After Ferron catches Helena in the hidden room, Helena studies the alchemical array instead of leaving, but discovers its symbols have been deliberately defaced. Ferron watches angrily, and Helena tries to provoke him about the cage. When they leave, a frightened necrothrall silently mouths Ferron’s name, Kaine, before Ferron sends the thrall away and seals the room by warping the iron around the door.

Helena questions Ferron about the necrothralls, but Ferron deflects and claims he has reanimated too many people to count. As Ferron escorts Helena through the house, Ferron remarks that Aurelia would not mind Helena’s death if it made Aurelia a rich widow. Helena points out that Ferron sounds enslaved by his own orders, and Ferron challenges Helena’s loyalty to Luc, arguing that the Holdfasts helped create the social divisions Helena blames on the guilds.

Helena rejects Ferron’s attempt to reframe the past, but Ferron’s comments make Helena study him more closely. Helena considers the mystery of Ferron’s age, his apparent lack of pleasure in cruelty, his anonymous role as High Reeve, and his obedient service to the High Necromancer. Helena wonders whether Ferron is playing a long game or whether Helena only needs to believe Ferron is cunning to make Helena’s own captivity feel less humiliating.

Aurelia interrupts them and angrily accuses Ferron of neglecting social obligations to spend time with Helena. Aurelia reveals she asked Stroud about Helena and was told Helena was a nobody, but Ferron answers by threatening to display Helena more publicly and remind the world that Helena is his. Aurelia, shaken and jealous, storms off after demanding that Helena be kept out of Aurelia’s sight.

Ferron and Helena then argue about care, the tablets, and Helena’s friends. Ferron cruelly suggests Helena’s friends must have thought little of Helena if Ferron’s behavior seems like care, prompting Helena to name Luc, Lila, Soren, Ilva Holdfast, and Matron Pace. Helena is disturbed that she nearly forgot Soren, then rationalizes how being a foreign vivimancer in the Eternal Flame made Helena politically difficult for Luc before Ferron mocks her and leaves.

With time left under the tablets’ calming effect, Helena explores the outbuildings. Most are locked, but Helena enters a stable and discovers Ferron’s chained black monster, a wolf-like creature larger than a destrier, before necrothralls drag Helena out. Helena then finds a neglected five-sided chantry, reflects on the differences between Etrasian and Paladian religion, discovers a polished plaque for Enid Ferron, Ferron’s mother, and considers the patriarchal religious beliefs that shaped attitudes toward women, vivimancy, necromancy, and Lumithia’s cult before watching the moons rise.