Greymoor Academy Recap Part 6: Samhain

Greymoor Academy recap part 6 covers chapters 205–232, the darkest stretch of the book so far. Content note: violence, grief and a pregnancy loss. We mention these events without describing them.

The wedding (chapters 205–208)

On Halloween night, Cole and Lana marry at the Night Shade pack. The Queen arrives, hugs Maisie in front of everyone and whispers that the voices tell her Maisie will be her end, with a knife to her heart. She promises Maisie a wedding present she will never forget.

For a moment Maisie lets herself hope. The four have filled the pack with royal guards because she asked them to worry. Maybe she does not have to run. Then Mrs. Braxton asks her to talk to Lana, who is wrecking her bedroom and refusing to put on her dress. Lana is terrified and sorry: someone told her it was the only condition for saving Cole. The door clicks shut behind Maisie, and Tessa is waiting.

Soren's chapter reveals his own plan. He had thinned the border guards so Margaret's people would strike the wedding, intending to let Margaret remove the Queen and then hand Margaret to the Council. Only Jericho knew. It goes wrong immediately: Maisie is gone, and an explosion blows in the wall of the hall. As the four search the burning corridors, Lana claims Maisie asked for help to run away. Then dozens of guards, including Soren's own, arrest all four princes for conspiring against the Queen.

The Ridge (chapters 209–213)

Maisie wakes up tied in the trunk of a car and gets it open, only to land at the foot of the Ridge. Tessa is waiting with a syringe full of ash. The tonics, she explains, were her idea, and the Queen promised Tessa she would marry the four within three months if this worked. Maisie will be blamed for the attack on the wedding, and her goodbye letter has been replaced with a forgery.

On the clifftop, Tessa attacks the mates' marks on Maisie's neck. Then Lyon Park, who saw Maisie being put into the car and followed it on foot, throws one of Tessa's men into her, and Maisie goes over the edge. Lyon catches her and holds on while Tessa attacks him again and again. When Tessa pushes him over too, he turns in the air to shield Maisie, tells her to close her eyes, and asks her to tell Jenny he is sorry.

At midnight, in the Council's cells, the four feel the bond break. Snow falls in October. Tessa's man climbs down the cliff and finds no trace of Maisie. The Queen's ruby dims, then lights again. And Phillip Gruer, yanked to the foot of the mountain, finds a pulse.

Framed (chapters 214–216)

The Queen shows Soren the forged letter, full of cruelty aimed at each of the four's deepest wounds. Soren's answer is immediate: Maisie did not write it. Then comes the rest of the frame: faked photos with Lyon, stolen money, Soren's ring found on Lyon, and Lyon found at the foot of the Ridge. Maisie is named as the prime suspect in his death. Soren begs his aunt to stop ruining her. The four are released, and banished from court until Soren accepts the "truth" and marries Tessa.

Maisie wakes up in a hospital, paralysed. Gruer paid for everything. Lyon is gone. And, he tells her, she had been pregnant, and lost the baby.

Nine months (chapters 217–232)

In a small German town, Maisie learns that the news calls her a thief, a traitor and worse. Rage gets her off the floor. She crawls, then stands, then walks out of the hospital two months later. Meanwhile the Queen confesses to her sister what she did long ago, then destroys her, and forces Kisten Hunt to serve her by threatening his sister Kara. Kisten finds Maisie a week out of hospital and warns her: disappear, or her husbands and everyone who helped her will pay.

Seven months later she is a bartender in Utah under a false name, fighting off assassins every week. Soren, now a Councilman, has been hunting her the whole time. Mercer finally catches her. The interrogation is brutal: she confesses to everything to protect them, Soren takes her story apart piece by piece, and Mercer tells her they know she was pregnant and believe she ended it. The session crosses a line we will not describe. The Council grants her a trial, but she must live at Greymoor under guard, in an ash collar. Jenny, who watched her "confess", cuts her off.

Alone in her room, Maisie draws a circle and the collar does nothing. She came back on purpose. The ash that nearly ended her has made her immune to it, and she is here for the Queen.

What we noticed

• The forged letter works because it knows each of the four's private pain. That points to the Queen's reach: she reads minds and has spies in every house. See details you missed, part 2.
• Lyon's arc lands because the book set it up in chapter 204. Read our Lyon Park tribute.

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