Kingfisher wakes in Zilvaren to the sound of sand striking the window and remembers the shared dream in the huntsman’s cottage with Saeris. When Kingfisher checks his body, Kingfisher finds the dagger tattoo Saeris gave him and discovers that his badly swollen hand, leg wound, and sting injuries have all healed, apparently because Saeris fed him in the dream.

Carrion enters covered in raised welts while Kingfisher is unharmed, prompting a sharp exchange about Carrion’s condition and Kingfisher’s sudden recovery. Kingfisher suggests Saeris healed him in his sleep, and Carrion complains that Kingfisher was healed and sexually reunited with Saeris while Carrion only dreamed he had become a goat.

Carrion gives Kingfisher pale clothes to replace Kingfisher’s blood-covered leathers, arguing that they need to go aboveground and should not waste magic on appearances when they may face guardians. Kingfisher reluctantly changes in Carrion’s bedroom, where Kingfisher notices how completely Saeris’s blood has restored his body.

Inside the room, Kingfisher finds walls covered with Carrion’s drawings. Kingfisher recognizes Amelia Daianthus, Carrion’s mother and the former queen of the Yvelian Fae, and remembers the fall of the royal family: Belikon carrying Rurik Daianthus’s bloodied god sword, Bitterbane, and Amelia later giving her child to Kingfisher’s father to hide and protect.

Kingfisher studies more drawings of Rurik, warriors, creatures, landscapes, the Shield, and the Winter Palace, realizing that Carrion has spent years recreating a homeland he never knew. When Carrion appears and defensively expects mockery, Kingfisher instead tells Carrion that the drawings show longing for a place and people denied to him. Kingfisher returns the Winter Palace drawing and tells Carrion to keep it and bring it home.