IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD read-along and recap, the finale!
chapters 31 through the epilogue with behind the scenes info and a sneak peek of orchard
welcome back to the last installment of the IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD read-along! it’s been super fun for me to revisit this book and i can’t wait for y’all to see where the story goes in the sequel, IN AN ORCHARD GROWN FROM ASH
as a reminder, i’ll be launching ORCHARD at porter square books at 7 pm on may 1st in cambridge, MA where you can pick up a copy a whole day early
and if you can’t make it, or you can but you just want another copy, you can also still preorder the hardcover from your favorite retailer!
okay let’s get into it! and read all the way to the bottom for a sneak peek of ORCHARD 👀
RECAP
Chapter Thirty-One
last we left lexos he had been exiled from tarro’s palace (and entire country) and had gone to zita, stavra’s mom, for help setting up a meeting with the other Stratagiozis, sans Tarro and Baba
zita came through and the meeting has arrived! lexos does some politicking with the Stratagiozis (mostly Ammar and Nastia, who are still arguing over the Vitmar1) but ends up getting his way…. sort of
the other Stratagiozis agree to help lexos get rid of tarro and preserve the Argyros family’s power IF lexos deposes his father first and becomes Stratagiozi himself and lexos is like “oh yeah no for SURE i’ll totally totally kill him when i get home don’t even worry about it” which is 100% a lie
Chapter Thirty-Two
back at Stratathoma lexos comes clean with baba about the plan including the kill order the other Strats gave
Baba: okay great! do it!
lexos: wait what
Baba: do it. d̸̨̛͕̰̎̆̕ǫ̴̟͈͍̞̗̊̓͊̋̇̂ ̵̡̣͕̪̻̃͑i̵̩̭̍̄̚ț̷́̎̓͆̕ ̶̼̪͉̪̀͛̂̈́k̴̖̥̖̬̞͐̓̅̀į̴̧͉͚̊͌l̶͎͍̭̙̳̒͛͛̀l̸̻͍͗ ̶̛̘͈̜̈́͊̐̀̃ͅm̶̻̣̟͙̮̮̉̉ȩ̴̤͎̳̺̅͐
lexos doesn’t have the nerve. he is, as logan roy would say, not a killer2
Chapter Thirty-Three
meanwhile we catch up with rhea, who is almost home after leaving the northeast. she’s still cataclysmically angry at lexos, believing that he had michali killed after he realized she meant to let michali live. but he can’t know she’s angry—she still has to carry out the Sxoriza’s plan and get lexos to help her sneak them into Stratathoma—so when she arrives home she pretends everything is chill3
Chapter Thirty-Four
not chill enough however that she’s cool to show up for dinner so it’s just lexos nitsos and chrysanthi who sit down for the evening meal
and in the absence of adult supervision (i mean yes they’re all 100+ years old but they are CHILDREN!!!!! in the worst way!!!) lexos and nitsos have an argument and lexos starts to realize…. nitsos like…… he KNOWS stuff????? he’s been paying attention?? he’s had thoughts all by himself????
deeply unsettled by this AND reeling after another bad encounter with Baba, lexos is like you know what fuck it. i’m killing my dad
Chapter Thirty-Five
late that night rhea sneaks out of her bedroom bc it’s time to set the Sxoriza’s plan in motion! she decides not to ask for lexos’s help bc, well, he sucks, so she invokes the saints/her mother and uses lexos’s magic herself (!!!!!!!) to alter the tides and currents near Stratathoma, which will let the Sxoriza safely approach by sea
Chapter Thirty-Six
basically at the same time while rhea’s doing all that, lexos is sneaking into Baba’s room to give him a good stab. unfortunately Baba is awake (and thus harder to stab) but like giving off a WEIRD vibe. Baba and lexos have a quick chat about lexos’s mom—“she sure loved those saints, also did i ever mention how i killed her when you kids were super young?”—and that’s enough for lexos to finally do the deed.
rip Baba
lexos, the firstborn twin4 and thus the eldest child5 is now the Stratagiozi and has inherited Baba's magic death power thingy hooray for lexos!
to celebrate (? idk) he carries Baba’s body out to Nitsos’s clockwork garden and buries him there which is where RHEA finds him on her way back from the water
Chapter Thirty-Seven
rhea’s like “okay dead dad aside we gotta talk about michali man what the FUCK” and lexos has absolutely no earthly idea what she’s talking about. he denies having anything to do with michali’s death and things devolve into a big ol argument as each twin tries to convince the other to switch sides6
as the argument gets worse lexos is like “you know what we’re not getting anywhere” and he’s already killed Baba so what’s one more Argyros? he tries to use the aforementioned magic death power thingy on rhea (it’s his now, right?) but…. uh oh she is very much still alive
Chapter Thirty-Eight
big confusion!!!!
