Bree wakes with a pounding headache and aching eyes while Alice waits to confront her. Alice says a blond boy brought Bree back at one in the morning, stumbling and slurring, with an explanation that Bree had partied too hard at a frat house. Bree denies blacking out, but Alice believes the cover story, fears college is already pulling them apart, and leaves after telling Bree she needs help.

In the bathroom, Bree discovers a deep cut inside her lower lip. The pain triggers a rush of memory, and Bree realizes she can use pain to recover what the mesmer erased. She goes to Nick’s Genetics 201 lecture, confronts him about the false drunken-frat story, and makes clear that she remembers the hidden world despite Selwyn’s attempt to wipe her mind.

During a class partner exercise, Bree and Nick work through a genetics pretest while Bree pushes for answers. Bree slips Nick a list of terms connected to the Order and the magic she has seen, including Shadowborn, Legendborn, mesmer, Merlin, Kingsmage, and aether. Nick is alarmed and urges Bree to forget everything, saying the answers are not worth the danger.

Nick decides he will ask Dean McKinnon to assign Bree a different mentor so their association will not draw suspicion, and he orders Bree to stop asking questions. Bree refuses to be dismissed, reminding Nick that surviving a demon attack together does not give him authority over her. Bree leaves the lecture hall determined to pursue a new plan.

Bree searches online and identifies the Lodge of the Order of the Round Table, a historic secret society house surrounded by woods near campus. When Bree’s father calls angrily about her failure to call back, Bree lies by saying she got caught up with people at dinner, promising not to make another bad choice while withholding the truth about magic and her suspicions about her mother’s death.

After researching UNC’s secret societies in Statistics, Bree concludes that the Order’s public cover is nearly perfect and wonders whether Arthurian legend is based on the real Order rather than the other way around. Bree walks to the Lodge, reflecting on old Southern spaces built to exclude Black people, then senses aether layered over the castle-like building. Bree recognizes the clove-and-smoke signature as Selwyn’s warding magic, knocks on the door, and tells the girl who answers that Nick told her to meet him there.