The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Forna, Namina. The Gilded Ones. Penguin Random House, 2020.

The novel is narrated in the first-person present by Deka, the protagonist. Deka prepares for the Ritual Purity in which Elder Durkas will test all the 16-year-old girls at Temple Oyomo by cutting them and watching to see if their blood runs red or gold. The girls whose blood runs gold will be deemed impure and killed. Deka is nervous about the ceremony because she deeply believes in her god, Oyomo, and she wants to be pure in his eyes. Deka lives in Irfut, which is in the north of Otera. Most of the people there have white skin. However, Deka’s mother is from the south, where most of the people have dark skin.

Deka’s mother died from the red pox three months ago, so she goes to the ceremony with her father. Suddenly, deathshrieks appear. The monstrous creatures are known to attack girls on the cusp of the Ritual of Purity, but they have never been seen so far north. The deathshrieks surround the villagers. When one attempts to kill her father, Deka shouts at it to stop. All the deathshrieks stop what they are doing and run off. Deka looks around, confused. Her father calls her a demon. Elfriede asks what is wrong with her eyes. Deka’s crush, Ionas, stabs Deka in the stomach. Elder Durkas announces that Deka is impure as her blood runs gold.

Deka awakens in prison. She is told that she is a demon. Her father cuts off her head. Her head reattaches itself to her body and she wakes up again. Over the next two months, the Elders kill Deka nine times, which is almost unheard of. Usually, demons are killed after two or three attempts. They collect her blood so they can sell it. A nameless woman Deka refers to as White Hands appears at the prison and tells Deka that Emperor Geza is forming an army of “alaki” to fight against the deathshrieks. If Deka fights for the emperor for 20 years, White Hands promises she will be absolved of her demonic nature.

White Hands takes Deka and a girl named Britta, who is also an alaki, to a ship. Deka and Britta vow to be friends. They arrive in Hemaira, White Hands takes them to Jor Hall, where all the alaki are being registered. The girls are all paired with a newly recruited boy solder for the duration of their training. Deka is paired with Keita, a wealthy aristocrat. After, Deka and Britta are selected to go to the Warthu Bera, which is the most elite training center and is run by the Okai, who are the emperor’s female spies.

Deka and the other alaki begin training. Deka and her new friends (Britta, Belcalis, Adwapa, Katya, Gazal, and Asha) vow to be not just allies but sisters. Deka realizes that her mother had a necklace which contained the Okai symbol on it. She wonders if her mother was an Okai, so she goes to the library where she finds her mother in the Heraldry of Shadows, which confirms her suspicions. Deathshrieks infiltrate the Warthu Bera and kill Deka’s friend Katya. Katya bleeds the blue blood which indicates her final death. Deka uses her strange powers to send the deathshrieks away again. White Hands returns to the Warthu Bera and tells Deka and her friends that she is going to train them in a special group so they can be sent out on dangerous deathshriek raids. Deka and her friends go on their first raid with their jatu partners. Deka uses her powers to stun the deathshrieks while the rest of the group kills them all. Deka finds a secret temple inside a cave that appears to be dedicated to the four original demons: The Gilded Ones. Deka finds a creature swimming in a pond. It transforms into a kitten-like beast and Deka takes it as her pet, calling him Ixa.

Deka and her friends go on so many successful raids that the emperor congratulates them personally and says they will ride by his side to the deathshriek’s primal nesting grounds where they will kill them all. Deka goes on a small raid in which she hears a pair of deathshrieks talking. She is shocked to realize that the deathshrieks have the capacity for language, emotion, and religion. Now that she thinks about it, the monsters never seem to take girls, either.

Deka and her friends head out with the emperor and 100 others to find the deathshriek’s primal nesting grounds. They are ambushed by deathshrieks. Deka realizes that one of them is Katya, transformed into a monster. She tries to protect her, but the emperor realizes what Deka is doing and orders his men to kill Deka. Deka is captured. Keita offers to kill her himself, but he uses a blue potion to fake her death. Then, when the deathshrieks attack, he sneaks away with her on Ixa and takes her to a salt mine where she can heal.

White Hands arrives and reveals she is the firstborn alaki and the true empress of Otera. The Gilded Ones were never demons, but goddesses. They ruled Otera until their sons imprisoned them and tried to kill all the alaki, who are part-Goddess, part-human. Before the Gilded Ones were locked away, they used their magic to bless the alaki with the gift of respawning as deathshrieks if they were killed. Then they created the Nuru, who could exist between deathshrieks and alaki and free them all. White Hands tells Deka that she is the Nuru. Keita kisses Deka goodbye.

Deka goes to the final battle. She tells the alaki the truth of their nature. She and her friends run off to the N’Oyo Mountains to free the four goddesses. The emperor blocks her path and tells her he is a male descendant of the goddesses with superhuman strength. Deka defeats him, then releases the goddesses. Deka and her allies prepare to take back Otera, but the sons of the goddesses plot their resistance to the new order.