Helena explores her sparse room and bathroom, searching for anything she can turn into a means of suicide. The cup cannot be broken into a sharp edge, the mirror is fixed and unbreakable, and the room has no cords. A remembered plea from Luc urges her to live, but Helena apologizes to him and decides death is still her best option if she can manage it.

Helena discovers that her door is unlocked, but the dark corridor outside triggers a severe panic response rooted in her time in the stasis tank. Unable to step into the shadows, she retreats and later takes in a tray of nearly inedible food and a bundle of castoff clothes, including a plain red dress whose stripped decorations remind Helena to be wary of Aurelia.

When Kaine Ferron does not come, Helena tries to prepare herself by exercising and thinking through his background. She recalls the Ferron family’s rise from ironworkers to industrial power through alchemical steel, and she remembers her own indirect academic rivalry with Kaine at the Institute. Helena cannot understand why an academic guild heir became High Reeve, but she takes grim comfort in the idea that she has beaten him before and may be able to do so again.

On the second day, Helena forces herself into the hallway to scout, but the dark overwhelms her. She collapses and sees a vision or memory of Lila Bayard, altered and scarred, before waking on her room floor with a painful sense that something important has slipped beyond recall. Aurelia then arrives, insults Helena, and announces that Stroud has called: the procedure will happen that night. Aurelia threatens to have thralls wash Helena if she does not clean herself.

Helena washes, dresses in the red gown, and follows Aurelia through Spirefell while observing Aurelia’s vanity, inexperience, and insecure cruelty. Aurelia leads Helena to a locked second-floor room and leaves her there, making Helena realize too late that she may have been placed somewhere she should not be. Trapped by her fear of the corridor, Helena enters and finds a spare bedroom with a carefully maintained silver-inlaid desk.

While waiting, Helena worries about what transference means and recalls healing General Bayard’s body after his brain injury, only to fail to restore his mind. She connects that failure to Elain Boyle’s later cure and to the hidden procedure now sought by the Undying. The door opens, and Kaine Ferron enters, surprised to find Helena inside.