70 pages • 2 hours read
Rebecca YarrosFourth Wing
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 33-39Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary
Shaken by news of the attack, Violet and Xaden scramble to get dressed and join flight formation; Xaden gives her a jacket to put on over her dress uniform. When she joins her friends, Rhiannon immediately identifies the jacket. They head to the courtyard, and Xaden telepathically shares that they have been dragged out of bed for the last event of the War Games, not for an actual attack. Rhiannon helps Violet hide the jacket from Dain before Commandant Panchek begins to speak. Dain’s father, General Sorrengail’s secretary, gives orders to each wingleader. Xaden is ordered to select riders to be stationed with him outside of the borders of the empire, where they will remain for five days. Dain is assigned a different outpost, within the kingdom wards, to take his squad of first-years.
The cadets quickly pack and prepare for the long flight. Liam is unusually tense. Violet spots Andarna and grows concerned with her ability to keep up and hide during the fights to come, then sees a harness she is wearing that can hook to Tairn, allowing him to carry her easily. Xander approaches and claims both Liam and Violet for his team. Dain pushes back, leading to a fight that culminates in Dain’s realization of their relationship.
Chapter 34 Summary
Xaden’s group crosses the wards and leaves the empire, nearing the Athebyne outpost. During a break, Liam and Violet commiserate over the fact that they are the only first-years in the group. Xaden takes Violet into the forest for a moment of privacy. They are found by gryphon fliers, who taunt Xaden and recognize Violet. Xaden hides them in shadow until reinforcements arrive. When Violet is about to attack the fliers, Xaden stops her, approaching them and accusing them of being early.
Chapter 35 Summary
The fliers warn Xaden that a hoard of venin attacked one of their villages. Violet is shocked, both by the mention of venin and the clear collaboration between their own squad and the enemy gryphon fliers. One of the fliers contemplates taking Violet hostage for ransom; Xaden threatens them in turn. The fliers leave. Violet surveys the squad and realizes that all the fighters but her are children of the separatists. When she points this out to Tairn and Andarna, she discovers that they both knew that the dragon riders were interacting with the gryphon fliers but kept it a secret because of Tairn’s bond with Sgaeyl. Xaden commands the rest of the squad to leave as Violet’s control of her signet power starts to slip because of her anger.
When Violet accuses Xaden of treason for working with the fliers, he tells her that they have allied to fight the venin. The dragon-powered wards around Navarre prevent them from entering the empire, but the surrounding areas are vulnerable to attack. Xaden tells her that the government of Navarre knows about the venin but does nothing; the gryphon attacks along the border have been in search of weapons for self-defense. Xaden insists that he kept this secret from Violet because Dain might see her memory and report Xaden’s efforts to command.
Xaden gives her a rune-inscribed dagger that is enchanted to fight against venin. Although Violet claims to no longer love or trust him, she believes his story. They return to the squad and continue their flight. As they fly, Tairn, Andarna, and Violet discuss the lie; Tairn feels deeply guilty about his deception and apologizes. Violet tries to logic her way through the reconciliation of truth and fiction, concluding that the kingdom truly has been hiding its knowledge of the venin. They arrive at their assigned outpost to find no riders waiting for them. The Athebyne outpost is the most strategic garrison manned by the empire, and the fact that it is empty does not bode well because the army would never have emptied it of riders for the War Games. Xaden asks Violet whether Dain has ever touched her face; she confirms this, claiming it is how he always touches her. Xaden realizes that Dain has been reading Violet’s memories without her knowledge. Meanwhile, Garrick discovers a letter from Dain’s father that instructs them to “survive if [they] can” (571).
Chapter 36 Summary
The squad gathers on the battlements. Xaden reads the rest of the letter and tells the group that they have a choice. If they flee and save themselves, the nearest trading post and its occupants will be killed. Liam, using his gift of far sight, sees four venin approaching the village. Gryphon fliers arrive; their leader, the same woman who confronted them by the lake, tells them to leave. They learn that two venin were able to destroy a Poromeil city the month before, so facing four now would be a death sentence. She leaves to command her group, and Xaden and the other riders all decide to stay.
