An Ember in the Ashes

Laia returns to the world she used to know in Chapter 27, and the way she views the festival shows how our experiences change how we see things. Once, the festival was a time of pure joy where she and her family would celebrate and take part in everything it had to offer. After what’s happened recently, Laia can still see the joy, but she doesn’t enjoy it the way she used to. Loss of the people she once enjoyed the festival with has colored her perceptions. Instead of a simple, carefree time, the festival is now a reminder of what she no longer has. Izzi’s unrestrained excitement shows what Laia might have once been like at the festival. Izzi has been enslaved almost her entire life, and this is the first time she’s experienced something fun. She sees life in a new way at the festival, and the hope for more of what the festival offers gives her something to fight for.

Laia’s romantic conflict comes to a head in these chapters. Up until now, she’s been attracted to Elias but had not let herself entertain the idea of getting close to him, both because she fears him and because she hates Masks. Laia’s dance and conversation with Keenan should make him the obvious choice, but his abrupt exit leaves Laia wondering how he truly feels and foreshadows her inability to lose herself in the kiss with Keenan later. In contrast, her dance with Elias feels natural. Elias is being his true self during the dance, and Laia finds herself attracted to who he would be without the empire’s influence. When she realizes it’s him, she can’t just erase who he was during the dance, and Elias’s personality makes Laia rethink that all Masks are pure evil.

Elias’s backstory is revealed in these chapters. He spent the early years of his life among tribespeople who loved and cared for him as their own. As a result, he was not as hardened or violent as the other children who are brought to Blackcliff, and those early lessons about love and life have stuck with him through all his training. Though Elias grew up surrounded by love uncommon in the Martial Empire, this didn’t affect his competency. He is still one of the fastest and most skilled of his classmates, showing how the empire’s training permeates every aspect of trainees. Elias isn’t comfortable with killing for the sake of killing, but he has still internalized all the ways to kill a person and is just as proficient at them as Helene or Marcus. Elias’s initial reaction to the festival—trying to decode the drums and looking for threats—shows how conditioned he is to be a soldier. Even when he enters a situation as a civilian who’s not there for any reason related to the military, he must consciously remind himself to relax and stop acting like he’s on Blackcliff’s grounds.

The tribal woman Elias dances with and that Laia later sees at the blacksmith’s shop does not appear again in the book. She has been supplying Scholars with weapons, suggesting the resistance has had outside help for some time. The Scholars initially fell to the Martial Empire because the empire has unbreakable weapons, and the Scholars hope that having Martial weapons of their own will allow them to meet the Martial forces on even ground. The tribal woman’s presence suggests the tribes will play a larger role later in the series. Elias tells the woman his grandfather “Martialized” his name, which means he took Elias’s tribal name and changed it to a version acceptable in Martial society. This is a form of acculturation—the practice of one group eliminating the culture of a group they’ve violently overtaken. Though the Martials haven’t conquered the tribes, Elias’s grandfather erased Elias’s tribal name in favor of one he found more fitting. Names and naming conventions further develop the theme of What Makes Us Who We Are, as names are intimately connected to identity.

Chapters 29 and 30 show Elias’s romantic conflict. In Chapter 29, he dances with Laia and then pretends not to care about her so the Commandant won’t harm her. He feels both affection and protectiveness for Laia, and he struggles to reconcile these emotions. In Chapter 30, he comes face-to-face with his feelings for Helene and the love she has for him. He doesn’t know how to feel or how to compare these emotions to the ones he has for Laia. The Commandant’s threats at the end of Chapter 29 are a direct result of Elias showing interest in her. It is likely the Commandant doesn’t believe Elias was trying to take advantage of Laia, and she probably wants to punish him by maiming Laia. The Commandant’s words may also be a hint into her past: She never explains the circumstances that led her to be pregnant with Elias, but she makes it clear she’s hated him since she knew he existed. It may be that her own beauty made life at Blackcliff difficult when she was a student.