Gilded in Vengeance Summary: Revenge in Gilded Age NYC
Introduction
In 1880, two sixteen-year-old girls from the Five Points tenements receive invitations to a ball most of New York will never know exists.
Gilded in Vengeance by Lyssa Mia Smith follows Emmy Vallillo and Grace Montgomery into the secret Society of the Charmed, where magic, patronage, and social elevation come with a price.
The novel moves between the crowded immigrant blocks of Lower Manhattan and the gilded estates along the Hudson, where conjurers draw power from an invisible mist called the brume.
What begins as an opportunity for two friends becomes a story about loyalty, ambition, and what people are willing to do to escape poverty.
TL;DR: The Short Version
- Premise: A wrongfully imprisoned conjurer returns under a false identity to dismantle the people who destroyed her family.
- Setting: Gilded Age New York, split between Five Points tenements and Fifth Avenue wealth.
- Magic: Alchemical, elemental, sensile, and bridging conjury, all powered by the brume.
- Central relationship: Emmy’s broken sisterhood with Grace, and her alliance with the fire-wielding Jack Fontaine.
- Themes: Betrayal, class inequality, anti-immigrant prejudice, and the line between vengeance and justice.
- Structure: 41 sections — an invitation, a prologue, 38 chapters, and an epilogue — paced across a four-week summer season.
Gilded in Vengeance Summary: The Full Story (Spoilers Ahead)
Spoiler warning: This section covers major events, twists, and the ending of the novel.
Emmy Vallillo and Grace Montgomery grow up like sisters in the Five Points tenements.
Emmy learns alchemical transformation from her father, Matteo, an Italian immigrant who heals neighbors for free, while Grace learns bridging magic from a father who is rarely present.
In January 1880, both girls attend the 127th Magical Debutante Ball at Stratton Mansion.
Emmy transforms a tin toy soldier into solid gold onstage, but the Society has quietly changed its rules to admit only one protégé that year.
Grace conspires with dressmaker Clara Claremont and guardsman Oliver Stratton to sew fool’s gold into Emmy’s hem. When Emmy is accused of fraud and Matteo tries to defend her, Chancellor Louis Stratton shoots him dead.
Emmy is sentenced to Grimsbane Tower while Grace takes the single protégé position.
She spends 828 days in solitary confinement, screaming to keep her mind intact, until a prison breakout puts her in the path of Jack Henrick Fontaine.
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Jack is a former Society scion who wields black fire, and he kills the guards holding Emmy. With his telepathic friend Caleb Alton and Emmy’s childhood neighbor Jimmy Li, they retreat to the abandoned Mistfield Manor in Avalon-on-Hudson.
Jack reveals that Grace and Oliver also framed him for the fire that killed his prophetic sister, Rose, and Elizabeth Windsor. Using Rose’s bone-carved amplifying relic, Emmy unblocks her magic and discovers she can now transform living tissue and human faces.
The group forges new identities for the June social season. Jack becomes “Nathaniel Fontaine,” Emmy becomes heiress “Winnie Fairchild,” Caleb becomes her brother “Paxton,” and Jimmy becomes building prodigy “Zhao Rui.”
Their first target is Clara Claremont. Emmy and Jack infest her dress orders with bedbugs and lice, and Caleb telepathically exposes that Clara’s enchanted gowns siphon brume from the women who wear them.
That siphoning caused the fatal fall of sixteen-year-old Henrietta Chilton during a lawn party. When Chancellor Stratton arrests Clara onstage at the summer pageant, Grace immediately betrays her to protect herself.
Next comes Oliver Stratton. The group monitors his secret poker habit at the Bronze Door gambling hall, and Emmy uses Grace’s stolen invisibility ring to alter the cards and expose him cheating in front of wealthy ordinaries.
Oliver is dragged out by an angry crowd, and Jack confronts him in the alley. Oliver uses suppression magic, draws a knife, and slits Jack’s throat.
Emmy shoots Oliver dead and heals Jack’s severed throat with Rose’s relic. Jack then tells Keeper Duncan Windsor that Oliver confessed to Elizabeth’s murder, igniting a war between the Windsor and Stratton families.
