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Vows of Blood and Deception Chapters 31–40 Summary
This Aria Ashbrook Vows of Blood and Deception chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 31
Rose sorts out the riding pairs, and Ruben tells her that Kyor watched over her the entire time she was unconscious. He also makes it clear he’s stepping back and isn’t pursuing her romantically anymore.
Once the group is moving, Rose feels a strong pull drawing her off the route. She slips from her horse, searches the sodden ground, and finds her mother’s ring. When she puts it on, she’s hit with an overwhelming vision of the pattern on William’s skin.
The group rides on until Stide brings them to an abrupt halt. They’ve wandered into a hule, land riddled with vätte burrows. A stone wall then materializes behind them, cutting off retreat. When Kyor tries to walk through it, it erupts into flames.
Stide leads the group across the burrows on foot, in single file, testing the ground ahead with her spear. The vätte keeps sending illusions to disorient them throughout the crossing, and Stide teaches Rose to spot them by looking for small inconsistencies in how things appear. Rose nearly falls for one, but Kyor catches her.
After nearly an hour, Stide announces they’re through. As the group remounts, Kyor detects something threatening in the forest ahead and orders everyone to move immediately.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 32
The group flees on horseback after Loch spots crows overhead, the telltale sign of a Myrkr. They don’t get far before Rotting Ones close in from all sides. The pale, dead-eyed creatures are marked by blackened veins and smell as terrible as their name suggests.
Kyor takes charge and tells everyone to cut off limbs rather than go for killing blows. His familiarity with the creatures makes it clear that he’s fought them before. Rose slides off Elska to fight on foot and reaches for her green magic, only to find it gone. The Myrkr is draining the group’s power.
The Myrkr rides into view, all darkness and dread. Thessa tells the group that the Rotting Ones will fall back if the group forces the Myrkr to retreat. Kyor charges at the Myrkr on Elska, while Rose ignores his order to stay back and follows.
A Rotting breaks through the defensive line toward Kyor. Rose shouts a warning, but Kyor spots an opening and attacks. Stide cuts off the Rotting’s advance while Kyor lands a blow on the Myrkr, who lets out a horrible cry that sends the crows scattering into the trees.
But at that same moment, Kyor turns toward the Rotting, and Stide thrusts her spear without seeing him. She kills the creature, but the spear also goes straight into Kyor.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 33
Stide’s spear strikes Kyor through the shoulder during the battle, and as the Myrkr and the Rottings retreat, Rose drops to Kyor’s side and tears strips from her shirt to pack the wound. Kyor makes Rose promise to kill him if the infection starts to take hold, and she agrees, though she’s certain he’s going to be fine.
Knowing Kyor’s injury is beyond anything she can treat herself, Rose calls for help getting him onto Elska. Ruben steps in to assist while Stide stands frozen in shock. Once Ruben secures Kyor on Elska, Rose rides ahead toward Galreck to find a healer, and the rest of the group stays back to burn what remains of the Rottings.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 34
Rose and Elska travel through the night with Kyor unconscious on the wolf’s back. By dawn, Elska is beginning to falter, but the sound of distant drums keeps her moving. They arrive at Galreck around midday and make their way into the slums outside the city walls.
In the slums, Rose finds an enforcer on a street corner and gets the enforcer to bring her to the local power, a surprisingly young teenager who goes by Lofty. She gives Lofty a false name and haggles with him for a healer, along with supplies, food, and somewhere to sleep for the night.
Rose, Kyor, and Elska stay in a bare, freezing hovel where Rose brews a pain relief potion to pass the time while someone fetches the healer. When the healer arrives, he tells Rose he can close the wound and address the internal damage, but his abilities only go so far. Kyor’s shoulder may never fully recover. Rose tells the healer to go ahead anyway.
About an hour later, the healer packs up and leaves. Kyor is stable, Elska stands guard at the door, and Rose finally lies down beside Kyor, close enough to feel his heartbeat and know he’s still alive.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 35
Kyor wakes in pain, and Rose quickly reassures him there’s no sign of infection. Rose tells him the healer saved his life but that some of his injuries couldn’t be fully healed, and he’ll need weeks before he’s back on his feet. She gets up and gives him a strong pain-relieving tincture. Then the two of them make do with the stale food they have. She makes sure Elska is cared for as well.
When Kyor starts shivering from the cold, Rose climbs back onto the bed to share her warmth with him. The tincture starts to loosen him up, and he begins talking in a way he clearly wouldn’t if he were unmedicated. He tells her about his father dousing him in ice water as a boy, about his father starving him for days as punishment, and about his father forcing him at thirteen to kill a helpless man because he threatened the life of Leilah, the palace servant who’d always looked after Kyor.
