Smoke and Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox

Here is a summary with spoilers for Smoke and Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox

In a prologue, Queen Daephinia Nero is fighting the dark sorcerer Malakar after he has killed her human husband, King Juno, and their half-fae daughter. Malakar has taken the Crown of Concord, which contains enormous magical power. Daephinia uses the last of her magic to create a golden bow and fires an arrow directly into the crown. The crown shatters, releasing an enormous wave of magic that destroys Malakar and devastates the surrounding land. The resulting catastrophe, known as the Shattering, divides Arcanis into three regions and leaves the Crown of Concord broken. The history of the Shattering becomes the foundation for the centuries-long conflict between humans and the magical races.

Two hundred years later, Elyria Lightbreaker is living in Coralith. She is a fae warrior who was once famous for her role in the war and is known among humans as the Revenant. Despite her reputation as one of the most dangerous warriors in Arcanis, Elyria is now living recklessly and drinking heavily. She has spent years trying to suppress the memories of what happened during the war and, more importantly, the death of Evander Ravenswing, the man she loved. Her current life is disrupted when she is attacked by men working for the crime lord Tartanis. One of them, Raefe, captures her and brands a pattern into her thighs with his flametouch, leaving permanent scars. Elyria eventually uses her wildshaper magic to turn a plant into vines and incapacitate the attackers. When a guard insults her afterward, she punches him and is arrested. While she is in jail, Duchess Laeliana Ravenswing arranges for her release. Laeliana is Evander's mother and Kit's mother, and she has come to Elyria because the Arcane Crucible is about to begin again.

The Arcane Crucible occurs every twenty-five years. Champions from the human and magical races enter a series of deadly trials, and the winner is supposed to gain the power necessary to bring peace between the divided peoples. Twenty-five years earlier, Evander entered the Crucible and never returned. Elyria has spent the years since his disappearance avoiding Kit, despite having once been close to her. Kit is now determined to enter the Crucible herself. Laeliana wants Elyria to stop her because she cannot lose another child. Elyria initially refuses, arguing that Kit is an adult who can make her own decisions, but she eventually decides she cannot allow Evander's sister to enter the same trials that killed him. She travels to the Lost City of Luminaria to find Kit before the Crucible begins.

At the same time, Cedric Thorne is preparing to enter the Crucible on behalf of humanity. Cedric is a human knight who has been raised and trained by Lord Leviathan Church. Cedric's parents were murdered when he was a child, and he has always believed Elyria, the Revanant, was responsible. Church has encouraged that hatred and trained Cedric to view the magical races as enemies. Humans cannot use magic naturally in the same way as the Arcanians, so they rely on mana tokens and other magical objects. Church has taught Cedric that winning the Crucible and obtaining the Crown of Concord is necessary for humanity's survival. Cedric has spent his life training for this moment and intends to use the Crown to give humans an advantage over the magical races. Church also demonstrates his own ruthlessness when he executes captured criminals while teaching Cedric that mercy is weakness. Cedric travels toward Luminaria with the other human forces and eventually arrives at the site of the Crucible.

When the champions gather at Castle Lumin, Cedric finally meets Elyria. He immediately recognizes her as the Revenant and accuses her of murdering his parents. Elyria does not understand the accusation because she does not remember killing them. The confrontation is interrupted by the Arbiter, the mysterious figure who oversees the Crucible and has multiple voices. The Arbiter explains that the trials are designed to test more than individual strength. The champions must learn to work together because unity is necessary to restore the Crown. The magical Gate also enforces the rules: when a human champion attempts to attack another participant, the Gate violently stops him. Despite the demand for cooperation, most of the champions enter the Crucible still believing their own race should ultimately win.

Kit enters the Crucible despite Elyria's attempts to stop her. When Elyria tries to prevent Kit from going through the Gate, Kit creates a wall of ice between them and enters anyway. Shortly afterward, a human mindwielder named Brandon Cormac comes back through the Gate severely wounded. He explains that monsters are inside the trial and then dies, with his body burning away because he has violated the Crucible's rules. The Arbiter gives Elyria a private warning containing part of a larger prophecy involving sacrifice and betrayal; she is shocked that it would talk to her out of everyone else. Elyria realizes that Kit is now trapped inside and decides to enter the Crucible herself. She goes through the Gate and becomes bound to the trials alongside Cedric and the other champions.

