Aelin dreams or remembers the Staghorns and Oakwald burning, with ash falling like snow and the Lord of the North fleeing in agony before vanishing into flame. The vision accuses her, linking her suffering to the destruction of Terrasen’s sacred symbols and forests.

Aelin wakes chained to a stone altar instead of inside the iron coffin where Cairn usually keeps her. Iron covers her hands and body, and iron-laced food and water have suppressed her magic. She cannot tell which torments were real and which were illusions, because her wounds vanish whenever she wakes, leaving only memory and fear.

Fenrys, trapped in wolf form by Maeve’s orders, watches from across the room. Aelin and Fenrys use a silent blink code they created during her captivity, with Fenrys asking whether Aelin is all right and assuring Aelin that he is with her. Fenrys cannot intervene because Maeve’s commands bind him absolutely.

Cairn returns, taunting Aelin and feeding the braziers before briefly ordering Fenrys into the hall. Aelin recalls how Maeve and Cairn broke her hunger strike by forcing iron-laced water into her and starving her until she ate. Cairn again demands that Aelin end the torture by swearing the blood oath to Maeve, which would make Aelin Maeve’s slave and endanger the world.

Cairn notices Rowan’s mate-mark on Aelin’s neck and threatens her with possessive cruelty, restrained only by Maeve’s gag order. Fenrys returns and can only watch as Cairn chooses a hammer and decides to move from Aelin’s feet to her knee. Aelin retreats inward, clinging to rage, Terrasen, and refusal, while Fenrys repeatedly signals that he is with her; the hammer falls, and Aelin screams.