These Hollow Vows

These Hollow Vows (2021) is the first in a young adult romantasy series by American author Lexi Ryan. Before the These Hollow Vows series, Ryan was primarily known for her adult romance novels, which covered subgenres including sports romance, contemporary romance, and small-town romance. Ryan has written two additional installments in the These Hollow Vows series, with a fourth installment slated for spring 2025.

This guide refers to the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2021 e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, graphic violence, antigay bias, substance use, and sexual content.

Plot Summary

These Hollow Vows opens on Abriella “Brie” Kincaid, a practiced thief, stealing from a wealthy man’s vault. She escapes with enough money to make her next debt payment to her aunt Madame Vivias but ends up giving the money to her friend Nik, who needs it to pay a more pressing debt. She returns to the basement room that she shares with her sister, Jasalyn “Jas” Kincaid, who excitedly reports that portals to Faerie will open the following day. Though Brie is suspicious of the fae, her looming debt leads her to consider a trip to the dangerous faerie realm, particularly since her neighbor, Sebastian, on whom she has a crush, will soon be moving to the next stage of his mage apprenticeship. (She later learns that this is false; Sebastian is really the faerie Prince Ronan.) Before she and Jas can enact her plan, however, Madame Vivias sells Jas to faerie as revenge for the missed payment. Brie purchases information from the goblin Bakken using her bright red hair. Bakken tells her a legend that King Mordeus, Jas’s kidnapper, stole the crown of the Unseelie Court from the rightful heir, Prince Finnian.

Brie attends the faerie ball, where she meets Pretha, who poses as another human attending the ball. (Brie later learns that Pretha is a Wild Fae ally of Prince Finnian.) As she searches for the portal from Seelie to Unseelie, she meets a silver-eyed fae who offers to help her; she later learns that this is Prince Finnian, or Finn, who seeks to overthrow his uncle.

Brie travels to Unseelie, where Mordeus blackmails her into stealing three artifacts from the Seelie Court in exchange for freeing Jas. He only reveals the first artifact, a magic mirror. When Brie returns to the Seelie Court, she encounters Sebastian, who admits that he is Prince Ronan and has been living in disguise as a human for the past two years. Brie flees and is briefly abducted by Finn and his allies. They explain that Brie’s talent for hiding in shadows is actually a form of magic that she can develop now that she is in Faerie. When she runs from Finn, she is pursued by a creature called the Barghest, which bites her with venomous teeth. Two wolves defend her (sent, she later learns, by Finn), and Sebastian returns her to the Seelie Court to be healed. She agrees to become part of a group of potential brides for Sebastian, as this gives her a reason to continue living at the Seelie palace.

Brie schemes how to get the magic Mirror of Discovery from the Seelie queen’s solarium. Pretha poses as a tutor to take Brie to Finn’s headquarters in a nearby village. Finn trains Brie in using her powers and warns her against undertaking any bonds, a process that mystically ties fae to humans. Brie, who feels that this bond would allow a fae to control her, insists that she never plans to bond. She asks Sebastian to give her the Mirror of Discovery; he agrees. He explains a long conflict between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Finn’s rebels later reveal that Sebastian’s mother, Queen Arya, has enslaved Unseelie refugees fleeing Mordeus’s rule. Finn helps these children escape. Brie meets Pretha’s daughter, who predicts that Brie will die during a bonding ceremony and become a queen. (Brie does die during a bonding ceremony in the novel’s climax; the latter part of the prediction doesn’t come to pass in this installment.) When Brie grows ill, she sees a young human woman present herself as “tribute,” which she later learns means that the woman sacrificed her life to help Finn use his magic, which is blocked by a curse that Arya enacted.

Mordeus assigns Brie the task of finding the Grimoricon, a magical book, but lets her keep the mirror, which she uses to ensure that Jas is well, even after Finn warns her that the mirror is not reliable. When she overhears Sebastian interrogating Jalek, one of Finn’s allies, she is shocked to see a crueler side to her love interest. She helps Finn free Jalek before the Seelie guards or prince can harm him. When she returns to the palace, she is attacked by spirits called Sluagh, who trap her in her own memories made real. They summon a house fire from her childhood, which nearly kills her again. Finn rescues her but insists that Pretha heal her. (Brie later learns that this is an effect of Arya’s curse.)

Brie learns that the Grimoricon is at another Seelie palace and plans a trip there with Sebastian. Sebastian tracks Brie to Finn’s stronghold, revealing that an amulet that he gave her is a tracker. Sebastian is angry about the connection with Finn, whom he sees as an enemy. Brie and Sebastian kiss, but she later sees him kissing another woman. Jealous, she goes to a faerie ball, where she drinks drugged wine. Pretha takes her to the rebels’ house to recover. While intoxicated, Brie makes sexual advances to Finn, who admits his attraction but refuses her advances while she is drugged.

Bakken tells Brie that the Unseelie fae suffer from a curse that keeps them from accessing their magic; this makes them get injured and die like mortals. This aging is exacerbated if they use their magic. Bakken tells Brie that she can break the curse either by killing Arya or another way, which involves her death. (She later learns that this happens when she bonds Sebastian and dies from the curse, as he as Unseelie blood.)

Brie and Sebastian go to the seaside Seelie palace, where they have sex and confess their love. Brie steals the Grimoricon and transports to the Unseelie Court, where Mordeus reveals that Brie wears King Oberon’s missing crown, which conveys the power of the Unseelie Court. Oberon bestowed it upon her during the fire in her childhood. Brie died, but Oberon, who loved Brie’s mother, traded his life for Brie’s. Mordeus demands that Brie bond with him to relinquish the crown, but Brie sits on the throne herself instead. She kills Mordeus and frees Jas. Brie, fearing that she will forever be hunted for the crown, agrees to bond with Sebastian. As soon as they bond, she begins to die. He gives her a potion that will turn her fae. When she recovers, she learns that Sebastian is part Unseelie; he bonded her to secure the crown. Furious that both Sebastian and Finn betrayed her, Brie uses her powers to flood the palace with darkness and flee.