The first major trial strips the champions of their magic and forces them to survive against monsters and it happens soon as the contenstants walk into the gate. Cedric encounters a nocterrian creature that initially saves him from another beast but then attacks him. The creature is killed, and Cedric continues through the trial. He later finds Zephyr, a small sylvan healer, being attacked by gnarlings. Rather than abandoning her, Cedric saves her, and she becomes one of his first allies. The group eventually encounters a dragon. Cedric is nearly killed by its flames until Thraigg Ironfist, a dwarf warrior, distracts the dragon. Elyria then arrives and physically puts herself between Cedric and the dragon's fire. She uses her staff and magic to help defeat the creature, and Elyria, Cedric, Kit, Thraigg, and Zephyr escape the trial together. This is the first time Elyria directly saves Cedric despite his belief that she murdered his family. It doesn’t make him rethink anything about her. 

The next trials begin forcing the champions to confront their own histories. Cedric's Trial of Spirit places him inside a vision of the night his parents were killed. He watches his childhood self relive the attack on his family's home. His father is murdered, and his mother attempts to protect a locket and a secret before she is killed by shadow magic. Cedric sees himself as a six-year-old child witnessing the attack. He finally realizes that the memory he has carried for most of his life is wrong. He did not hear someone identify the Revenant as the person responsible. Instead, he was the one who said the name “Revenant,” because he associated the shadowy figure he saw with the frightening stories he had heard about Elyria. His hatred of Elyria has therefore been based on a child's misunderstanding. Church knew Cedric's version of events and never corrected him.

Elyria's own trial forces her to confront what happened to her during the Battle of Luminaria. She remembers fighting Malakar's followers, being killed, and then being resurrected when the power of the shattered Crown passed through her. That resurrection gave her access to shadow magic. Afterward, she became capable of killing through the shadow power but was terrified of what it could turn her into. For roughly two centuries, she has suppressed this part of herself because she associates it with the violence she committed after the battle. During the trial, she finally stops treating the darkness as an outside force and accepts that it is part of her own power. She gains control over it instead of allowing it to control her. When she emerges from the trial, she discovers Cedric trapped in another vision involving a burning house. Elyria enters the flames, uses her shadow to protect herself and Cedric, and pulls him out. Their relationship changes after this because both have now witnessed the other's deepest trauma and now understand the other a little bit better. 

As the champions continue through the Crucible, tensions between the human and magical participants remain high. Belien and Leona, two human champions, repeatedly insult the magical races and refuse to cooperate. Elyria's anger nearly causes her shadow magic to attack Belien, but Cedric stops her. Elyria and Cedric also become increasingly protective of each other. At one point they nearly kiss, but Elyria pulls away. The next major trial involves a massive magical barrier that cannot be passed by any individual champion. Elyria realizes that the Arbiter's repeated insistence on unity is literal. She has the champions combine their blood and magic. The combined power allows her to break through the barrier. Belien and Leona refuse to contribute and are left behind. The trial demonstrates that the champions can only progress when they combine their different types of magic rather than competing against each other.

The group then enters a dangerous labyrinth. Belien and Leona attempt to move ahead without the others. During the chaos, Elyria attacks Leona with a shadow blade, but Belien deflects the attack. The blade strikes Gael Winters, a flamecaller, and cuts off one of her wings. The group continues deeper into the labyrinth and discovers that Leona has been hiding powerful telepathic abilities. Eventually, a rift opens and Leona falls to her death. Belien responds by using blood magic. He attacks Cedric and strikes him directly in the heart, leaving him apparently dying. Elyria realizes that there is a mysterious golden thread connecting her to Cedric and refuses to let him die. She defeats Belien and sends him into the chasm. Cedric survives, but the incident confirms that his connection with Elyria is more than ordinary attraction.

The next trial takes the survivors into an area filled with fire and a deadly fyre wyrm. Elyria creates a bridge across a lake of fire while using Cedric's mana to help break through the magical obsidian. The group eventually fights the wyrm and manages to cut off one of its heads, but the creature regenerates with three heads. Cyren Tenrider is killed by the wyrm. Gael, already devastated by the loss of her wing and the deaths around her, chooses to sacrifice herself by setting herself on fire and attacking the wyrm from inside its body. She kills the creature but dies in the process. Cedric survives the fire and later experiences an uncontrolled burst of his own magic. His body erupts in white-gold flames, revealing that he possesses innate fire magic despite being raised as an ordinary human knight. Elyria uses her shadow magic to contain the flames and save him. Cedric's previously unexplained connection to fire becomes another indication that the rigid division between humans and magical races is not as simple as he was taught.

