51 pages • 1 hour read
Harper L. WoodsThe Coven
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Willow”
Willow is shocked by the state of the school’s gardens. Iban says that no one knows what happened to the plants; his only explanation is that the magic at the school is no longer as strong as it once was. She asks him when someone last made an offering to the plants, and he tells her that the Coven forbids this practice. Willow allows the plants to twist around her hands and arms, splitting her skin and taking her blood. Iban is shocked as the leaves and vines turn green again. When Willow sways on her feet, the vines catch her, and she tells Iban that there must be balance; witches must return what they take from the earth. She explains, “It was the symbiotic relationship that a witch was meant to have with her affinity. Harmony, rather than theft” (77). Seeing this relationship makes Iban wish that he had not given up his own magic. When Gray realizes what Willow has done, he offers her his own blood to replenish her strength. She refuses, and he carries her to her dorm room. Willow knows that Gray cannot feel love, but she thinks that she can manipulate his lust for her in order to achieve her goals.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Gray”
Gray enjoys Willow’s rebelliousness, but he hates the fact that he is attracted to her. Like Willow, he finds Susannah and George—the members of the Covenant—to be selfish, and he appreciates the courtyard’s new vibrancy now that the plants have been revived. Now, he anticipates the first Reaping of the year, when he will have his “pick” of witches. He enters Willow’s room and gazes at her sleeping form, lamenting his lack of control where she is concerned. He notices that she fell asleep in her jeans and looks uncomfortable, so he removes them. At the sight of her curves, he becomes aroused and leaves.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Willow”
Willow dreams of Flora, who tells her that although Ash is safe, Willow is not. When Willow awakens, she sees her jeans on the floor and reaches for the rose on her desk. When she pricks her finger on its thorn, the rose shows her everything that it saw while she was asleep. She dons her school uniform and meets her roommates. Iban delivers a hearty breakfast, courtesy of Gray, to replenish Willow after her blood sacrifice. She realizes that the Coven would approve of Iban as a match for her, especially because he was a Green witch; the Coven prefers pure bloodlines. However, Willow doesn’t want children.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Gray”
Willow sits in the front row, eating her fruit during Gray’s class, and he reflects that she is a terrible temptation. His “true body and heart [are] locked in the pits of Hell” (98), and he has no interest in anything besides sex. Vessels and witches are allowed to experience intimacy at the Reaping, but the students involved are blindfolded when the Vessels feed, so they do not know who is partaking of their blood. Gray reminds himself that because Willow has flirted with every male she’s met at school, her behavior isn’t inspired by him in particular.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Gray”
Gray considers killing Iban so that the boy cannot become romantically involved with Willow, but he knows that the Coven would punish him for such an action. As a male witch who gave up his magic to have a family, Iban is a valuable asset. Gray realizes that Flora taught Willow to think for herself, and he appreciates this. He recalls when Charlotte Hecate first prayed to the devil to escape a mob, after which the devil gave her some of his magic. It was Charlotte who first used the devil’s magic to create Vessels, the “immortal homes for the souls of his demons” (104). Gray realizes that Flora taught Willow about Charlotte. Historically, Charlotte did not want authority over the Coven, so she resurrected the Covenant and gave them a governing role. Though they were Charlotte’s mentors in life, they tore her apart and buried the pieces in the gardens. Because Charlotte is immortal, her body cannot rot, so her magic lives on in her bones.
