During the week after the barrow-wight incident, Celaena’s black eye slowly heals while she works in Mistward’s kitchens, avoids the fortress residents, and continues failing to shift under Rowan’s training. Spring rains crowd the kitchen at night, so Celaena eats on the shadowed steps and listens to Emrys, Mistward’s honored Story Keeper, tell legends.

Celaena observes the fortress inhabitants from a distance and knows they watch her in return, but she makes no effort to join them. Luca is the only one who consistently tries to reach her, even quietly revealing that he once had days when trauma left him unable to talk or get out of bed. Celaena rejects the opening, and Luca does not press her again.

Emrys gives Celaena space, especially when Malakai visits him, but Celaena is disturbed by the affection between the two men and by the easy intimacy of other couples. Rowan also comes to hear Emrys’s stories, though Celaena never asks why. Outside training, Rowan and Celaena continue treating each other as if the other barely exists.

Training remains stagnant: Celaena cannot shift, Rowan grows increasingly contemptuous, and their days become a cycle of insults, silence, and punishment chores. Rowan threatens to take her back to the barrows because fear triggered her fire before, but he stops after Celaena says she would rather slit her throat than return there. His frustration turns into making Celaena chop wood when her anger is especially obvious.

On the eighth day, Celaena asks Rowan to show her how shifting works. Rowan transforms into a hawk in a flash, then attacks her and shifts back into his armed Fae form, demanding that Celaena try. She studies him, wonders what made him so empty, and attempts to pull her Fae form forward through visualization, but nothing happens.

Celaena provokes Rowan by insulting Maeve, and the confrontation turns physical when Rowan grabs her tongue to prove he can silence her. After Celaena fights back and insults him again, Rowan bites the place between her neck and shoulder in a violent, dominant display. The humiliation and rage finally break through Celaena’s blockage: she shoves Rowan away, shifts into her Fae form, bares elongated canines, and roars with the desire to tear him apart.