The interlude looks back on the blessed girl’s first year in her new home at the Citadel. After a life of being displaced with her sister, the girl adapts quickly to stone homes, plentiful food, and adults who treat them as welcome rather than unwanted. Her sister’s happiness and pride help the girl suppress any lingering homesickness.

Atroxus visits the girl only on sacred holy days, and the priests prepare her carefully for each meeting. The girl sees Atroxus as kind rather than frightening, because he laughs with her and indulges her games. Between visits, the girl settles into monastery life: she dislikes formal lectures but loves instruction in sun magic, practicing joyfully with her sister even after lessons end.

On free days, the girl runs in the forest with her best friend and becomes enchanted by the golden firefinches. When the groundskeeper dismisses the birds as invasive pests and says they will eventually need to be culled, the girl wants to defend them but stays silent because her sister has taught her never to argue with priests.

After one full year at the Citadel, the girl sees a vampire for the first time. A young warrior priest, once kind to her sister, is dragged into the chapel after being transformed. The sunlight burns him, and the head priest insists that the girl and her friend watch so that a future bride of the sun can witness “the truth of the darkness.”

The priests pin the transformed man beneath the sunlit mosaic, and the girl’s sister is ordered to drive a blade through his chest. Horrified and nauseated, the girl flees to the gardens afterward, where a firefinch lands near her. An arrow immediately kills the bird, and the groundskeeper cheerfully praises the girl for distracting it; overwhelmed by the two violent sights, the girl collapses and vomits in the rosebushes.