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Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapters 41–54 Summary
This Aria Ashbrook Web of Vows and Vengeance chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 41
The ballroom descends into chaos when magic plunges the room into darkness and the crowd panics. Rose tries to find Kay, and Benny tells Rose to get to the wall and promises to look for Kay himself.
A voice then forces its way into everyone’s heads and claims it has damning truths to reveal about the king. Commander Zelle arrives and breaks the spell. The darkness lifts, and Rose sees bodies on the ballroom floor.
Rose spots Kay being sheltered by Hew and shifts her focus to the wider threat around her. Armed rebels emerge from the crowd, including Issen ice warriors who have come from their distant mountain homeland. The rebels try to kill King Korvane, but Zelle stops the attack. The rebels have brought their own siphon to counteract Zelle’s powers, and a full battle breaks out.
During the fighting, Rose notices a smoke tattoo on a fallen rebel that she recognizes from her acquaintance Peter. She then finds Peter’s body and realizes the tattoo marks Peter’s involvement in the rebellion, which makes her fear that Peter’s close associate Ruben may also be in the room.
The rebels use an illusion to draw Zelle’s attention. A concealed attacker steps out behind Zelle and slashes his throat. Rose knows enough from her healer’s background to understand right away that Zelle won’t survive the wound.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 42
Zelle is killed during a rebel attack at the ball. Kyor rushes to Zelle and begs for a healer, but the king shuts him down coldly, orders the music back on, and has attendants remove the body. Shattered, Kyor gets up and walks out.
Rose checks on Kay, finds her unharmed, and then goes after Kyor. She tracks him to the battle yard, where he’s tearing up his knuckles against a wall and cutting a fresh mark into the stone. Rose realizes the marks are tallies representing every person Kyor has seen die.
Kyor turns on Rose, first lashing out with harsh words, then pressing her dagger into her hand and telling her to kill him. Rose refuses and tells Kyor she no longer wants him dead and that Zelle believed he was worth redeeming. She puts her hand on Kyor’s chest and stays there until he comes back to himself.
As Rose turns to leave, Kyor tells her to go inside and see her sister while she still can. Then he admits he’s wanted her all night. Rose leaves.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 43
Rose comes back soaking wet, and Llinos uses her wind power to dry Rose off before they go looking for Kay. When Rose finds Kay in an antechamber with Hew, she wants to stop the relationship immediately, but Kay argues that Hew had spent the evening warning her about people at court who might exploit Rose’s weaknesses. The sisters end up talking for hours until Artur Lorathin comes to collect Kay, and they say a tearful goodbye.
The next morning Rose finds Kyor passed out drunk near the weapons cabinet. She gets Kyor to the kitchen, where Leilah takes over and holds him while Kyor breaks down. Rose slips away.
When Rose and Llinos spar later, Zara arrives with Oke and Mattieu and starts using her power to reopen Rose’s wounds while insulting Zelle’s memory. Kyor appears out of nowhere, still drunk, and threatens Zara, Oke, and Mattieu with his lightning until they leave. Rose approaches Kyor and tells him the drinking won’t help, then leaves him to his grief.
That afternoon, Rose finds a book with an image matching her dagger and identifies it as one of the three blades of Vindrun. The page with more information has been ripped out, and Rose suspects the High Priestess Mila. Rose wants Caroline to dig into the matter further. Shortly after, there’s an unexpected knock, and someone asks for Rose.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 44
Kyor shows up at Rose’s door drunk and in a dark mood, and Llinos refuses to let him past until Rose gives the nod. Rose vouches for him, Llinos steps aside, and the moment Kyor gets through the door, he nearly takes Rose down with him. That’s when Rose notices that Kyor’s shirt is soaked through with blood. He has two wounds, and the deeper one needs stitches.
Rose threads a needle and offers Kyor something for the pain, but he turns it down. Getting Kyor’s shirt off takes both of them. Then Rose stitches the wound while Kyor sits through it without making a sound.
When Rose is done, she tells Kyor he’s free to go, but Kyor doesn’t move. He steps closer instead and backs Rose against the wall. Kyor and Rose are seconds away from kissing when Benny kicks the door open. Kyor pulls back, picks up his shirt, and tells Rose to think about it on his way out.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 45
Practice in the battle yard picks back up with a weaker siphon filling in for Zelle. The replacement siphon can’t hold position the way Zelle could, so the other Rettlings find windows to use their powers whenever the siphon drifts far enough away. Rose stays close to Llinos and Benny for safety, and Jonas hovers nearby until a court guard pulls Jonas off.
