The Prison Healer

In this section, Kiva and Jaren’s harrowing experience of the final trial intensifies the novel’s focus on Community Support as a Tool for Survival, for Jaren’s full control of all four elements makes him uniquely qualified to help Kiva overcome the seeming impossibility of this challenge. However, the true emotional depths of their burgeoning relationship stem from their mutual willingness to reveal the origins of their past physical and emotional scars. Just as Kiva trusted Jaren with descriptions of her former tendency toward self-harm, he now trusts her with the knowledge that his mother abused him while under the influence of drugs. Faced with this stark confession, Kiva appreciates the fact that despite the damage Jaren’s mother caused him, he still manages to perceive the good in her. As she tells him, “I think it’s incredible you can separate the drug from the user and still care about your mother enough to want to protect her” (377). Her comment indicates her genuine affection for Jaren despite the unspoken difficulties that now stand between them.

This conversation also reveals Jaren’s earnest desire to show his feelings for Kiva, and his intentions are made even plainer when he invites her to live in the castle with him and his family and study at the healers’ academy. While this invitation hangs in the air, the tension thickens with Kiva’s private knowledge of the political realities that lie between them. Although the author does not reveal anything further on this front until the very end of the story, Kiva is full of her awareness that as the Rebel Princess, she is essentially poised on the opposite side of the chessboard from Jaren. In this moment, she knows that even if they manage to escape the prison, their organic feelings for one another may be curtailed by the opposing interests of the factions to which they belong.

Upon the pair’s completion of the final trial, the author moves on to illustrate the large-scale consequences of The Corruptive Influence of Unchecked Power, showing that those who are oppressed will eventually revolt. As Kiva beholds the most violent riot that she has ever seen, it is clear that the corruption and depredations of both Warden Rooke and the abusive guards have led to this acute moment of wholesale fury and destruction. The anger that the prisoners feel over the guards’ torture and abuse and at Warden Rooke’s poisoning scheme leads them to arise and enact an external climax that matches the intensity of Kiva’s emotional response at the prospect of breaking free of the prison. However, while the narrative suggests that prisoners’ response is warranted and indeed overdue, certain casualties—such as Tilda—show that the resulting violence harms everyone indiscriminately, and that revenge is not synonymous with justice. Even the innocent Tipp would have been killed without Kiva’s timely magical intervention. Ironically, the rebellion also gives Warden Rooke something that he wants—more dead prisoners in the name of “population control.” Thus, even though Jaren, Naari, Kiva, and Tipp manage to escape, the injustices of the prison remain in operation despite the current chaos.

Finally, when Tilda is revealed to be Kiva’s mother, Kiva’s own identity as the Rebel Princess becomes clear, and her unique ability to magically heal others foreshadows her greater significance upon a much broader political stage in subsequent installments of the series. However, the core essence of her values remains, and her ongoing concern for the deep connections that she has forged in prison is apparent when she uses her secret healing magic to save the wounded Tipp from death. Her spontaneous action shows that she views Tipp as her family, and perhaps even as a stand-in for her brother Kerrin.

This revelation about Kiva’s heritage also recontextualizes the previous scenes between Kiva and Tilda, adding nuance to Kiva’s desperation to keep Tilda alive at all costs. As these political realities come to a head in the novel’s conclusion, Kiva reveals herself to be far more devious than the earnest Jaren could ever be. Although the two have become emotionally close and Jaren has been completely honest with her, Kiva deliberately hides her identity even as she accepts this opportunity to infiltrate the very epicenter of her enemies’ power. The conclusion therefore ends on a deliberate cliffhanger, and the author refrains from clarifying whether Kiva’s feelings for Jaren or her desire for revenge will prevail: a major conflict that will be explored in the next novel in the series, The Gilded Cage. However, in this brief moment of triumph between conflicts, Kiva does not yet realize the imminent struggles that she will face on the political stage of Wenderall; all she can focus on is the idea that “she [is] free” (404).