52 pages • 1 hour read
Penn ColeGlow of the Everflame
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 10-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, child abuse, and sexual content.
Eleanor helps Diem prepare for the Ascension Ball and gives her advice on the Corbois family members and their relationships. While Taran is sensitive, funny, and kind, Aemonn is more calculated and polished. Alixe is an admirable fighter and one of the respected female members of the Emarion Army. Diem reflects on all that she is learning and realizes that she deeply admires Alixe. After Eleanor leaves, Diem considers what she now knows about the Descended. She feels alone in this world, but she also wonders if she can use her power for good, and she knows that it might be up to her to save the mortals.
Diem meets with Remis about her new position. He suggests that she let him take the lead during the upcoming House Receptions. If the other houses believe that he is her advisor, they will be less likely to challenge her. Diem is not sure about the wisdom of this plan but promises to consider it. Afterward, Diem wanders through the palace alone. She ends up in a dark passage where she overhears the servants gossiping about her. Then she runs into Henri.
Chapter 11 Summary
When Diem sees Henri, she feels as if her lungs have been filled with water. He notices the Crown and demands to know why she lied to him about who she is. She tries to explain everything that has happened, then swears that she loves him and wants to marry him. She begs him to escort her to the Ascension Ball and to become her King Consort. He agrees, insisting that they destroy the Descended together. They kiss passionately. Just as they are about to have sex, Luther arrives and interrupts them.
Chapter 12 Summary
Luther warns Diem about being caught with a mortal. Realizing that Henri might be in danger, Diem begs him to leave. Once he goes, Diem and Luther argue about Diem’s position and what it entails. He leads her into his chambers so that they can talk in private. Inside, he shows her a book filled with the names of half-mortal children. He explains that the book is a catalog of all the half-mortals he has saved as part of his efforts to atone for his crimes against other innocents. He explains that he and Auralie were working together to defend the mortals. He wants Diem to be the queen because she wants to protect the mortals, too, and Luther believes that the gods want this as well. He begs her not to bring Henri to the area until it is safe, advising her to take Aemonn to the ball instead. Diem softens and agrees to take Aemonn as her escort to secure the royal houses’ favor.
Chapter 13 Summary
Diem writes Henri a letter, begging him not to come to the ball for his own safety, but she promises that she still loves him. Afterward, she meets Lily and Teller in the dungeon. Teller relays what he has learned about the Descended from his studies, explaining how the royal family’s magic and rituals work. Lily is particularly worried that Garath, who has violent tendencies, will challenge Diem. She and Teller suggest that Diem use another advisor instead of Eleanor, who is not as powerful as other Corbois family members. Before Teller leaves, he asks to see Diem’s magic. She tries to show him but cannot summon her powers.
Chapter 14 Summary
Diem and Luther prepare for Ulther’s upcoming funeral. During their meeting, she realizes that she doesn’t hate him after all, but she dismisses her confused feelings on the topic. They discuss the House Receptions, and Luther again swears his loyalty to her, offering to help her communicate with Andrei about what is happening.
At the first House Receptions, Diem meets the members of House Hanoverre, including Iléana, a woman who has shown interest in Luther. When Diem learns this, she feels inexplicably jealous. Alixe teases her about having feelings for Luther, but Diem insists that her heart belongs to another. The conversation turns to love mates. The Descended can mate with their lover for eternity, but such a match means that they will never be able to love again even if the mate dies.
Chapter 15 Summary
Diem and Remis meet one-on-one. He suggests that they enter “a bonded bargain” (165). In this bargain, Remis and House Corbois will support Diem at the expense of Remis’s magic. Diem agrees, and Remis uses magic to seal the bargain. He reminds her to defer to him during the next Receptions and to pretend that her father was the late Harold Corbois.
Chapter 16 Summary
Diem dresses for Ulther’s funeral, feeling uncomfortable in her finery. At the arena, Eleanor panics when she sees that Diem is wearing black, which is considered to be a sign of disrespect at Descended funerals. Luther warns her against making more honest mistakes in public, lest she further endanger herself.
