The morning after Apollo coldly dismisses her, Ilsa is exhausted, hurt, and angry. A maid silently summons her downstairs, where she meets Derrik, the officer appointed to guard her with seven men. Ilsa is initially rude from frustration, then apologizes and learns that Derrik is Apollo's close ally and second-in-command, not a servant.

Because Derrik knew the dead Ilsa, the resemblance between the two women immediately matters. Derrik admits that the original Ilsa's loss still hurts everyone who knew her, but says Apollo warned the men what to expect. Ilsa, ashamed that her presence keeps reopening their grief, asks to keep to herself as much as possible. She also confirms that the household staff in this house did not know Apollo's wife, which gives her some relief.

After this brief exchange, Ilsa retreats to another lonely day. She realizes she has no shared language with most of the people around her, little to occupy her time, and no clear place among people who either mourn her double or cannot understand her. The isolation feels bleak, but she also recognizes it as familiar, since loneliness has long been part of her life.

Late that night, Ilsa hears a carriage and secretly watches from her bedroom window. She sees a strikingly beautiful, heavily adorned woman arrive and exchange words with a red-haired man from the house, who gives her something from a pouch. When the woman notices Ilsa watching, she responds with a knowing, catty little wave, and Ilsa concludes that the visitor is a prostitute who has come for Apollo and has likely been with him before in that very room.

The sight shocks and disgusts Ilsa, but it also changes her thinking. While drinking wine and studying herself in the mirror, she reflects on her past with Pol, her parents, and the bad choices that trapped her in abuse. She decides Apollo's behavior only proves he is not someone she should want, and that being in this world may actually offer her freedom, safety, and a fresh start. By the end of the chapter, Ilsa resolves to stop dwelling on rejection and to seize this unexpected second chance to make a life of her own.