Elide Lochan limps through Oakwald Forest weeks after Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen left her there with orders to head north. Elide is trying to find her lost queen and Celaena Sardothien, because Kaltain Rompier gave Elide a strange dark stone before destroying Morath and told Elide to deliver it. The journey has left Elide starving, thirsty, ill, and uncertain whether the stone is a gift or a curse.

Elide remembers surviving contaminated water and relying on berries she tests before eating. She avoids villages and hunters despite her desperation, because men have betrayed and threatened her before, including the guards at Morath and her uncle, who sold her to Duke Perrington. Elide continues north through the forest, hoping to find Terrasen and her queen.

When Elide senses danger, she hides beneath exposed tree roots just before two wyverns fly overhead. Elide recognizes from Morath that Ironteeth witches sometimes fly in formation to conceal their numbers, and the daylight scouting suggests they are hunting something important. The wyverns head north toward the Ferian Gap, where Manon had said another host was camped.

After the wyverns pass, Elide resumes walking but senses someone watching and following her. Elide draws the fighting knife Manon gave her, though she wishes Manon had taught her how to use it.

The perspective shifts to Lorcan Salvaterre, who has been fleeing Ironteeth witches for two days after infiltrating their camp, killing sentinels, and torturing a Yellowlegs witch for information. Lorcan learned that one witch army waits in Morath and another in the Ferian Gap, but the witch knew nothing about the Wyrdkeys Lorcan seeks. Lorcan already wears one key around his neck and knows that all three together can open a gate between worlds with catastrophic consequences.

Lorcan watches Elide from hiding and notices her witch leathers, human scent, hunger, injured gait, and poor grip on her knife. When the wind carries Elide's scent to Lorcan, he recognizes a reek associated with demon-possessed creatures he has killed. Deciding Elide may be useful to interrogate, Lorcan silently begins following her.