Chapter 17 Summary
At the funeral ceremony, Luther reads a poem written by Ulther’s late mate, Rapheol. Diem didn’t know that Ulther was mated, and Eleanor tells her more about the Descended’s unique love connections. Taran and Lily chime in too, explaining how powerful these bonds can be. They state that mated lovers can sense one another’s emotions and auras and have strong sexual relationships. When Luther rejoins the group, he warns Diem against trusting the dangerous Garath. Diem resists his instructions, not wanting to listen to further demands from him.
Chapters 10-17 Analysis
The more integrated into the Descended world that Diem becomes, the more complex her Quest for Self-Discovery grows, and she also begins to become more aware of the heavy Burden of Leadership that now weighs upon her. Ensconced in the Descended palace, Diem feels “[a]lone. As alone as one could be, surrounded by hundreds of strangers vying for [her] attention” (109). She is still learning how this world works, and she does not yet know which of the Corbois family members she can trust. While characters like Luther, Remis, and Aemonn swear that they have Diem’s best interests in mind, she cannot help but wonder if they might betray her. Ever since she was a little girl, Diem has been raised to view the Descended as the unequivocal enemies of the mortals. She has always identified as a mortal and now feels caught between her old way of life and the royal leadership role that she is expected to assume. Isolated from her village, family, and friends, she finds herself surrounded by the very people whom she has been trained to despise. As a result, her new queenly position traps her in a moral dilemma, and she must decide who she is, what is expected of her, and how she is meant to lead.
As Diem tries to orient to her new life and identity, the author uses vivid figurative language and fragmented syntax to illustrate Diem’s complex internal experience. In Chapter 11, for example, when Diem runs into Henri in a dark palace passageway, her past and present lives collide. Rather than feeling comforted, the encounter with Henri makes her feel as if she is “tumbling headfirst into shallow water” (114), and she desperately struggles to label the maelstrom of emotions within her, musing, “Shock, […] then confusion. Realization. Grief. Then anger. So much anger” (115). The deliberately fragmented sentences combine with vivid metaphors and similes to articulate the turbulence of her reaction upon seeing Henri. Although she is reminded of her life before the palace and the Crown, the sight of him also terrifies and outrages her because she knows that Henri is breaking palace rules and endangering himself. He also compounds her anguish when he accuses her of lying about her origins, and the resulting confrontation compromises their childhood bond and intensifies the Challenges of Balancing Love and Duty. Throughout the scene, the narrative toys with conventional grammatical structures to capture Diem’s struggle to reconcile her conflicting emotions and desires.
As these various conflicts mount, the impending rituals of the Ascension Ball, the Challenging, and the Rite of Coronation heighten the narrative stakes, accelerating the pace and foreshadowing even more dramatic confrontations to come. As Diem works with her brother and her new Descended allies to prepare for these highly politicized events, she is forced to change so quickly that she almost cannot recognize herself, and she does not know how to overcome these looming challenges. When she and Eleanor talk about Alixe in Chapter 11, Diem reflects that “Alixe remind[s] [her] so much of [her]self—or at least the [person] [she had] dreamed of becoming” (106). Because Alixe is a strong and accomplished warrior who has earned the respect of her male counterparts, Diem wishes that she could emulate Alixe’s faith in her own strength. Faced with a barrage of unfamiliar challenges, Diem now feels helpless and weak, and she must begin her Quest for Self-Discovery anew now that her public identity has changed so radically. At the moment, she does not know how to activate or wield her power, and she struggles to abide by the customs of the Descended as she despairs of finding a way to protect mortal lives. These challenges cause her to question her identity and to dread her upcoming rites of passage. These chapters therefore suggest that as long as Diem lives in confusion, she cannot claim her true identity or truly rise to the challenges that lie before her.
