The Veiled Kingdom

Nyra bears deep scars on her back from her father’s abuse, and these old wounds stand as a symbol of Nyra and Dacre’s complex relationship dynamics. When Dacre first sees Nyra’s scars, he is infuriated at the thought that someone would commit such violence against her, even though they have not yet acted upon their mutual attraction. He is viscerally upset by Nyra’s pain, so much so that his anger makes her fear the intensity of his reaction. The moment also marks a new level of connection between the protagonists, demonstrating the progression of their relationship.

However, their relationship takes a negative turn after Dacre discovers Nyra’s true identity. When he thinks about the lies that Nyra has told him, he fixates specifically on her scars and realizes with a raw intensity that King Roan inflicted such wounds upon his own daughter. However, because he is fully immersed in the rebels’ uncompromising worldview, he disregards the full significance of the betrayal that Nyra has suffered at King Roan’s hands and instead focuses on his own outraged sense of betrayal. As he states, “She told me that it had been her father. What she didn’t say was that it was the king” (326). Prior to Dacre’s discovery of Nyra’s identity, the two are physically intimate and emotionally intimate, but his trust and loyalty to her evaporate when he realizes that she lied to him, and when he contemplates the meaning of her scars, the scene also hints that Dacre is about to inflict his own abuse on Nyra as well, scarring her even further on an emotional level.