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The third and final Trial begins in the Bowl the next day. When the contestants arrive, they are faced with a huge maze created and controlled by Blooms, Elites who can grow supernaturally strong plants. The king announces to the crowd that the person who reaches the center of the maze and kills the criminal waiting there first will win the Trial, thus ensuring some amount of bloodshed for the eager audience to enjoy. Before the contestants enter the maze, Kai and Paedyn exchange an encouraging look.
Paedyn, whose only goal is to survive the day, enters the maze. She soon realizes that the Blooms keep rearranging the walls to confuse the contestants and finds herself in a quickly narrowing path. She narrowly avoids being crushed, but her foot gets stuck between the hedges. Paedyn pulls it out but is injured in the process. She keeps running through the maze until all the paths start narrowing at the same time. This time, they do not crush her, but the maze is now narrow enough that if contestants meet, they will have to fight to get past one another. Soon after, Blair finds Paedyn.
Increasingly frustrated, Kai runs through the maze. After the paths narrow, he runs into Andy in jaguar form. Andy’s power is difficult to control, as the longer she stays in an animal form, the more her animal instincts take over her rational mind. She does not seem to recognize Kai and attacks him, but he senses Jax’s ability nearby and Blinks out of her reach. After Jax gets too far for him to use his power, Kai decides to turn into a jaguar instead. The two creatures begin to fight, but Kai feels his grasp on his human mind weaken. He reminds himself not to kill his cousin, but Andy bites his shoulder before turning into a falcon. The Blooms do not let her fly out of the maze, so she returns to her jaguar form, but Kai runs away. After a while, he is elated when he senses one of the Blooms’ power nearby.
Blair threatens Paedyn and chokes the air out of her, intending to kill her slowly. Paedyn knows that her only chance against her enemy is in a physical fight, so she tries to gain time. She taunts Blair about being unable to get either of the princes. The young woman reacts by throwing Paedyn around and kicking her, so Paedyn grabs her foot and knocks her down. She then knocks Blair unconscious and runs away, fighting her way through the maze until she reaches the clearing in the center.
Kai uses the Bloom’s power to destroy the walls in front of him until he reaches the center of the maze. He gets there at the same time as Paedyn, who does not notice him and instead runs toward the so-called criminal chained in the center of the clearing.
The person at the center of the maze is Adena, beaten and tied up. Paedyn is shocked and distraught when she sees her friend. She remembers the king’s warning that she would not win the Trials and realizes that he made sure she could not. Adena tries to warn her friend, but a branch thrown by Blair hits Adena in the chest and impales her. Paedyn screams and holds her friend as she collapses in agony. Before she dies, Adena makes Paedyn promise to wear the vest that she made her.
Kai is confused about the unfolding scene, as he does not understand what Adena is doing there. Jax and Andy also arrive at the clearing just as Blair, the winner of the Trial, is cheered by the crowd. However, the atmosphere shifts when the celebration is interrupted by masked figures coming out of the tunnel and into the king’s box. They take the royal family hostage while others, including Silencers, ensure that no one in the crowd or among the contestants can use their powers. Kai realizes that this is an attack by the Resistance.
Despite her pain and distress, Paedyn can feel that something is going on around her. She raises her head toward the box, where the king is being held hostage by Calum. Kitt has realized that Paedyn betrayed him and looks at her in shock. Calum then explains what the Resistance fights for and demands that Ordinaries be reintegrated into society. However, contrary to the original plan, he threatens to kill the princes if the king refuses. Paedyn is alarmed by his statement. Suddenly, Kai overcomes a Silencer and steals the power to erupt in flames.
Despite the pain, Kai fights against the effects of the Silencer’s power until he can master the ability. He overcomes the Silencer and regains control of his own power, using the opportunity to grab onto Kitt’s Fire ability.
A chaotic fight ensues in the Bowl as Kai attacks the Resistance with Kitt’s Fire while more Imperials rush into the Bowl. Paedyn says a final goodbye to Adena before she gets up to run away. Heartbroken and helpless, she escapes the arena and remembers that Adena’s vest is back in her room in the castle. Paedyn runs to the palace, where a few Imperials stop her to ask concerned questions about the situation in the Bowl. She pretends to be scared and confused so that the soldiers lead her back to her room without questions. Once there, she puts on her vest and lets a Healer heal her injured foot. She then sneaks out to escape through the gardens, as she knows the Imperials will be too busy to guard that exit. While she runs, Paedyn reminisces about bittersweet memories of her time with Kitt and Kai until she finds herself on a path leading back toward Loot. Before she can get far, however, she is stopped by the king, who is waiting for her on his own in the middle of the road. He reveals that he has known for a while that she is an Ordinary and a Resistance member and threatens to kill her for her treason. The king also taunts Paedyn about her father’s and Adena’s murders, which enrages her. He then swings his sword at her.