Benny gets absorbed watching Grenda and Oke spar, so Llinos and Rose fall into their own sword practice. Llinos spends most of it gossiping about Kyor staring at Rose all morning, and sure enough, Kyor walks over, sends Llinos away, and takes her place. Kyor points out that Rose skipped their morning training session, then challenges her to a fight. Rose has to draw blood to win.
During the fight, Kyor pins Rose to the ground and pushes her to admit she wanted him to stay the other night. Rose lies. Then she flips the dynamic by saying something suggestive enough to break Kyor’s focus. Rose drives her elbow into his side and nicks his neck with her knife at the same moment. It’s enough. Kyor checks the blood on his fingers, acknowledges that Rose won, and walks away.
Llinos wastes no time grabbing Rose and hauling her toward the dorms. Llinos announces that she and Rose need to talk.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 46
Rose confides in Llinos that her feelings for Kyor are purely physical and not something she intends to act on, largely because of the gap in their social standings.
At dinner, Jonas is unsettled by a letter from his father but deflects when Rose asks about it. Kyor then shows up and plants himself beside Rose, deliberately pressing his leg against hers until Rose’s friends manufacture excuses to disappear.
Alone with Kyor, Rose comes clean about the attraction between them but makes clear she won’t do anything about it. Kyor agrees not to make a move unless Rose asks him to, then proposes that they keep up their morning training sessions and keep things strictly professional. Rose accepts.
Kyor holds to that for the next week and a half, putting Rose through intensive close-quarters training without stepping out of line. At breakfast one morning, the group grows restless over how long it’s been since the last trial, and Jonas warns Rose that a water-based challenge is probably on the way, which unsettles her given her longstanding fear of open water.
Across the room, Kyor appears and silently mouths the word “knife” at Rose. She then notices two unfamiliar grey-haired strangers walking in, and the whole group senses that something is wrong. The trial bell rings before Rose can reach her knife, and Rose enters the third trial with no weapon.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 47
The Rettlings are taken to Follen Lake for the third trial. Mila tells them to cross a frozen section of the lake, makes it clear that she expects some competitors to die, and then disappears.
Once the Rettlings step onto the ice, the spirits of soldiers who fell there begin forcing their voices and pain into the competitors’ minds. Kyor tells Rose to keep moving and block everything else out. When Rose panics at the sight of a spirit seemingly attacking him, Kyor shows her that the apparitions pass through solid matter and pose no physical threat.
The mental assault wears Rose down until she raises her blade toward her own throat without fully realizing what she’s doing. Kyor slaps the blade from Rose’s hand and brings her back to herself, then pockets the knife so she can’t reach it again.
Rose and Kyor then turn their attention to Mattieu, who has snapped and is hurling fire at the spirits. Since the competitors are dressed in the same uniforms as the apparitions, Oke runs toward Mattieu and risks being cut down before he realizes she’s real. Rose ignores Kyor’s warnings, breaks away to pull Oke back, and arrives just as Mattieu drives a knife into his own stomach.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 48
Oke tries to cauterize Matthieu’s stab wound, but the injury is too severe, and Matthieu dies. The trauma sends Oke spiraling, and she turns on Rose, choking her and slamming her into the ice. Desperate, Rose calls out to a nearby spectral figure for help. When Oke pulls a dagger, it suddenly shatters, and Rose sends an ice blast from her hand that hits Oke in the chest. Oke collapses, the ice breaks open beneath her, and she’s pulled into the water.
With the ice cracking beneath Rose as well, she puts her hand on the surface and asks for help a second time. Energy floods through her, and the fractured ice knits itself back together. Kyor, who witnessed everything, hands Rose his dagger and warns her not to tell anyone about the magic she just used. Using it carries a death sentence.
Rose and Kyor walk to the end of the trial in silence, where Llinos and Benny are already waiting. Just before they reach Llinos and Benny, Kyor repeats his warning. Rose chooses to trust him.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 49
The survivors rest on a shingle bank after completing a brutal trial on a frozen lake. Rose is the only survivor still holding out hope because Jonas hasn’t returned yet. Zara wants to leave, but Rose refuses.
Then someone spots two figures moving through the mist. Jonas is carrying Kestria, but before Jonas reaches the bank, his knees give out, and he stops moving on the ice. Benny runs out to take Kestria from him, but Jonas still won’t get up.
Rose heads out onto the ice with Llinos to get Jonas. As Benny passes Rose with Kestria, Rose notices that Kestria’s eyes have gone white and realizes that Jonas accidentally used his power to blind her. That’s why Jonas couldn’t bring himself to leave Kestria behind.
Together, Rose and Benny haul Jonas back to shore. Jonas is barely coherent, repeating that he didn’t mean for it to happen. Once everyone is back on the bank, Mila declares the trial over. Rose is left shaken, aware that she used illegal magic during the trial to kill Oke.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 50
Back at the High Hold, Benny tells Rose and Llinos that the healers have given up on restoring Kestria’s sight, which means Kestria’s done with the competition.
