Over two frozen weeks, Kiara’s company travels south with Dior bound and guarded. The Dyvok skirt Redwatch and the northern weald while feeding sparingly from their scorched, and Dior stops trying to escape after learning they are headed for Dún Maergenn. Dior hides any grief for Gabriel, though the emotional wound remains.

Near the ruins of San Guillaume, the party reaches a large Dyvok convoy: dozens of cage-wagons holding more than a thousand captured refugees, guarded by thrallswords and foulbloods. Soraya, another vampire and Kiara’s relative, greets Kiara and mentions an imprisoned child in a chained iron box who resists drinking. Kiara presents Dior as a valuable prize whose blood will please the Blackheart.

Kiara orders Joaquin to lock Dior among the other captives. When the wagon proves too full, Kane brutally feeds on and kills a young prisoner simply to make room, revealing to Dior the full horror of vampiric feeding. Joaquin then pushes Dior into the cage despite Dior’s distress.

Inside the wagon, Isla recognizes Joaquin, the man she once loved, but Joaquin answers coldly that the Dyvok did get him and walks away. Isla tells Dior that she and the other children from Aveléne were recaptured after Frère Lachlan abandoned them to join other silversaints heading south with a large man who had an iron hand.

Dior then reunites with Baptiste, who survived and is among the captives. Dior breaks down in Baptiste’s arms and tells him Gabriel fell, while Baptiste mourns another loss. When Dior offers condolences for Aaron, believing Aaron died because Gabriel found Aaron’s broken sword, Baptiste and Isla reveal the worse truth: Aaron is not dead but Dead, apparently the chained captive in the iron box.