After learning that Count Mataro intends to bind Hadrian to House Mataro and that House Marlowe has disowned him, Hadrian retreats to his apartments drunk, shaken, and alone. Gilliam’s dying warning and dead face haunt Hadrian, while the promised title of Lord Consort of Emesh feels less like an honor than a gilded prison.

Valka enters despite Hadrian’s locked door and finds Hadrian disheveled, intoxicated, and armed only with the scalpel used to sharpen pencils. Valka gives Hadrian water, reproaches Hadrian with dry humor, and quickly recognizes that Hadrian’s distress comes from having killed for the first time, not from deceit or vanity.

Hadrian explains that Hadrian meant only to wound Gilliam, but Gilliam cut him first and the duel turned fatal. When Valka asks what Hadrian will do now, Hadrian tells Valka about Gilliam, Anaïs, Hadrian’s father, the Chantry, and the count’s plan to send Hadrian to Binah to keep him away from Vas. Hadrian admits that instead Hadrian asked to accompany Valka to Calagah, because Hadrian believes the Empire is destroying him.

Valka questions whether Count Mataro will allow the journey and whether Hadrian understands that the betrothal to Anaïs means Hadrian must return. Hadrian says he cannot stay after what has happened and, when asked about House Marlowe, says Hadrian has been disowned by both Hadrian’s father and grandmother. In anger and despair, Hadrian throws away the Marlowe signet ring, recognizing how much Hadrian depended on the symbol of a house that has now rejected him.

When Hadrian sinks into self-pity, Valka strikes Hadrian and tells Hadrian that the consequences are not merely happening to him but happening because of his own choices. Hadrian accepts this and breaks down over the memory of seeing Gilliam die. As Hadrian asks again to go with Valka to Calagah and rejects the future waiting in Emesh, Valka softens, touches Hadrian’s face, and remains with Hadrian as exhaustion overtakes him.