Elspeth prepares for Market Day in her dead mother’s crimson Spindle dress, choosing a rose instead of an elaborate hairstyle and hiding her injured wrist beneath the gown’s sleeves. Jespyr meets her in Destrier black and helps her join the others, while Elspeth feels exposed in her house colors and uneasy about appearing publicly among Ravyn, Elm, Hauth, Ione, and the Yews.

Hauth approaches Elspeth with renewed charm, using her as a way to provoke Ravyn. Ravyn interrupts and takes Elspeth’s hand, but Hauth retaliates by grabbing Elspeth’s injured wrist, causing visible pain and nearly exposing the wound from the previous night. Ione quickly intervenes and lies that Elspeth hurt herself falling from a horse, allowing Elspeth to escape Hauth’s suspicion for the moment. Elm and Jespyr separate Elspeth and Ravyn from Hauth, though Elspeth remains afraid Hauth is hunting for the truth.

As the group moves toward Market Street, Elspeth tries to divert Elm toward Spindle House to search for Erik’s Well Card, but Elm refuses, arguing that public attendance is part of their disguise and that Ravyn is too far away to support them. At Market Day, the Nightmare warns Elspeth that more than Destriers serve the King, and Elspeth drifts through the crowded square, overwhelmed by noise, memory, and the knowledge that the Nightmare is gaining strength.

Ravyn finds Elspeth in the crowd, and their private conversation becomes emotionally direct. Ravyn admits he resisted courting Elspeth because he was already drawn to her and feared that closeness would make him stop pretending to be the King’s loyal captain. Elspeth urges Ravyn to embrace the role of traitor against a kingdom that would kill them and Emory, insisting that the reckoning belongs to them, not to the King. Ravyn responds by holding Elspeth tightly, but the moment is interrupted when Elspeth’s father, stepmother, and half sisters find them.

Elspeth’s father greets Ravyn and is visibly moved when he sees Elspeth in her mother’s dress. Elspeth’s half sisters, Nya and Dimia, pull Elspeth away and confront her about courting Ravyn, fearing he will discover she had the fever and arrest her. To escape them, Elspeth asks Elm for help, and Elm uses his Scythe Card to send the twins away in a spell of giggling cheerfulness.

While drinking with Elspeth, Elm reveals that he has noticed too much to ignore: Elspeth’s combat ability, her secrecy, and the yellow glint in her black eyes, which he saw when she attacked her father in the wood. The Nightmare urges Elspeth to tell the truth as Elspeth panics over how much Elm has guessed. Before Elspeth can answer, armed Destriers force their way into the square with news that Physician Orithe has taken an infected child and that the child’s parents have been arrested; Hauth intends to make an example of them, turning Market Day’s celebration into a public scene of fear.