73 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah J. MaasA Court of Thorns and Roses
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 39-46Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 39 Summary
Rhysand ensures Feyre is sent wholesome food in the dungeon. After a few days, two of Rhysand’s female High Fae servants escort Feyre to a dressing room where they paint her body with swirls and dress her in a revealing gossamer gown. Feyre is to accompany Rhysand to the nightly feast, and he will know if Tamlin touches her because the paint will be smeared. At the party, Rhysand flaunts Feyre in front of Tamlin, who tries to restrain himself. Rhysand forces Feyre to drink faerie wine, and she blacks out. Later, Lucien visits Feyre in her cell and explains that Rhysand forced the drugged Feyre to dance suggestively to torment Tamlin. Feyre is humiliated. Lucien asks why Feyre didn’t wait for him to help her, but Feyre insists that she was dying and had no time. Lucien admits that he has only just recovered from his punishment; Amarantha forced Tamlin to whip Lucien for helping Feyre in the first task. Lucien explains that Tamlin’s stoicism is to prevent Amarantha from learning what form of Feyre’s torment upsets him most.
Every night, Rhysand drugs Feyre and makes her dance. During the day, she recovers and puzzles over Amarantha’s riddle. One night, before Feyre is drugged, Amarantha has Rhysand execute a Summer Court faerie for attempting to escape. Feyre sees the High Lord of the Summer Court exchange looks with Rhysand, and she realizes that it is a mercy killing and that Rhysand is hiding a larger conspiracy.
Chapter 40 Summary
For her second task, Feyre must solve a riddle and pull one of three levers to free herself and Lucien before they are crushed by a spiked grate suspended from the ceiling. If she chooses incorrectly, the grate will crash down instantly. Feyre, still illiterate, cannot read the riddle on the wall and so has no way to determine the correct lever and decides to guess. Feyre’s arm hurts as she reaches for the second lever, and the eye in her tattoo narrows. Rhysand telepathically guides Feyre to the correct third lever. Feyre is devastated by the near disaster and certain she will fail the next task. Rhysand, still in Feyre’s mind, tells her to hold back her tears and leave the throne room with dignity. Later, Rhysand visits a distraught Feyre in her cell. He licks at Feyre’s tears until she pushes him away. Rhysand hints that he knows Feyre is attracted to him, but Feyre tells him to leave. Rhysand does and agrees not to drug Feyre the next night. Feyre realizes that Rhysand’s visit has shaken her out of her despair.
Chapter 41 Summary
Feyre is certain that she will not leave Under the Mountain alive. One night, as she is painted for Rhysand, the Attor appears with an emissary from the King of Hybern. Rhysand’s servants hide themselves and Feyre to spy on their conversation. The King of Hybern’s emissary warns the Attor that the King is displeased with Amarantha for prioritizing her own goals over his new war against humans.
Another night, music pours through a vent in Feyre’s cell and inspires a beautiful vision of nature. Feyre believes the music is a message from Tamlin, and her hope is restored.
Chapter 42 Summary
The night before the final task, Feyre attends the throne room party as usual, but Rhysand waits to drug her. She and Tamlin meet in a corridor, desperate to be intimate one last time. Rhysand discovers them and warns Tamlin of Amarantha’s revenge if she finds them together. Tamlin dresses and leaves. Rhysand scolds Feyre for taking such a risk, and he kisses her when he hears Amarantha approaching. Feyre is humiliated again when the entire faerie court, including Tamlin, sees her in Rhysand’s arms.
Later, Rhysand visits Feyre in her cell. Rhysand is secretly plotting against Amarantha and is using Feyre to “[work] Tamlin into a senseless fury” (382) so that Tamlin will destroy Amarantha once Feyre breaks the curse. Rhysand never touches Feyre beyond her waist or arms while she dances so he can convince Tamlin later that he was on his side all along. Protecting the Night Court is Rhysand’s first priority. Amarantha forced Rhysand to be her lover as punishment for Rhysand’s father killing Tamlin’s father and brothers, who were her allies. In retribution, Tamlin killed Rhysand’s father. Rhysand kissed Feyre to conceal her embrace with Tamlin and protect them all from Amarantha’s wrath. Rhysand admits he could have forced Feyre to accept his help under any terms but chose not to.
Chapter 43 Summary
For Feyre’s final task, she must murder three innocent High Fae in cold blood, as she killed Andras. Feyre declares her love for Tamlin again, and the task begins. Anguished, Feyre kills the first two faeries by stabbing them in the heart with an ash wood dagger. The third faerie is unmasked: Tamlin. Feyre declares the task is unfair, but Amarantha insists she never promised that Feyre could have Tamlin alive. Feyre must kill Tamlin or be killed. Feyre tries to remember everything Tamlin tried to reveal to her surreptitiously about the curse. She recalls Lucien and the Attor referring to Tamlin’s “heart of stone” (396) and realizes Tamlin’s heart is literally made of stone and that it won’t be hurt by the dagger. Tamlin smiles at Feyre, which she takes as encouragement. Feyre stabs Tamlin in the heart while telling him she loves him.
