With only two days left before Sisterhood escorts take Princess Anna to Rossak, Anna feels that Emperor Salvador is exiling her for loving Hirondo and refusing her brothers' rules. Anna considers escape, but Hirondo has already rejected the danger and Anna is unsure whether Hirondo is even alive. Feeling trapped by palace guards and surveillance, Anna flees into the Imperial Palace gardens for a last taste of freedom.

Anna passes the abandoned waterwheel cottage where, as a child, Anna witnessed Toure Bomoko's assault on Empress Orenna. The place still terrifies Anna, so Anna retreats instead into a secret grove of fogwood shrubs. Because Anna has a rare mental affinity with the plants, the branches admit Anna, conceal Anna, and form a private refuge stocked with food, water, games, and books.

While guards search outside, Anna reads a history of the riots after the Orange Catholic Bible and the Imperial decision to shelter Toure Bomoko and the CET delegates. The account forces Anna to revisit how Bomoko raped Orenna, how Emperor Jules ordered all thirty-five delegates executed in public, and how Jules made young Anna watch the killings. Bomoko escaped, Jules tortured suspected helpers, and Orenna withdrew into seclusion, leaving Anna with lasting trauma.

After reflecting that Rossak might remove Anna from reminders of the past, Anna hears Orenna outside the fogwood hiding place. Orenna reveals that Orenna has long known about Anna's bond with the plants and asks to enter. Because Anna trusts Orenna, Anna opens the branches, and the two women speak privately about escape, loss, and survival.

Orenna warns Anna that if Anna stays hidden, Salvador will execute Hirondo and the kitchen staff for helping conceal the affair. Although Anna denounces Salvador as a monster, Orenna argues that Anna must seek a new strength that does not depend on a man, as Orenna herself once had to do. For Orenna's sake, Anna agrees to try life with the Sisterhood and leaves the fogwood refuge with Orenna.