Summary

Chapter 30 

Feyre gives the poorest people in the village small bags of gold and silver. She sees Isaac Hale, her own former lover, with his wife. Feyre smiles, wishing them well. When she returns home, she finds the whole household busy getting ready for the ball in two days. Feyre helps dig a new garden for Elain. Meanwhile, she worries about the blight and can’t bring herself to paint. Nesta reveals that the glamour didn’t work on her. Nesta tried to follow Feyre, but she could not find a way through the wall. She chose not to marry Tomas because she realized he would not help her. Feyre realizes her sister cares for her after all. Nesta demands the truth and asks Feyre to teach her to paint. In spite of their new fortune, Nesta reveals that she hates their father for nearly letting them starve and for not doing more to save their mother.      

Chapter 31 

Feyre stays close to Nesta at the ball, putting on a smile for Elain. She can’t shake the feeling that she should have done more to get answers about the blight and help Tamlin. The next day, Feyre learns the Beddor family was killed in a fire. Feyre realizes that faeries attacked the Beddors because she gave Clare’s name to Rhysand. Feyre tells her family to hire scouts and guards for protection and to flee far away on a ship at any sign of something strange. Feyre warns Nesta about the blight. Elain’s glamour breaks and she remembers what really happened the night Feyre was taken. Feyre leaves on horseback for Prythian. When she reaches the manor house, it is silent and everyone is gone. 

Chapter 32 

Feyre examines the damaged manor. She realizes it was the scene of a vicious fight. Alis emerges wearing a torn dress and limping. Alis reminds Feyre that Tamlin told her to stay away. Feyre begs for the truth and Alis finally gives her answers. The blight is Amarantha, the vicious high queen of Prythian. Amarantha was once an emissary from Hybern, as well as a deadly general in the war against humans. Her younger sister, Clythia, fell in love with a human warrior named Jurian. Jurian betrayed and murdered Clythia, fueling Amarantha’s hatred of humans. Amarantha wanted to rule Prythian, so she snuck in forces and poisoned the High Lords to steal most of their magic. Amarantha wanted Tamlin for her lover and was enraged when he refused. In retribution, Amarantha cursed Tamlin. To break the curse, he had forty-nine years to get a human girl—a girl who hated faeries enough to kill one unprovoked–to declare her love for him. Amarantha made the curse harder to break by putting masks on Tamlin’s court and preventing them from saying a word about the curse. Andras crossed the wall as a wolf to help Tamlin, and the Treaty was a ruse to get Feyre to go to Prythian to break the curse. Had Feyre said she loved Tamlin, she could have freed him, his power, and the land. Tamlin sent her away three days before the curse was up. Feyre decides that she will go to Amarantha’s court Under the Mountain and save Tamlin or die trying. 

Analysis

Love serves as a driving force in these chapters. When Tamlin sends Feyre home, he shows his love for her and his need to keep her safe. In return, Feyre leaves, showing her love for him and her desire to lessen his burdens. When Nesta goes after Feyre, she displays the depth of her love for her sister. Nesta abandons her plans to marry Tomas because his love was not strong enough to compel him to accompany her. Nesta knows Feyre will do anything for Tamlin because of her love for him, which is ironic since Feyre has yet to speak those words. Nesta hates their father because she doesn’t believe he was motivated enough by love for their mother to find a cure for her illness. Love compels Feyre to tell her family the truth about where she was and to warn them about the potential danger. Motivated by love, Feyre decides to return to Prythian to help Tamlin however she can.  

Tamlin’s care for Feyre and her family allows her to set down the weight of her duty towards them, but she picks up another burden when she realizes she needs to help Tamlin. Nesta’s insistence that the family can take care of themselves is an act of love that liberates Feyre from the ties of her human life. Nesta is uniquely suited to relieve of Feyre of this duty having proved her strength by resisting the faerie glamour and pursuing her sister to the wall. Though Feyre is angry at herself because she stopped pressuring Tamlin and the other faeries for information about the blight, her anger fuels her determination to return to Tamlin’s side. As Feyre changes out of fancy clothes into a tunic, pants, and boots, she is transformed into a huntress once again as she picks up a new duty for saving the man she loves. 

Alis’s revelations in Chapter 32 reveal important answers to the mysteries introduced throughout the novel thus far. The blight is a fitting euphemism for the way Amarantha’s curse has caused Tamlin’s power to diminish and atrophy. Feyre must reckon with all the lies she’s been told due to Amarantha’s curse and her next steps will define the course of the plot, as well as her own development. Alis’s information allows Feyre to put the pieces of the puzzle together to finally understand her role in Tamlin’s life and in breaking the curse. Amarantha’s hatred for humans, her thwarted heart, and her lust for power all present her as a powerful and dangerous villain. The details provided by her sisters about Clare Beddor’s death, and the interactions with Rhysand earlier in the novel confirm everything Alis reveals and leave no doubt about the kind of evil Feyre is up against. Presented with all of this information, Feyre makes the decision to pursue love even if it puts her in grave danger.  

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