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Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapters 55–67 Summary
This Aria Ashbrook Web of Vows and Vengeance chapter summary contains full spoilers.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 55
Rose races back into the ballroom to find Llinos collapsed and in distress. A healer rushes over but quickly determines that the poison has already spread too far through Llinos’s system to do anything. Llinos dies on the ballroom floor, and Caroline sobs beside her.
In the aftermath, Rose pieces together what happened. Earlier that evening, Holden had handed Rose a glass of wine, which she passed along to Llin without taking a drink herself. The poison was never meant for Llinos. Rose spots Holden slipping away toward a gate out and gives chase. Kyor blasts the gate with lightning before Holden can escape.
Rose confronts Holden, takes his ceremonial sword, and tells Kyor to release his magical hold so the fight is fair. Rose gets the better of Holden and pins him down, then decides to let him live and walks away. Holden immediately picks up the sword and tries to stab Rose in the back. Rose throws a rock and kills him.
Kay witnesses it all and is horrified. Rose, still raw with grief over Llin, says simply that she delivered justice.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 56
Returning to the ballroom, Rose and Kyor find Llinos already moved to a couch, with Caroline holding her. Rose tells Benny that the man responsible is dead. Benny asks for a sea burial, and Kyor takes charge of arranging it. Kay says her goodbyes and leaves.
Kyor organizes carriages, and the group travels to the coast in silence. Everyone pitches in to build a funeral raft while Caroline stays with Llinos. Benny carries Llinos down to the water, and he and Caroline wade out together, light the raft with torches, and send it out to sea. Rose watches with Kyor beside her, and Kyor takes her hand.
Back at the High Hold, the group goes their separate ways, and Rose follows Kyor to his room. Rose tries to kiss him, but Kyor pulls back, reminding her of her own rule about not using each other as a distraction.
Rose picks a fight and brings up a rumor about a woman named Thea who was stripped of her powers after Kyor denied fathering Thea’s child. Kyor denies it and explains himself, then tells Rose he’ll do anything she needs, but not that. Rose asks Kyor to hold her instead and falls asleep in his arms.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 57
Rose wakes several times through the night from nightmares, and each time Kyor is there to comfort her. What finally pulls her out of sleep for good is the noise from the kitchen, the clatter of pans and laughter from the cooks starting their morning. She and Kyor talk briefly about grief before he heads off to get them food. While Kyor is gone, Rose overhears a warm, easy exchange between him and one of the cooks. Leilah playfully probes Kyor about who he has with him.
Rose decides to check on Benny rather than linger, so she heads upstairs, gets herself ready, and meets Benny in time for breakfast. Jonas joins them, but the mood sours when he voices his doubts about Kyor and warns Rose away from him. Things come to a head when Jonas calls Rose stupid.
Kyor, who has appeared behind Rose without anyone noticing, steps in and makes clear that Jonas could face serious consequences for speaking that way. Kyor tells Jonas his feelings toward Rose were never hatred, then warns Jonas not to speak to her like that again before walking out.
Benny breaks the silence Kyor leaves behind with a dry remark that that’s exactly why he has kept romance out of the Retterheld.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 58
Kyor urges Rose to try freezing a bowl of water, still convinced she has magic despite her repeated denials. They spend nearly an hour on it before Rose calls it off with nothing to show for the effort.
When they head to bed, Rose confronts Kyor about why he keeps pulling away from physical intimacy. Kyor tells her it has nothing to do with a lack of desire and everything to do with wanting to respect and protect her. Rose refuses to accept that explanation, telling him she needs him to treat her as an equal, not hold back on her behalf.
That breaks the tension, and Rose and Kyor finally become intimate, but just as things reach a turning point, the signal for the fourth trial cuts through. As they rush to get dressed, Kyor grabs Rose’s hand, and Rose can tell he’s about to say something that goes far beyond what they’ve acknowledged between them. Rose stops him before he can get the words out, telling him it has to wait. They agree to pick up where they left off once the trial is over.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 59
Rose and Kyor wake in a rush when they realize the next trial is starting sooner than expected. Kyor paints battle sigils on Rose’s face, and they join the group in the courtyard. Benny has already worked out from the carriage tires that the group is heading to the Lueayan Channel.
When the Rettlings arrive, Mila lays out the challenge. All sixteen competitors must climb down a cliff, reach the four boats at the bottom, and row across to the Eastern Isles. With only four boats holding two people each, half the group will never make it onto the water, and everyone knows this means a fight.
