Fair Warning
Fair warning: this video is full of spoilers, including who dies. If you haven’t finished the book, stop here and come back later.
The short answer: Violet learns that the monsters from her father’s fables are real, loses a friend she loves, nearly dies, and wakes up in a rebel city that was supposed to be ash. Then her dead brother walks in and says, welcome to the revolution.
The Setup Before The End
Quick recap of where things stand. Violet Sorrengail survived the first year at Basgiath, bonded two dragons, the huge black Tairn and the small golden Andarna, and discovered that her lightning is her signet. She and Xaden Riorson became lovers, in secret.
Then comes the final War Games exercise, in the middle of the night. Xaden builds his own squad, and every rider in it, apart from Violet, carries a rebellion relic. They fly beyond the wards, toward an outpost called Athebyne.
The Meeting At The Lake
At a lake near the outpost, two gryphon riders find Xaden and Violet in the middle of a kiss. In the book they’re called fliers. Xaden greets them like old partners and says they’re early, and Violet realizes he has been smuggling weapons to the enemy for years.
She’s furious. He says the weapons are for one thing only: fighting venin. And the fliers warn that a horde of venin has just destroyed a village and is heading for a trading post near Athebyne.
Why Xaden Kept It Secret
Why did Xaden hide it? Earlier in the book, he tells Violet about the deal that left him with a hundred and seven scars on his back. He took responsibility for the loyalty of the hundred and seven children of the rebel leaders, and if any of them betrays Navarre, his life is forfeit.
So the smuggling put every one of them at risk. He says he couldn’t tell her without risking her, and risking Dain finding out through a memory. It’s a reason, not an excuse, and Violet treats it exactly that way.
The Venin Are Real
Venin, in Violet’s father’s book of fables, are the villains who draw magic straight from the source, without a dragon or gryphon to guide it. In Xaden’s telling they’re real, and they’ve drained the Barrens and spread.
Our wards stop all magic that doesn’t come from dragons, so venin are powerless inside Navarre. That’s why Violet’s kingdom has never seen them. And the only thing that kills a venin is the very material that powers the wards, which is why the raids along the border have been about stealing it.
Violet remembers her father’s hidden letter, and she believes Xaden. But she says she doesn’t trust him anymore. He kept this from her on purpose.
Tairn And Andarna Knew
There’s a second betrayal in this scene, and I think it’s the sharper one. Tairn and Andarna knew. They were calm around the fliers because dragons are bound by bonds, and Sgaeyl is Tairn’s mate. Everyone knew but Violet.
Tairn later says it was an error, and that he won’t make it again. That scene matters because it shows how the dragons think. They protected her without asking, and she hates that. But it also explains why Tairn pushed her so hard in flight: he suspected what was coming.
The Trap At Athebyne
At Athebyne, the outpost is empty. There’s a letter from Colonel Aetos, Dain’s father. It says the mission is to survive if they can. Xaden realizes they’ve been sent there to die.
He works out why, and Violet agrees. Dain touched Violet’s face before they left, and his signet reads recent memories. Dain read what she knew about Athebyne, and his father used it. The test is cruel: abandon the village of the enemy, or abandon command of the wing.
Dain’s Part In It
Dain’s part in the trap is the quiet tragedy. He is not a villain. He is Violet’s oldest friend, and he does exactly what he always did: follows the rules and reports what he knows.
Earlier in the book he tried to read her memory in front of the quadrant, and she refused. This time, the book strongly implies he didn’t ask. He touched her face the way he always does, and Xaden is sure he read what she hadn’t offered. That one touch helped send them to Athebyne to die, and it breaks the friendship.
Resson
They choose to fight. Xaden gives everyone a way out, and they all stay. Violet stays, too, even though a flier mocks that no Sorrengail would risk their neck for another kingdom.
At the trading post of Resson, four venin attack with blue fire and wyvern. They are the two-legged dragon creatures from the fables. Soleil, a third-year, and her dragon Fuil die first, when a venin drains the life out of the ground, and out of them.
