52 pages • 1 hour read
Alex AsterLightlark
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A 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 44-51Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 44 Summary: “Carmel”
Celeste and Isla make a plan to go to the library in the mainland castle to look for the bondbreaker. At Carmel, a festival of the Centennial that celebrates every realm, Isla gets drunk and Oro takes her to her room, where they bond and she falls asleep on his lap. When Oro leaves her to go back to the celebration, Ella comes to tell Isla that Celeste has been attacked.
Chapter 45 Summary: “Vanished”
Chapter 46 Summary: “Poison”
Isla tries but fails to open the spiral door in the Place of Mirrors. Later, she feels momentarily attracted to Oro while exploring an underwater chamber on Moon Isle with him. In the water, Isla is attacked by a mer-creature, but Oro saves her and heals her wounds. He has not found the heart and suspects it is in Vinderland territory. He reveals that the Vinderlanders are former Wildlings.
Chapter 47 Summary: “Bloom”
Chapter 48 Summary: “Hidden”
Oro shows Isla a secret library in the Mainland castle. This is where he learned about the heart of Lightlark. He tells her that it was not only Sunling and Nightshade power but also Wildling power that created Lightlark. Since Isla’s ancestor was one of the three people who created the island, Isla is one of the only people who can unlock the heart. She goes to visit the sleeping Celeste and promises to keep looking for the bondbreaker. Then she finds the diamond ring she had given Azul clutched in Celeste’s closed fist.
Chapter 49 Summary: “Diamond”
Chapter 50 Summary: “Sleepless”
Chapter 51 Summary: “Heart”
As a symbol of their alliance, Isla and Oro exchange crowns and go in search of the heart. Oro tells Isla his plans for restoring Lightlark once the curses are broken. They find the blue bird and follow it to its nest, but the island begins to crumble, Oro spasming in pain. Isla sings to heal Oro. When the sun rises, an egg floats above the nest, cracks open, and reveals the heart of Lightlark. Isla goes to retrieve it but is shot through the heart by an arrow. Because the sun is out, Oro cannot help her, so she summons Grim, who whisks her away.
Chapters 44-51 Analysis
Isla’s growing sense of herself as a sexual person culminates in these chapters. Isla’s drunkenness at the celebration of Carmel sets a sensual tone as she begins to realize how good it can feel to give in to The Dangerous Allure of Beauty. Her lack of inhibitions helps her to feel “better. Freer. Wilder” (317), facilitating a moment of tender closeness with Oro. In a later scene, after the two strip down to their underwear for a swim, Isla is attacked by a mer-creature, and Oro must heal her: “Something about his proximity, maybe, or his hands on her—or the blood she had lost, more likely—made her feel a little dizzy” (332). With Oro, she feels the sensations of arousal but denies what they mean. However, when she gives in to her attraction for Grim, she allows herself to experience overwhelming sensations of arousal and pleasure looking at his body and feeling his touch.
As far as Isla knows, this is her first sexual experience. Aster foreshadows the truth that Grim has hidden from Isla at the end of this encounter: “[S]omething about it all was so familiar, like falling asleep, or humming to the rain, or breathing. Like she had already done it all a thousand times in her dreams” (350). While these descriptions of deja vu are soft and pleasant, the later revelation that Grim has manipulated her memory will devastate Isla emotionally and ruin this memory for her.
The day after this encounter, Isla realizes she knows where the heart is. This discovery reflects Isla’s intelligence and determination. In an earlier segment, while observing the market, Isla realizes that “[p]atterns form[] for the patient […] and she had learned to be a very special brand of persistent while trapped within her glass castle” (77). Here, she’s able to deduce where the heart is by recalling repeated encounters with the bird.
However, the discovery of the heart also directly follows her sexual encounter with Grim. The heart itself is a representation of unity; Isla learns in these chapters that her own Wildling ancestor helped to create it, along with rulers of Nightshade and Sunling. Her discovery of the heart symbolizes Isla’s growing closeness to Oro and Grim—metaphorically, she has found her own heart. This segment ends with a last-minute complication as Isla is shot through the heart with an arrow just as she claims the heart of Lightlark. This event propels the narration into the climax.