Rose and Kyor claim their boat first. Meanwhile, Yeva and Odetta attack Benny and Jonas over the last remaining boat. Rose asks Kyor to intervene, and he uses his lightning to knock Odetta back long enough for Benny and Jonas to get away.
Out on the water, things get strange. Every time the sea touches Rose, she feels intense pain, and at one point, she seems to leave her body entirely. When Rose deliberately puts her hand in the water, she senses something beneath the surface, trapped and suffering. Kyor feels nothing when he tries. They suspect the sensation is connected to some residual magic in Rose, and Kyor spots something on the water behind her.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 60
The kraken is already surfacing when Rose and Kyor realize what they’re dealing with. It’s massive, furious, and blocking the only crossing. Rose senses that the creature is in pain and doesn’t belong there, which is what’s driving its aggression. Rather than fight the creature, they reason that something must be holding it in place against its will and that breaking whatever is restraining it would solve the problem faster than any confrontation.
Rose spots the source on the cliffs above. A line of priestesses is keeping the kraken trapped in the channel. Benny and Jonas bring their boat alongside in support while Kyor prepares to act. The goal is to disrupt the priestesses enough to break the priestesses’ hold on the kraken without harming them.
Kyor sends a hailstorm across nearly a mile of cliff face, precise enough to leave the water untouched. Rose dips her hand into the water to check on the kraken and senses that things are improving, but the ward is still holding. Kyor pushes harder and sends a volley of lightning bolts down between the priestesses. The effort is almost too much for Kyor, and he nearly goes down.
Rose checks the water one more time, and the kraken’s pain is gone. The ward is broken, and the crossing is clear. But before anyone can move, Jonas asks the question none of them had thought to ask. If the kraken is free, why is the creature still there?
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 61
The group is on boats trying to get past a kraken blocking their route. Rose finds she can sense the creature’s emotions, and she attempts to communicate with the kraken mentally, urging it to leave. The kraken can partially hear Rose but is too consumed by its own distress to act on what she’s telling it. Rose tries submerging her hands in the water from the boat, and when that still isn’t enough, she has the group paddle closer.
Nothing works well enough, and Rose decides the only real option is to get into the water with the kraken. Both Jonas and Kyor strongly object. Kyor eventually agrees to trust Rose, though not before he refuses to let her treat the moment as a goodbye, telling her she either believes she can do it or they’ll find another way. She tells him she can and jumps in.
The connection with the kraken becomes immediate and overwhelming. Rose reaches out to the creature, showing it mentally that it’s free to go, and for the first time, the kraken genuinely seems to understand.
But Rose mistimes a wave, swallows water, and starts to drown. She kicks hard toward the surface and can’t find it. Her thoughts begin to break apart, and her strength drains away. Rose sends one final desperate message to the kraken before she loses consciousness.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 62
Rose wakes up groggy and disoriented, her body still fuzzy from paparvy seed, a painkiller someone gave her while she was unconscious. Kyor is at her bedside, relieved. He fills her in. All the competitors who made it into boats survived the crossing, and Rose is now among the final eight competitors in the Ofur.
Kyor also tells Rose there’s a ball that night and that he postponed it until she came around. More importantly, Llinos’s family will be attending. Kyor tells Rose that Benny has already spoken to Llinos’s family about Rose’s friendship with Llinos, but Rose is terrified they blame her for Llinos’s death. Kyor reassures her that they don’t. Before he leaves to get ready, he hints that Benny owes Rose an explanation about something Benny has done.
Alone, Rose bathes and starts preparing for the evening. Then Zara walks in, which is the last thing Rose expects. Even more surprising, Zara apologizes for attacking Rose during the competition. Rose acknowledges the apology without fully letting Zara off the hook. On her way out, Zara offers Rose a dagger, a mark of respect tied to Zara’s family traditions. Rose takes it.
With Zara gone, Rose picks out something to wear and tries to psych herself up for the night ahead. Facing Llinos’s family will be harder than anything the Retterheld has thrown at Rose so far.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 63
Rose arrives at the ball in a black leather jumpsuit with daggers and painted sigils, having been tricked by Zara into thinking it was suitable attire. The moment she walks into the ballroom, the music cuts out and the room goes silent. Zara seizes the opportunity to humiliate her publicly, calling her a slum rat who disrespects the Eastern Isles. The tension breaks when Carys, Llinos’s younger sister, loudly calls Rose bad-ass, and Benny introduces Rose as the warrior who kept the earl alive. The mood in the room shifts.
