Graceling recap

In the seven kingdoms, a rare few are born Graced with an extreme skill, marked by two different-coloured eyes. Katsa, niece of King Randa of the Middluns, believes her Grace is killing, and has been used as her uncle's enforcer since childhood while secretly running the Council, which undoes the harm the seven kings do. Rescuing a kidnapped Lienid grandfather, she meets Po, a Lienid prince whose Grace is not fighting but perception - he senses the world around him and every thought that concerns him. Together they work out that the kidnapping leads to King Leck of Monsea, whose famous kindness is a lie held up by a Grace that makes people believe whatever he says. In Monsea they find Leck's wife murdered and his daughter Bitterblue in flight. Po holds Leck off while Katsa takes the child over the winter mountains, discovering on the way that her Grace was never killing but survival. Katsa returns to kill Leck before he can speak, Bitterblue is crowned queen at ten, and Katsa goes back for Po, who has been blinded but can still see through his Grace.

In the seven kingdoms a very small number of people are born Graced, marked by two different-coloured eyes and possessed of one skill carried to an impossible extreme. Katsa, niece of King Randa of the Middluns, is believed to be Graced with killing; she has been her uncle's enforcer since she was eight, sent to maim and frighten people who displease him, and she hates it. In secret she runs the Council with Prince Raffin, the guard captain Oll and Lord Giddon: a small network that quietly undoes the cruelties of the seven kings. The book opens with a Council mission into King Murgon's dungeons in Sunder to free an elderly Lienid nobleman, Prince Tealiff, who has been kidnapped for no reason anyone can see. On her way out Katsa is intercepted in the dark by a Graced fighter who is nearly her equal; she knocks him unconscious rather than kill him, and the Council carries Tealiff back to the Middluns to hide him in Raffin's workrooms while they try to work out who took him and why.

The man from Murgon's courtyard turns up at Randa's court: he is Po, youngest son of King Ror of Lienid and Tealiff's grandson, searching for the old man himself. Recognising each other, they come to an understanding, and Po is brought into the Council's confidence and reunited with his grandfather. The two of them begin sparring daily, the first time in Katsa's life she has fought anyone she cannot easily beat, and the first time she has been treated as a person rather than a weapon. Together the Council works the kidnapping backwards: none of the seven kingdoms gains anything by holding a harmless old man, and Murgon was clearly storing him for somebody else. Tealiff, when he recovers enough to speak, cannot explain it either. Meanwhile Randa continues to hand Katsa assignments, and her willingness to carry them out is wearing thin.

Randa orders Katsa to punish a lord who has crossed him, and she refuses. Rather than run, she walks into his great hall and makes it plain that he has no way to compel her and no way to stop her leaving, and the king, who has spent his life pointing her at other people, backs down in front of his own court. Katsa gives up her place in the Middluns and sets out with Po to find who took his grandfather, leaving the Council in Raffin, Oll and Giddon's hands. The trail points east and the suspicion narrows to Monsea, the mountain-ringed kingdom whose king, Leck, is famous throughout the seven kingdoms for his gentleness - he takes in the sick and the orphaned, and he married Tealiff's daughter, the Lienid princess Ashen. Nothing about that reputation should make him a kidnapper, which is precisely what starts to trouble them.

Travelling alone together, Katsa learns that Po has been lying to the world about his Grace. He is not Graced with fighting: he perceives the physical world around him without needing to see it, and he senses the thoughts of anyone thinking about him. His family hid it when he was a child because a king who knew would either use him or kill him, and only his mother and grandfather share the secret. Katsa is furious at having been read, then accepts it, and the two become lovers on the road, on the understanding that Katsa will not marry anyone. With Po's Grace to test their reasoning, they arrive at an answer to the kidnapping: Leck's reputation for kindness is not a fact but a story he is able to make people believe, because his Grace works through his voice. It explains why nobody in Monsea questions the disappearances at his court, why Ashen has been out of contact for years, and why Tealiff, who may have begun to suspect something, had to be taken quietly.

Knowing that hearing Leck speak is enough to lose your own mind to him, Katsa and Po go into Monsea anyway. In the forest they find Queen Ashen dead, killed while getting her daughter away from the castle, and the ten-year-old heir Bitterblue hiding nearby, hunted by her father's men. Leck's story is already running ahead of them: the kingdom is being told that Katsa murdered the queen and stole the child. When Leck himself comes close, Po sends Katsa away with Bitterblue and stays behind to hold him off, knowing his own Grace gives him a chance nobody else has of resisting a voice he cannot help hearing. Katsa and the child flee south with Leck's riders behind them and no way of knowing whether Po survived.

With every road watched, Katsa takes Bitterblue over the mountains in the depth of winter - a crossing nobody attempts in that season - hunting and building fires and carrying the child through snow for weeks. Somewhere in that ordeal Katsa finally understands what her Grace actually is. She was never Graced with killing: she is Graced with survival, which is why she cannot be beaten, cannot be starved, cannot freeze, and learns any skill that keeps her alive almost instantly. The distinction changes what she believes about herself, because the thing Randa built his threats on was a misunderstanding of a girl who had simply never been allowed to be anything else. The two of them come down out of the mountains to the coast of Sunder and take ship for Lienid, where Bitterblue can be hidden among Po's family while Katsa works out what to do about Leck.

In Lienid, Katsa learns that Leck has summoned the rulers of the seven kingdoms to Monsea to hear his account of the murdered queen and the stolen child, and that his voice in that room would end any hope of the truth. King Ror sails with them. Katsa gets into the hall and kills Leck with a thrown dagger before he can talk his way into anyone's head, and Monsea comes out of the fog he kept it in, uncovering the cruelties he committed on his own people and animals for thirty-five years. Bitterblue is crowned queen at ten, with Ror remaining to steady the kingdom for her. Katsa then recrosses the mountains and finds Po alive at a lakeside hut: he survived Leck, but his injuries left him blind, and he has been hiding it and living through his Grace alone. She refuses to leave him there. They return together, and Katsa keeps the terms she has always kept - no marriage, no promise to stay in one place - and sets out to keep the Council alive and to teach girls across the seven kingdoms to fight.

Katsa reaches the Lienid court with Bitterblue and learns that Leck has told the seven kingdoms that Katsa murdered Queen Ashen and stole the child, and that he has called the kingdoms' rulers to Monsea to settle the matter. King Ror sails with them. Because Leck's Grace works through his voice, the only safe way to face him is to stop him speaking: Katsa gets into the gathering hall and kills him with a thrown dagger before his words can take hold of the room. With his death the fog lifts from Monsea, and the extent of what he did to his people and his animals begins to surface. Bitterblue, ten years old, is made queen, with Ror staying on to steady the kingdom until she can rule it herself. Katsa then crosses back over the mountains and finds Po alive at the lakeside hut, blinded by his injuries and hiding it, using his Grace to move through a world he can no longer see. She refuses to let him disappear, and he agrees to come back. They end the book together on Katsa's terms: no marriage, no promises to stay, and a plan to keep the Council running and to teach girls across the seven kingdoms how to fight.