For two more weeks, Celaena, Chaol, Dorian, and the soldiers travel south through worsening autumn weather. Icy rain and cold leave Celaena miserable, but the weather clears as the company nears Rifthold.

Dorian rides over to Chaol and asks him to come see the view from a hill, forcing Chaol to bring the chained Celaena along. At the summit, Celaena sees the glass castle of Rifthold, the enormous crystalline palace built over the old stone castle. The sight overwhelms her and recalls her first arrival there eight years earlier, when she was young, richly dressed, and already thinking about a man she had killed.

Dorian jokes that one more tower will make the castle collapse, then decides the company will camp nearby for the night. Chaol asks what the king will think of Celaena, and Dorian predicts his father will tolerate her only until she speaks, though he suggests the king has greater concerns.

As the camp is made, Chaol notices Celaena’s grim reaction to the city and asks about it. Celaena admits she still does not fully understand how she was captured and suspects rival assassins betrayed her to create an opening for themselves. When Chaol says Endovier must have been terrible, Celaena describes being shorn, chained, whipped, salted in her wounds, and helped only by kind prisoners from Eyllwe who cleaned her back at night. Chaol offers no reply and later speaks to her only in commands.

That night, Celaena wakes from a nightmare of being buried alive in an Endovier mass grave. Looking at the glowing glass castle, she thinks of her coming confinement within its walls and resolves to win the competition, serve the king, and then disappear. She rejects any sense of destiny, kingdoms, magic, or Fae, insisting to herself that she is no longer meant for anything.

Across the camp, Dorian watches Celaena in the moonlight and sees sadness and beauty beneath her sharpness. Although he reminds himself that she is a dangerous assassin and only his Champion, the image of her gazing at the stars stays with him in his dreams.