Benny then tells Rose that his mother is the Duchess of the Eastern Isles, making him an earl. Kyor joins them, and they go to meet Benny’s grandmother, the Dowager Duchess, an imperious woman who makes pointed remarks about the Eastern Isles having once been an independent kingdom before unification with Morathka. Kyor steers the conversation away before it sours further.
Benny leads Rose and Kyor to a side room where Carys and Morwenna, Llinos’s mother, are waiting. Rose apologizes to Morwenna, telling her that the poisoned drink had been meant for her. Morwenna refuses to let Rose carry the blame and reveals that Llinos had written home before her death, asking her family to help Rose and her sister find somewhere to live after the Retterheld. Morwenna promises to treat Rose as one of her own. Kyor eventually takes Rose back to the room they share.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 64
After returning to their room, Rose says she should go back downstairs and apologize, but Kyor brushes this off and insists she rest. She flirts with him and hints that she wants more, but he turns her down, pointing out how weak and exhausted she still is. Rose yawns and gives in, and she and Kyor go to sleep.
Rose wakes feeling like herself again, physically restored and mentally sharp, the paparvy clearly out of her system. She and Kyor share a deeply intimate moment, and this time Kyor doesn’t hold back. At the height of the moment, thunder rattles the windows, suggesting Kyor’s magic escaped his control. Afterward, Rose feels that something between them has shifted in a way that can’t be undone.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 65
After an intimate moment, Kyor brings up Jonas and Benny. Neither bought the cover story about residual magic, and Jonas kept asking, and Kyor struggled to hold the lie together. Kyor wants to wipe their memories or remove them as a threat, but Rose talks him down and takes responsibility for handling it. He agrees, with one condition. Getting her powers under control is the only priority once they return to Wrohelm.
Rose then notices pale scars on Kyor’s arm. Kyor tells her his father pressed a burning palm against his skin as a so-called strengthening exercise, and the longer Kyor screamed, the longer it went on. The abuse only stopped once Kyor’s own powers developed, and he made it clear he could return the favor. They share a charged moment, but a ship horn pulls them back from doing anything more.
On board, Rose’s reunion with Benny is warm, but Jonas is stiff and distant, something she cannot address on a crowded ship. Rose then learns that greenish storms rolled in while she was unconscious, a sign of Kyor’s fear for her.
As they near the mainland, Rose, Kyor, and Benny spot priestesses waiting on the dock, Mila among them. Mila announces a rules violation occurred during the last trial and that she initially considered death the only fitting punishment.
Rose and Kyor brace themselves, certain Rose’s ice powers have been discovered. Instead, Mila disqualifies Kyor for using his lightning against the priestesses. He accepts it without argument and whispers to Rose to claim the gifting for herself before he’s taken away.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 66
Kyor gets portated away, and Rose is wrecked by it. Zara immediately starts goading Rose, and things escalate fast until Grenda steps in and uses her power to lock both women in place. She dresses them down, then releases Zara first and tells her to walk straight to her carriage. Once Grenda frees Rose, Rose warns her that Zara will come after her for this, but Grenda isn’t bothered.
On the ride back, Jonas takes a carriage by himself while Rose travels with Benny. Rose is cold enough that Benny notices and gives her his coat. Rose sleeps, but the rest doesn’t do much for her.
Back at the barracks, Rose and Benny cross paths with Jonas in the dining hall. He’s withdrawn and turns down Benny’s offer to spar together. When Rose mentions that she wants to head to the library, something shifts in Jonas, and he starts asking her why. Rose covers by saying she needs to talk to Caroline about Llinos’s family, and Jonas lets it go and walks off.
Web of Vows and Vengeance Chapter 67
Rose is alone in Kyor’s room and goes through his drawings for the first time. She finds a drawing of herself asleep in his bed, and the tenderness with which Kyor captured her makes it clear how deeply he feels for her. It hits her hard, and she wishes she’d told him she loves him.
Further down the pile, Rose finds another drawing of herself, this one from their first meeting in the temple, where her face is twisted with rage and hatred toward Kyor. The guilt that drawing brings is almost worse than the first drawing’s impact on her.
Unable to sleep, Rose makes her way to the temple library and finds Caroline there, finishing up a strained session with Rohan. Once Rohan leaves, Caroline turns cold toward Rose, admitting outright that she wishes Rose had died instead of Llin. Rose doesn’t fight it. The two reach a painful understanding over the grief they’re both carrying.
Rose then asks Caroline about books on krakens and the magic of communicating with them, keeping her tone casual. Caroline tells Rose that someone else already came looking for exactly the same thing. Rose assumes the visitor was Kyor, but when she turns around, Jonas steps out of the shadows.