Camilla meets Nona after school, and Nona truthfully says the day went well. As they leave, Nona checks the alley for the masked person she saw earlier, but the person is gone. Camilla brings Nona home through the heat, gives her ice water, and offers sliced fruit before closing up the apartment with black sheeting and barring the door.

Camilla gives Nona bones to arrange while sketching Nona’s choices. When Nona asks where Camilla went during school, Palamedes emerges in Camilla’s body and avoids answering fully, though Nona guesses the errand involved Site C or Crown. Palamedes says Crown is not their friend right now, which upsets Nona because Nona still loves Crown for her beauty, warmth, and smell.

Palamedes turns the conversation into a careful discussion of love, consent, and obligation. Nona connects this to Hot Sauce, Honesty, and her other school friends, whose affection surprises and delights her. Palamedes admits that he pities the Captain, likes Crown despite the problem she poses, and does not trust Crown’s current position.

During the bone exercise, Nona cuts her thumb on a splintered piece. Palamedes heals the wound with necromancy, which leads Nona to ask again why the blue light harms other people but not Camilla and Palamedes. Palamedes explains that Camilla’s body and his soul can temporarily avoid the damage because he draws the cost onto himself within a strict time limit; Pyrrha is immune because of her soul, but Nona’s own immunity remains unexplained.

Nona asks whether Blood of Eden does not want her, and Palamedes clarifies that they want her very badly. Nona says she is not especially afraid of We Suffer, partly because the commander once gave her a sweet and a sense of purpose. When Nona admits that Palamedes’s necromancy feels both pleasant and sad, Palamedes is struck because he still does not understand what Nona is.

Palamedes’s timer ends his time in Camilla’s body. Before withdrawing, he asks Nona to give Camilla a gesture from him: he kisses Nona’s knuckle, and Nona imitates the gesture on Camilla’s hand after Camilla returns. Camilla accepts it with only a small flinch, showing that the intimate routine has become familiar but still painful.