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The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapters 51–67 Summary
This Sarah A. Parker The Ballad of Falling Dragons chapter summary contains full spoilers.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 51
Grihm is troubled by a Great Silver Sabersythe dragon that has apparently lost her mind. She abandoned her nest, and her unhatched eggs won’t survive without her. Moons are about to fall from the sky, and things couldn’t be grimmer.
Kilíth steps in behind Grihm, sees the protective gear, and understands what it means. Grihm hands him a letter from Kaan and a parchment lark with one order. If Grihm isn’t back within seven cycles, Kilíth should press the final fold. Kilíth gives his word.
Before leaving, Grihm pauses at a wall of names carved by those who never returned. He tells Kilíth his own name. Then he draws his dragonscale blade and walks into the smog.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 52
Veya wakes up in chains and is dragged into a cavern cluttered with junk and scavenged treasure. A hooded man sits on a throne at the center. His name is Arkyn, the Scavenger King.
Arkyn tells Veya about King Ostern’s illegitimate son. While Kaan grew up in the palace, this boy scrubbed floors. The boy wanted his pah’s approval so badly that he tracked down a rare Elding Bird egg and brought it as a gift. Ostern crushed it and tried to burn the boy alive. An Elding Bird named Cliár saved him, but the fire left one side of his face melted.
Veya realizes Arkyn wants Kaan’s throne. She tries to defend her brother but slips up and mentions that Kaan is in love with someone. Arkyn calls for Guíll, a woman who can read minds, to force the secret out of Veya.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 53
Raeve, Kaan, Roan, and Pyrok hike through a swampy forest toward the Bhoggith nesting grounds. They left their dragons behind to avoid being spotted, but Raeve notices Líri shadowing them through the treetops. She can’t send Líri away without making a scene, so she stays quiet and hopes the dragon remains hidden.
Meanwhile, Sereme keeps sending waves of intense pain through Raeve, strong enough to nearly knock her off her feet. Raeve hides it from the others.
At the edge of dragon territory, the group finds a secret shelter built into a tree. Kaan tells everyone to rest until the dam leaves her nest at sunrise. He pulls Raeve aside and stresses the need for stealth, but she brushes him off. Pyrok also senses that something is wrong with Raeve, but she deflects with a joke.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 54
Inside the treehouse, Kaan notices Raeve skipping meals and moving as if she’s hiding an injury. She blames the muddy hike, but he isn’t convinced. Pyrok interrupts before Kaan can question her further.
Roan is working on a tracking device to find the protégé, but the prototype needs another day or two. This delay is a problem for Raeve, who’s secretly under pressure to carry out an assassination for Sereme and can’t leave until the group moves.
As the group watches the foggy marsh, Kaan tells Raeve about the nesting grounds. The local militia has been killing male dragons to steal eggs from unprotected nests. Kaan shares an old saying from his homeland: those who take from nature without giving back will eventually pay for it.
Raeve feels a sudden, strong intuition. She points to a solitary nest far in the distance and tells the others that’s where the moonshard is.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 55
At daybreak, the pink dragon flies away from her nest. Outside the window, Líri bows her head low. Kaan realizes Raeve is beside him. Her eyes have turned entirely black, filled with what look like distant stars.
Raeve heads for the stairs. Kaan grabs her arm, but she pins him against the tree, her mouth close to his throat. He stays calm and warns her that she has nothing to mask her scent. The local dragons will kill her because she smells like him and Rygun.
Pulling back, Raeve speaks with a voice that isn’t hers. It sounds ancient and detached. She promises to return Raeve to him as the mate of her “Precious One.” Then she walks into the marsh alone.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 56
The Other moves toward the nest while Kaan follows in shock. She calls up stones from the marsh and builds a path through the mud. At the nest, she finds the silver moonshard beside a dead egg. She breathes a spark of her own magic into it as an equal trade, and the shell turns bright silver.
On the way out, The Other meets the dam. They share a silent look of mutual grief, and the dragon lets her pass.
Back on land, Kaan asks what The Other is. She tells him that he already knows. Then she assures him that Raeve loves him deeply but warns that the full story will remain hidden until Raeve is ready. She thanks him for his love before leaving Raeve’s body. Raeve collapses, and Kaan catches her.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 57
Arkyn leaves Veya in a prison cell with a deal. If she can convince the woman in the next cell to eat, he’ll tell the Mindweft to go easier on her next time.
Veya is stunned to find that the prisoner is Kyzari, so thin and frail she’s barely recognizable. At first, Kyzari lunges at Veya through the bars, then comes back to herself and recognizes her.
Kyzari explains she was caught in one of Arkyn’s traps while hunting for moonshards. She opens up about how her pah used her for political gain and how she was repeatedly abused. She then admits she’s given her heart to Caelis, the God of Aether.
Veya hands Kyzari a journal that belonged to her mah and tells her how much it cost her to keep it hidden from the Mindweft. Kyzari reads it and breaks down. Veya tells her she must survive because her mah is still alive.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 58
Raeve wakes from a deep sleep to find the group already gone. Kaan left a note saying they went after the protégé and that he needs to talk with her when he gets back.
Hidden under her cloak, Raeve discovers the silver moonshard. It’s beautiful but stirs too much pain, so she covers it again. A pink dragon feather in her gear tells her that her Other was active without her knowing. She gathers her weapons and heads out to carry out the assassination she owes Sereme.
Roan sees Raeve leaving but doesn’t stop her. Outside in the thick fog, Líri is waiting. Raeve lets the dragon come along.
