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 52-56Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 52 Summary: “Prophecy”
Isla is weak, wounded by the arrow, but the heart’s magic saves her from death. Celeste is healed, too, by a rare Wildling elixir Grim has found. Isla runs to her friend and promises to make everything better. Oro returns at dusk and gives Isla the heart of Lightlark, which she dropped when she was shot. They surmise that they have fulfilled all parts of the prophecy, except for which ruler must die. Since Isla wants to save Celeste, Oro chooses Grim to die. Isla objects, arguing that Cleo or Azul are better candidates, but Oro explains away their suspicious behaviors. Isla threatens Oro and then leaves.
Chapter 53 Summary: “Choice”
In an attempt to save Grim’s life, Isla asks Celeste to allow him into their bondbreaker plan. They decide to do it at the Place of Mirrors, which will suppress everyone else’s power. Isla collects Grim, who promises to do anything to help, and then reveals that the sensual dreams Isla has had about them are actually memories he has magically suppressed. Prior to the Centennial, they had a year-long, secret romantic relationship. At this revelation, Isla runs away from Grim. She finds Celeste, and they use the bondbreaker together, but it takes something from Isla. Celeste reveals herself to be Aurora, the ancient ruler who first cast the curses 500 years ago. At that time, she was in love with Oro’s brother, but he rejected her for a Wildling named Violet, and Aurora cursed all the Starlings to avenge her rejection. Because she herself was not cursed, she has been pretending to be her own progeny ever since. She also reveals that Isla is not powerless. Instead, since her mother was Wildling and her father was Nightshade, she has the powers of both realms, but they have been masking each other. Moreover, because Grim and Oro have fallen in love with Isla, giving her access to their powers, using the bondbreaker has now given Aurora all six powers of all the realms. Finally, she reveals that Grim has been her accomplice in this entire plan. Isla attacks her but fails and then uses her starstick to return to Wildling.
Chapter 54 Summary:” Cursed”
Isla confronts her guardians on Wildling, angry with them for not telling her the truth about her parents. She retrieves two swords and portals back to the Place of Mirrors and then finds and fights Aurora, who has Grimm and Oro tied up. Aurora is winning the fight until Isla calls the heart of light to her and uses the bondbreaker to steal Aurora's powers back, killing Aurora. This act fulfills the prophecy, and the curses are broken. The island cracks, but Oro saves Isla from falling. He uses Wildling power to do so, thus revealing that she loves him. Despite this apparently happy ending, Isla is also heartbroken at the betrayals of her guardians, Grim, and Celeste/Aurora.
Chapter 55 Summary: “Broken”
Isla has unraveled all the mysteries of the Centennial, the realms, and her own history. She returns to the mainland castle to recover and grieve. She’s not sure what will happen to the realms next since Starling is left without a ruler, Cleo and Moon Isle have cut contact with the Mainland, and Grim has disappeared. Oro tells her how he fell in love with her, and Isla returns his feelings, but she is not ready to move forward because of her heartbreak over Grim.
Chapter 56 Summary: “Key”
Isla returns to the Place of Mirrors, realizing what will open the spiral door: her crown. It clicks into the lock, and the door opens.
Chapters 52-56 Analysis
In the previous sections, Celeste had become a secondary character, her alliance and friendship with Isla garnering less focus than the growing relationships between Isla and Grim and Oro. Her impact on the plot seemed minimized even further when she was attacked and put into a magical coma. However, once Isla gains the heart of Lightlark, Celeste becomes a major character again. The erstwhile quest for the bondbreaker also gains new urgency and sudden success as the two rulers find it and plan to use it immediately to break the curses.
These climactic chapters slow the action down, only covering a few hours instead of days, but they feature several final twists. Grim has hidden Isla’s memory of him from her, which puts his pursuit of Isla in previous chapters in a new, unsettling context. To Isla, this information registers as both Abandonment and Betrayal: She can no longer consider him a friend, and she must reevaluate all their past interactions in light of this betrayal. Celeste’s revelation that she is in fact Aurora is a similarly profound betrayal, one that forces Isla to realize that the bond between them was never real. An ancient competitor for the heart of Lightlark, Aurora has been working with Grim and Isla’s guardians to manipulate Isla behind the scenes her entire life: “Isla had been alone. And Celeste had preyed on her loneliness” (396). The loss of this friendship breaks Isla emotionally, but it also provides her with new information—that everything her guardians told her about her parents and herself was a lie. Isla was not born powerless after all, and this knowledge helps fuel her final strike against Aurora.
The heart of Lightlark gains greater importance as a symbol of unity when Isla calls it to her, using it to break free of Aurora’s restraints and gain back her powers from Aurora. Aurora’s body is swallowed by the cracking island of Lightlark, symbolizing the unnaturalness of her original offense: betraying a friend and breaking trust. By contrast, Isla’s ability to wield all the powers of Lightlark after her victory represents the importance of trust, collaboration, and love. The final revelation is that Oro and Isla are in love and can share each other’s powers, a state of vulnerability that makes both lovers cautious but hopeful about their bond. This ending is only a “happy for now” romance ending, though, because the final two chapters also set up for a sequel. In this denouement, the action has almost entirely ceased, most of the characters have dispersed, and Isla is left to process her emotions, largely alone. Several mysteries are teased for the next book: what Cleo is doing with her army, where Grim went, and what will happen to the nation of Starling without a ruler. The novel ends on a tantalizing note as Isla finally unlocks the spiral door in the Place of Mirrors, but what is within is not revealed.
