The Fiery Heart recap

Sydney and Adrian are together in secret while Sydney's newly minted Alchemist sister Zoe lives in the next room and reports on everything. The book alternates between them: Adrian trying to build a life worth offering her, painting, taking a class and weighing his medication against his access to spirit; Sydney hiding a relationship, a magical education and a research programme that would count as treason to her order. With Sonya Karp and the spirit user Nina Sinclair, they work towards something that would stop a Moroi or dhampir being turned Strigoi at all, and Sydney's chemistry is what makes it testable. They visit Keith Darnell and see what the Alchemists' re-education leaves of a person. They summon a small creature that bonds to them both. Adrian goes off his medication to use spirit properly and swings hard between elation and collapse; Angeline's secret with Trey ends her relationship with Eddie; Jill's isolation grows. Then Zoe learns the truth about her sister. In the final pages Sydney is seized by the Alchemists and taken away to be re-educated, and Adrian is left with no idea where she has gone.

Previously: Sydney Sage is an Alchemist - a member of a secret human order that hides vampires from the world - running the assignment that conceals Jill Dragomir, the Moroi queen's half-sister, at a human boarding school in Palm Springs. Jill lives as Sydney's sister and is guarded by the dhampirs Eddie Castile and Angeline Dawes; the royal Moroi Adrian Ivashkov, psychically bonded to Jill since he healed her, lives nearby. Over two years Sydney has exposed a corrupt Alchemist, stopped a restored Strigoi who was killing young Moroi women, helped rescue Sonya Karp from a society of human vampire hunters, and discovered that she is a witch, trained in secret by her teacher Jaclyn Terwilliger. She then learned from Marcus Finch, an Alchemist who escaped the order, that the golden lily tattoo every Alchemist wears carries compulsion that keeps them obedient; she had hers broken, and now passes as loyal while being nothing of the kind. She destroyed a witch who came for her power, and finally admitted what she felt for Adrian: they are together, secretly, in defiance of everything her order believes. At the same moment her younger sister Zoe, newly committed to the Alchemists, arrived in Palm Springs as her assigned partner.

Sydney and Adrian conduct a relationship in stolen hours and coded messages, because Zoe is now living with Sydney, watching everything, and reporting to their father and the order. Sydney has to hide three things at once: Adrian, her magic, and the fact that her tattoo no longer compels her. Adrian, who has never had a reason to be reliable before, is trying to be one - painting seriously, keeping his drinking down, and taking a class. A new guardian, Neil Raymond, arrives to reinforce the detail, impeccably correct and immediately the object of more attention than he realizes. Jill, bonded to Adrian, experiences a great deal that nobody is willing to explain to her, and Zoe's presence makes the whole household perform a version of itself.

The research restarts in earnest. Sonya Karp is pursuing something bigger than restoring Strigoi: a way to keep a Moroi or dhampir from being turned in the first place, and Sydney's chemistry is what makes it testable. Adrian's contribution requires spirit, and spirit requires him to stop taking the medication that keeps his moods level, so he goes off it - which restores his magic and takes away his floor. Marcus Finch resurfaces to press Sydney again to leave the order altogether, and leaves for his own work when she refuses; staying inside is still how she protects everyone. Ms. Terwilliger's lessons move on to workings that need two casters, and Sydney's competence has passed the point where she can call it an experiment.

Adrian's father visits and reduces everything his son has been building to a joke, which Adrian survives better than he expects and worse than he admits. Adrian's art class gives him the first genuine achievement of his life. Angeline's secret involvement with Trey comes out and ends her relationship with Eddie, leaving the household's fragile arrangement worse than before. Nina Sinclair joins the research: a spirit user who restored her own sister from Strigoi, one of the very few who have ever managed it, and who is plainly interested in Adrian.

Sydney and Adrian go to see Keith Darnell, the Alchemist Sydney exposed, to learn what the order actually does to the people it takes. What they find is a man who has been through re-education and come out hollow, frightened of the dark, unable to say plainly what happened to him. It is the clearest picture Sydney has of what waits for her if she is ever caught, and it does not change her mind about staying. He and Sydney also work one of Ms. Terwilliger's summonings together and end up jointly responsible for a small scaled creature that has bonded to both of them and has to be fed and hidden. The research edges towards a usable result. Off his medication, Adrian's magic works and his moods do not: he moves between long stretches of energy and productivity and drops he cannot explain away. He and Sydney tell each other what they feel without hedging it, which is the most dangerous thing either of them has done.

Zoe's suspicions harden. She has noticed the absences, the messages and her sister's unaccountable ease around Moroi, and she has been raised to treat all of it as evidence of corruption. Sydney manages her, deflects her and keeps her convinced, and each success buys less time than the last. Adrian's swings deepen, and Jill takes the worst of them through the bond while the household argues around her. The Strigoi research reaches the point of needing what only spirit can supply. Sydney is doing the work of an Alchemist, a witch, a chemist and a liar simultaneously, and the number of people who would have to be silenced to keep it hidden has grown past anything she can control.

Zoe learns the truth about her sister and Adrian, and reports it. Sydney is seized by the Alchemists in daylight, stripped of her phone and her charms before she can use anything, and driven away into the desert to a facility whose location nobody outside the order knows. She knows exactly what is waiting, because she has seen what re-education left of Keith Darnell. Adrian is left behind with no way to find her, no standing to make demands of the Alchemists, and no medication in his system to absorb the loss. Jill is still hiding, the research is unfinished, and the Palm Springs arrangement has been broken open by the order that was supposed to be maintaining it.

The book ends on the disaster it has been building towards. Zoe finds out what her sister has been hiding - the relationship with Adrian, and everything it implies about Sydney's loyalty - and does what she was trained to do: she reports it. Sydney is taken by the Alchemists without warning, seized in daylight, her phone and her charms gone, and driven out into the desert to a place nobody outside the order knows the location of. She understands, from what she has already seen of Keith Darnell, precisely what re-education means and how little of a person it returns. Adrian is left behind knowing only that she is gone. He has no way to find her, no standing to demand anything from the Alchemists, and no protection from what losing her will do to a spirit user who has stopped taking his medication. The research into a defence against Strigoi conversion is unfinished, Jill is still in hiding, and the household's cover in Palm Springs is now compromised by the order that was supposed to be maintaining it.