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The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 59
Raeve leaps from Líri onto the wall and uses her magic to sink through the stone. Inside the fortress, the barracks are empty but look hastily abandoned, with drinks and games left behind as if the soldiers had been called away without warning.
Deeper in, Raeve finds a hall packed with soldiers and archers. Her target waits just beyond a set of ornate golden doors. A sudden spike of pain from her blood bind with Sereme hits her, and a guard spots her. Both call on Clode, and the guard finishes first, but the goddess favors Raeve. He dies by his own magic.
Raeve suspects the soldiers have been waiting for her and that Sereme led her into a trap. She draws her blades and prepares to fight through every last one of them.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 60
Raeve tears through the room with magic and steel. She keeps one young guard alive and learns the army hasn’t been waiting for her. The Tri-Council had ordered them to ambush and capture Kaan.
With the fight over, Raeve lets the guard go with a message for his leaders. If any of them harm Kaan, she’ll level their Citadel. Before he leaves, he begs her to spare a boy named Ahvi hiding in the next room. Raeve realizes the boy is the protégé Kaan has been searching for. She promises not to hurt Ahvi, gives the guard her old prison identification, and walks through the golden doors to finish her mission.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 61
Raeve walks into a circular, domed room and finds a makeshift nest in the center with a light blue egg and a young fae boy. The sight stops Raeve cold, and she drops to her knees. This child is the person she was sent to kill.
As a Mindweft, Ahvi already knows what’s happening. He tells Raeve he’s glad she chose not to kill him. As it turns out, he’s the same protégé Kaan, Roan, and Pyrok have been searching for. He’s been a prisoner at the Citadel, though he once tried to escape but was caught.
Ahvi also tells Raeve he’s glad she spared a guard named Kurth, because Kurth was the one who helped him find the egg. Then the egg begins to shake. Ahvi pulls a silver object from his cloak and tells Raeve to run.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 62
Ahvi uses a magical device to set the nest on fire, but a shimmering shield keeps him and the egg safe. Raeve rushes out to escape the heat and smoke. When the air clears, the egg has hatched into a tiny dragon.
Raeve wraps the hatchling in fabric and fastens it to her chest. Then she tells Ahvi to climb onto her back, and together they sprint away.
As they flee, Ahvi warns Raeve that the forest is full of hidden troops waiting to ambush Kaan. Raeve realizes the guards she defeated earlier were only a secondary defense, and the real danger lies ahead.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 63
Kaan and Pyrok move through dense fog when the attack strikes. Stone pillars erupt from the ground and metal spikes lash out, neutralizing their magic. Traps snap shut and haul both men into the air in heavy nets.
Raeve drops in, cutting down several guards before casting a spell to muffle the sounds of combat. Kaan slices himself free just in time to stop a soldier from striking her from behind while she’s down and in pain. Pyrok crashes to the ground a moment later.
As Raeve, Kaan, and Pyrok form a defensive circle, Raeve warns that over a hundred more enemies are closing in. She chants in two elemental languages, and the ground liquefies into a deep mire. The army sinks beneath the surface and vanishes.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 64
Kaan offers jewelry from his pah’s ears to Borg in exchange for information. Borg refuses and instead takes one of Kaan’s memories of vengeance. The scene shifts to a past battlefield.
In the memory, Kaan’s dragon has just killed his pah’s mount. He finds his pah badly burned and paralyzed. Kaan drags him to a boulder and tells him his reign is over, adding that the crown will eventually go to Veya when Kaan dies. His pah tries to bargain with secrets, but Kaan refuses. He cuts out his pah’s tongue and beheads him with a dull saw.
Before leaving with the head and the crown, Kaan conjures a simple stone cup and places it in his pah’s lap. It’s a bitter echo of a kinder gift he once gave the man.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 65
Raeve admits to Kaan that she’s bound by a blood spell and was ordered to assassinate Ahvi. Kaan already suspected this from information a waif he keeps with him had shared. He asks her to explain the hidden runes on her skin and identify who’s behind them. When Raeve lets the name Arkyn slip, Kaan vows to find and destroy him. She panics because she never meant to say that name.
Ahvi tells the group he can break the blood bind, but the ritual must happen at the exact location where the bond was created. Raeve resists at first but reluctantly agrees and reveals that the blood bind was made in an old mining site south of Gore, near the border of the Undercity.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 66
Arkyn chains Kyzari next to her aunt in the hallway. Veya has already been tortured and looks broken. Arkyn’s men search the cells and discover the diary beneath Kyzari’s waste container.
Kyzari spits in Arkyn’s face, and he beats her nearly to death. He orders the guards to drag her back into the small room. Turning to Veya, Arkyn says that Raeve will need the Aether Stone back and instructs her to keep the girl alive until it’s time to use the stone. After that, he leaves.
The Ballad of Falling Dragons Chapter 67
Raeve, Kaan, Pyrok, and Ahvi travel toward Gore by cart. Raeve notices Pyrok caught in a nightmare and tosses his flasks out to stop him from drinking more.
Kaan sits with the driver Noeve, who mentions that Raeve looks remarkably like a woman she transported along the same route fifty cycles ago. Kaan brushes it off, steering the conversation toward his sister. Noeve explains that Veya visited the velvet trogg and returned with a silver jeweled bangle that gave off a deeply unsettling aura. Kaan is upset because Veya had promised to get rid of that object.
Just then, a parchment lark lands on Kaan, but it isn’t from his sister.