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Throne of Glass Chapters 35–44 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas Throne of Glass chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Throne of Glass Chapter 35
Chaol watches from the castle balcony as Celaena and Dorian wander through the courtyard garden below. During their walk, Dorian notices her necklace and shares the legend of the Eye of Elena, an ancient magical amulet, hinting that hers looks remarkably similar. Celaena brushes it off, but she’s privately shaken, knowing the king could have her killed for possessing something so historically and magically significant.
Back in her rooms that night, Celaena discovers dozens of Wyrdmarks chalked beneath her bed, including a symbol she recognizes from one of the murdered competitors. She scrubs them clean and heads to the library in search of answers.
There, Celaena stumbles upon Nehemia reading an advanced text and speaking the common tongue with perfect fluency—abilities she had always claimed not to have. Nehemia shuts the book, refuses to explain herself, and leaves. Celaena then finds a paper with a Wyrdmark on it that Nehemia left behind. She begins to wonder if Nehemia has been lying to her all along and whether she could be connected to the murders.
Throne of Glass Chapter 36
Celaena wakes on Yulemas morning to find a bag of candy waiting on her pillow, and she eats most of it before Philippa appears and scolds her for the state of her bed and her teeth.
Dorian arrives soon after, admits he sent the candy, and then produces his real gift: a timid golden‑haired puppy that had taken a liking to Celaena and that he thought she could help come out of her shell. She agrees to keep the puppy but sets firm conditions about training and routine. On impulse, she kisses Dorian on the cheek to thank him, and he leaves in a flustered, stumbling rush.
Alone afterward, Celaena starts worrying about Nehemia. With the princess having just learned of a massacre of her people, Celaena fears she might use the ball that night to strike back at Adarlan’s royals with the same creature that has been killing the Champions. She knows it might be paranoia, but the thought of Dorian and Chaol being in danger is enough to push her into action.
Celaena decides to sneak into the ball, arranges a gown and mask through Philippa, and says nothing to Chaol when they walk together to the Yulemas temple service, even though she knows he’ll recognize her the moment she shows up.
Throne of Glass Chapter 37
Celaena attends a Yulemas religious ceremony at a grand glass temple alongside Chaol. She finds the service painfully dull and falls asleep partway through. Chaol does too, though he won’t admit it until she catches him out.
When the service moves into the procession of the gods, a young blindfolded girl representing Deanna, Goddess of the Hunt, walks up and stops in front of Celaena. She blesses her and hands over a small golden arrow as a token of the goddess’s favor. Celaena tries to pass it to Chaol, but he gives it straight back, unwilling to risk offending the gods.
Throne of Glass Chapter 38
Celaena convinces Philippa to help her sneak out to a royal masked ball, then bluffs her way past the guards and makes a memorable entrance down the main staircase into the Great Hall.
Chaol pulls Celaena aside immediately, furious that she managed to slip out at all. She wears him down by pointing out that Nox, a known thief, was allowed in while she wasn’t, and Chaol eventually lets her stay.
Celaena’s real reason for coming was to keep an eye on Nehemia, who she feared might do something dangerous that night. After an hour of watching, though, Nehemia does nothing suspicious and simply sits with the Queen of Adarlan. Celaena starts to feel ashamed for ever suspecting her. Eventually, Nehemia comes over, says she’s unwell, and heads back to her rooms.
With that worry off her mind, Celaena tries to enjoy the evening. She asks Chaol to dance, but he refuses, saying Duke Perrington is watching and the attention would be unwelcome. Before anything more can pass between them, Dorian appears, brushes off Chaol’s concerns, and asks Celaena to dance with him. Chaol walks away, and she takes Dorian’s hand.
Throne of Glass Chapter 39
Dorian spends the entire evening dancing with Celaena, who’s disguised as Lady Lillian. Chaol watches from the sidelines, uneasy, and a courtier named Otho points out that Dorian looks like a man in love. Chaol can’t argue with it and eventually walks out. Kaltain watches too, seething, and privately concludes that Celaena has to go.
Around three in the morning, Celaena leaves the ball before Dorian notices. She heads back to her rooms with her guard Ress, but Dorian has already beaten her there and is waiting at her door. They go inside, and he kisses her. She kisses him back until the memory of Endovier surfaces and breaks the spell.
Celaena pulls away and sends Dorian home, though he manages one more kiss before she shuts the door on him. Once he’s gone, she steps out onto her balcony and stands there alone, her hand at her lips, her feelings getting the better of her.
Dorian walks back to his rooms, certain he’ll find a way to make things work between him and Celaena. Down in the garden, Chaol watches Celaena on the balcony. She never looks down.
Throne of Glass Chapter 40
Celaena sleeps well past noon before her new puppy wakes her. Dorian stops by and tells her the time, which surprises her. She settles on naming the puppy Fleetfoot.