Kai fights Resistance members in the arena, unsettled by their unusual lack of supernatural abilities. He notices that Kitt, battling nearby, seems uncharacteristically enraged and brutal. When he sees that people are fleeing out of the Bowl, the prince decides to follow them.
Paedyn attempts to evade the king’s attacks, but he eventually overpowers her. While they fight, however, he admits that he has lied about Ordinaries carrying a disease to create an Elite society and become more powerful. After he pins Paedyn down, the king then carves an “O” (for “Ordinary”) above her heart with a dagger to brand and humiliate her. As he is about to kill her, however, she gets free and overpowers him in turn, breaking his nose. He tells her that she is misremembering the night of her father’s death and that Kai actually killed him. Paedyn, confused, realizes that this is why the prince has always felt so familiar to her. Angry and distraught, Paedyn then runs the king’s sword through his chest in her father’s and Adena’s names before cutting his throat.
As the king dies, Paedyn notices that she was recorded by a nearby Sight, who then runs away. Paedyn sets out to flee, but she is stopped by Kai throwing a dagger at her and narrowly missing. The prince is distraught, clearly conflicted about his duty to kill her and his feelings for her. Paedyn, who now knows that Kai killed her father, is ready to die at his hands as well. However, he offers her a head start and promises that he will not show mercy the next time he finds her. Paedyn runs.
Leaning over his father’s body, Kai is conflicted. He is heartbroken, angry, and shocked, now aware of Paedyn’s identity as an Ordinary. However, he remembers his duty as an Enforcer and promises himself that he will eventually find her.
While running through the forest back to Loot, Paedyn stops and examines the wound over her heart. She is also conflicted about her feelings for Kai, reminiscing about their tender moments, and dismayed that she forgot who her father’s murderer truly was.
The Epilogue is the only chapter narrated by Kitt. Three days after the king’s death and Kitt’s subsequent coronation, the new king feels exhausted, confused, and betrayed. Now embittered by the pressure of his new position and the events of the last few days, he orders Kai to find Paedyn and bring her back to him.
The final section of the novel begins with the final Trial, this time happening in front of the king and an audience. The setting of the arena is significant, signaling that the narrative is building up to its climax and harkening back to the history of Roman gladiators. The arena and the maze are especially conducive to the depictions of climactic combat and symbolic resistance. This makes them typical settings in contemporary works of young adult fantasy, such as James Daschner’s The Maze Runner series, Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In Powerless, the maze in the third Trial intensifies the previous Trials’ emphasis on survival and self-reliance. It pushes the contestants further toward violence and bloodshed, as evidenced by Blair’s attack on Paedyn and Andy unexpectedly turning against Kai. Additionally, the maze can be interpreted as a characterization device to highlight the characters’ struggle to symbolically find their way. Kai, for instance, simply razes through the hedges altogether, which hints at his destructive nature. Paedyn once again relies on her strategic mind, which reinforces the power of her intellect and survival skills.
Adena’s fate marks a significant narrative shift. Her death severs Paedyn’s final connection to her past and cements her opposition to the king’s rule. On the other hand, Paedyn’s betrayal of Kitt’s trust gives him a decisive push toward the end of his moral dilemma. While the crown prince had been debating whether to side with his father or Paedyn’s cause throughout the story, his character arc now concludes with him becoming her enemy. Paedyn, who had tried to see beyond his resemblance to the king, symbolically notes that his eyes are now undeniably “the eyes of the king” (181). Significantly, the novel’s Epilogue is narrated by Kitt, who consciously discards his characteristic kindness and compassion. As a result, the narrative reframes him as an antagonist and introduces suspense about his future in the series.
The final confrontation between Paedyn and the king provides some amount of closure, but it also sets up new narrative stakes for the next book. Paedyn learns the truth about her father’s murder, which reframes her understanding of her relationship with Kai. This creates dramatic tension as Kai and Paedyn now part ways as apparent enemies. Paedyn’s dagger being originally given by her father for protection and later used to kill the king provides narrative closure to its symbolism. Finally, Paedyn’s injury bleeding as she flees echoes the opening chapter’s humorous red herring, now made real and dramatic. The “O” carved into her skin by the king may also foreshadow her eventual reclamation of the symbol as a mark of her identity: “I trace the jagged lines that form that single letter. That single letter that will forever scar, marring it with the memory of him and what I am” (489). This relates to her earlier implicated feelings of shame about being Ordinary, a character trait that is not yet resolved but may develop throughout the series.