Queen of Shadows recap

Aelin Galathynius returns to Rifthold with Rowan to free her condemned cousin Aedion, break the Valg collar on Dorian, and kill the king of Adarlan. Reclaiming her old life brings her back to Arobynn Hamel, the assassin master who raised her, whose help costs more than it is worth, and to Lysandra, a courtesan who turns out to be a shapeshifter and becomes her closest ally. Aelin frees Aedion in a public rescue, has Arobynn killed, and inherits his fortune and the Amulet of Orynth, which proves to contain the third Wyrdkey. At Morath, the witch Manon Blackbeak is shown what the duke is breeding in the lower levels, begins to refuse her orders, and saves a servant named Elide Lochan. In Rifthold, Aelin destroys the black tower holding magic down, restoring it across the continent, then confronts the king; Dorian breaks the collar and kills his father, at the cost of a magical blast that shatters Chaol's spine. Aelin brings down the glass castle. Dorian takes the throne, Chaol and Nesryn sail south for healing and allies, and Aelin turns north to claim Terrasen against a war that is only beginning.

Previously: the assassin Celaena Sardothien served a year as the King of Adarlan's Champion before admitting that she is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, the lost heir of Terrasen. Sent overseas to Wendlyn, she was taken in hand by the Fae warrior Rowan Whitethorn on the orders of Queen Maeve, mastered the fire magic she had spent her life hiding from, and faced her family's murder and her own guilt. She learned that the king of Adarlan holds at least one of the three Wyrdkeys, fragments of a shattered gate between worlds, and that his soldiers carry Valg demons inside them, bound by collars and rings of black Wyrdstone. After destroying such a force at the fortress of Mistward, she declared herself queen, refused Maeve's blood oath, and won Rowan's instead. In Rifthold, everything went wrong while she was away: her cousin Aedion Ashryver, secretly loyal to Terrasen all along, was arrested for treason and condemned; the healer Sorscha was executed; Chaol Westfall was driven out of the castle into hiding with the rebels; and Dorian Havilliard, exposed as a magic-wielder, was collared by his father and is now ridden by a Valg prince. In the north, the Ironteeth witch Manon Blackbeak was made Wing Leader of an aerial army raised for a war nobody has explained.

Aelin arrives back in Rifthold with Rowan and begins working the city, killing the king's Valg-ridden guards and learning how much has changed. Chaol and Nesryn are living underground with the rebels; the reunion between Aelin and Chaol is cold, because she has come back as a queen with priorities and he has spent months believing he ruined everything. Aedion is in the castle dungeons, beaten and starving, condemned to be executed publicly on the king's birthday, days away. Dorian, or the thing wearing him, hunts rebels for his father and does not appear to recognize anyone. Needing money, information, and the resources of the city's underworld, Aelin goes back to the one person she swore never to see again: Arobynn Hamel, the King of the Assassins, who raised her, sold her, and greets her return as though nothing happened. At Morath, Manon Blackbeak commands the Ironteeth legions for Duke Perrington and is increasingly aware that the fortress is doing something in its lower levels that she has not been shown.

Arobynn agrees to help free Aedion, at a price, and Aelin agrees to it knowing she is being played. Through him she is drawn back into the world of the guild and reunited with Lysandra, the courtesan she once treated as a rival, who has spent years in Arobynn's household and has more reason to hate him than Aelin does. The two become allies and then friends. Rowan, magicless in Rifthold and conspicuous, keeps close to Aelin and takes an instant dislike to almost everyone. Aelin and Chaol argue about what she has become, about Dorian, and about whether the prince can be saved at all; Chaol insists he is still in there, Aelin is not convinced anything is left to save. Meanwhile Aelin scouts the castle, revisits the tunnels and Elena's tomb beneath it, and starts assembling a plan to take Aedion off the execution block in front of the entire court.

The rescue works: Aelin, Rowan, Chaol, Nesryn, and their allies pull Aedion out of the execution and get him clear of the castle. Aedion, half dead and ten years past believing it possible, meets his cousin again and swears the blood oath to her, becoming the second member of her court. The group holes up in a warehouse in the slums while Aedion recovers and the plans grow: free Dorian, break the towers of black stone that hold magic down, kill the king. At Morath, Duke Perrington finally shows Manon what is being done in the fortress: Ironteeth witches of the Yellowlegs clan are being used to breed something with the Valg, and the results are not witches. Manon is ordered to approve of it. She meets a quiet, limping kitchen servant named Elide Lochan, a Terrasen girl kept there by her uncle Vernon, and finds herself doing something she cannot justify to her grandmother: leaving the girl alive and noticed.

Lysandra reveals what she has hidden all her life: she is a shapeshifter, her magic bound and stolen from her since childhood, and with magic still dead in Rifthold she can do nothing with it at all. She and Aelin become genuine allies rather than convenient ones. Elena's spirit presses Aelin again about the Wyrdkeys and the gate, and Aelin, tired of being steered by a thousand-year-old ghost with an agenda, demands answers she does not get. Arobynn's help comes due, and the price he actually wants becomes clear; Aelin begins arranging how to settle with him rather than pay it. Her plan sharpens around the black towers: bring one down and magic returns to the whole continent, which is the only way any of them can fight the king at all. Chaol, thinking about a city full of collared Valg soldiers who would also get their power back, argues hard against it.