and before they can sort any of it out, nitsos arrives7 and reveals a whole bunch of shit
[taylor swift voice] he’s a mastermind
he’s been using his gift to affect rhea much the way he creates and programs mechanical creatures
he does note that his gift is less “you are my robot now i control your every thought” and more “you’re like a little clockwork thingy—i can wind you up and aim you in a particular direction but there’s still every chance you could tip over or head in a new direction bc of some blip in the terrain and i might have to come in and wind you up again/reorient you”
he made her choose michali and go to the northeast
he had michali killed
all of this bc if he can’t be Baba’s favorite/second/heir he will dismantle the entire system
the Sxoriza: we will destroy the federation and build something better
Nitsos: we will destroy the federation and build something better for me specifically
rhea is not thrilled by any of this news! but luckily nitsos’s little victory here won’t count for much when the Sxoriza arrive, which they should do at any moment!
except they’ve been betrayed by falka, who told tarro that rhea had opened a passage for the Sxoriza—one tarro and his fleet are right now using to capture Stratathoma.
lexos immediately sprints for the exit bc tarro is NOT his biggest fan at the moment only to learn via a warning from stavra that the Stratagiozis all betrayed him (betrayal for you! betrayal for YOU! betrayal for EVERYONE!) and immediately went to tarro about lexos’s plan to oust him
lexos is absolutely fucked
it takes zero effort for tarro and falka to capture lexos and make him their political prisoner, at which point falka reveals her own gift (given to her by tarro the way lexos’s and the other argyrosi got theirs from Baba originally)—she can take AWAY other gifts from people and make them her own
she takes lexos’s gift re: the stars and the tides no problem and then is like “say ah!!!” to get the mark of his inherited magic death power thingy off his tongue
only it’s not there
bc lexos isn’t the eldest twin at all
Chapter Thirty-Nine
rhea is!!!! somebody8 lied about their birth order way back when and this whole time rhea has actually been the oldest of Baba's kids/his natural heir as far as magic is concerned
rhea doesn’t realize any of this though until she’s already escaped Stratathoma with Chrysanthi in tow and meets up with piros who came to rescue her and he’s like “hey uhhhhhh you have this weird mark on your tongue” and rhea’s like “oh FU—”
Epilogue
rhea and chrysanthi are with the Sxoriza up in the mountains and it’s like… still winter… but also spring? everything’s gone a little wonky BECAUSE! rhea has used her new magic death power to resurrect michali!!! and he came back kind of weird!
i’m sure this will have no consequences in the sequel!9
final thoughts
and that’s the end of GARDEN! it’s been so fun revisiting this book and i hope it helped get you prepped for the sequel release (or was just something to fun to read while you’re at work idk)
now that you’re ready, make sure to…….
and as a thank you for coming along with me, here’s a…..
sequel sneak peek!
i thought as a last little preview of the sequel before it comes out i would give you a snippet from Chrysanthi’s first POV chapter, featuring the introduction of a new character, Andrija, who will be important going forward
There was quite a lot to be said for not being stuck behind the same stone walls every day. Since leaving Stratathoma, Chrysanthi had tried spices she’d never heard of before and seen mountains taller than she’d thought possible, and though all of it was very exciting, her favorite novelty was, without question, this: riding out into the Ksigoran woods in the early morning, her paints tucked in a bag at her side as she searched for new subjects and new colors to match.
This particular morning had already gifted her with a brown she’d spotted in the knot of a birch tree, so pale and cool it was almost lilac, and a strange shade of silver that seemed, in the diffused light, to rise off the snow like a layer of fog. One of her most successful outings, really—the only thing that might have improved it would have been Rhea’s company, but that was in short supply these days, which meant Chrysanthi was alone. Well. Almost alone. Riding silently behind her, just as he always did, was Andrija Tomic, his hulking figure keeping her sheltered from some of the wind that came down from the peaks.
He’d been assigned to her by Piros, meant to keep her from getting into trouble, and when they’d first met, Chrysanthi had been greatly optimistic—surely nobody’s company would be as dull as Michali’s, who often seemed just as dead as he was alive—but Andrija had proven himself to be a man of few words. Or, more accurately, a man of one word, and that was, “No,” offered to Chrysanthi in a northern accent when she asked if she could ride on ahead without him, or if she could stay out beyond camp borders past sundown.