Chapter 44 Summary
Tamlin is hurt but alive. Amarantha declares that the bargain was not specific, so she can free Tamlin whenever she wants as long as she does so eventually. Amarantha tortures Feyre and threatens to kill her unless she admits that she doesn’t really love Tamlin. Tamlin, still healing, is unable to help. Rhysand tries to intervene, but Amarantha attacks him. The crowd demands that Amarantha free Tamlin immediately, but she refuses. Amarantha forces Feyre to remember the worst moments of her life. Tamlin tries to apologize for insulting Amarantha, but she continues torturing Feyre. Feyre solves Amarantha’s riddle and speaks the answer, “Love,” before Amarantha breaks Feyre’s neck, killing her.
Chapter 45 Summary
Feyre, dead, watches the scene through Rhysand’s eyes, since they are still magically bonded by their bargain. She sees Lucien remove his mask. Tamlin, enraged, stabs Amarantha through the skull and tears out her throat. Tamlin holds Feyre’s body, and all seven High Lords of Prythian each bestow a bit of magic on her corpse. Tamlin kisses Feyre and tells her he loves her.
Chapter 46 Summary
Feyre is resurrected as a High Fae. The curse is broken, and Amarantha is dead. Feyre removes Tamlin’s mask, torn between her love and her horror that she murdered two innocent faeries. After a short meeting with the High Lords, Tamlin and Feyre recover in a bedchamber and have sex.
Later, Feyre meets with Rhysand on the mountainside. Rhysand tells Feyre he defended her at the end because he wanted to do the right thing and didn’t want Feyre to “die alone.” He admits that he loves flying but that he often loses the things he loves. Feyre tells him that her body is High Fae, but her heart still feels human. Rhysand tells her this is a good thing. He gives Feyre a shocked look, then vanishes.
Tamlin and Feyre head home to the Spring Court at sunrise, and Feyre looks forward to eternity with him.
Chapters 39-46 Analysis
The last chapters are the most morally complex as Maas simultaneously concludes her thematic explorations of love and sacrifice and sets up the next novel in the series.
Rhysand commits murder, assault, and psychological violation all in the name of destroying Amarantha. Maas maintains ambiguity about whether Rhysand is truly invested in the greater good or purely self-motivated. Rhysand calls himself a “pragmatist” while visiting Feyre in her cell, yet he also proclaims to help Feyre in the end not only because he wants his future children to know he fought against Amarantha, but because he didn’t want Feyre “to fight alone […] Or die alone” (413), echoing Feyre’s own words to the dying Summer Court faerie in Chapter 17. Rhysand’s arc complicates the previously clear portrayal of the total incompatibility of non-consent and intimacy. Rhysand gives Feyre no choice in establishing their relationship, yet Feyre tentatively begins to trust the High Lord of the Night Court as he seems to genuinely be on her side, although he manipulates and humiliates her for his own political purposes. Rhysand’s shocked expression at the end of his final confrontation with Feyre is later revealed as his recognition of the mating bond between him and Feyre, and much of the second novel in the series, A Court of Mist and Fury, further examines the fraught progression of Rhysand’s and Feyre’s intimacy.
Within the context of this first novel, Maas portrays love as the force that allows Feyre to triumph over Amarantha and even death itself. By making the ultimate sacrifice with her climactic death, Feyre proves herself worthy of resurrection, a gift the High Lords give extremely rarely. Feyre’s resurrection as a High Fae symbolizes the metaphorical death of her previous self and her new life fully committed to Tamlin and Prythian. Still, Maas portrays Feyre as unreconciled to the horrors she saw and committed Under the Mountain, even as the other faeries thank Feyre for saving them from Amarantha. Feyre maintains her essential nature as a self-sacrificing individual more willing to take on personal harm than to cause harm to others, and Maas sets up her protagonist’s internal conflict for the next novel in the series. In Feyre’s ambivalent feelings at the conclusion of A Court of Thorns and Roses, Maas resists the notion that love justifies all actions even as she celebrates love as the most powerful force in Prythian: “Tomorrow—there would be tomorrow, and an eternity, to face what I had done” (416), Feyre thinks as she heads home with Tamlin. Maas withholds emotional closure for Feyre despite completing the narrative arc of the novel, suggesting future character growth in later novels.
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