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Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapters 29–40 Summary
This Aria Ashbrook Web of Vows and Vengeance chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 29
Rose and her group have just survived their first trial. Jonas is injured, Estel is dead, and Rose is frantically searching for Benny until she spots him alive on the platform among the other survivors.
Mila addresses the Rettlings, tells them to rest, and vanishes with the other priestesses.
Rose and Llinos help Jonas back to the carriages. Loch wanders into the water and disappears before anyone finds him, though Llinos assumes he’s made it into another carriage. The ride back is quiet and subdued.
At the eastern arc, healers are waiting. They treat Rose for a rib injury and a damaged ear. On her way out, she walks straight into Kyor. He makes it clear he won’t attack her while she’s in a weakened state, but the comment ignites an argument. Rose defends her mother, insisting her mother followed the queen’s direct order to save the baby during childbirth and had no choice. The confrontation ends without resolution, and Rose walks away.
Rose heads to the dorm to sleep before dinner, but she finds Benny waiting outside her door, pale and shaken. He tells her he’s done something he’s not sure she can forgive.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 30
Benny comes to Rose feeling guilty about accepting the offer to sit out the next trial, since Rose also helped bring down the creature. Rose quickly brushes off his guilt. They share a hug, and Jonas walks in. Jonas asks Benny to leave, then questions Rose about whether something is going on between Rose and Benny. She laughs it off and calls him out on his possessiveness.
Jonas softens and apologizes for snapping at Rose earlier. He brings up the fact that their parents once planned to betroth them and asks her to stop throwing herself into danger. Rose refuses, arguing that surviving the first trial proved she was capable. Jonas backs off and suggests they revisit the kiss from the carriage. But Rose is exhausted and sends him away, turning down his offer to stay the night.
When Rose gets to dinner, the hall is almost empty. The first trial killed most of the competitors, and Shim is among the dead. Zara confronts Rose and demands to know how Rose survived when Zara’s brother didn’t. Benny steps in and tells Zara that her brother knew the risks. Zara backs off after threatening Rose.
Jonas arrives later with good news. His father is bringing his wards to the upcoming ball, likely including Kay. Rose is thrilled, and Llinos decides to sort out Rose’s dress that night.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 31
Llinos fills Rose in on Benny’s suspicion that Jonas is being possessive and hiding something. Before Llinos leaves, she reworks one of Rose’s gowns into something more functional and striking, creating Rose’s signature look.
Unable to sleep after Llinos leaves, Rose heads to the kitchen and asks Leilah to send feast leftovers to the people starving in the slums. Leilah doesn’t say yes outright, but she agrees to look into getting the necessary authorization.
Later that night, Rose hears voices outside her door and recognizes Zara and the fire wielder Mattieu. When Zara and Mattieu can’t break through Jonas’s ward, Zara orders Mattieu to burn the door down instead.
Rose grabs what she can and improvises an escape, wetting a bedsheet, taking her knife and satchel, and using a sand bucket to weaken the flames just enough to force her way through. She barely escapes.
Five days later, Rose wakes up in a different room with Jonas at her side. He tells her Loch raised the alarm and that Llinos’s recovered powers helped speed her healing. Though she’s relieved to be alive, Rose breaks down when she realizes she missed the ball and, with it, her chance to see Kay.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 32
Rose tells Llinos she’s planning revenge on Zara, but killing Zara is off the table since they’re competing for the favor of Etta, the Goddess of Life. Instead, Rose brews a potion designed to give Zara a nasty bout of diarrhea and leaves it to simmer for a few days.
Back at training, Holden announces a team sparring exercise and deliberately assigns Rose and Zara as opposing captains. Jonas, Llinos, Benny, and Kestria, among others, end up on Rose’s team.
Zara attacks before Holden even finishes the countdown, dropping Rose to her knees and technically eliminating her from the exercise. The other team keeps targeting Rose anyway. Her teammates do their best to hold them off, but the tide turns against them. Running out of options, Rose burns her own shirt to produce ash for Yeva to weaponize, but an enemy wind weaver sends the ash straight back at them.
Just as things look hopeless, Kyor strolls onto the field. Rather than joining Zara’s team, he summons a lightning strike that floors everyone at once and tells Holden he wins. As the group clears out, Kyor notices Rose is shirtless and tells her he prefers that look on her.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 33
Rose wakes early and heads to the battle yard, where she finds Kyor filling in for the absent Zelle. He puts her through footwork drills before letting her spar with a weapon. When she tries to put her sword away at the end of the session, they end up uncomfortably close, and Kyor uses the moment to needle her, implying that she’s attracted to him. She leaves quickly.
