Eight-year-old Kaleb Gorin chases his prized rubber ball through the dark streets of the Sault, ignoring the sort of rules his mother expects him to obey because of the Gorin family’s reputation. When the ball bounces into the Shulamat garden, Kaleb climbs the wall to retrieve it and discovers Lin Caster and Aron Benjudah sitting together below.

Kaleb hides on top of the wall, afraid that Aron, the Exilarch, will report him to the Maharam or to Kaleb’s mother. As Kaleb listens, Lin wonders whether being feared might be useful if it keeps people from obstructing her, and Aron responds by asking whether Lin has considered why the Malgasi turned against their Ashkar.

Aron explains that Prince Andras of House Belmany once fell in love with an Ashkar woman and learned from her about the Goddess and the prophecy of the Goddess’s return. When Andras innocently repeated the story to his family, House Belmany treated it as a threat rather than folklore, fearing that an Ashkar woman with sorcery could challenge their rule. That fear, Aron says, led the Belmany Court to target the Ashkar, causing the persecution from which Mariam escaped and many others did not.

Lin asks what became of Prince Andras, and Aron tells her that Andras took his own life after the Wolfguards murdered the Ashkar woman he loved. Lin recognizes with sorrow that the destruction of the Malgasi Ashkar was brought on by love as well as fear.

As Aron says something quietly to Lin, Kaleb nearly loses his grip on the wall. At that moment Lin cries out in pain and whispers of fire, a dark woman, and fire on the water. When Aron touches Lin’s shoulder, Kaleb sees a terrifying vision: Lin wrapped in flames with pearl-white eyes, and Aron beside her as a great raven with outstretched wings.

The vision vanishes, leaving Kaleb terrified. Kaleb scrambles down the wall without retrieving the ball and flees, haunted by what he saw; the chapter closes by noting that ravens are ill omens in Castellane but, for the Ashkar, the raven symbolizes Judah Makabi, protector of the Goddess and liberator of the Ashkar people.