After the deaths and revelations of the previous fight, Camilla Hect realizes Palamedes Sextus is missing. Camilla explains to Gideon Nav that Palamedes has loved Dulcinea Septimus through twelve years of letters, even proposing marriage so Dulcinea could spend her remaining time cared for. Gideon is mortified because Dulcinea never mentioned Palamedes and because Gideon had assumed her own closeness with Dulcinea was harmless.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus points out that Dulcinea’s behavior never made sense: Dulcinea spoke of Palamedes as if he were nearly a stranger. Gideon, desperate to apologize and make sure Palamedes is all right, runs toward Dulcinea’s sickroom. In the corridor, Palamedes silently immobilizes Gideon with bone magic, then enters Dulcinea’s room and leaves the door open.

Palamedes confronts the woman he has been calling Dulcinea. He explains that he initially accepted her distance as an attempt to spare him pain, but his investigation has shown something is wrong. He asks why she killed the Fifth House, and she admits Abigail Pent frightened her because Abigail was both a speaker to the dead and a historian interested in Canaan House’s old records. She also explains that she hid the key in Abigail’s body to conceal it and gain time.

Palamedes then asks where the real Dulcinea is. The impostor reveals that Dulcinea Septimus came to Canaan House at the Emperor’s call, but the impostor killed Dulcinea’s cavalier Protesilaus during boarding, spoke with Dulcinea, and later disposed of Dulcinea’s body in the furnace after the impostor’s own cavalier was destroyed. She insists Dulcinea was dead before the shuttle landed and says her murders were meant to ruin the Emperor’s Lyctor plans, lure him into a vulnerable position, and make him watch his Houses shatter.

The impostor reveals herself as one of the Emperor’s Lyctors and speaks bitterly of Lyctorhood as a state between life and death. Palamedes, having kept her talking, reveals that he has used the time to accelerate her cancers, infections, and bodily damage. When she says that will not be enough to kill a Lyctor, Palamedes disperses his own thanergy in a massive white explosion, intending to kill her and avenge Dulcinea, the Fifth, the Fourth, and everyone else she has harmed.

Gideon is freed by the blast and flees to the atrium as Canaan House shakes apart around her. After the destruction subsides, the impostor emerges burned, wounded, regenerating, and still alive. She names herself Cytherea the First, Lyctor of the Great Resurrection, a necromancer and cavalier, and declares that she has come to kill the Emperor and burn his Houses. Then Cytherea raises her rapier and tells Gideon that her vengeance begins with Gideon.