Violet commands Andarna to hide, and to flee if Violet dies. As they prepare, they see a creature fly overhead; only Violet realizes that it is a wyvern, a two-legged flying reptile created by the venin to fight dragons. Xaden gives her a second rune-inscribed dagger and tells her that General Melgren, whose gift is to see the future, cannot see the rebel’s children because of their separatist relics. He promises to tell her all his secrets if they survive. The riders head to the trading outpost. Violet and Tairn fight venin and wyverns. Xaden finds a cave and starts an evacuation procedure for the civilians; Violet tries to cover with her lightning but cannot aim properly. Six wyverns target Violet; she and Tairn lead them away from the city, using her lightning to draw attention. Liam and his dragon sacrifice themselves to save Violet and Tairn; Violet and Liam share a tearful farewell. Xaden arrives to say his goodbyes, which are interrupted by the arrival of dozens of wyverns. Before Liam dies, he reveals that there are two venin riders amongst them. Xander decides to distract them while Violet devotes herself to killing them. As they take to the air, something injures Tairn.
Chapter 37 Summary
A venin stabs a sword into Tairn and keeps her grip as they climb. Violet unbuckles herself from her saddle to engage in hand-to-hand combat. The venin breaks her arm and stabs her with a poisoned dagger, but Violet uses lightning and a dagger to kill the venin. Many of the wyverns die along with her. Violet, after watching the venin leader vanish, convinces Xaden to drop his shadow protections holding the wyverns back from attacking her. She pushes herself to the limit of what she can do with Tairn’s ability; Andarna helps Violet stop time as she channels Tairn’s power, killing one of the remaining venin and taking out half of the remaining wyverns. Xaden kills the final venin, and Violet loses consciousness as she falls off Tairn.
Chapter 38 Summary
Andarna stops time and rescues Violet. Xaden holds her as she faints again. She comes to consciousness in time to hear the rest of the squad discussing her condition; her blood has turned black, and she is paralyzed, unable to mentally reach out to Xaden, Tairn, or Andarna. The riders debate the 12-hour flight to get her to medical attention at the college. Xaden decides to take her somewhere closer, although some of his squad members warn him of the risks.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Xaden”
The novel’s point of view shifts so that Xaden is narrating. Sgaeyl comforts Xaden when, three days later, Violet has not yet awakened. He is also overwhelmed by grief and guilt for Liam’s death. Tairn adds to his shame by reiterating that Xaden should have told Violet the truth sooner. Xaden ruminates on the development of their relationship and regrets keeping Violet in the dark for so long. Violet awakens, and he rushes to check her wound, which has become a silver scar over the last three days. Although initially happy and gentle, she quickly remembers the events from days prior; Xaden tries to comfort her, hiding that Andarna has grown and lost her gift. Violet looks out the window, surveying the scarred remnants of a destroyed city. She recognizes the location as the Tyrrish capital Aretia, a city her own mother helped to sack. After confirming that Liam is dead and has been put to rest, Violet kicks Xaden out of the room. He speaks with his friends about the fliers who escaped the venin and the iron box they discovered in the remnants of the trade outpost, which they believed to be the venin’s goal. Xaden bathes and reconvenes with Garrick before going to Violet.
Violet agrees to fight with them but rejects Xaden’s advances, no longer trusting him. Xaden tells her that he loves her and that he believes she loves him too. She does not deny this. He promises to tell her everything and swears to earn her trust. Violet asks if it is possible that they were at the outpost accidentally; the door opens behind them and the person entering asserts that it was intentional. Xaden steps aside, and Violet beholds her brother, Brennan, who warmly welcomes her to the revolution.