Dorian then brings up the kiss from the night before and apologizes for being too forward. Celaena stumbles through an awkward non‑answer, insisting she has no strong feelings about it either way, and eventually ducks under the blankets out of sheer embarrassment. Before he leaves, Dorian notices her scars and says something about them. She brushes it off and goes to get dressed.
Meanwhile, Kaltain walks through the palace greenhouse with Duke Perrington. He reveals that Lady Lillian isn’t the noblewoman she pretends to be but is actually the infamous assassin Celaena Sardothien. Kaltain is rattled at first but quickly starts thinking about how to turn this to her advantage.
Perrington lays out a plan. During the upcoming duel, Kaltain will preside over a ceremonial toast and slip a drug called bloodbane into Celaena’s drink. It won’t kill her, but it will impair her enough to give their fighter Cain a clear advantage. Perrington frames it as protecting Dorian. Fixated on marrying the prince, Kaltain agrees.
Throne of Glass Chapter 41
Late at night, Celaena is reading when she comes across a passage explaining what the Wyrdmarks near the murder victims actually do. They’re used to summon a creature called a ridderak, which kills a sacrifice and transfers that person’s strength to whoever summoned it. She works out that someone has been using these marks to open a portal, and her suspicions fall on Nehemia, who’d been lying about how much she knew about Wyrdmarks.
Celaena begins to wonder if Nehemia is building toward something far larger than she let on, possibly a full‑scale rebellion, and killing the Champions to collect their strength for it.
Then Celaena notices the tapestry in her room stirring in a draft and remembers the secret passage hidden behind it. Since every murder so far has happened within two days of a Test, she figures the ridderak is due to strike again soon and decides to go into the tunnels rather than wait.
Celaena heads down with nothing but a candlestick and a makeshift knife. At an underground crossroads, she spots fresh footprints in the dust leading down a deeper stairwell. She follows them, drawn by the sound of a man chanting in a language she doesn’t recognize, and peers into a chamber at the bottom. It isn’t Nehemia kneeling before a void of absolute darkness. It’s Cain.
Throne of Glass Chapter 42
Celaena discovers that Cain has been using dark magic to summon a ridderak, which he’s been siccing on the other Champions to drain their strength. When he catches her watching, he disarms her and locks her in the chamber with the beast before walking away.
The ridderak doesn’t attack right away, and Celaena realizes it prefers its prey alive and helpless first. That hesitation gives her enough time to think. She remembers Elena had drawn her to this part of the castle for a reason, and it clicks. The nearby tomb holds Damaris. Using the ridderak’s own lunge against it, she leaps clear as it barrels through the locked door, then sprints down to the tomb with the creature right behind her.
At the tomb, Celaena snatches Damaris from its stand and drives the blade through the ridderak’s skull just as it springs at her. It dies, but not before its teeth sink into her hand and leave a severe wound.
Celaena wipes the sword clean and places it back where it belongs, then drags herself upstairs to her chambers before her legs give out. Nehemia finds her bleeding on the floor, hauls her into the bath, and uses Wyrdmarks to perform a healing ritual while Celaena fades in and out of consciousness.
Throne of Glass Chapter 43
Celaena wakes up healed from the ridderak bite, with Nehemia sitting nearby watching her. Nehemia saved her life, but she isn’t warm about it. She wants to know what happened.
The tension pushes Celaena to finally be honest, and she tells Nehemia her real name and the truth about Endovier and the tournament. Nehemia takes it hard at first, but the conversation opens something between them. She gives Celaena a name from her own tradition, Elentiya, meaning something close to a spirit that couldn’t be broken, and their friendship is fully restored.
The next morning, Celaena walks with Chaol and thinks about telling him what Cain did, but she talks herself out of it. Revealing the creature would mean revealing the secret passage, and she isn’t ready to hand him that. Before training, Chaol stops her to ask if she knows what she’s getting into with Dorian. They train, head back toward her rooms, and run straight into the King of Adarlan.
Throne of Glass Chapter 44
Celaena and Chaol run into the king in the hallway, and the encounter shakes Celaena badly. She bows and steps aside as the king passes, but the unease lingers well into lunch and beyond. Without a word between them, she drifts closer to Chaol for the rest of their walk, and he lets her.
Back in his room, Chaol keeps returning to a report about the king’s recent travels. What bothers him most is that the king came back without a single member of his party, all of whom are now dead. The official explanation about rebels and poisoned food stores feels thin, and the vague details make Chaol suspect the real story is being buried.
Chaol’s thoughts then turn to Celaena. She’s become frighteningly good in training, fast enough that keeping up with her is a genuine challenge. But the idea of her winning the competition sits uneasily with him. If she becomes Champion, he’ll have had a direct hand in shaping someone widely considered the deadliest assassin alive and then sending her back into the world.
For now, Chaol sets that worry aside and focuses on finding out who’s been killing the other Champions and making sure Celaena wins, because going back to Endovier isn’t something she’d survive.