Bree is pulled into Vera’s memories and witnesses the beginning of her maternal line’s power. Vera is enslaved on Master Davis’s plantation, where she sees the master’s wife secretly meet Reynolds and later remembers being assaulted by Master Davis beneath a magnolia tree. Months afterward, Vera realizes she is pregnant, and when Master Davis notices, Vera understands he intends to harm her again.

To protect herself and the daughter growing inside her, Vera runs. Hunted by pattyrollers and dogs, Vera uses the creek, trees, and her own strength to evade capture. Beneath a tree, Vera cuts her palm, mixes her blood with fruit and honeysuckle, and calls on the ancestors for protection, foresight, resistance, and the strength to hide and fight.

The ancestors answer Vera but demand a price: the power will be bound to Vera’s blood, one daughter at a time, forever. Vera accepts. Red-and-black power ignites inside Vera, and Vera turns to Bree, telling her that this is Bree’s beginning.

Bree is then carried through eight generations of women descended from Vera. Bree sees their faces, their suffering, their resilience, and the moments of their deaths when the family’s power passes from each mother to her daughter. Bree understands that this inherited force is bound directly to her flesh and history.

The vision shifts to Bree’s mother as a young woman walking on campus with a girl who has golden eyes. Bree then revisits the car crash with her mother, who shows Bree that the accident truly was an accident and no one’s fault. As Bree’s mother dies, she presses love into Bree’s heart, and the ancestral flame passes to Bree.

Finally, Bree revisits the hospital memory after the accident through her ancestor-enhanced sight. The police officer who spoke to Bree and her father is revealed to have been glamoured: the figure was actually Sel’s mother. Sel’s mother, grieving and golden-eyed, tells Bree that Bree will not remember, but that Bree’s mother was her friend.