Exhausted after the inquest, Elm intercepts Filick to ask where Ione Hawthorn has been taken and whether a Physician has treated her hands. Filick says Ione is on the servants’ floor and insists her hands were intact when he saw her. Elm doubts this because Elm remembers Erik tearing open Ione’s palms, and the bloody handprints still staining Elm’s doublet confirm that Elm did not imagine the injury.

Elm finds Ione guarded in a locked servants’ room, dismisses the guards, and enters. Ione immediately confronts Elm for using the Scythe Card during the inquest to make Ione’s father threaten the King. Elm argues that his manipulation kept the King from killing Ione immediately and spared Ione the dungeon, but Ione is furious because Ione wanted to retrieve something from Stone and disappear, not remain at court under watch.

Suspicious of what Ione still needs in the castle, Elm grabs Ione’s hand to inspect her palm, then stops himself from forcing it open and asks instead. Ione finally shows him that the wound is completely gone. When Ione confirms the cut was real and deep, Elm realizes the Maiden Card has healed Ione as well as remade Ione’s appearance.

The revelation unsettles Elm because Maiden Cards have long been treated as ornamental gifts for women rather than powerful tools. Ione suggests that men dismissed the Maiden because they saw beauty as useless beside obvious power, and that women may have kept its healing ability secret for that reason. Elm infers that Ione returned to Stone to recover her Maiden Card, but Ione refuses to tell Elm where it is because Elm is a Rowan.

Ione asks whether Elm will use the Maiden’s healing magic to restore Erik. Elm recognizes that awakening Erik would unleash terrible consequences, so Elm decides the Maiden’s true magic must remain secret for now. Despite exhaustion and discomfort around Ione, Elm is drawn to the danger and energy between them, then orders Ione to come with him to the dungeon so Ione can see Elspeth, or what remains of Elspeth.