At breakfast, Loch surfaces from his usual fog to reveal that Zelle views the prince as a son and knows about the prince’s marks. The meal turns sour when Benny and Llinos snap at each other, apparently over Llinos’s relationship with Caroline, which Benny seems to resent.
To avoid another session with Holden, Rose trains privately with Kestria, who opens up about Seiren. Seiren was a different person before her previous Retterheld and hasn’t been the same since. Kestria also says that Odetta is driven purely by a desire for power over others. When Rose asks what Kestria wants the gifting for, Kestria admits that she doesn’t know and entered hoping the reason would eventually reveal itself.
Rose arrives at dinner late and finds Jonas waiting with food he saved for her. He tells Rose that he wants to ensure she and Kay never have to return to the slums and has something private to discuss, but he heads off to train before they get the chance. As Jonas leaves, Rose notices Kyor slip up from the kitchen stairs without a shirt, moving as though he doesn’t want to be seen. She follows him.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 34
Rose follows Kyor through the High Hold late at night to the guards’ temple. Not wanting to risk being spotted inside, Rose climbs up to look through a window.
Rose sees Zelle waiting in the shadows and immediately suspects that he is passing Kyor information about the upcoming trials. But it turns out Zelle has smuggled in Kyor’s dire wolf Elska and brought his own wolf too. Zelle had kept both wolves elsewhere while he trained the Rettlings.
Watching Kyor reunite with Elska, Rose sees a side of him she has never encountered before, openly warm and unguarded. Her foot slips against the temple wall, and Elska notices. Rose scrambles down and sprints back to the barracks. She resolves to keep the whole thing to herself, telling herself it’s because she doesn’t want to lose Zelle as a trainer.
Back at the barracks, Rose catches the tail end of a blazing argument between Benny and Llinos over a shared plan that has collapsed after losing Suan, Jai, and Coulter. Caroline is tangled up in the dispute as well. Before Rose can work out what any of it means, Loch announces that Rose is standing outside. Rose walks in, and Benny and Llinos immediately switch to cheerful small talk. She plays along, unconvinced, and decides not to push it.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 35
Rose returns to training with Zelle, and the session goes smoothly. Kyor arrives toward the end with pastries and tells her to eat, though Rose is wary enough that Kyor has to eat one himself first.
Zelle then brings up the fact that he knows Rose saw Elska and urges her to forgive Kyor, arguing that Kyor was just a grieving boy when he told his lie. Rose doesn’t accept that, pointing out that she was also a child when her family paid the price.
A week later, Rose slips a stomach illness concoction into the water jugs at the Rowell table early one morning. It immediately goes wrong when Kyor walks in and drains a full glass before Rose can intervene. She manages to pull his attention away with conversation, but the damage is done.
Then Holden arrives and makes a nasty comment about Rose’s family. Rose hands him a glass of the laced water, which he drinks. The Rowells come down shortly after and help themselves as planned, so the original targets are dosed alongside the two unintended ones.
At Rose’s next session with Zelle, he tells her there was never any bet behind Kyor’s decision to train with her and that Kyor did it out of a genuine desire to make amends. Zelle also speaks of his admiration for Rose’s father, and Rose finds herself in tears before she can stop it. The sparring session that follows is the best she’s ever had, and for the first time, she feels like a real competitor.
That night, Llinos offers Rose a home in the Eastern Isles once the Retterheld is over, along with the promise of work and a fresh start for her and Kay. Rose accepts. Not long after they settle down to sleep, a trial bell rings and the second trial begins.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 36
Rose gathers her weapons before the trial, including a mysterious dagger Dinah once gave her, and heads downstairs with Llinos. A priestess informs Rose and Llinos that they’ll be traveling to the trial separately, a decision neither woman is happy about. Before Rose gets into her carriage, Jonas sprints across the courtyard and kisses her. Kyor sees Jonas kiss Rose and walks away with a tight jaw and a hard stare.
Alone at the edge of the forest, Rose finds Dinah waiting. Dinah lays out the rules. Rose has until dawn to find her sister somewhere in the forest, or Rose is out of the competition. Magic is also banned, which for once puts Rose on equal footing with the other competitors.
To get her bearings, Rose climbs a tree and spots a cluster of lights about a mile to the east. As Rose climbs back down, she snaps a branch and startles Zara, who’s below her, vomiting from poison Rose gave her earlier. With no magic available, Zara poses no real threat, and Rose shoves her aside, lies about the lights she spotted, and heads toward them.
