Manon Blackbeak wakes in agony in a cramped ship cabin, chained at wrists and ankles. Aelin Galathynius tells Manon that Abraxos is safe on the foredeck, but Manon herself is a prisoner; if Manon tries to escape, hurts anyone, or endangers the group, Aelin will kill her. Aelin also reveals that iron splinters were found in Manon’s wound, making clear that someone with witch claws gutted her.

Left alone, Manon realizes she has no safe clan, no aerie, and no certainty that the Thirteen survived. She remembers that she is not only part Crochan but the last Crochan Queen, and that her grandmother forced her to wear the red cape of the half sister Manon had unknowingly killed. Stripped of her Blackbeak heirship and unable to claim any other belonging, Manon sinks into despair and sleep.

Three days later, Dorian watches Manon wake. During the voyage down Eyllwe’s coast toward the Stone Marshes, the ship has survived a storm with Rowan’s help and is nearing Banjali, which forces Dorian to think of Nehemia and the Wyrdmark she once drew on him. Dorian explains that Abraxos flew straight to Aelin’s ship, Manon fell into the sea, and Rowan, Aelin, and the others spent a week saving her from blood loss, infection, and the iron-tainted wound.

Manon questions Dorian about their location, Elide, and the Thirteen. Dorian tells Manon they have not met Elide and have seen no riders or wyverns, while Manon warns that Aelin cannot use her as leverage because the Blackbeak Matron will no longer recognize Manon as heir or witch. When Dorian asks what happened after Rifthold, Manon only says that everything has a price.

Aedion arrives with food and openly says he would have shot Manon and Abraxos down if Aelin had allowed it. After Aedion leaves, Dorian presses Manon about the truth, and Manon admits that her grandmother demanded the life of Manon’s Second as the cost of saving Dorian in Rifthold. Manon refused, attacked her grandmother to buy the Thirteen time to run, forfeited her title and legion, and lost contact with them; she asks Dorian to find out whether they live, offering herself to his command in return.

Before sleeping again, Manon adds one more message: Aelin must be told that Elide Lochan is alive and looking for her. Exhausted by the conversation and consumed by grief over the Thirteen, her parents, her sister, and her ruined identity, Manon withdraws into heavy sleep, haunted by dreams of blood, her grandmother’s crimes, a green western land, and watching animal forms that never grant the death she almost welcomes.