To Kill a Kingdom

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018

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Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 17 Summary

Elian balks at the idea of killing a begging creature and wonders why the vicious siren, who moments ago was ready to kill, is begging for her life. Lira asks him to kill Maeve, wanting her to suffer. She notices that blood, dripping from Elian’s wound down his hand and into his knife, is being absorbed by the blade. Kye, having heard Lira speak Psáriin, warns Elian not to trust her, but Elian focuses instead on Maeve. Lira’s suggestion that they pull out Maeve’s heart is also strange to the crew. Madrid explains that they don’t take hearts—only sirens do.

The siren begs for her life from Lira again, but Elian orders his crew to hold her down as Madrid shoots a spear through her fin, pinning her to the deck. Elian tries to interrogate her, using Lira as a translator, but the siren lunges at him. The crew scramble to save Elian from the siren, but they can’t find a good shot without hitting Elian. Finally, Kye pulls the siren away from him, and Elian quickly plunges his knife into her. The knife takes in the blood and the siren dies. They watch as the siren fades into sea-foam.

Chapter 18 Summary

Lira is conflicted about helping the humans kill Maeve, as sirens have been at war with humanity for generations. After Maeve disappears, the crew of the Saad take Lira below deck to a windowless room. They show her a big cube made of black glass and reveal it to be an impenetrable prison. Elian asks Lira where she’s from and why she left, threatening to put her into the prison built for the Sea Queen should she refuse to answer. She says that everyone abandoned her. The vagueness of her answer doesn’t satisfy Elian, so he puts her into the glass cage for the three days until they reach Eidýllio.

The prison is dark, and Lira only sees light when a crewmember brings her food. She remembers her first time killing a human: a prince from Kalokaíri when she was 12. He was around her age, and she lured him into the water and let him drown peacefully in her arms before she took his heart. Lira felt remorse for killing the boy, and it showed when she presented the heart to the Sea Queen. Her mother was angry that she allowed the boy to die before she took his heart and ordered her to kill Khalia, then a very young child, to prove her ruthlessness. Lira weighed the option of running away with Khalia but feared they’d both still face her mother’s wrath, so she decided to go through with it. However, her aunt, Crestell, wanted to protect her daughter and offered to let Lira kill her instead. The Sea Queen, agreeing that it was a suitable substitute, ordered Lira to kill Crestell, and though Lira didn’t want to, she felt she had to. Just before Lira ripped out her heart, Crestell told Lira to become the queen that the sea needed.

When the three days are up, Elian interrogates Lira again about her origins. He uses his pocket watch to determine whether or not she’s lying; Lira senses the magic, so she figures out how to tell half-truths. She tells him that the Sea Queen stole her family, and that her family are hunters like his. He asks her how she knows so much about sirens, and she says that she tortured one to get information, thinking about Maeve. He asks if she knows about the Crystal, and she promises to tell him if he makes it worth her while. He balks at the idea of striking a deal with his captive, so she asks him to let her out. He doesn’t, instead sending Kye to bring her a pillow.

Chapter 19 Summary

Elian finally allows Lira out of the cage when they reach Eidýllio, which is so bright and warm that it seems like magic to her. Eidýllio is a land of love, and Madrid tells Lira that it’s Elian’s favorite place. This confuses Lira, who knows him as a ruthless killer. Lira notices that Elian’s knife absorbs light as well as blood, and she longs to hold it. The crew leaves all of their weapons in bags and checks them at the gate before they enter the city, but Elian keeps his special knife, citing diplomatic immunity.

The wall to the city is made of white rose petals that reflect light, and the crew walks over a floating island to get to it. The city smells of sweets, which is Madrid’s favorite thing about it. Scouts come to check the crew for weapons, but Lira refuses to let them touch her. The scout moves her arms to search her, and she tries to attack him but ends up being knocked to the ground. Lira wants to fight but is weaker than she was as a siren, and Elian steps in to stop the quarrel. They get into the city, and Elian tells her that he intends to leave her there. He returns her seashell necklace and tells her that she should find the Reoma Putoder if she misses the ocean.

Lira finds the Reoma Putoder, which is a lagoon in Eidýllio. She uses her necklace to try to call to Khalia but gets no response, so she throws the necklace into the water. Moments later, Khalia emerges, giving her back the necklace. The Sea Queen has given her a bruised eye as punishment for helping Lira kill the Adékarosin prince. Lira is angry because she was supposed to have taken Khalia’s punishment for her. She tells Khalia about the Crystal, which Khalia infers she means to use against her mother. Khalia agrees that the Sea Queen needs to be stopped. She recounts that the Sea Queen knew when Maeve was killed and didn’t care; their deaths mean nothing to her. Lira vows to change that once she gets the Crystal and take the Sea Queen’s throne.

Chapters 17-19 Analysis

In these chapters, Lira is just beginning to experience an internal conflict. Though she has been transformed, she is still very much a siren at her core. However, her ruthlessness as a siren has led to her contributing to the humans’ murder of a fellow siren. She also is faced with the reality of her mother’s cruelty when she sees Khalia at the Reoma Putoder. The pull to align herself with the humans and distance herself from her mother confuses Lira, who hasn’t quite let go of what she has been taught. She worries that letting the humans kill Maeve was a betrayal, but she also believes that the Sea Queen punishing Khalia is a betrayal.

The crew of the Saad still don’t trust Lira, so they imprison her and plan to abandon her in Eidýllio. Elian, who projects an image of ruthlessness, is actually a compassionate person (and, his appreciation of Eidýllio hints, a romantic one). He is hesitant to kill Maeve when Lira tells him that she’s begging for her life. Likewise, he can’t bring himself to harm Lira, though she’s a strange girl who seems far from trustworthy. He primarily decides to keep Lira around because of her knowledge about the Crystal of Keto; however, he also seems to take pity on her.

Christo’s depiction of Eidýllio—the kingdom of love—reflects the novel’s broader tendency to play with romantic tropes. Although To Kill a Kingdom ultimately is a love story, it satirizes many of the conventions of fairy tale romance, the most obvious example being Lira’s practice of quite literally stealing hearts. On its surface, Eidýllio seems to conform to these romantic tropes; it is a city with walls made out of rose petals, and its very name means “romance,” or a romantic idyll, in Greek. However, Christo will reveal a dark side to the kingdom in the coming chapters with her depiction of Queen Galina, who has suffered significantly as a result of a superficially “romantic” characteristic: Any man who touches her becomes so devoted to her that he goes insane. Through figures like Galina, Christo suggests that love is a powerful force but not necessarily a nice or picturesque one.