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Throne of Glass Chapters 14–24 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas Throne of Glass chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Throne of Glass Chapter 14
Celaena spends four days in intense training, waking before dawn to work out in her room before joining Chaol for morning runs through the game park. In the afternoons, she trains with the other Champions under Brullo, where she deliberately keeps a low profile.
The day before the first Test, Chaol skips breakfast and lunch without explanation. When Celaena arrives at the training hall, guards are everywhere, and Brullo is absent. A young assassin named Pelor tells Celaena and Nox Owen, a thief she has just met, that a Champion was found dead that morning. His name was Bill Chastain, known as the Eye Eater, and someone had horrifically mutilated his body.
With no structured session planned, the competitors train on their own. Celaena gravitates toward knife throwing and corrects Nox’s technique. They fall into an easy back-and-forth, and by the end, Nox tells her he’s betting on her to win.
That evening, Chaol stops by Celaena’s rooms, worn out from a council meeting. Their conversation turns personal. He tells her he walked away from his title as Lord of Anielle to become a guard. Celaena tells him she lost her parents at eight and was once forced by Arobynn Hamel to break her own hand to develop her left-handed swordsmanship. She reflects on how different yet strangely parallel their lives have been.
Throne of Glass Chapter 15
The competitors arrive in the sparring room to find half of it hidden behind a large black curtain. Nobody knows what the Test will involve, and the usual noise has given way to tense quiet. When the curtain is finally pulled back, it reveals an archery contest with five targets set at increasing distances across the room. Each competitor shoots once at every target, and whoever scores worst gets eliminated.
The group goes one at a time, so Celaena has to stand and watch before her turn comes. Most perform well enough. Pelor struggles badly with the longbow and barely lands any shots, drawing mockery from the group. Nox stands out, hitting three bull’s-eyes and coming close on the remaining two. Then Cain shoots five consecutive bull’s-eyes, unsettling Celaena more than she wants to admit.
When Celaena’s turn finally comes, she hits bull’s-eyes on all five targets. On the last one, the farthest and smallest, she lands her arrow on the tiny black center dot no one else had touched. The competitors who’d been laughing at her go quiet.
After the scores are tallied, one of the army soldiers is eliminated instead of Pelor. Celaena walks away with the best performance of the day but feels strangely hollow about it.
Throne of Glass Chapter 16
During an early morning run in the game park, Celaena stops to be sick from the exertion while Chaol waits nearby. When Chaol notices the scars on Celaena’s back, he asks about them, and she tells him the overseers publicly whipped her on her first day in Endovier. The next morning, another prisoner helped Celaena recover, but the overseers killed the prisoner later that same day. Celaena eventually took revenge on them. Once she steadies herself, she starts running again.
The next day, Celaena attends a weapons lecture with the other Champions, where a man named Sven shoves a guard and bolts for the door. Guards shoot him dead before he reaches it. The room locks down, and the guards draw their weapons as they close in around the Champions. Celaena watches, turns it over in her mind, and decides Sven was never really trying to escape. Sven chose to die rather than keep going along with the king’s competition, and Celaena sends a silent prayer his way.
Throne of Glass Chapter 17
Dorian sits through a tedious afternoon court session, struggling to stay awake while his mother, Queen Georgina, nags him about marriage and hands him a list of noble brides. He slips away as soon as he can and wanders the castle halls.
Passing the training room, Dorian finds Celaena still sparring with three guards well after training hours. Nehemia watches from the sidelines, cheering Celaena on.
Pulling Celaena aside, Dorian asks where Chaol is and why Nehemia is there with an armed assassin. Celaena explains that Brullo permitted her to keep training after hours and that Nehemia came to train with her.
Dorian insists Nehemia has to leave, but Celaena pushes back on every point he makes. Nehemia joins in, and when Dorian asks Celaena to translate, Celaena tells the princess that Dorian has offered himself up as Nehemia’s sparring partner.
Not wanting to cause a scene with a foreign princess, Dorian grabs two practice swords and turns the situation into a basic swordsmanship lesson, trying to make it look as though Dorian had authority all along.
Throne of Glass Chapter 18
Celaena watches Dorian give Nehemia a fencing lesson and grudgingly feels drawn to him. The attraction catches her off guard, partly because the only person she’d kissed before was Sam, a fellow assassin she lost more than a year ago, and any interest in someone new still feels strange.
Chaol interrupts by grabbing Celaena’s arm and demanding what Dorian is doing with Nehemia. After a short, tense exchange, he says the guards will escort her back to her chambers and tells her she’s trained enough for the day and needs rest before the Test tomorrow.
Celaena insists she can’t afford to lose training time. She also knows that fleeing would be suicidal, so his reaction makes no sense. She then vents about being told to hold back in training while Cain gets all the praise and how much that’s been bothering her. Chaol doesn’t give an inch, so she leaves furious.
Throne of Glass Chapter 19
At court, Kaltain grows annoyed that Dorian slipped away before she could approach him. When Perrington arrives, she intercepts him and steers the conversation toward Dorian’s romantic future. Perrington lets slip that the queen has already drawn up a list of approved brides for Dorian.