Listening to all of it, Rose realizes she might actually be able to get Kyor to reveal the secret vow he’s been keeping from her. She weighs the possibility seriously, but she can’t bring herself to take advantage of him while he’s this vulnerable. Whatever he’s hiding, she decides he has to tell her willingly. She tells him to sleep, and he drifts off.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 36
Rose wakes beside Kyor, who thanks her for saving his life. Embarrassed by what Kyor let slip while feverish, he pivots to flirting to move past it. Before things go further, a boy named Ryan arrives and leads them through the slums to meet the others.
Lofty is waiting. He has figured out who Rose and Kyor are and threatens to tip off the Galreckian court unless they owe him a favor. Kyor tries to confront him, but Kyor’s injured shoulder makes the threat hollow, so Rose steps in. She negotiates it down to one favor from her alone, with the condition that nobody can be killed as a result. Lofty agrees and leaves.
Rose then catches up with the group on what she missed. Loch and the Sannings stayed outside the city with the horses and will rejoin the group on the other side. Caz wants to stop at the Galreckian library for its maps so she can identify which parts of the route north near the Hirathean Path have been used as Torailian ambush sites.
The others ask Kyor to share knowledge from his time commanding the king’s army, but Kyor deflects and says he and Caz will handle navigation together. The plan is to collect food and horses, then move on.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 37
The group reaches Galreck. On the way in, Benny pulls Rose aside and tells her that what’s holding her back from Kyor isn’t doubt about his character but fear of being hurt again the way she was before. Rose doesn’t argue.
Once inside the city, Ruben slips away to a nearby stable to ask about horses and lodgings. He comes back empty-handed on both fronts. There are no horses, and a festival the following night has taken most of the available rooms.
The group then sorts out sleeping arrangements. Caz goes straight to the library to work through the night, preferring the quiet. Benny claims he’ll stay with acquaintances, though Rose and Ruben both suspect he plans to meet the rebel leader Arle. Ruben takes the stable owner up on his offer of a spot in the straw.
That leaves Rose and Kyor. Kyor argues Rose can’t stay anywhere without a lockable door, since her powers tend to break loose at the wrong moment, and Caz backs him up.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 38
Rose and Kyor are trying to find a room in a city packed with festival crowds, but the first two inns they try are completely full. On the way to the third, Rose feels an odd pull from her ring and follows it to a building she assumes is Etta’s temple. Once inside, they realize the building belongs to Oel, the God of Order and Logic. Rose says a quick prayer anyway and silently asks Oel for guidance about Kyor before they head back out.
The third inn turns out to be just as hopeless. Right as Rose and Kyor are about to accept that they’ll be sleeping in a stable, an older female knight named Ryne spots Kyor and greets him warmly. She tells them she’s in Galreck hunting a prominent rebel figure named Arle, who she believes is there to meet the person funding the rebellion. Rose already knows who that is and says nothing. Ryne offers them her room for the night since she can relocate to the knights’ quarters. She hands Rose the key and heads off into the crowd.
When Rose unlocks the door, the room is almost entirely taken up by one small bed.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 39
Rose and Kyor check into a cramped inn room that can barely fit the two of them. Rose washes up first, and while Kyor takes his turn in the bathroom, she rifles through her bag, thinking about Kay and William, which pulls her into one of her visions. She sees William alone in his room, his markings spread much further across his body than he’d ever admitted, and the fear on his face makes it clear he’s not as in control of his situation as he’d led her to believe. She snaps back when Kyor reappears.
Afterward, Rose tends to Kyor’s shoulder wound with a healing paste, then he heads downstairs to sort out their laundry and rustle up some food. When he comes back with a tray of snacks and wine, he offers to braid her hair. She agrees, and they sit together on the narrow bed while he works through it slowly.
Rose and Kyor eat, drink the wine faster than either of them intended, and eventually settle in for the night. As they lie together, Rose lets slip that she’s thinking about tasting Kyor, and from there, the restraint Rose and Kyor have been holding onto gives way. They sleep together, and afterward, they confess that they love each other.
Vows of Blood and Deception Chapter 40
Rose wakes beside Kyor and realizes something is wrong. Kyor isn’t breathing, and green veins are spreading out from his wound, the same sign Rose knows marks someone turning into one of the Rotting. She remembers Kyor made her promise to kill him if she ever saw the green, but she can’t do it. She falls apart completely, certain she’s about to lose him.
Then Kyor shakes Rose awake. It was a nightmare. Rose looks at Kyor’s shoulder, and the green is gone, leaving only the original wound, unchanged. Kyor holds her while she comes down from the panic, and she admits how real it all felt. They talk briefly about how close Kyor actually came to dying, and he reminds her they’ve been through worse. They agree they should sleep, but when Kyor kisses her, neither of them sleeps.