The final ball of the season brings the confrontation the group has been building toward. Jack slides a truth-enchanted hairpin onto Grace’s glove, and she involuntarily confesses before Chancellor Stratton that Oliver was involved in Elizabeth Windsor’s murder.
Chancellor Stratton fires at Grace; Emmy tackles her to the floor and saves her life. In the chaos, Keeper Windsor’s guards shoot the Chancellor dead, but he has already stabbed Caleb seven times in the stable.
Emmy keeps Caleb alive with improvised bandages until he reaches a hospital. With three days left before the Golden Gala, she and Jack travel to Lower Manhattan and find a truth conjurer — six-year-old Tobias — and his sister Agnes.
At the Golden Gala, Jack publicly demonstrates Tobias’s truth magic and accuses Grace of murder. Grace counters with a hidden bridged suppression bracelet, framing Jack and revealing she has been posing as Emmy’s maid “Mary” all summer.
Jack surrenders to protect Emmy’s cover, and he and Jimmy are beaten and taken to Society Headquarters for execution. Grace takes Rose’s relic and leaves Emmy defenseless in the woods.
Emmy escapes using a stolen invisibility ring, returns to a ransacked Mistfield, and learns that Jack once got himself arrested deliberately just to find and free her from Grimsbane. She abandons her revenge on Grace to save him.
At Jack’s sham trial at Stratton Mansion, Emmy steps forward as Emilia Vallillo and tells the assembled Society the truth about her father’s murder.
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When the crowd remains indifferent, she threatens to release the Society’s secrets and member names to Manhattan newspapers within three minutes.
The Society orders the prisoners released. As they flee, Oliver ambushes them, paralyzes Emmy, and slits Jack’s throat before Emmy breaks free, grabs a fallen pistol, and shoots him dead.
Jack dies in her arms. Emmy chases Grace into a burning alley, where the two former friends fight while Mrs. Windsor, wearing the invisibility ring, overhears Grace confess to burning Mistfield and killing Elizabeth.
Emmy tears the relic chains from Grace’s neck and reclaims both Rose’s amplifying relic and a second relic Grace forged from Matteo’s bones. She fuses them inside Jack’s black flames and places the combined relic on his chest, restoring his life.
Grace and Clara are imprisoned in Grimsbane Tower. Keeper Windsor appoints Jack as the new Commander of the Guard, and the group returns to New York City to reform the Society from within.
In the epilogue, Jack opens Society education and protections to working-class and immigrant conjurers, Jimmy builds a unionized construction company, and Emmy visits Grace one final time for closure before stepping out into the sunshine alongside Jack.
Summary by Chapter (Spoilers)
This section offers a brief look at each of the book’s 41 sections for readers who want to see what is inside. Spoiler warning.
Invitation: A formal card invites select guests to the 127th Magical Debutante Ball at Stratton Mansion on January 24, 1880. It warns that sharing the invitation with uninvited parties is punishable by death.
Prologue: Emmy and Grace attend the ball with Matteo, hoping to become Society protĂ©gĂ©s. Emmy transforms a tin soldier into gold, but Grace and her allies plant fool’s gold in Emmy’s hem, and Chancellor Stratton shoots Matteo when he intervenes.
Chapter One: Emmy endures 828 days of solitary confinement in Grimsbane Tower, screaming to preserve her sanity. After she bites a guard, two guards are killed by an escaping inmate who opens her cell window.
Chapter Two: The escapee is Jack Fontaine, who recognizes Emmy from the ball. She lies that she can transform a guard’s face into his, and he frees her using stolen keys before burning her cell and the corpses with black flames.
Chapter Three: Emmy and Jack evade guards and swim the freezing Harlem River to Manhattan. They meet Caleb Alton, who tracks guard positions telepathically, and find Jimmy Li waiting with a carriage.
Chapter Four: Jimmy drives them to Mistfield Manor and explains he learned about magic after attending Matteo’s funeral. Jack reveals that only one protĂ©gĂ© was accepted that year and proposes an alliance to ruin Grace, Clara, Oliver, and Chancellor Stratton.