After the survivors have endured the trials, Evander suddenly appears. Elyria immediately recognizes him as the man she loved and believed had died twenty-five years earlier. Kit is also overwhelmed because Evander is her brother. He claims that he survived the previous Crucible and has been trapped inside the Sanctum ever since. For a brief moment, Elyria believes the person she lost has returned. The reunion quickly becomes a trap. Evander suddenly attacks Kit and drives a darksteel blade through her back. His appearance changes as dark magic overtakes him: his skin darkens, his veins become visible, and his golden wings crumble. He attacks the rest of the group, injuring Thraigg and Nox and throwing Zephyr aside. It becomes clear that Evander has been corrupted and is being controlled by another power.

Evander eventually explains what happened. He reveals that Varyth Malchior, the leader of the sanguinagi cult and a descendant of Malakar, manipulated him after the previous Crucible. Malchior used Evander's life-debt to bind dark magic to him and turned him into an instrument inside the Sanctum. Evander has also been interfering with the current Crucible and manipulating the labyrinth. When Evander attempts to kill Cedric, Elyria uses her newly mastered shadow magic to create a blade and drives it through Evander's heart. The killing frees him temporarily from the corruption. In his final moments, the real Evander returns and apologizes to Kit before dying. Elyria is therefore forced to kill the person she entered the Crucible to save, finally accepting that the Evander she loved cannot be restored in the way she wanted.

The Arbiter then reveals her identity. She is Aurelia, a banished celestial Guardian of Balance who has been trapped within the Sanctum. Aurelia explains that the Crown of Concord was created for Selenae, a mixedborn princess who was supposed to represent unity between the different peoples of Arcanis. The history of the Crown and the Shattering is more complicated than the surviving versions of the story suggest. Aurelia's own actions contributed to the chain of events that eventually allowed Malakar's power and influence to continue. The current Crucible is therefore connected directly to the original attempt to restore balance to Arcanis.

The final trial is the Trial of Concord. Aurelia sends Elyria and Cedric into an empty chamber where there is no crown waiting for them. Instead, there is a jeweled dagger. Aurelia explains that the final test requires one of the two champions to willingly sacrifice themselves so that the other can claim the prize. Elyria and Cedric both immediately decide that they should be the one who dies. They struggle over the dagger because neither is willing to let the other sacrifice themselves. Cedric eventually convinces Elyria that she has to survive because she is the person capable of restoring the Crown and sealing the Chasms. He kisses her and, while she is distracted, uses the dagger to stab himself through the heart. Cedric dies in Elyria's arms, completing the sacrifice required by the Crucible.

Elyria refuses to accept Cedric's death. She takes hold of the half-crown that appears after the trial, and the Crown's celestial power passes through her. Because the golden thread between her and Cedric is still present, she is able to use the Crown's power and the remaining connection to his magic to bring him back to life. Cedric therefore survives the sacrifice, although the resurrection changes the circumstances of the victory. Aurelia then explains that the object they have obtained is not the complete Crown of Concord. It is only one half. The other half disappeared with Selenae, the mixedborn princess who was believed to have been lost.

The survivors return from the Crucible believing they have succeeded, but their victory lasts only briefly. Zephyr, who has spent the entire Crucible acting as the group's healer and earning everyone's trust, suddenly attacks Elyria. Zephyr cuts Elyria's hand, steals the half-crown, transforms into an eagle, and escapes. It is revealed that Zephyr is a shapeshifter who has been working for Varyth Malchior. She had deliberately kept the other champions weakened while pretending to help them. Her betrayal fulfills the warning about friendship being betrayed and leaves the surviving champions without the Crown they fought for.

After the betrayal, Elyria and Cedric are separated. Elyria takes the severely wounded Kit back to Aerithia while Cedric returns to Havensreach. Aurelia remains trapped inside the Sanctum and explains that she cannot leave until the complete Crown of Concord is reunited. Eight weeks later, the human and magical kingdoms have established a fragile peace, but neither side completely trusts the other and both still want control of the Crown's power. Kit eventually recovers enough to summon Thraigg and Nox, who reunite with Elyria. Elyria decides that her next goal is to find Zephyr, locate Varyth Malchior, recover the stolen half of the Crown, and discover where Selenae is hiding. Cedric separately begins pursuing the truth about Malchior and the other half of the Crown.

In the epilogue Cedric returns to Lord Church, his longtime mentor and the man who raised him after his parents' deaths. Church questions Cedric about what happened inside the Crucible and sends him to continue searching for the missing half of the Crown. After Cedric leaves, Church cuts his own arm and uses his blood to activate a hidden compartment. Inside is the half of the Crown that Zephyr stole. Church then reveals his true identity: he is Varyth Malchior, the same sanguinagi leader who manipulated Evander and has been operating behind the conflict.