back. She’s ready.
Starside Chapter 45
Aris tracks the bond between the swords across the sky, through a storm of thick clouds, and into a shimmering, disorienting realm of magic. She lands before a glowing archway at the entrance to the well.
Zane is there. He’s already claimed his cup and is on his way out. Aris tells him Cadoc killed Kira. Zane tells her Cadoc made it through and drank from a cup of his own, though he was screaming when his dragon carried him off.
The thought of Cadoc with immortality fills Aris with rage, but she stays on course.
Zane plans to bring his cup back to his mountain to save the people there. He and Aris embrace, say goodbye, and he flies off.
Aris tells her dragon to wait, says her farewell in case she doesn’t return, and walks through the arch.
Starside Chapter 46
Walking through the arch, Aris finds a cave full of goblets. A silver one sits in her path. The moment she touches it, it fills with swirling liquid magic. She’s kept her promise to Kira’s sister. Now she can finish what she came here to do.
Aris summons the God of Travels who burned her family and village to the ground. The goddess appears without fear. When Aris demands to know why her family had to die, the goddess answers plainly: there was a prophecy, Aris was a threat, and she acted to remove it.
Then, the goddess offers something unexpected. If Aris swears a blood oath not to kill her, she’ll reveal a way to bring Aris’s family back. It goes against everything Aris has lived for, but she drops her sword and takes the oath.
The goddess tells Aris to kill the God of Death, and her family can be returned.
Aris thanks the goddess and calls her dragon through the arch. The goddess reminds her of the oath. Aris points out she swore not to kill her herself, then tells her dragon to eat the goddess. The dragon obeys.
Starside Chapter 47
Aris arrives to find Raker on the throne of the God of Death, her sword across his lap and an empty goblet at his side. He’s already drunk the magic and reclaimed what he was.
Raker tells Aris the truth. He’s the God of Death. Five years ago, the God of War tried to kill him, but he had hidden a shard of his soul on Stormside and woke there as a human. He entered the Questral to recover his powers.
Aris asks the one thing she can’t make sense of. Raker could’ve killed her to take Stellaris at any point. He never did. He doesn’t answer.
With her sword back in hand, Aris challenges Raker to a duel. He meets every strike but never tries to hurt her. Eventually, he drops his sword, takes her face in his hands, and says he left to protect her from what he is. He asks her to join him. Their swords were always meant to work together, and united they could bring down the gods and restore what’s been lost.
In the end, Aris kisses Raker. She says she thinks she loves him. Then she drives her blade through his heart.
Starside Chapter 48
Raker doesn’t die. He grins and steps closer, telling Aris she’ll need to try much harder than that because he’s death.
As Raker asks whether Aris meant what she said about loving him, she slips free, snatches his sword off the ground, and runs. With both blades in her possession, neither can be summoned back to him.
For nearly a week, Aris stays in the air with Raker closing in behind her and the fiftieth day of the Questral running out. When she reaches the gates at sunset, she stops to say goodbye to her dragon. The other side has no magic to sustain her. She doesn’t belong there. Aris promises to come back and sprints for the closing gates.
Raker catches Aris’s ankle. She tries stabbing him with his own sword, but it doesn’t work. Her dragon knocks him off balance, and she throws herself through the gap before the gates seal shut.
On the other side, Raker reaches the gate too late. He and Aris stand on opposite sides of the bars, close enough to touch. He tells her the gates won’t keep him from her. She replies that she’ll see him in fifty years and walks away.
What did you think of this Starside book summary? Share your thoughts in the comments.
And if you haven’t read Alex Aster’s Starside yet, be sure to add it to your TBR list!