Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Seventeen-year-old Abriella “Brie” Kincaid, a practiced thief, breaks into the house of wealthy Creighton Gorst. She is relieved that the theft will let her pay urgent bills. When Gorst’s vault is warded with magic, Brie needs to draw upon her meager magical training to circumvent the spell. She laments not having the time or money for training to become a powerful mage. She marvels at the enormous, overflowing vault and wonders if she can take more than she planned without being noticed. She sees a debt notice, signed by her friend Nik’s young daughter, Fawn, that is scheduled for payment the next day.
Suddenly, Brie hears Gorst approaching; she worked for him as a maid until he tried to force her into sex work. She is unable to clean up all the blood she used to unlock the spelled door before he arrives, but she slips away without being caught. Though exhausted, she hurries to Nik’s house, where Nik explains that Fawn took a loan from Gorst to purchase lifesaving medicine for her mother. Nik plans to give herself to Gorst to pay her daughter’s debt, which would mean a lifetime of servitude for her. Brie gives Nik the money that she stole from Gorst. Even though the funds would help Brie and her younger sister, Jasalyn “Jas” Kincaid, it will save Nik and Fawn’s lives.
Brie and her sister are bound by a magical contract to Madame Vivias, their aunt. They signed as children, and the interest on the initial loan is an “insidious trap” from which Brie suspects she will never be free. Nik offers to help Brie find employment as a sex worker to faeries, which Brie considers more dangerous than working for Gorst, if more lucrative. Brie refuses, as she distrusts the powerful, magical fae.
Brie returns to her aunt’s house, where she promises to have the money she owes by the following day, though she doesn’t think she can secure funds again on such short notice. Her cousins Cassia and Stella demand she do servant work before she sleeps.
Chapter 2 Summary
After cleaning for her cousins, Brie returns to the basement room that she shares with Jas. Fourteen-year-old Jas greets her sister exuberantly and then returns to working on dresses for Stella and Cassia. Jas is excited about gossip that Queen Arya of the Seelie Court, whom Jas describes as “the good faeries” (23), will be offering humans passage to her lands, as she seeks a human wife for her son. Brie snaps that the Seelie fae are likely as “evil and cruel” as any other fae (4). Jas stubbornly insists that faeries are like humans and that they are more good than bad. She plans to attend Queen Arya’s ball.
Sebastian, who is an apprentice to the mage next door, enters the room. Brie is attracted to him and laments that he will soon be leaving for another stage of his apprenticeship, which means that they will no longer be neighbors. (In Chapter 7, Brie learns that this is false; Sebastian is actually Prince Ronan, a fae prince, who is returning to the Seelie court.) Brie teases Jas about wanting to marry a faerie and then realizes that Jas’s actual design is to find their mother, who abandoned her daughters to travel to Faerie years prior. Jas hopes that their mother will recognize her daughter’s dire straits and help them. Sebastian worries that searching for their mother will be dangerous, particularly if they encounter the infamous “shadow court” faeries. Jas tempts Brie by suggesting that she could steal a faerie treasure that would help them pay off their debts. Sebastian cautions that their mother could be dead and advises that they don’t attend the ball. Brie pushes off the decision until after she has slept.
The next day, Brie and Jas count their inadequate payment to their aunt. Driven to desperation by their increasing debt, Brie agrees to the trip to Faerie. Jas is delighted at the prospect of making Brie a beautiful dress. When Sebastian hears of their plan, he storms off in anger. Brie follows him, thinking of how her affection for him makes her bleak life happier, even if she keeps it secret, fearing rejection. He urges her not to go to Faerie, promising to help her out of her contract “someday.” He worries that she will be attracted to the fae prince, Ronan. He urges her to be cautious while in Faerie. Cassia suddenly appears, gloating because her mother sold Jas to faerie traders because the sisters did not have the money they owed.
Chapter 3 Summary
When Brie bursts into her aunt’s office, Madame Vivias congratulates her on being free from the contract. Madame Vivias insists that she has done Brie and Jas a favor, as they would have spent their lives paying off the contract. She knows that Brie has been stealing. As Brie demands information about where her sister has been sold, Madame Vivias bitterly suggests that “maybe [Jas will] live happily ever after” (40), a jab about the stories that Jas and Brie’s mother used to tell about Faerie.
Sebastian laments that, given one more year, he could have freed the sisters. (This precise timeline isn’t clarified but is later implied to be related to his role as the Seelie prince.) He asks for time to try to help Brie and find Jas; Brie agrees, though she doubts that he will succeed. Brie seeks information from Bakken, the “house goblin” whom Madame Vivias employs. She offers to trade her bright red hair, something the goblin covets, for information. He takes a long lock of her hair and tells her that Jas was sold to “His Highness, King Mordeus […] the Unseelie ruler, the shadow king himself” (46). Brie is horrified, as the Unseelie have a reputation as cruel torturers.