Kaltain brings up Lady Lillian, noting that the prince has grown attached to her and suggesting that Dorian’s feelings run deep. The news rattles Perrington, who dismisses the idea as absurd and impossible, hinting that reasons exist why the match could never happen, though he isn’t ready to explain them. Kaltain files that information away. She sees Lillian as a rival worth removing and views Duke Perrington’s hostility toward the girl as a potential asset.
Later, as Dorian and Chaol walk to dinner, Chaol urges Dorian to keep his distance from Celaena, but Dorian brushes off the warning. They then discuss a murdered Champion whose body was completely emptied of its organs. Chaol has already informed the king and plans to continue the investigation.
Throne of Glass Chapter 20
Restless after a tense exchange with Chaol, Celaena wanders her rooms with nothing to do. She notices the pianoforte, sits down, and begins playing, though hesitantly at first. The music soon takes over, and Celaena loses herself in it completely.
Dorian walks in while Celaena is playing and watches from the doorway before sitting beside her on the bench, startling her. They end up talking and needling each other back and forth. Celaena flat-out accuses Dorian of choosing her as his Champion out of a craving for excitement, and he has no comeback. Dorian then makes a throwaway comment about Celaena thinking of a secret lover while playing the piano, and the mood shifts.
On Dorian’s way out, Celaena tells him that her lover’s name was Sam and that Sam died thirteen months ago. Dorian apologizes and leaves, and Celaena’s music stays with him long after he’s gone.
Throne of Glass Chapter 21
The Champions climb the castle wall to grab a flag near the top, with the last person to reach the flag cut from the competition. Celaena chooses tar as her climbing tool and takes a trickier, less crowded route up a drainpipe rather than fighting for space with the other Champions. During the climb, one competitor falls to his death.
While Celaena works her way toward the flag, she spots Grave shove Nox off the gargoyle where Nox is perched. Nox dangles from his rope with no wall to grab, and Grave pulls out a hidden dagger and starts cutting through the rope. The other competitors nearby keep moving.
Celaena abandons her position and slides back down the drainpipe to reach a gargoyle where a mercenary has already anchored a rope. She ties the rope around herself and warns the mercenary to leave it alone. The moment Nox’s rope gives way, Celaena runs across the row of gargoyle statues and hurls herself off the wall after him.
Throne of Glass Chapter 22
Celaena saves Nox from a fatal fall during the Test by catching him in midair. Nox grabs the rope, and the two of them swing hard into the wall before hanging there to recover. By the time Celaena and Nox regain their balance, Cain has already seized the flag and won. Celaena finishes eighteenth.
Afterward, Chaol tries to reassure Celaena that the result is acceptable given their strategy of keeping a low profile, but she’s clearly frustrated. Chaol and Celaena bicker but eventually loosen up, and the mood lightens between them. Later, Philippa brings word that someone found a Champion who never showed up for the Test dead in a servant’s stairwell.
The following weeks pass more quietly. Celaena gets through two more Tests without drawing attention or losing another competitor. She keeps improving physically, but she starts to doubt whether she’ll actually earn one of the four spots in the final duel, especially with Nox performing well and Cain looking like a near-certain finalist.
Throne of Glass Chapter 23
Celaena wakes from a nightmare about being whipped in Endovier and finds Chaol in her room. The sound of her screaming drew him there. He tells her it’s Samhuinn, cancels morning training, and asks whether she plans to attend the religious service. She declines.
Later in the garden, Celaena, Chaol, and Nehemia run into Dorian, who remarks on Celaena’s outdated dress. When Dorian asks Nehemia whether she’ll attend the feast that evening, Nehemia turns the question back to Celaena. Once Nehemia learns Celaena won’t be there, Nehemia and Celaena share a joke at Dorian’s expense before Dorian heads off on his own.
Walking on, Celaena, Chaol, and Nehemia spot Cain crouched by the clock tower, clearing dirt from a strange etched mark in the flagstone. Cain notices them watching him and slips away without a word.
Nehemia recognizes the mark as a Wyrdmark and warns Celaena to leave it alone, though Nehemia won’t say much more. As they find additional marks nearby, Nehemia turns to Celaena with unusual intensity and tells her she senses that Celaena is concealing something and isn’t who she pretends to be. The two eventually agree to meet daily so Celaena can tutor Nehemia in the common tongue, keeping the arrangement secret from Chaol.
Throne of Glass Chapter 24
Unable to sleep, Celaena notices the tapestry on her wall shifting even though the window is closed. She checks behind the tapestry and finds a hidden stone door leading into a passage. She grabs a few supplies, ties a ball of yarn to her chair to track her way back, and heads inside.
The passage leads Celaena deep below the castle to a sewer chamber with old boats and a gate that opens directly outside. She realizes she could leave immediately and seriously considers it, even climbing onto the gate before stopping herself. Celaena decides staying is the smarter move because she now knows where the exit is and can use it after winning the competition on her own terms.
On the way back, Celaena finds a grate overlooking the Great Hall, where a feast is in full swing. She sees that all the other Champions were invited while she wasn’t, which makes her furious. When Celaena spots Chaol heading out, she panics, races back to her room, and throws herself into bed just in time.
Dorian shows up a little drunk and finds Celaena asleep. Chaol comes in after Dorian and removes him from the room. Chaol then returns alone and leaves a small piece of jewelry from the feast on Celaena’s bedside table. Celaena wakes just enough to thank him before drifting off again, and Chaol covers her with a blanket before leaving.