Chapters 33-39 Analysis
The last section of Fourth Wing concludes with an ambiguous future and a disrupted understanding of the world. Even as Violet herself possesses superior knowledge compared to those who have been more recently initiated, her newfound position as a confidant to the rider-flier alliance leaves her without a solid understanding of her most intimate relationships. At the end of the novel, her new identity represents a full reversal of the woman she was at its beginning. Violet used to be a woman with deep relationship ties and little power; now, she is one of the most powerful young riders of her age but has lost trust in even her most sacred draconic connections. The only constant in her life is her own intellect, which saves the trading outpost and most of the riders even as it puts her in mortal danger. The conclusion of Fourth Wing also sees the conclusion of Violet’s first leg of the Hero’s Journey, as outlined by Joseph Campbell. She has undergone Departure, leaving the war college and the security presented by her loved ones there, and entered Initiation, gaining a bleak understanding of the world and traveling beyond the point of no return. Violet cannot return to her ignorance, just as she cannot return to the scribe version of herself. Her own moral alignment and beliefs compel her to continue even as she mourns who she once was.
Trust and betrayal circle each other as Violet is betrayed by the figures who make up the central pillars of her growth and development. Most notably, Dain and Xaden both break her trust in drastically different ways. Dain is revealed to have manipulated Violet, using his signet against her without her knowledge. His decision to do so reinforces his deep distrust towards Xaden and his unwillingness to honor Violet’s personal growth; he forcibly invades her mind and steals knowledge of her memories because some part of him desires a say in who she will become as a rider. His command of her memories is an extension of his earlier efforts to send her to the scribes, for he performs all of these actions repeatedly and without her consent. Dain thus represents a devotion to rules in and exemplifies one aspect of the ongoing theme of Upholding Morals Versus Obeying Rules. His unscrupulous actions make it clear that he does not follow a moral code and instead aligns himself with the kingdom rather than with humankind in general. In some ways, Xaden represents a problematic manifestation of the other half of this theme, for his alignment with his personal morals supersedes his obedience to Navarre’s laws, and thus, he betrays Violet by withholding critical information from her. His choice to do so is a different violation of her consent, as he prevents her from making her own informed decisions about their relationship and her own place within the kingdom. Although he has clear reasons for restricting her knowledge, his violation harms her trust even more than Dain’s because of how closely their interests already align. Violet has proven time and time again that she follows a moral perspective; she shows herself to be trustworthy, and it is Xaden’s failure to see her intentions clearly.
The end of the novel also demonstrates several different ways in which the various characters go about Using War to Gain Power even as it demonstrates The Value of Knowledge, making a clear argument that those in power often manipulate knowledge and people for their own benefit. Navarre’s control of information is directly connected to its military success, meaning its physical and social power stems from its ability to suppress the knowledge and power of others. In this active pursuit of suppression, the kingdom develops its own history and mythos, censoring all mention of the venin whose depredations are central to Poromeil’s plight. Even first-hand knowledge is insufficient in the face of such corrupted power, especially when that knowledge comes from a socially “othered” group. This tension between war, power, and knowledge therefore constructs a core conflict that will be further explored in later installments of the Empyrean series, namely, how to share knowledge from a powerless position.
The concept of cowardice also reappears several times throughout the novel’s final chapters. Violet notes while deciding to fight the venin that “[w]e can live as cowards or die as riders” (577), and this statement reflects her understanding that seeking safety means fleeing and condemning innocent people to die. During the entirety of Violet’s training, cowardice was frowned upon; viewed as a sign of weakness, it is considered to be worthy only of derision, and a swift death is often the consequence. Violet’s decision to remain and die as a rider is therefore a direct reflection of her sister’s earlier question in the novel’s first chapter when Mira asked, “Are you going to die as a scribe? Or live as a rider?” (22). Her choices in the novel’s last section, while aligning with her own inner morals, also compel her to align with the separatists she once disdained: a shift in perspective that is further mirrored in the novel’s final focus on Xaden. Ultimately, Violet allies herself to the separatist cause, joining forces with Xaden even as she emotionally distances herself from him, and thus the novel concludes on an uncertain note that promises future development in the novels to come.
Related Titles
By Rebecca Yarros
