After Celaena’s ship leaves the harbor, Chaol remains on the docks, fixating on the date she whispered to him before departing. The date has no year attached, but Chaol recognizes it as the day she left the city, the anniversary of her capture at Endovier, and the day her parents died.

Chaol weighs Celaena’s warning about the Wyrdkeys and realizes those revelations explain the king’s unnatural power, Cain’s strength, the king’s deadly journeys, and Perrington’s disturbing behavior. Although Chaol has vowed to go to Anielle, he notices that he never promised when he would leave, giving himself room to keep investigating.

Back in Celaena’s chambers, Chaol searches her desk and will for anything connected to the date but finds nothing. Then he notices royal chronicles and genealogies hidden near the desk. In the chronicle from ten years earlier, he finds the date Celaena gave him: the day King Orlon Galathynius, Rhoe Galathynius, and Evalin Galathynius were assassinated, with Aelin Galathynius’s fate uncertain.

Chaol turns to genealogies of Adarlan, Terrasen, and Wendlyn, following Evalin Ashryver’s bloodline. He discovers that Aelin descends from Mab, one of the three Fae Sister-Queens, and remembers Celaena’s discomfort when receiving Deanna’s golden arrow, as well as Celaena’s earlier admission that her great-grandmother was Fae.

Chaol then reads the next day’s chronicle, which claims Aelin died after her parents’ murder, though her body was never found. He connects this to Celaena’s story that Arobynn found her half-dead and frozen on a riverbank. A poem about Ashryver eyes—bright blue ringed with gold—confirms what he has seen in Celaena’s own eyes.

Chaol realizes Celaena Sardothien is not merely connected to the lost princess; she is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, rightful Queen of Terrasen. This makes her the greatest living threat to Adarlan, the one person who knows the secret of the king’s power and could gather allies against him—especially now that Chaol has sent her to Wendlyn, among her mother’s kin and Queen Maeve’s Fae realm.