Bakken reports a legend that Mordeus is not the true Unseelie king, as he stole the throne and fears that his nephew, Prince Finnian, will return to reclaim the crown. Mordeus is consumed with preserving his power and will do anything to do so. If Brie wants to pursue Jas, she will have to use the Seelie queen’s secret portal to Unseelie lands. The portal was established because Queen Arya had a forbidden love affair with the previous Unseelie king, King Oberon. The portal is hidden in the queen’s childhood armoire. Bakken gives her a bracelet of silver thread, which will be undetectable to others. If she breaks a thread, he will appear, and she can trade another lock of hair for information. He cautions her against underestimating Mordeus.
Chapter 4 Summary
Nik urges Brie to tell Sebastian of her plan; she hopes that Sebastian will accompany Brie. Brie refuses to disrupt Sebastian’s internship. Even so, she understands Brie’s plan, as she would pursue her daughter into Unseelie lands “in a heartbeat” (52). Nik reports that Gorst found the blood in his vault and is consulting a mage to help find the culprit.
Brie says goodbye to Sebastian, who gives her a protection amulet and insists that she always wear it. He alludes to secrets in his past that he cannot yet reveal. (In Chapter 7, he reveals that he is secretly Prince Ronan, a Seelie faerie.) He kisses her and requests that she wait for his return. Brie feels that “[f]ate is toying with [her],” as she is only learning that Sebastian returns her feelings now that she “may never see him again” (55). She vows to remain focused on saving Jas, not on a potential romance with Sebastian.
Brie has a nightmare about a house fire from her past until Nik wakes her. Gorst has arrived, seeking to arrest her. Nik helps Brie sneak away to the ball, which starts in an hour. She joins the crowd awaiting the portal, judging them for their faith in the fae. She rushes through the portal just as Gorst’s men arrive.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first several chapters of These Hollow Vows take place in Elora, Brie’s homeland in the human realm. While the events that transpire in the Elora chapters are less linearly connected to the main conflict of the novel than are the events that take place in the Faerie realm, they nevertheless provide important political and emotional background that informs Brie’s actions after she relocates to the Seelie Court. The opening scene, in which Brie steals from a wealthy man, illustrates the income inequality that is pervasive in Elora. Ryan draws a contrast between the extremely rich and the extremely poor and indicates that this social stratification is stark. If there is a middle class in this society, Brie does not encounter it.
Even before Brie travels to Faerie, she is acutely aware that the link between Income Inequality and Societal Injustice is something that transcends the boundary between the realms. Though the terminology is different, the novel does not draw a clear distinction between enslavement by the fae and exploitative contracts with mounting debts that make indentured servitude tantamount to enslavement. The boundary between these contracts and full enslavement becomes even more intangible when Madame Vivias sells Jas to Mordeus for failure to pay the scheduled contract payment. If indentured servitude and debt can transmute into enslavement at the whim of the wealthy, the novel suggests, then it is not materially different from enslavement. Brie and Jas’s contract is exploitative, particularly since it was signed when they were children. The legal and economic system in Elora thus seems designed to exploit the poor, rather than inadvertently allowing this to happen. Ryan therefore presents income inequality as the primary division between groups in her novel. Poor fae and poor humans have the same concerns—and the same enemies—as each other, despite their differences.
Poverty thus teaches Brie the importance of maintaining the Balance Between Autonomy, Desperation, and Guilt. While she maintains rigid moral guidelines that protect her from excess guilt while living in Elora—such as only stealing from the wealthy who decline to offer her legitimate work—her position becomes more complicated after she travels to the Seelie Court. Friendships forged even in desperate circumstances are framed as strong because of these struggles; when Brie gives the money she stole from Gorst to Nik and Fawn, for example, this is an act of love that stems from knowing that Nik’s circumstances are more dire than hers. She sees the money as more valuable to Nik than it is to her, even though she, too, faces very few choices. Making a choice—having the freedom to even make a bad choice or one that puts her and her sister at greater risk—is presented as an important opportunity. Reminding oneself of one’s autonomy, even when that agency is minor, proves an important declaration of self-worth in the novel.
This first section of the novel also highlights several literary and mythological allusions. Brie and Jas’s employment (insofar as their exploitative contract can be considered true employment rather than indentured servitude or enslavement) in their aunt’s house, where they are forced to serve their shallow and callous cousins, is reminiscent of Cinderella narratives made popular by French writer Charles Perrault. The figure of King Oberon, meanwhile, has origins that go back to Greek mythology, though the fabled faerie king is most commonly associated with Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ryan’s allusions to fairytales and folklore thus orient her novel within a longer tradition of faerie stories. These connections help Ryan’s world building, as they encourage readers to explore the overlap between the different faerie narratives to fill in the mysteries of Brie’s world. These allusions also permit Ryan to subvert expectations, as she can let this history of fairy tales encourage readers to make assumptions about the plot that, when proven incorrect, become twists that move the plot forward.
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