Hasar publicly separates Chaol and Nesryn at the feast, sending Nesryn to sit beside Sartaq and placing Yrene beside Chaol. The maneuver leaves Yrene tense and embarrassed, while Chaol recognizes that Hasar is using Yrene as a pawn. Chaol and Yrene keep their conversation guarded because the court is watching and listening, but Yrene reveals that she has completed her final Torre examination and that Hafiza still has one unofficial test for her.

After dinner, Arghun calls for entertainment, and dancers perform as servants transform the hall into a lounging space filled with smoking herbs and sensual courtly indulgence. Nesryn remains apart with Sartaq in a clearer, quieter area, while Hasar and Renia settle together and Arghun courts attention from nobles and servants. Kashin appears ready to invite Yrene to join him, so Chaol intervenes and asks Yrene to sit with him somewhere quieter, both to protect her and to maintain the appearance Hasar expects.

On a shadowed couch near the opiate smoke, Yrene explains that the servants at these gatherings have some protections but that Chaol is right to question whether true consent can exist under social and economic pressure. Under cover of flirtation, Yrene then passes along Hasar’s intelligence: Perrington’s armies are stretched from the Ferian Gap to Rifthold, and Aelin is unaccounted for, not in Terrasen or Orynth. Hasar has pressured Yrene to extract information from Chaol about where Aelin might go and also suspects Chaol may have been involved in the library attack.

The opiate smoke heightens the tension between Chaol and Yrene, and their staged intimacy becomes dangerously real. Chaol admits only that he does not know Aelin’s plans, then gives Yrene a false destination to satisfy Hasar: Skull’s Bay, a place he believes Aelin would avoid because of her history with the Pirate Lord. Yrene leaves after delivering the answer to Hasar, but both Yrene and Chaol are shaken by the genuine desire and guilt that showed between them; Kashin seems to notice, and Nesryn later watches Chaol with careful understanding.

After the party, Sartaq escorts Chaol and Nesryn back to their suite, and Chaol stops Nesryn before she can retreat to her room. Nesryn says she thinks she is needed elsewhere and explains that Sartaq plans to seek answers among his people about whether the Valg reached the southern continent before. Nesryn wants to go with Sartaq to the rukhin, hoping to find useful knowledge and perhaps win Sartaq’s support for their cause. Chaol asks to wait until morning before deciding, then asks Nesryn to sit with him and tell him about her family’s Tehome’s Day celebration, while both silently acknowledge that their paths and feelings have changed.