Willow knows this, and she confronts Gray, brushing her lips against Gray’s and threatening to make a deal with the devil herself. She is like a siren calling him, he thinks, and he realizes that she feels “like life.” As Gray pushes against her, she says that she is showing him what he’ll never have. She admits to knowing that he entered her room. He insists that he didn’t violate her and wants her to be awake when they have sex, so that she will scream his name. Susannah interrupts, reminding Gray that feeding on students outside the Reaping is discouraged. Willow leaves the room, and Gray invokes “dominium,” declaring Willow off-limits to all Vessels except him. According to the rules of this practice, he can only select one such witch in his centuries of life. He does not want Willow to know, but he knows that Susannah cannot deny him this boon.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Willow”
Willow avoids Gray for a few days, struggling with her father’s admonitions that men prefer quiet women. She researches Vessels in the library, learning that no one knows the true identities of the demons within them. When Gray escorts her to his office, she asks his name, but he refuses to tell her. Names have power, he says, and if he were summoned by name, he would have to answer. He suggests a truce. The other Vessels fear him just as the Coven fears Willow, and when he tells her that she is worth more than all of them, she feels seen for the first time in her life. He knows that Ash is her weakness, but she doesn’t yet know what Gray’s weakness is. He reminds her that Vessels cannot love, and the tilt of his head draws her gaze to a painting of Lucifer that hangs above him. The fallen angel is beautiful and angry, and Gray says the painting is a reminder that anyone, however beautiful, is capable of terrible things. He asks her to help him return the Coven to the old ways and “restore the balance before it’s too late” (123). They make a deal: his protection for her help. To seal the bargain, she drinks blood from him, and he from her.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Willow”
Susannah teaches the witches about their magic, though Willow knows more than the others. Susannah says that Charlotte Hecate was too strong, so the Covenant selected two each of the other kinds of witches in order to create balance in the Tribunal. Susannah declares that the death of the Hecate line strengthened the Vessels, making it impossible for witches to destroy the Vessels completely. Susannah says that the only way to weaken a Vessel is to deprive it of its food source: witches’ blood. Once the Vessel is weak enough, it can be trapped within the earth.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Gray”
Gray is summoned to the body of a student who was killed in the courtyard. The young witch is wrapped in vines, and George wants to close the school, fearing that Willow isn’t safe. As with one of the deaths that occurred 50 years ago, someone has torn the witch’s heart out. Another witch accuses Willow of murder, based on the fact that Willow made a blood offering here. As soon as Willow’s education is complete, she will be his equal on the Tribunal. Susannah orders Gray to keep Willow safe, not realizing that he has his own reasons for doing so.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Willow”
Willow dreams of her aunt, who clutches a small black pouch of bones. In the dream, when Loralei sees Willow, she calls her niece “Charlotte” and tells her to run. Suddenly, Willow is struck in the back, and Loralei tells her to wake up, calling her by name now. Willow wakes up and runs to the bathroom, feeling sick. She removes her shirt and sees an odd triangle of marks slashed into her back, then covers herself with a towel as Gray bursts into the room. He demands to see her injury, and she can feel his gaze “slither” over her breasts. She lies about knowing the woman in her dream but says that whoever chased her remained unseen. He explains that the mark on her back is called the devil’s eye, and that it allows “Him”—Lucifer—to watch Willow. Gray asks her to explain why the devil would be interested in her.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Willow”
Gray kisses the skin below the mark, which arouses Willow. He suggests that she would be happy if he “bent her” over the sink now. He calls her “love,” wrapping a hand around her throat. When she tries to compel the stone tiles to do her bidding, Gray kisses her hard. His hand slides to her breast and then under her thin shorts. He brings her close to orgasm, then stops, saying that she can finish when she tells him the truth. When Willow retorts that she will achieve an orgasm herself, he uses his power of compulsion to prevent this, saying that she will not be able to reach orgasm without him until he releases her. He has more control over her now because she has consumed his blood.
Chapters 11-20 Analysis
The practice and theory of blood sacrifice, which Willow demonstrates in the school’s courtyard, is another allusion to Greek mythology, and its prohibition suggests the Covenant’s true goals. Ancient Greeks believed that just as the earth nourishes humanity, human blood nourishes the earth as well, and this belief underlies the historical sacrifices of animals. As a symbol of primal life force, blood was thought to be especially powerful, and this belief fuels the novel’s references to blood sacrifices and the practice of feeding Vessels with the blood of witches. When Willow offers her blood to the plants, she thinks, “It was about them needing to receive back a portion of what had been taken from them” (75). Her private thoughts reveal her essentially ethical approach to witchcraft at this point, for she understands that just as witches draw power from nature, they must also return some of that power via their blood. Because Willow is willing to help the plants, they later serve her in return by confining those who threaten her and assisting her when she is weak. Many stories in Greek mythology represent blood as a potent force. Prime examples occur in the respective stories of Narcissus and Adonis. When Narcissus dies, narcissus flowers spring from the earth where his blood has fallen; similarly, when Adonis is killed by a wild boar, red anemones grow where his blood touches the earth.