Chapter Five: Jack explains that conjurers draw power from the brume and outlines a plan to infiltrate the summer season under forged identities. Caleb warns that Rose’s prophecy showed Oliver driving a knife into Jack’s throat.
Chapter Six: Emmy fails to unblock her magic until Jack physically restrains her, recreating the trauma of her arrest. She taps the brume and transforms her fingernails into iron daggers.
Chapter Seven: Emmy learns the amplifying relic lets her transform living tissue. She and Jack break into Society Headquarters and forge record-book entries for the Fairchild and Fontaine identities.
Chapter Eight: Oliver arrives at headquarters with guards, forcing a hurried escape through a melted hole in the stone wall. Emmy seals the wall, turns the fallen stone to dust, and disguises Jack as Oliver to send a guard away.
Chapter Nine: Jack lays out the four-week revenge timeline from the Mistfield roof. He schedules an appointment at Clara’s dress shop and transforms his own face into “Nathaniel Fontaine.”
Chapter Ten: Emmy visits Claremont Originals as Winnie Fairchild and meets Grace, who does not recognize her. When Mrs. Windsor learns Winnie is staying at Mistfield as a Fontaine cousin, she faints and Grace accuses the Fontaines of killing Elizabeth.
Chapter Eleven: Jack hires a large charmed staff and gifts Emmy a silver chain setting for Rose’s relic. He shows her Rose’s prophetic drawings, including the one depicting Oliver slitting his throat.
Chapter Twelve: The group attends the Inaugural Splendor ball at Clarity Hall in full disguise. Emmy meets the Strattons and watches Grace dance intimately with Oliver in his guard uniform.
Chapter Thirteen: The group plays stud poker for animal masks enchanted to merge with the loser’s face. Grace, Oliver, and Clara force their servants to wear the masks, and Emmy breaks the enchantment before storming out.
Chapter Fourteen: Caleb explains that the Society blames immigrants for straining the brume. Jack decides to lure Oliver to the Bronze Door, and Emmy proposes sabotaging Clara’s dress shop at night.
Chapter Fifteen: Emmy and Jack break into Claremont Originals and share an intimate conversation about Jack’s past and Grace’s childhood jealousies. They settle on infesting Clara’s dress orders with bedbugs and lice.
Chapter Sixteen: The group dusts pests into Clara’s orders over two nights and attends the Enchanted Pursuit lawn party. Sixteen-year-old Henrietta Chilton falls to her death while wearing one of Clara’s enchanted gowns.
Chapter Seventeen: Jack retrieves the Fontaine grimoire and admits he once set the family library on fire out of jealousy. At the summer pageant, Jack performs with black fire, Oliver brawls with him onstage, and Grace displays bridged multi-elemental conjury.
Chapter Eighteen: Emmy transforms a dress thread into a vine that covers the stage and is crowned Princess of the Charmed. While dancing, she feels Clara’s gowns siphoning her brume, and Caleb relays the truth to Chancellor Stratton, who arrests Clara onstage.
Chapter Nineteen: The group celebrates on the Mistfield cliffs, and Jack vows to burn the Society before letting it take Emmy again. They set their next plan on catching Oliver cheating at the Bronze Door.
Chapter Twenty: Emmy discovers the relic-making pages have been cut from the Fontaine grimoire. The maid Mary accidentally touches an enchanted truth bangle and reveals that Grace borrowed the grimoire and knows Emmy’s true identity.
Chapter Twenty-One: At the Strattons’ private picnic, Mrs. Stratton says she wants Oliver to marry an heiress rather than Grace. Oliver kisses Emmy on the cliffs, and Jack interrupts and strong-arms him into a night of gambling in the city.
Chapter Twenty-Two: The group tests the truth bangle and Mary voluntarily confesses she witnessed Matteo’s murder and prayed for Emmy in prison. Jack returns drunk from a raid on an ordinary conjurer and reveals Oliver wants to return to the Bronze Door.
