Helena wakes from a dream-memory of Lila, who is sitting frightened outside Helena’s room with a fresh scar tearing across her face and throat. Lila begins to confess that she has been lying to everyone, but Helena wakes before hearing more. The memory leaves Helena disturbed because Lila was Luc’s paladin primary and would never normally refuse vivimantic healing.

During the third transference session, Ferron pushes deeper into Helena’s mind and notices an unnatural fault line among the memory blocks. Helena instinctively reacts with a violent, self-destructive mental force that ejects Ferron but leaves Helena gravely ill for days. Nightmares of drowning and grasping hands torment her, and a mind specialist admits that her condition is unprecedented. After recovering, Helena loses much of her will to resist and accepts that Ferron’s encroachment is slowly becoming inevitable.

Winter isolates Spirefell, and the Ferrons leave for the city, giving Helena more freedom in the estate. Newspapers reveal New Paladia’s repopulation program being recast as a scientific project to breed valuable resonance combinations, while unexplained disappearances in society pages make Helena suspect cracks or insurrection within the regime. Helena also dreams repeatedly of Ilva Holdfast and Crowther waiting for her to answer them.

Aurelia returns with her lover, whom Helena recognizes as Lancaster, the man who found Helena’s room during the solstice party. Because Lancaster seems attentive to the house and tries to slip away from Aurelia, Helena wonders if he could be connected to the Resistance or to her hidden memories. Helena decides not to approach him yet, fearing that certainty would give Ferron something to discover if he reads her mind.

Ferron returns and announces Stroud’s visit. Stroud examines Helena and discovers that Helena has been fed only necrothrall scraps, leaving Helena malnourished and too weak for transference. Stroud angrily summons Ferron, who claims Aurelia handled the menu and promises proper meals. Stroud then examines Helena more closely, uses resonance that makes Helena sick, and renders Helena unconscious; Helena later wakes disoriented with a sharp bruise near her hip.

Helena receives a full meal for the first time and eats ravenously. Ferron later reads her dreams and notices her hopes about Lancaster, then warns that Lancaster will soon become one of the Undying for wartime service, though Helena takes this as possible evidence that Lancaster is only pretending loyalty. Further memories return: Lila, unscarred, gently discussing Helena’s trauma, trainees, and the hospital; Helena recalls Matias’s resistance to her becoming a healer and Ilva’s efforts to legitimize her vivimancy. Helena then remembers that Lila had a twin brother, Soren, Luc’s paladin secondary, but when Helena tries to recall him, the block violently shuts the thought down.