52 pages • 1 hour read
Glow of the Everflame
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Chapter 40-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 40 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide and child death.
Diem prepares for the Challenging. After donning her sleek leather outfit, she studies herself in the mirror and asks her friends what they think. Everyone approves.
Before the Challenging, Diem and Luther encounter Aemonn, who is the same horse that Luther rode on the day he met Diem at the hunting cabin. Luther explains that he borrowed Aemonn’s horse that day. Diem realizes that Aemonn, not Luther, is the Descended who Henri witnessed killing the half-mortal boy.
On the way to the arena, Luther stays by Diem’s side. Relieved, she feels his aura move around her.
Chapter 41 Summary
Diem and Luther ride to the arena together. Before the Challenging, Luther reveals that Teller and Lily recently kissed. They discuss the prospects of their siblings’ relationship, and then Luther gives Diem a new medallion. The phoenix on the medallion that Aemonn gave her had sapphire eyes, but this medallion from Luther has “dark gray diamonds” for its eyes (513). Moved, Diem kisses Luther, losing herself in the moment until Remis interrupts. Teller encourages Diem before the battle.
Remis begins the Challenging. Diem listens in horror as representatives from each of the 20 houses challenge her. Finally, Luther pipes up and challenges her on “behalf of House Corbois” (522).
Chapter 42 Summary
The arena erupts in chaos. A furious Remis demands to know if Diem told Luther about their bonded bargain. Diem realizes her error and wonders if Luther is now exacting his revenge on Remis by robbing him of his powers. When Remis questions Luther about his intentions, Luther insists that the Crown is rightfully his. Panicking, Diem refuses to fight Luther no matter what. Her advisers insist that she must fight him because he is the strongest Descended; the houses will only respect her if she wins against a worthy opponent. However, Diem wants to fight Rhon Ghislaine, the Descended who killed his own half-mortal child in Mortal City while Diem was forced to watch. (That event took place in Spark of the Everflame.)
She pulls Luther aside, and he begs her to fight him. He reveals that he only challenged her because he planned to die by suicide using his magic to protect her. He planned to make the magic look as if it had come from her. Diem is overcome by emotion but insists that she cannot let him sacrifice himself for her.
Chapter 43 Summary
Diem challenges Rhon. In the arena, Rhon taunts and jeers, then throws several spells at Diem. She uses her protective shield but cannot summon the power to fight back. Suddenly, Rhon attacks her, and she falls into darkness. While unconscious, she has a vision in which a gray-skinned man calls her the Daughter of the Forgotten and urges her to fight for him. Furious, Diem insists that she doesn’t rule for his sake but for the sake of her people.
Diem regains consciousness in the arena. She feels her body tingling and summons the magic to defeat Rhon. Just before killing him, she announces that she will spare his life. However, as soon as she releases him from her magic, Rhon lunges at her with a dagger, so she kills him with her magic. Then she forms more spells, wrapping the arena in branches and levitating above the crowd. She dares the crowd to challenge her again if they still doubt her. Everyone pledges their allegiance.
Chapter 44 Summary
Diem reconvenes with Luther after the Challenging. She feels truly happy for the first time since her father died.
Luther accompanies Diem to Fortos’s island of Coeurîle for her coronation. On the way, they discuss the Challenging and the Corbois family, and strategize ways to unite the mortals and Descended. Finally, Luther reveals that he, too, is half-mortal; his mother, Avana, is not his biological mother. His biological mother was Florille, a woman with whom Remis had an affair. Remis banished her, but she later found Luther at the palace. He tried protecting her, but Remis found her and killed her, attacking Luther in the process and leaving scars on his body. Hearing this, Diem is overcome by emotion. The two continue talking, trying to understand what their connection means and why they have seen the visions they’ve seen. They arrive at their destination and part ways before Diem’s coronation.
Chapter 45 Summary
Diem is overwhelmed by her surroundings as she approaches the Kindred’s Temple, a site that is sacred to the gods. (The island of Coeurîle is also the only place in which the Descended cannot use their magic.) At the temple, the kings and queens of the other realms welcome Diem. Inside, she notices how much of the building is made of heartstone and godstone. (Godstone has toxins that can kill the Descended, while heartstone keeps them alive.)
The other royals start asking Diem questions about her past. She tries to answer honestly but feels unnerved when she sees the Umbros Queen again. She feels even more uncomfortable when someone again refers to her as the Daughter of the Forgotten. Finally, they start the coronation ceremony. Suddenly, several bolts of lightning shoot from the sky and into the temple, destroying the heartstone. Furious, the royals accuse her of being an imposter. Diem hears a familiar voice behind her (her mother’s) telling her to run.
Epilogue Summary
Auralie waits just beyond the temple steps. She is ready to return to Lumnos after the coronation. She clutches the vials of flameroot powder that she has stolen for Diem and waits for the ceremony to finish. Suddenly, Luther grabs her from behind and demands to know what she is doing. He wants her to come home with him and is surprised to learn that she doesn’t know that Diem is the new queen. Then Vance appears, and they start talking about their mutual missions. Suddenly, lightning strikes the temple. When Diem appears in the doorway, Auralie panics and tells her to run.
Chapter 40-Epilogue Analysis
In the novel’s final chapters, Diem accepts her calling and claims her true identity. Ever since she was chosen as the new queen, she has questioned her purpose in life, and she has spent most of the novel feeling trapped between childhood and adulthood, love and duty. Her ongoing internal conflict reflects the Burden of Leadership and captures the complexities of her Quest for Self-Discovery. However, in the novel’s climactic Challenging scene, Diem reconciles these raging internal conflicts and makes a very public declaration of her intentions for the future, and this moment marks a crucial turning point in her development.
As Diem finally gains control of her magical powers, these unique abilities become a symbol of her authentic identity and her innate sense of agency. Since becoming queen presumptive, Diem has not been able to summon her powers voluntarily, and she has therefore dreaded the prospect of failing to defend herself against a more powerful Descended opponent at the Challenging. On the day of the event, Diem discovers that she can use her magic only if she accepts who she is, and the vision that she has in the arena spiritually awakens her and grants her a revelation. As she states:
It struck me then—what I had been missing all this time. I had been begging my godhood like a needy toddler, asking it to save me whenever I was scared or angry or in need of comfort. And, like a parent coddles a babe, at first it had watched over me, holding my hand protectively as I took my first tottering steps as a Descended. But I wasn’t a child, and this world could spare no time for me to learn to walk (552).
Once Diem accepts that she is no longer a child, she is finally ready to embrace a fully adult identity as a woman, a Descended, and a queen. She stops being “scared or angry” and instead uses her power to fight for her rightful place in the world (553). Within this context, her sudden success at summoning her magical powers becomes a metaphor for the culmination of her coming-of-age journey.
However, despite this intense inner progress, Diem’s fate is left on a highly ambiguous note, and Cole uses a cliffhanger ending to suggest the focus of the next installments in the Kindred’s Curse Saga. As the narrative shifts to other key characters, Diem’s first-person narration dissipates and a third-person narrator assumes authority over the story to relate Auralie’s perspective of the events in progress. This jarring stylistic shift implies that Diem’s world is more expansive than even she understands, and it also provides essential insight into Auralie’s reasons for staying away from Lumnos. At the same time, Cole intentionally avoids resolving all of Diem and Auralie’s conflicts, reserving these issues for the series’ third installment.
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