In the Regent’s private hall in Kesath, Alaric watches Gaheris’s Enchanters restrain the captured sariman and draw its blood inside a nullification field. The process distresses the Enchanters and unsettles Alaric, who remembers the loss of magic, but Gaheris is focused only on the bird’s usefulness and scorns Alaric for returning from Nenavar without answers.

Once the Enchanters leave, Gaheris reveals his plan for after Alaric and Talasyn stop the Void Sever. He intends to end the peace with Nenavar, bring the Dominion into the Night Empire, and use the marriage treaty to lure Talasyn to the Citadel. If her Lightweave cannot yet be removed, Gaheris plans to use the sariman to control her and hold her hostage to force Nenavar’s compliance.

Alaric argues cautiously, pointing out the danger of Nenavar’s dragons and questioning Kesath’s Voidfell supply, but Gaheris dismisses these concerns. Gaheris insists Talasyn must be kept under close guard during her coming coronation visit, especially because uprisings have begun in former Allfold territory. He warns that Talasyn’s past with Sardovia makes her untrustworthy, using the memory of Alaric’s mother as a lesson against trusting a woman whose desires may conflict with Kesath’s survival.

The chapter shifts to the Belian shrine in Nenavar, where Talasyn stands inside a pillar of Lightweave and witnesses a memory of her abandonment. She sees a court servant, marked by fired-clay beads, leave an infant Alunsina on the steps of an orphanage in Hornbill’s Head and tell her to be strong. Talasyn recognizes the woman as Indusa, the nursemaid who was supposed to take her to the Dawn Isles, and is troubled by why Indusa instead brought her to the Continent and left her there.

After the vision fades, Talasyn reflects on her recent freedom from Urduja’s control and her frustrating stay at the shrine, where the Light Sever has only now produced a useful memory. Yanme Rapat arrives, and Talasyn first suspects Urduja sent him, but he explains that he visits the shrine to remember Talasyn’s mother, Hanan. Rapat reveals that he was once the general responsible for Eskaya’s defenses during the civil war and was demoted after failing to prevent the crisis that led to Hanan’s evacuation and Talasyn’s disappearance.

Before leaving, Rapat warns Talasyn that Hanan and Urduja were deeply at odds: Hanan refused to be named Urduja’s heir and did not want Talasyn declared heir before Talasyn could choose for herself. The warning leaves Talasyn uneasy. As Talasyn prepares to leave for a meeting, she is struck by new unexplained visions of deep blue waters seen from above and an aged hand gripping a snowy ridge, intensifying her confusion about her past and future.