Rowan Whitethorn reaches Rifthold after flying for two days without rest, food, or water, but the capital is already collapsing under the Ironteeth witches and their wyverns. Knowing Aelin ordered him to save Dorian, Rowan leaves the doomed city behind and hurries the injured king through the palace while avoiding the fighting.

Dorian leads Rowan to a secret exit in the queen’s chambers. Rowan blasts through the locked doors, and Dorian briefly pauses before a portrait of his mother holding him as a child, then opens the hidden trapdoor behind it. They descend into dusty passages while the sounds of slaughter carry from above.

As they move through the tunnels, Dorian says he should stay and die with his people. Rowan argues that Dorian is more useful alive and that even Dorian’s powerful magic could not have saved a city already so thoroughly destroyed. When Dorian asks about Manon, Rowan learns what happened and says he would not trust the Blackbeak heir, though even thirteen elite witches and wyverns could matter in the war against Erawan.

They reach the sewers, passing signs of the earlier destruction from the clock tower and the place where Aelin killed Archer Finn. Rowan finds a half-rotted boat and orders Dorian into it, covering him with his cloak. Rowan shifts into hawk form, uses air magic to hide Dorian’s scent and shield the vessel, and sends the boat drifting out through the sewer mouth.

While flying above the boat, Rowan looks back once at Rifthold, seeing Aelin’s shattered glass wall and the city that shaped and wounded her. Rowan thinks of Darrow’s rejection, his own lack of armies or wealth, and the fear that choosing his bond with Aelin could cost them politically or even doom the world. He forces himself onward as the castle walls are bathed in blood.