After hours of questions, Kaz sees the completed auction scheme as a dangerous but necessary plan. He reflects that Johannus Rietveld never truly existed: Kaz created the identity years earlier from Jordie’s middle name and their family name, and Colm Fahey can now use it as the respectable face of the fake jurda consortium.

Exhausted and in pain, Kaz knows going to the Slat is reckless and likely fatal, but he believes the crew needs reinforcements and that the trap around them leaves no safer move. Kaz finds Inej in the hotel bathroom cutting bandages and demands help planning a rooftop route to the Slat, because traveling through the streets would get Kaz captured before Kaz arrived.

Once Inej maps the route, Kaz gives Inej her contract, having paid off the debt binding Inej to Per Haskell. Inej is stunned and grateful, but Kaz frames the gift as freeing Inej from obligation. Kaz gives Inej instructions in case Kaz does not return, including hidden money behind the Crow Club, though Inej refuses Kaz’s suggestion that Inej abandon the others.

Kaz asks about Dunyasha, and Inej explains the Suli belief that wrongdoing gives life to one’s shadow. Their conversation turns into a moral confrontation: Inej presses Kaz on whether Kaz’s crimes make Kaz like Pekka Rollins, while Kaz insists life is not about what anyone deserves. The argument forces Kaz to think of Jordie not only as a beloved brother but also as a vulnerable mark, leaving Kaz weary and shaken.

When Inej’s wounds bleed through her bandages, Kaz offers to help rewrap them. The act of touching Inej triggers Kaz’s trauma of Jordie’s corpse in the harbor, while Inej shares the lasting fear and violation caused by Tante Heleen and the Menagerie. Kaz manages to change the bandages, nearly kisses Inej’s neck, then recoils as desire and horror collapse into memories of death.

Inej asks what happened to Kaz and Jordie, but Kaz refuses to explain the whole truth and instead describes the people Kaz hunted and destroyed after Pekka’s con. Inej tells Kaz forgiveness must be earned by becoming more than another Pekka Rollins, but Kaz cannot imagine that path for himself. Kaz dresses to leave, urges Inej to survive and seek vengeance, warns Inej to study Dunyasha’s tells, and exits for the Slat after forbidding Inej to follow.