Iron Flame Chapters 55–57 Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapters 55–57

Chapter 55

Violet is angry that Xaden knew that she knew about the deal and let her sit on the information for months; Xaden, meanwhile, is angry that Violet did not just ask him about it. He accuses her of not trusting him and not fully forgiving him for last year. Violet didn’t ask him about his deal with her mother, Xaden continues, because she was scared, and that she needs to be able to trust him enough to ask the difficult questions. He wants her to stop waiting for him to give her answers; she must “demand the truth,” instead because he needs Violet to “love all of [him]—not just what [she] decide[s] to see.”

Violet replies that this is difficult for her; she knows so little about Xaden’s past. She uses the same analogy she previously used with Imogen near the start of the text—if a battle-axe came flying out of an armoire, she explains, you would want to check to make sure that nothing else is going to come flying out before you use the armoire again. Xaden co-opts her analogy to explain that, even though there are metaphorical “knives” in his armoire, he would never use them to hurt Violet because he loves her. His words break through to Violet and she admits she was worried that Xaden only kept her alive because of the deal, and not because he was intrigued or impressed by her. She then decides to put her fears aside and ask Xaden what his second signet is, because of Sgaeyl’s prior bond and the fact that Xaden is entirely sane. Xaden is visibly shocked, and before he can answer Brennan knocks on the door to say that a horde of wyvern have been spotted flying towards them from Pavis.

Chapter 56

Violet, Xaden, Brennan, and Rhiannon make their way to the Assembly, and Violet hopes that she is right about the wards. She is comforted by the knowledge that she, Xaden, and Dain have been imbuing the wardstone with a lot of power, and she hopes that it is enough. Violet explains that they need fire from one of each type of dragon, but that a dragon can only ignite a wardstone once. She also wonders why the First Six did not make more wardstones given that they had access to many dragons. Six dragons (including Tairn) breathe fire on the stone. Nothing visibly changes, and Violet hopes that it worked anyway.

Later, Tairn and Sgaeyl land and drop their riders on a cliff so that they can watch for incoming wyvern. Violet accuses Xaden of concealing his second signet from her, and Xaden responds that he is afraid Violet will not love him anymore after he tells her. Violet tries to guess, cycling through different possibilities, until she realizes that he is an inntinnsic, someone who can read minds. It is the most dangerous signet to have; inntinnsics are killed as soon as their powers manifest. He explains that nobody else knows and that he cannot read people’s exact thoughts—only their intentions, which he describes as the subconscious motivations that precede actual thoughts. Violet is hurt and stunned, and asks if he has ever read her intentions or said things only because he knew what she wanted to hear. Xaden says she is already falling out of love with him. When he pleads with her to say something, Violet replies that her love is not fickle, but that she is going to have many questions if they both survive this battle.

At that moment, Tairn alerts Violet that seventeen venin and hundreds of wyvern are headed towards them—these numbers mean they’re drastically outnumbered. Xaden tells Violet he loves her and the two of them prepare to fight, possibly to the death, when the wyvern hit the invisible barrier created by the wardstones and drop dead.

Violet and Xaden head to the Assembly room and learn that General Melgren and Violet’s mom have requested a meeting with a member of the Assembly as well as Violet and Mira, and asks that no more than two marked ones attend—presumably so that he can use his signet to predict the outcome. They agree to meet and Syrena pulls Violet aside to show her that she is still able to wield, which means that the wards are not fully operational.

Chapter 57

While flying to meet Melgren, Violet asks Xaden if he ever used his signet to influence her feelings or get information from her. Xaden swears that he stopped as soon as he started to fall for her and saw her as something other than General Sorrengail’s daughter. However, he does admit that their bond makes it easy for Violet to convey her intentions to him by accident.

Violet and the selected delegation arrive, and they meet with Melgren and Violet’s mom. Melgren accuses them of disrupting hundreds of years’ worth of secrecy and putting Navarre citizens at risk by dropping wyvern on their outposts. Mira responds that this secrecy only protected the Navarre people and left everyone else, especially the Poromish citizens, to fend for themselves. Melgren and Sorrengail say they are about to be outnumbered at Samara and blame the revolution for causing dwindling numbers in Navarre’s military. They propose a temporary truce and ask for help defending Samara, but Brennen steps forward and says that they will not defend a kingdom that left so many innocent people to die, then leaves.

Violet’s mom is stunned to learn that Brennan is alive. She then asks to speak to her daughters alone and says that the ward they raised with Warrick’s journal will not work because he concealed information to stop others from successfully creating wards. She continues on to say that the full information should be in Lyra’s journal (the one that Violet was tortured for by Varrish), and she hands it to Violet. She also tells them that wyvern are created with runes.

Later, Violet and Mira carve into a dead wyvern to see if this is true and discover a runestone, which explains why they keep reanimating and reappearing. As if to prove her point, another wyvern carcass starts to move and Violet quickly kills it with lighting. Violet looks at Lyra’s journal and realizes it is in a language that she does not speak. She will have to rely on Jesinia to translate it.

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