Liam And Deigh
Then comes the worst scene. A wyvern grabs Deigh, Liam’s red dragon, and they crash into the hillside. Deigh dies, and a rider can’t live without a bonded dragon, so Liam is dying, too.
Violet carries him to Deigh. His last wishes are small: take care of his sister Sloane, and hear Xaden out. He also tells her the one thing that matters most: there are two riders leading the horde. Liam dies in her arms, and Xaden screams so hard she feels it.
The Venin Rule
Xaden throws up a wall of shadows to buy time. Violet fights a venin on Tairn’s back, takes a poisoned dagger in the side, and kills her. And three wyvern fall out of the sky, dead.
That’s the rule Liam was trying to tell her. When a venin dies, so do the wyvern it created. If she kills the riders, the horde falls. Tairn spots the strongest one, and Violet calls lightning with Andarna’s time stop to guide a bolt exactly where she needs it. More than half the monsters drop from the sky.
The Poison And Andarna
Xaden finishes the last rider with a rope of shadow. Violet is burning with poison and falls from Tairn’s back. Andarna stops time one more time to catch her.
Violet wakes up cut off from her dragons, with black blood, and paralyzed. Xaden carries her, and the others argue: the wound might be poison or magic, and Basgiath is twelve hours away. Xaden refuses to let her die. He says there is somewhere closer.
Aretia
Three days later, Violet wakes in Xaden’s bed in a fortress. Through the window she sees a town with green roofs and the Temple of Amari. She knows it. This is Aretia, the Tyrrish capital that history says was burned to the ground.
It’s being rebuilt, and it’s hidden. Violet works out why: General Melgren sees the outcome of battles, but he can’t see the future when more than three marked riders are together. That’s why they’re forbidden to gather, and why Aretia can exist. She has just walked into the heart of the rebellion.
Brennan
She asks if Liam is really dead, and Xaden gives her the little carving of Andarna Liam had been finishing. They buried him the day before. She says she’s in, she’ll fight with them, but she won’t trust Xaden with her heart again.
Then the door opens. It’s Brennan. The brother who supposedly died six years ago, the mender everyone mourned, grins and says welcome to the revolution. Xaden tells her she wasn’t healed. She was mended.
What The Ending Means
The ending flips the whole book. The wards really do protect Navarre, but they also hide a secret. Violet’s mother, and very likely the king, know about the venin and choose to do nothing. Violet’s father tried to warn her in a book that wasn’t allowed in the Archives.
Her father’s note said it only takes one desperate generation to change history, even erase it. The faltering wards and the raids on the border start to look like part of that cover up. Violet started the book as a scribe who trusted history, and she ends it knowing history was edited.
Where Everyone Ends Up
Where does everyone end up? Violet is alive, with a new scar, two dragons and no trust in Xaden. Andarna has grown huge, and her time gift is gone. Xaden is the leader of a hidden rebellion, and he has been in love with her much longer than he showed.
Liam and Soleil are dead. Dain, who read her memory and put his father’s rules above her, isn’t there for the finale, and Violet hasn’t faced him yet. Garrick, Bodhi and Imogen survive. And Brennan, the brother she grieved, is alive.
Questions The Ending Leaves Open
The book leaves a lot open. It never explains how Brennan survived, or why Tairn’s last rider burned out trying to save him. It never says what Violet’s mother knows. The dagger on her desk suggests she knows a lot.
We also don’t know what the venin Sage wants. The venin Violet killed mentioned a Sage, who would have been very interested in her. And we don’t know what the iron box from the clock tower holds. Those threads carry over into the next book.
My Verdict On The Ending
My verdict: it’s a great ending. The battle at Resson is the best action in the book, Liam’s death hurts exactly as much as it should, and the Brennan reveal makes you want to open the next book at once.
My gripe is that the explanation arrives all at once, in a dump of dialogue, after a lot of hiding. And the book still doesn’t tell us how Brennan lived. But I loved it. If you want to talk about it, leave a comment: did you see Brennan coming? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