At least he looked at her, though. Michali was always too focused on Rhea to pay her that kind of attention, but Andrija seemed to take notice when she pointed out a particular bird or set of tracks in the snow that she found interesting and that made his presence much easier to bear. Besides, she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t used to it. Silence and solitude had been so much of her life at Stratathoma. Whenever Rhea was gone, and Lexos lost to some dispute between stewards, Chrysanthi had spent her time wandering the grounds, pausing here and there to touch up spots where the stone perimeter wall looked in need of a bit of moss, and keeping an eye out for Nitsos.
She clutched tightly at the reins, urging her horse forward as a pang of guilt sliced through her. She was not meant to think of him anymore—not fondly anyway. Rhea had explained everything about that day in the garden, from Mama’s past and Lexos’s murder of Baba to the true purpose of the hummingbird Chrysanthi had seen so often flitting about in Nitsos’s clockwork garden. And though Chrysanthi believed her sister with all her heart, she found it difficult to leave Nitsos behind entirely. It was second nature to worry about him, to wonder how he was managing without her to look after him. Wherever he was now, she hoped it was with people who would help him keep his blond curls trimmed; he’d always hated it when they got in his eyes while he worked.
Behind her, a horse whinnied gently. She turned, half expecting to see Nitsos approaching, but of course it was Andrija. He’d bent low in the saddle to whisper something soothing in his horse’s ear. Chrysanthi held back a smile; maybe he spoke to his horse in single syllables, too.
“Everything all right?” she asked. Andrija nodded, not looking up. “Then shall we continue on?” They were close to the river here, she thought, and she was eager to spend some time with her paints on its banks—its color was proving deliciously difficult to replicate.
Andrija straightened slowly, appearing to think before saying, “No,” which was not unexpected.
They stayed quiet for the rest of the ride back to camp, which was not unexpected, either. Sxoriza scouts had broken the trail before the rest of the camp followed, and so it grew wider the nearer they got to the site, enough for Andrija’s horse to draw up alongside Chrysanthi’s and then slip past. Andrija probably hoped that Piros, who would be waiting up ahead for her return, wouldn’t realize he let Chrysanthi proceed first into the wilderness, unguarded.
Piros stood right at the edge of the campsite as they rounded a copse of pine trees, his beard dotted with snow, a heavy cloak draped over his broad shoulders. He had been responsible, on their ride across Thyzakos, for keeping Chrysanthi fed and out of trouble, and though he had since been replaced, he was still the one sent to fetch her whenever she was needed; apparently the rest of Rhea’s runners did not like to be talked at quite so loudly.
“Piros!” she called as they approached. “What can I do for you today?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” he said, visibly relaxing. “I’ve been waiting here for ten minutes.”
He was always in a hurry, Piros, always late to something or in search of someone who was late to something else. Chrysanthi liked to dawdle whenever he was in charge of taking her somewhere, just to see how red she could get his face to turn.
“So sorry to delay,” she said as she pulled her horse up short and began to dismount. “I saw a ruby-throated warbler that just had to be admired.”
Still seated on his own horse, Andrija made a small noise that might have been laughter, but a quick glance at his face showed no expression.
“A ruby-throated . . .” Piros started before trailing off wearily. “Yes. Of course.”
“What was it you needed?”
“Your sister,” Piros said, gesturing over his shoulder toward camp. “She’s asking for you.”
make sure to grab your copy to get more of Chrysanthi and Andrija!
for reasons both as stated in the book and otherwise…. they maybe have some secrets that you’ll have to read the sequel to learn about!
LICHRALLY this is the succession s2 finale how am i just putting that together now
oh look it’s one of those mirrored scenes i talked about in the last post where once again rhea is arriving home to find lexos waiting for her just like she did at the beginning except things are different now
he isn’t
he isn’t
lexos’s decision to redefine “family” as excluding Baba but including all the kids echoes rhea’s decision earlier in the book to stop protecting Baba/allow the Sxoriza to kill him if they want to but both she and lexos are so like over-committed to the paths they’ve chosen that they can’t admit to themselves or each other that they’re both kind of only acting in self-interest at the moment no matter how many times they say the word “family” or talk about what’s “right” and “wrong”
chrysanthi meanwhile: fast asleep completely oblivious being a perfect angel
the sequel has more to say about this
it will
IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD read-along and recap, the finale!
I must say it has been a DELIGHT rereading this book (so I can remember wtf happened while reading the sequel lol) and also the recap because you're a) hilarious and b) very good at breaking down the story in a way that my soupy brain can process things it didn't notice in the first read. Also the John Tucker Must Die reference was excellent 1000/10. CAN'T WAIT TO BUY ORCHARD TOMORROW AHHHHHH. Thank you for going through all the effort to do this!