Aelin settles her account with Arobynn Hamel permanently: he dies at the hands of someone in his own household, and his fortune, his guild, and his effects pass to her. She is suddenly one of the wealthiest people in Rifthold, which is what an assault on a castle costs. Aedion, Rowan, Lysandra, Chaol, and Nesryn each take a piece of the plan. At Morath, Manon is ordered to prove her obedience in ways she can no longer stomach, and the Thirteen begin to notice their leader hesitating. Elide, aware that her uncle intends to use her for the duke's purposes, prepares to run and hoards what she can. Kaltain Rompier, kept drugged and half-conscious in the tower, watches everything and is written off by everyone as broken. Rifthold's streets fill with the king's Valg guards and the rebels are hunted down one cell at a time, and the timetable collapses: the strike has to happen soon.

Among the things that came to Aelin from Arobynn's estate is the Amulet of Orynth, her family's ancient talisman, which he had kept as leverage over her for years. She works out what it actually is: the third Wyrdkey, hidden inside it for a thousand years and worn around her own neck without her knowing. At Morath, Manon defies the fortress outright, cutting Elide loose and getting her out with a warning to head north and find Celaena Sardothien. Her grandmother punishes the defiance viciously, and the Thirteen close ranks around her; Manon begins to suspect that the story she was told about her own mother is a lie. In Rifthold, Aelin and Chaol have their reckoning, sorting out what they were to each other and what they are now, and part on honest terms. Aelin and Rowan stop pretending about each other. The assault on the glass castle begins.

The tower falls and magic returns across the continent all at once, slamming back into everyone who ever had it. Lysandra takes another shape for the first time in years. Rowan has his power back. Every collared Valg soldier in Rifthold becomes far more dangerous, and the city descends into a running battle. Aelin fights her way through the glass castle to the throne room, where the king waits with the Wyrdkeys and with Dorian at his side. Chaol goes with her, refusing to leave the prince behind. What is wearing Dorian is stronger than any of them expected, and the king turns his son on his own friends. The confrontation becomes a contest of will over Dorian's body, with Chaol pleading with a friend who shows no sign of hearing him.

Dorian breaks the collar. Something of him has survived after all, and reaching for Chaol is what does it. He turns on his father and kills him, and the dying king claims he was himself taken over by the Valg long ago, that everything Adarlan has done was done by the thing inside him, and that a far older enemy is coming. The magic loosed in the throne room shatters Chaol's spine, leaving him alive but unable to move his legs. Aelin brings the glass castle down. In the ruins, Dorian is king of a broken empire; Aelin holds the Amulet of Orynth and the key inside it and knows the third remains at Morath, where the Valg king Erawan has been waiting all along. At Morath, Kaltain Rompier finally acts, destroying herself and much of the fortress, and pressing a shard of Wyrdstone into Elide Lochan's hand before she goes.

Rifthold is left half-ruined and leaderless until Dorian takes the throne, with Aelin's promise of alliance and very little else. Chaol, unable to walk, refuses to be a burden and sails for Antica on the southern continent with Nesryn Faliq, to seek the healers of the Torre Cesme and, more importantly, an army from the khaganate. Aelin, Rowan, Aedion, Lysandra, and Evangeline turn north for Terrasen, a kingdom Aelin has not seen in ten years, whose lords have no reason to hand a throne to a girl they last saw as a child and who has been an assassin ever since. Elide Lochan is on the road alone, hunted, carrying Kaltain's shard and a name to find. Manon Blackbeak commands the Ironteeth at a cost her grandmother has begun to count, with the truth about her own bloodline still hidden from her. Erawan's armies are intact, his creatures are multiplying, and the war for the continent has not yet begun.

The king of Adarlan is dead, killed by his own son once Dorian throws off the collar, and with his last words he claims he too was a puppet of the Valg, taken over long ago. Aelin destroys what remains of the glass castle, and magic is free across the continent for the first time in a decade. Chaol is left with a broken back and no feeling in his legs. Dorian is King of Adarlan, alone, holding a ruined capital and a country his father wrecked. Aelin, Rowan, Aedion, Lysandra, and Evangeline ride north for Terrasen, where Aelin has a kingdom to reclaim, an army she does not have, and lords who may not accept her. She carries the Amulet of Orynth and the Wyrdkey inside it, and she knows the third key is still at large. Chaol and Nesryn sail for the southern continent, to the healers of the Torre Cesme in Antica, to seek both a cure and an alliance. At Morath, Kaltain Rompier destroys herself and a great deal of the fortress, pressing a shard of Wyrdstone into Elide Lochan's hand and telling her to find Celaena Sardothien; Elide escapes into the countryside alone. Manon, cast out and wounded for defying her grandmother, is left with the Thirteen and a set of questions about her own history she has never been allowed to ask. Erawan, the Valg king who was never truly dead, is now unopposed at Morath.