46 pages • 1 hour read
Holly ReneeThe Veiled Kingdom
Holly ReneeFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A 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 15-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Nyra”
Nyra trains with Wren the next day because Dacre is absent. Their training is interrupted by the arrival of Dacre and Davian, who tell Nyra and Wren that they must participate in a mission beyond the borders of the hidden city. Nyra is nervous, and Wren tells her to stay close. They go to the surface with Davian, Mal, and some other warriors. Davian meets with Faris, a commander in the king’s army who feeds the rebellion information. Nyra is afraid, and she hides from view because she knows that Faris might recognize her. Faris tells Davian that he has information about the lost Princess Verena’s whereabouts, which could be significant because the princess could be used as a bargaining chip. Suddenly, Faris recognizes Nyra and throws a knife at her and Wren. Nyra is cut on the arm but deflects the blade. Wren throws a dagger at Faris, killing him. As Faris dies, he utters the word “princess,” which worries Nyra. Davian grabs and strangles Nyra, demanding to know who she is. He eventually releases her, and Wren goes to her side. Nyra, whose real name is Verena, admits to herself that she misses the real Nyra, her late mother.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Dacre”
Dacre asks Kai where Wren and Nyra are. Kai tells Dacre that everyone is talking about Dacre and Nyra after Dacre’s behavior last night. Dacre is pleased that he touched Nyra, but he is displeased that people are speculating about their relationship. Meanwhile, Wren and Nyra return to the hidden city, and Dacre watches in horror as Nyra limps at Wren’s side. He immediately goes to her and examines her knife wound and the bruises on her neck. He is disturbed when Wren tells him that Davian who choked Nyra. Wren is worried because Davian is growing more erratic as he fails to find anything to aid the rebellion. Nyra asks Dacre to heal her because she doesn’t trust the other healers. Wren is surprised because Dacre has not healed anyone since he tried and failed to heal their mother. (He inherited his healing magic from his mother but is anguished over his failure to use it to save her.) Dacre agrees to heal Nyra and if Kai takes Wren to the healers. He still plans to confront Davian about what he did to Nyra.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Nyra”
Nyra watches as Dacre prepares to heal her. She asks why they cannot go to the springs, and Dacre tells her that he must first close her wound to prevent infection. He heals her wound, and Nyra asks where he was in the morning. He asks why she wants to know. She admits to believing that he was avoiding her after their intimate encounter. He flirts with her while he heals her, then dismisses her until training the next day, when he intends to teach her to use a bow and arrow. Nyra finds his behavior confusing.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Nyra”
Nyra wakes to a pounding on her door. When she opens it, she sees Dacre, who tells her to join him on the training grounds. Once there, Dacre tells her they will not be training on the surface, not in the hidden city. Dacre leads her to Marmoris. They weave through the crowd, and Nyra grows increasingly nervous. Dacre delivers a secret message to one of the market vendors. Guards stop them and ask to see their papers, and both Dacre and Nyra nervously hand over forged papers that establish them as a married couple trying to go to the coast. The guards give them no trouble.
Nyra follows Dacre to a house. When they knock, an older woman answers the door; she is Dacre’s maternal grandmother. She asks Nyra’s name and recognizes that it is the same name as Nyra’s mother, the former queen. She states that Nyra reminds her of Dacre’s mother, Camilla. She takes the message from Dacre and reminds him not to tell his father; this alerts Nyra that Dacre and his grandmother are working together on something secret. Nyra gets the sense that Dacre’s grandmother knows who she really is, especially when she tells Nyra that Micah has not returned to their shared home in a few days. As Dacre and Nyra leave, Dacre’s grandmother tells them to be careful and directs Nyra to stay with Dacre.
Chapters 15-18 Analysis
Dacre and Nyra’s trip into Marmoris indicates Dacre’s new willingness to trust Nyra with his secrets, and despite his repeated claims not to trust her, his behavior during this interlude hints at a softening in his disposition toward her. As they enter his grandmother’s house, Nyra notices that Dacre’s gaze is “unwavering and intense, silently begging [her] to trust him” (263). Overcome by the thought that he is finally beginning to accept her, Nyra gives him her trust “so easily” that she does not think to question him on his motives for bringing her here. Although Dacre refuses to admit to himself that he is beginning to trust Nyra, his actions imply otherwise. By bringing her to his grandmother’s house, he is trusting her not to betray him, his grandmother, or the rebellion, especially given his misguided belief that Davian is unaware of his meetings with his grandmother.
The Contrast between Tyranny and Leadership also becomes more prominent in this section when Dacre’s grandmother states that Dacre will one day be the ruler of the entire kingdom, for at these words, “Dacre’s face twisted into something between pain and honor” (265). This silent but nuanced reaction reveals that Dacre struggles with the heavy weight of leadership, seeing it as a massive burden to carry, but his focus upon “honor” also hints that he holds a positive outlook about one day taking up the mantle of leadership and taking charge of all of Marmoris. Given the current state of affairs in the kingdom, this exchange with Dacre’s grandmother also hints at the much grander political designs that will drive the arc of the series as a whole.
The Impact of Dysfunctional Family Dynamics becomes evident in Dacre and Nyra’s hidden pain about their respective memories, especially their past relationships with their mothers. Notably, Dacre’s refusal to heal anyone after failing to heal his mother indicates the true depths of his trauma and guilt over losing her. As he reflects, “I had tried over and over to save her while my father screamed at me to do so. I could still feel her blood coating my hands” (236). Dacre’s visceral memories of his own failure and his father’s fury still haunt him, and in this context, it is all the more telling that he finally overcomes his past traumas in order to heal Nyra. When Wren expresses her surprise at his regained willingness to heal another, the exchange indicates that despite the controversy surrounding Nyra’s presence, she nonetheless has a positive influence on Dacre.
Significantly, Nyra’s own private guilt mirrors Dacre’s in some ways, for her guilt results from her lack of magic, which she perceives as the underlying reason for her father’s cruel mistreatment of her mother. When Faris makes a callous comment to the effect that King Roan killed Queen Nyra by forcing her to have another heir, Nyra thinks, “Guilt and grief were worse than any blade someone could throw at me, and my hands trembled as his words assaulted me” (220). Because this passage precedes Faris’s attack, the narrative foreshadows the blade that Faris will soon throw at Nyra even as Faris’s words stir up Nyra’s long-held guilt about her inability to serve as an ideal heir for her family. Thus, both Dacre and Nyra experience guilt in connection with their magical abilities (or lack thereof), and their similar emotional wounds indicate that their compatibility as romantic partners exists on multiple levels.
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