The Golden Lily recap

Sydney now runs the Palm Springs assignment, with a second guardian added to the household: Angeline Dawes, a dhampir raised outside Moroi law and hopelessly unsuited to high school. Sonya Karp and Dimitri Belikov arrive to research spirit and the restoration of Strigoi, and Sonya's ability to read auras confirms what Sydney will not admit - that she is working magic. Sydney trains with Ms. Terwilliger, takes self-defence lessons, and dates a safely ordinary human boy while spending most of her time with Adrian. Jill is quietly recruited as a model, a dangerous kind of visibility, and remains attached to Eddie, who refuses to see it. The old man Clarence's story about human vampire hunters turns out to be true: the Warriors of Light are a centuries-old society that considers every vampire an abomination, and Trey Juarez was raised in it. When the Warriors capture Sonya to try and execute her as proof that a restored Strigoi is still a monster, Trey helps Sydney's group infiltrate their gathering and Sonya is rescued. On the way home Adrian tells Sydney he loves her; she turns him down in the language of her order, and it breaks him.

Previously: Sydney Sage is an Alchemist, one of a secret order of humans who hide vampires from the world as a religious duty. She was assigned to conceal Jill Dragomir - the illegitimate half-sister of the Moroi queen, and the only reason her sister can hold the throne - at Amberwood Prep, a human boarding school in Palm Springs. Jill lives there as Sydney's sister, guarded by the dhampir Eddie Castile, who poses as their brother, while the royal Moroi Adrian Ivashkov, psychically bonded to Jill since he healed her, has settled nearby at the house of an elderly recluse named Clarence Donahue. In her first months Sydney uncovered a black market in tattoos made with Moroi blood, exposed the Alchemist Keith Darnell as its supplier and had him removed, which left her in charge of the assignment. She also discovered that a series of murders of young Moroi women was the work of Clarence's son Lee, who had been restored from Strigoi and was killing in an attempt to regain what he had lost; Lee died and Jill was recovered. Sydney's history teacher, Jaclyn Terwilliger, revealed that she is a witch, that human magic is real, and that Sydney has an unusual gift for it - which Sydney's entire upbringing tells her to reject.

Amberwood settles into a routine, and then a second guardian arrives: Angeline Dawes, a dhampir raised among the Keepers, who live outside Moroi law in the Appalachian backcountry. She is fearless, completely unprepared for a modern school, and enrolled as another cousin in the Melrose cover story, which hands Sydney a full-time problem. Jill has ended things with Micah, who takes up with Angeline instead; Jill's own attention is on Eddie, who refuses to see her as anything but a duty. Adrian is drinking less and painting more but has no direction, and Jill feels every swing of it through the bond. Sydney, now the Alchemist in charge, has to keep two Moroi and two dhampirs invisible at a human school while Ms. Terwilliger keeps pushing spell books at her that she does not want to open.

Sonya Karp and Dimitri Belikov come to Palm Springs to continue their research into spirit magic and the restoration of Strigoi, and Sydney is drawn in as the one person with the chemistry to test anything they propose. Sonya, herself a former Strigoi brought back by spirit, can read auras, and what she sees around Sydney says plainly that she is using magic. Adrian resents Dimitri's presence for reasons everyone can guess at. Sydney begins dating Brayden, a serious, widely read human boy chosen deliberately because he is safely ordinary, and starts self-defence lessons with Malachi Wolfe, a one-eyed instructor whose wild claims are matched by unexpectedly practical methods. Ms. Terwilliger keeps training her, and Sydney keeps insisting she is only being polite about it.

Jill is recruited as a model by Lia DiStefano, a Los Angeles designer, which flatters her enormously and is a serious risk for a girl whose safety depends on being unremarkable. Sydney's own training has gone further than she will admit: the charms work, and Sonya's reading of her aura leaves no room for denial. Clarence returns to his conviction that human vampire hunters killed his niece, and this time the details do not sound like an old man's confusion. Sydney's relationship with Brayden is running out of anything to say, and she notices how much more comfortable she is in Adrian's company than she is prepared to examine. Adrian, for his part, has stopped hiding what he feels from everyone except her.

The hunters are real. A society called the Warriors of Light has existed for centuries alongside the Alchemists, believing every vampire - Moroi as well as Strigoi - to be an abomination that must be destroyed, and Trey Juarez was raised inside it. Trey's family expects him to take his place among them, and his friendship with Sydney and the others becomes a problem he cannot solve. Sydney realizes that her own order has known about the Warriors all along and decided she did not need to be told, one more piece of a pattern she is starting to notice. Jill's modelling continues in secret, her feelings for Eddie go nowhere while Eddie and Angeline edge towards each other, and the research into restoring Strigoi draws exactly the wrong kind of attention. Sydney's relationship with Brayden ends, without either of them minding much.

The Warriors seize Sonya Karp. Because she was a Strigoi who was restored, they intend to try and execute her in front of their whole order as proof that a creature once turned can never be anything else. Sydney's group has no standing to demand her back and no time to negotiate, and the Alchemists will not intervene. Trey, caught between the people who raised him and the friends he has made, provides the way in. Sydney, Adrian, Eddie, Dimitri and Angeline plan an infiltration of the Warriors' gathering, and Sydney accepts that she will have to use Ms. Terwilliger's magic openly to get them through the door - the first time she stops pretending, in front of the people she cares about, that she is not a witch.

The rescue works. Eddie buys time in the Warriors' own ritual combat, Sydney uses magic in front of everyone, and Sonya is brought out alive; Trey's part in it costs him his standing with his father and his place in the order that raised him. On the way home, Adrian tells Sydney that he is in love with her and kisses her. Sydney turns him down - not because she feels nothing, which is the part she cannot say, but in the language she was raised on, that an Alchemist and a Moroi together is unthinkable - and it comes out far more brutally than she means it to. Adrian, who had finally been getting his life in order, is wrecked by it, and Jill feels the whole of it through the bond. Separately, Clarence mentions the young man who once investigated his niece's death: an Alchemist named Marcus Finch, who covered his golden lily with an indigo tattoo and then disappeared.

The rescue of Sonya Karp succeeds. Eddie buys time inside the Warriors' own ritual combat, Sydney uses magic openly in front of the people whose opinion she cares most about, and Sonya is brought out alive. Trey's part in it costs him his standing with his father and his place among the Warriors, and he is left with the friends he chose instead. The Warriors themselves are not destroyed, only thwarted, and the Alchemists' long silence about their existence is one more thing Sydney now knows her order kept from her. On the way home Adrian tells Sydney plainly that he is in love with her and kisses her. Sydney refuses him. She cannot say the true reason - that she feels the same - so she answers out of everything she was raised on, that an Alchemist and a Moroi together is unthinkable, and the words land far harder than she intends. Adrian, who had been putting his life in order largely for her sake, is left devastated, and Jill experiences all of it through the bond. Separately, Clarence mentions the young man who investigated his niece's death years before: an Alchemist named Marcus Finch who covered his golden lily with an indigo tattoo and then vanished, which is the first hint Sydney has that leaving the order is even possible.