Chapter Twenty-Three: The group watches Oliver’s card games for six consecutive nights. At Grace’s charity fundraiser, Grace taunts Emmy about an engagement to Oliver, and Mary steals Grace’s jewelry box of bridged magical items.
Chapter Twenty-Four: The stolen box contains addresses in Lower Manhattan and the missing French grimoire pages on relic creation. Emmy uses the invisibility ring to rig a card game, and Oliver is caught cheating and dragged into the alley, where he slits Jack’s throat.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Emmy shoots Oliver dead and heals Jack with Rose’s relic. Jack tells Keeper Windsor about Oliver’s confession, and the group learns the addresses belong to immigrant conjurers Grace has been binding for Chancellor Stratton.
Chapter Twenty-Six: At the final masquerade ball, Chancellor Stratton and Keeper Windsor argue and draw guns in the library. Jack slips the truth hairpin onto Grace’s glove, and she confesses that Oliver was involved in Elizabeth Windsor’s murder.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Chancellor Stratton fires at Grace, Emmy tackles her to safety, and Windsor’s guards kill the Chancellor. Emmy finds Caleb in the stable with seven stab wounds and keeps him alive until he reaches a hospital.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Jack reports that Caleb survived surgery. With three days left, he and Emmy travel to Lower Manhattan and find Agnes and her six-year-old brother Tobias, a truth conjurer, and pay them to help expose Grace.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Caleb shows Emmy a prophecy drawing that he will live to old age beside Jimmy, and Emmy finds a drawing of Jack looking lovingly at her. Jack confesses he has loved her since Rose drew the prophecy seven years earlier, and Emmy rejects him.
Chapter Thirty: At the Golden Gala, Keeper Windsor announces he is adopting Grace. Jack demonstrates Tobias’s truth magic onstage and asks Grace whether she has secrets about Elizabeth’s murder, and Grace whispers that Elizabeth was murdered before pointing at Jack.
Chapter Thirty-One: Grace uses a hidden bridged suppression bracelet to bypass the truth magic and frame Jack. Jack confesses to his escape to protect Emmy’s cover, is beaten and arrested along with Jimmy, and Emmy shatters the ballroom’s glass waterfall wall to escape.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Emmy sends Agnes and Tobias to safety and sees Jack and Jimmy loaded into a prison carriage. “Mary” offers help, then transforms into Grace, who reveals she has been impersonating the maid all summer and steals both relics.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Emmy escapes through the woods with a stolen invisibility ring and finds Caleb hiding near the ransacked Mistfield. Caleb reveals Jack got himself arrested two years earlier specifically to find and free Emmy.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Emmy sneaks into Society Headquarters and finds a trial notice for Jack’s execution at Stratton Mansion. She and Caleb devise a rescue built on the Society’s fear of public exposure.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Emmy enters the Stratton Mansion ballroom invisibly and steps forward as Emilia Vallillo to tell the truth about her father’s murder. When the crowd stays indifferent, she threatens to release the Society’s secrets to Manhattan newspapers within three minutes.
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Society orders Jack and Jimmy released, and Jack ignites a firework to cover their escape. Oliver ambushes them in the stairwell, paralyzes Emmy, slits Jack’s throat, and is shot dead by Emmy.
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Jack dies in Emmy’s arms, and she chases Grace into a burning alley where Mrs. Windsor overhears Grace’s confession. Emmy reclaims both relics, fuses them inside Jack’s black flames, and restores his life.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Jack extinguishes the mansion fire and escapes with Emmy and Jimmy to the ferry docks, where Emmy finally confesses her love. Keeper Windsor later apologizes, confirms Grace and Clara are imprisoned in Grimsbane, and offers Jack the Commander position.
Epilogue: The group returns to New York City to reform the magical community from within, with Jack as Commander and Jimmy running a unionized construction company. Emmy visits Grace in Grimsbane one last time before stepping out into the sunshine with Jack.
Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Emilia “Emmy” Vallillo | An eighteen-year-old alchemical transformation conjurer from Five Points who is wrongfully imprisoned and later poses as heiress Winnie Fairchild. |
| Jack Henrick Fontaine | A fire conjurer wielding black flames who escapes Grimsbane with Emmy and leads the revenge campaign under the name Nathaniel Fontaine. |
| Grace Eloise Montgomery | Emmy’s former best friend and a bridging conjurer who frames Emmy to secure the sole protĂ©gĂ© position and later poses as the maid Mary. |
| Matteo Vallillo | Emmy’s father, an Italian immigrant bricklayer and unregistered healer who is shot dead at the debutante ball. |
| Jimmy Li | Emmy’s childhood neighbor, a non-charmed building contractor who poses as building prodigy Zhao Rui. |
| Caleb Alton | A telepathic conjurer and former attendant to Rose Fontaine who poses as Winnie’s brother Paxton. |
| Oliver Stratton | Son of the Chancellor and a conjury binder who helps frame Emmy and set the Mistfield fire. |
| Chancellor Louis Stratton | Leader of the Triumvirate, wielder of suppression magic, and the killer of Matteo Vallillo. |
| Clara Claremont | Owner of Claremont Originals, a modiste whose enchanted gowns siphon brume from her clients. |
| Rose Ophelia Fontaine | Jack’s late sister, a prophetic conjurer who created the amplifying relic before dying in the Mistfield fire. |
| Keeper Duncan Windsor | A Triumvirate member and Grace’s uncle who adopts Grace after his daughter Elizabeth dies. |
| Elizabeth Windsor | Grace’s cousin and Rose’s friend, killed in the Mistfield fire. |
| Agnes and Tobias | Working-class siblings from Five Points; six-year-old Tobias possesses truth conjury through touch. |
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Who Is Gilded in Vengeance For?
The novel suits readers of young adult historical fantasy and romantic fantasy, particularly those drawn to Gilded Age settings and secret magical societies.
The revenge structure follows a target-by-target campaign, so readers who prefer clear objectives and escalating confrontations will find a familiar arc.
Those who enjoy disguise plots, forged identities, and a slow-building romance between two characters with traumatic pasts will find those elements central.
The book also addresses class inequality, immigration law, and institutional corruption as recurring concerns alongside the revenge plot.
Readers seeking lighter or comedic fantasy may find the tone darker.
The story includes imprisonment, solitary confinement, a parent’s murder on the page, knife violence, and characters who self-harm or manipulate illness in flashbacks.
It is listed for ages 14 and up and grades 9–12.
Books Like Gilded in Vengeance
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi: Shares a late nineteenth-century setting, a secret society hierarchy, and a crew of young adults pursuing a high-stakes heist with an artifact-driven magic system.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo: Features a revenge plot against corrupt elites, a crew of traumatized outcasts with distinct magical abilities, and a slow-burn romantic bond.
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong: Centers on betrayal, political intrigue, and romantic tension in an atmospheric historical setting.
The Diviners by Libba Bray: Combines a historical New York City setting with secret magical abilities, dark conspiracies, and hidden societal corruption.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: Provides the structural model for a wrongfully imprisoned protagonist who returns under a new identity to dismantle those who ruined him.
Revelle by Lyssa Mia Smith: Another young adult fantasy by the same author, built around performance, illusion magic, and a historical-inspired setting.
Book Snapshot
- Genre & Subgenre: Young Adult Fantasy / Historical Fantasy (Gilded Age fantasy, romantic fantasy)
- Core Narrative Tropes: Revenge arc, secret identities and disguise, friends-to-enemies betrayal, forced proximity, magic with limitations and costs
- Tone & Atmosphere: Dark, atmospheric, lyrical, suspenseful, romantic
- Primary Conflict: Emmy’s effort to unblock her magic, infiltrate the Society in disguise, and exact revenge for her father’s murder and her two-year imprisonment
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced and episodic, structured around a four-week summer social season in June 1882
- Book Structure: 41 sections — an Invitation, a Prologue, 38 numbered chapters, and an Epilogue
- Publisher: Storytide
- Publication Date: November 4, 2025
- Pages: 384
- ISBN-10: 0063239620
- ISBN-13: 978-0063239623
- Reading Age: 14 years and up (grades 9–12)
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