At breakfast, a messenger brings an invitation for the Hawthorns to attend Equinox at Stone, King Rowan’s castle. Ione is thrilled, but Opal worries because the family still owes taxes after a poor harvest. Tyrn decides they will go and produces the Nightmare Card, saying it is worth more than the debt and that he has been saving it for need.

Elspeth is shaken because the Card is the same one she touched eleven years earlier. Tyrn claims he stole it from a highwayman, but Elspeth remembers blood on Tyrn’s sword and realizes Tyrn may be hiding more than she knows. Tyrn demonstrates that Providence Cards cannot be destroyed, while the Nightmare in Elspeth’s mind bitterly mocks the Shepherd King and the kingdom built on the Cards.

Later, Elspeth looks through Opal’s copy of The Old Book of Alders and remembers childhood lessons from Opal and Elspeth’s mother, Iris. The story explains that the Spirit of the Wood once gave blessings directly, that the Shepherd King made twelve Providence Cards from that magic, and that the Spirit created the mist after people stopped venerating her. The mist brings fever to children, and survivors often gain dangerous magic while later degenerating in body or mind. The book says the mist can be lifted only by uniting all twelve Cards with black salt blood, but the missing Twin Alders Card has prevented every king from completing the Deck.

In Opal’s garden, Elspeth tells her aunt she does not want to attend Equinox because court is dangerous and Nerium will resent her presence. Opal encourages Elspeth to go anyway, reminding Elspeth that isolation is no life. Opal also gives Elspeth a letter from Elspeth’s father, who appears to be reaching out again. Elspeth thinks of degeneration and her mother’s death, fearing that her infection might expose itself before the King, Physicians, or Destriers, but Opal urges Elspeth not to let the fever define her future.

The night before the journey, Elspeth dreams for the first time since touching the Nightmare Card. She sees an ancient vine-covered room and a stern armored man with unnatural yellow eyes, then the dream shifts into Tyrn’s library, where the Nightmare appears as a black-furred, clawed creature with the same yellow eyes. When Elspeth asks about the man, the Nightmare says he was long dead and begins a cryptic story about a girl, a Shepherd King, and the monster they became, hinting that the Nightmare’s origin is bound to the kingdom’s deepest magic.