Drawing upon such mythological roots, Woods creates a world in which blood magic is associated with great power for either good or evil, describing the interdependent dynamic between the earth and the power of witches. Notably, Iban does not explain why the Coven forbids blood magic, and this injunction remains a curiosity from Willow’s perspective. If the earth grows weak, so will the witches, whose power relies on nature. It therefore follows that if the witches grow weak, their blood will provide less sustenance to the Vessels, who depend on it for survival. Susannah tells students that the only way to weaken a Vessel is to “deprive it of its food source” (130), and while the Covenant regulates the Vessels’ feedings via the weekly Reapings, Vessels are not allowed to feed on witches outside these times. As the witches’ blood becomes less potent—a consequence of the imbalance between their powers and nature—it will fail to sustain the Vessels that rely upon it. In addition to the deep antagonism between the Covenant and the Vessels, this growing imbalance suggests that the Covenant may be attempting to weaken the Vessels enough to eliminate them entirely, thereby fortifying the Covenant’s own power and authority.
The intensifying interactions between Gray and Willow also allow for a key moment of foreshadowing, and as Willow becomes curious about Gray’s hidden demonic identity, the narrative offers several clear-cut clues. For example, when he bursts into the bathroom and finds Willow half naked, she observes that his gaze is “like a tangible thing, slithering over [her] like the serpent in the Garden of Eden” (142). This simile, in which Willow compares Gray’s scrutiny to a snake, also acts as an allusion to the book of Genesis—the first book in the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Pentateuch. In the Garden of Eden, the fallen angel Lucifer disguises himself as a serpent to tempt Eve into eating a forbidden apple. This age-old story is clearly embedded in Woods’s narrative, for not only is Willow’s power replenished by the fruit that Gray sends after the blood sacrifice, but she also eats it suggestively in his class. These details are designed to reinforce her connection with Eve and with the dynamics of temptation, and the narrative also suggests quite openly that if Gray is the serpent who tempts Willow, then he could be Lucifer himself.
This theory is further supported by the large painting that hangs in Gray’s office and depicts Lucifer’s fall from grace. Willow’s visceral reaction to this painting indicates just how deeply ensnared she already is by the seductive allure of this embodiment of evil. As she observes, “[The figure’s] stunningly beautiful features twisted in pain. His eyes glowed bright gold, the harsh set to His features betraying every moment of His rage. He was like nothing I’d ever seen before, emitting such power from a painting that the breath caught in my throat” (122). While any demon that owes its existence to the devil might possess such a sympathetic representation of Lucifer’s beauty and anger, the fact that Willow’s eyes immediately shift from Gray to the portrait suggests that a deeper connection exists.
The intense sexual attraction between Willow and Gray further develops The Tension Between Duty and Desire, for Willow feels obligated to fulfill her father’s revenge plot, while Gray owes his allegiance to the school and the other Vessels. Torn between conflicting desires, they tempt one another to distraction, and they each must repeatedly remind themselves of the danger that the other poses to their goals. Within this context, several new developments emphasize the ways in which the pair represents The Balance of Opposites in nature and individuals. For example, Gray recognizes that “the Coven’s desperation to restore [Willow’s] blood had created the perfect weapon to bring about the downfall of everything they’d created […]. She would either be their undoing or [the Vessels’] salvation” (137). Within her, opposite possibilities are united: She could destroy the Coven or save it, and she is equally predisposed to either annihilate Vessels or protect them.
This largely unspoken tension parallels the balance for which Willow advocates when she discusses the nature of blood magic. She says that a witch is meant to have a “symbiotic relationship […] with her affinity. Harmony, rather than theft” (77), and she indicates that the give-and-take is crucial to the power of each. Likewise, when Gray suggests a truce, he asks Willow to help him “restore the balance before it’s too late” (123). The concept of balance reappears soon afterward in Susannah’s comment that “balance is of the utmost importance” (128) when it comes to the Tribunal, referring to the reason why there are two witch families of each kind on the Tribunal, except for the too-powerful Black witches. Notably, only a witch from House Hecate has the power to unmake Vessels; the Vessels themselves were created by Charlotte, and when her line died, this loss upset the balance between Vessels and witches, giving Vessels more power because they are nearly immortal. Thus, throughout the narrative, the widespread focus on the need for balance suggests each group’s real motives.