Rose goes to find Jonas, but the healers have already released him despite his terrible emotional state. She tracks him down in his room, and the two of them talk through everything that happened on the ice. He blames himself for what he did to Kestria, and Rose tells him she killed Oke during the chaos, partly to show him he’s not alone in carrying guilt. She also pushes back hard on his self-blame, reminding him that the trials don’t reward good people or punish bad ones.
When Jonas tries to kiss her, Rose gently puts him off without rejecting him outright because she doesn’t want to send him back into despair when he’s already barely holding it together. She reassures Jonas before she leaves, then heads downstairs to find Kyor. She locates Kyor in his private room in the basement kitchen, and after a charged exchange, Rose and Kyor finally stop holding back.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 51
Rose and Kyor fall into a passionate kiss that quickly turns physical. Things escalate between them until Rose asks for more, and Kyor suddenly pulls back and questions her motives. He points out that Rose turned him down the other night and wants to know why today is different. Kyor suspects that Rose might be using sex to guarantee his silence over a secret he now knows about her.
Caught off guard, Rose struggles to respond quickly enough, and her hesitation says more than her words do. Kyor tells Rose that she doesn’t need to do this and that he has no intention of telling anyone what he knows.
Kyor then tells Rose that all she has to do is tell him she trusts him, and they can continue. Rose wants to say it, but she can’t get the words out. Kyor’s family was responsible for destroying her family, including the death of her brother, and that history is too heavy for Rose to push past in the moment.
Taking Rose’s silence as an answer, Kyor says that he and Rose already know where things stand and walks out.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 52
Rose spends the night in her burned-out room without incident. At breakfast the next morning, the group tries to work out what the next trial will involve. The consensus is that it will center on water and require competitors to work in pairs. Jonas takes the opportunity to sideline Rose, insisting that she stay out of the way and pair with him so he can manage her. Rose objects calmly, but Jonas won’t budge.
Kyor interrupts and takes Jonas apart piece by piece, running through everything Rose has survived and achieved across the trials and making Jonas look small in the process. Kyor declares that Rose will be paired with him, not Jonas, and says it’s a direct order. Jonas storms off, clearly rattled by both the rebuke and what Kyor’s defense of Rose implies about their relationship.
Later, at the training yard, Holden singles Rose out for a one-on-one spar that seems like an attempt to put Rose in her place. Rose holds her own and ends up disarming him. Holden mutters that Rose only won because of luck and walks off.
Kyor has been watching the whole time. When Rose confronts him, he implies he came to see her. The tension between them is hard to miss, and Rose shuts it down before it goes any further. She pulls Llinos away with her, and as they walk off, Llinos tells Rose she’ll stay quiet in exchange for the full story of what happened between Rose, Kyor, and Jonas.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 53
Rose and Llinos are getting ready for a ball, and Llinos is reluctant to go until Benny shows up with Caroline in tow. Caroline’s arrival is enough to change Llinos’s mind, and Rose later finds out that Kyor arranged Caroline’s invitation.
At the ball, Jonas tries to walk Rose into the room on his arm, but she shakes him off to find Kay. The sisters have an emotional reunion, and Kay tells Rose that she genuinely believes Rose is going to win. A young man from court named William joins Rose and Kay briefly before politely stepping away to give the sisters space.
Kay then admits that she’s developed real feelings for Hew, one of Kyor’s close friends, and Rose is uneasy about her sister growing attached to someone from the very court that stripped their family of everything. Kay also mentions offhand that William suspects Jonas is thinking about proposing, which leaves Rose genuinely thrown.
When Hew arrives with Kyor, Hew takes Kay off to dance, leaving Rose alone with the prince. Rose thanks Kyor for arranging Caroline’s invitation and for keeping her secrets safe, and Kyor asks Rose to dance. The tension between them is obvious, but Rose pulls back. Before the moment goes any further, Holden interrupts and steers Kyor back to his duties. Kyor goes but tells Rose that he and Rose need to talk.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 54
Holden corners Rose and takes the opportunity to mock her chances in the trials and warn her that Kyor will eventually tire of Rose and move on. He ends the conversation with a toast that functions as both a pleasantry and a threat.
Llinos and Caroline show up and pull Rose away from Holden. Rose passes her wine to Llinos and steps outside for some air. Kyor follows Rose and steers her into an empty library off one of the side hallways, where the two of them finally act on the tension that’s been building between them. In the middle of it, a scream cuts through from the direction of the ballroom, and they quickly pull themselves together. Rose recognizes the voice and realizes it’s Llinos.