Rose picks up her pace and gets sloppy about noise. Then the forest goes completely silent, and she realizes she’s stopped paying attention. She turns around and finds herself looking directly at a dire wolf.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 37
Rose comes face to face with a wild, unbonded dire wolf and, rather than fight or run, tries to talk her way past the animal. She moves slowly toward the wolf while reaching for her dagger, arguing that she isn’t weak and doesn’t deserve to be culled. She gets almost within arm’s reach before the wolf reacts, but not the way she expects. Instead of attacking, the wolf cowers at the sight of her dagger. When the wolf starts whimpering loudly enough to draw other wolves, Rose stamps her foot and shouts to drive it off.
The wolf bolts in the wrong direction, straight toward another competitor, and Rose immediately regrets it and chases after the animal. By the time she arrives, Kyor has already killed the wolf and stands there with his dire wolf Elska.
Kyor is obviously sick, and Rose feels guilty because she made him that way. She accidentally lets slip that solarium root will cure him, then tries to leave before Kyor can ask any more questions. Kyor threatens to unleash Elska unless Rose helps him find the antidote, and she agrees.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 38
Rose and Kyor search the dark forest for a medicinal plant to treat Kyor’s worsening condition. Rose describes the plant as best she can, and Kyor passes the image to Elska. Elska tracks down the plant with Rose. Rose digs it up by hand and rushes it back to Kyor.
Rather than handing over the root immediately, Rose peels and prepares it first, knowing it’ll make Kyor even sicker otherwise. Kyor grabs her wrist and forces her to stay until he’s sure the remedy is working. While they wait, Rose says she knows Kyor told Zelle that he’d lied about her mother. Kyor deflects but lets slip that Zelle still thinks there’s good in him. Once Kyor has recovered enough, he hauls himself onto Elska’s back and takes off to finish his own challenge.
With sunrise closing in, Rose tears through the forest calling for Kay. She hears a faint response and follows Kay’s voice until she bursts into a clearing and finds her sister pinned to a tree by some kind of binding magic. Rose throws her arms around Kay, and the restraints fall away.
The two sisters share a brief, tearful reunion, and Kay reacts with disbelief to everything Rose has been through. Then Kay notices their mother’s ring is gone and drops to the ground, frantically searching the dirt for it. Before Rose or Kay can find the ring, everything around them tilts and gives way.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 39
After the trial, Rose finds herself on a rocky road with Grenda, who’s emotional after a brief reunion with one of her sons before soldiers took him back to the front. Grenda mentions she spotted a body in the woods on the way, a girl from Rowell named Elenor. Rose and Grenda make their way to a waiting carriage and find Oke and Moryal already inside.
Back at the High Hold, Jonas waits outside with no sign of Llinos, and Rose’s relief at surviving quickly turns to dread. Kyor pulls Rose aside and accuses her of poisoning him. Rose explains it was never meant for him and that he picked up the wrong jug without her knowing.
Suddenly, Llinos stumbles out of the last carriage, alive but badly wounded by a dire wolf bite and sedated on paparvy for the pain. Rose and Jonas bring her straight to the healers.
Later, Benny arrives at the dorm with grim news. Loch never returned from the trial, and it’s unclear whether he ran out of time or didn’t survive. Benny sets out for a walk on his own.
When Rose checks on Llinos, she finds her awake and recovering, though the healer warns Llinos to stay away from wine at the ball. Rose is relieved, and her thoughts have already turned to the night ahead, when she expects to finally have a real conversation with Kay.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 40
Llinos finally reveals the finished ball gown, and Rose is struck by how extraordinary it looks. The next morning, Leilah tells Rose she has arranged to share leftover food from the ball with people in the slums. That evening, Caroline leaves early to work at Rohan’s house because Rohan’s family is attending the ball.
On the walk over to the ball, Jonas meets Rose and Llinos and is impressed by Rose’s appearance. At the entrance, Rose and Kay reunite, and Rose is relieved to see her sister looking genuinely well and happy for the first time in a long while.
Inside the ballroom, Kay introduces Rose to Hew, a charming nobleman who’s clearly interested in Kay. Kyor arrives, greets Hew warmly, and ignores Rose. When Hew invites Kay to dance, Rose is reluctant to let Kay go. Kyor asks Rose to dance with him, and she agrees against her better instincts.
The dance is unsettling for Rose. Being that physically close to Kyor stirs feelings she’d rather not have, and Rose is painfully aware that Kyor knows exactly what effect he has on her. Once the music ends, she escapes into the crowd.
Rose then notices that Kay has accepted a second dance with Hew, which in court tradition signals that Kay is open to his courtship. Rose wants to find Artur but can no longer remember his face. She turns to look for Jonas instead, and that’s when a voice shouts “Murderer!” and the room goes dark.