Kaine finds Helena snooping and suspects her of searching for weapons to hurt herself with. They get into an argument about Luc and the Eternal Flame—Kaine says that they take advantage of her, but Helena denies it. She still doesn’t understand why Kaine is valuable to Morrough. Then Aurelia finds them together and gets upset.

Another day, Helena explores the outbuildings, and she finds an open door to the stables. Inside, she is confronted by a huge creature with enormous sharp fangs before the necrothralls that follow her everywhere pull her to safety. Later, she wanders the manor and discovers a room filled with commemorative plaques. One is etched with Enid Ferron’s name. She muses on the place of women in Paladian society—they are generally thought to be “categorically lesser” within the Faith. Only women who devote themselves to Lumithia can transcend women’s limitations and become “alchemists, surgeons, paladins, everything” (164), but in exchanged, they cannot marry or bear children.

Helena has a dream in which she walks in a room to find her Resistance friend Lila Bayard sitting on the floor crying, talking about how she has been lying. She wakes abruptly, desperate to see Lila again. Later that day, Helena has a resonance session with Kaine. As he tries to access her memories, she is overcome by longing for Luc. Her mind grows blank, and Kaine abruptly withdraws from her mind, which becomes blank. She stays in bed for several days afterward, and her dreams are terrible. 

Every month, they continue the transference sessions. She escapes the house and returns to the stable, thinking the creature she saw there would kill her, but it has been removed. The Ferrons return to the city for the winter, and Helena is alone with the necrothrall servants. She reads the newspapers and recognizes some faces but can’t remember them. Aurelia returns to the estate with Lancaster, who is revealed to be her lover, and they spend several days there. 

Kaine returns, and Dr. Stroud follows the next day. When she examines, Helena, Stroud is upset by her emaciated state. She demands that Kaine feed Helena better, emphasizing her value to Morrough. Kaine didn’t know that Aurelia was feeding Helena table scraps.

Helena feels lonelier by the day. She keeps replaying her dream of Lila, missing her friends. She begins to remember others in the Resistance, like Ilva Holdfast, Luc’s aunt, who convinced the Eternal Flame to accept her and utilize her vivimancy skills for healing. Then one day she remembers Lila’s brother, Soren. She is desperate to understand his relevance to her story—she can tell that memories of him have been specifically hidden and wonders why.

Helena wanders the manor in search of a weapon so that she can die by suicide. Kaine finds her just as she’s secreting a knife. A fight ensues, but Helena can’t defeat him.

In the middle of the winter, Governor Fabian Greenfinch is nearly assassinated. He survives, but Mandl is killed. Fear spreads throughout Paladia. Mandl was an Undying and shouldn’t have died; the people fear that more Undying will be killed, too. Helena is heartened by the news, convinced it’s a sign the Resistance is still alive. Stroud visits for an examination and mentions to Helena that she isn’t Undying; Helena is shocked. Stroud gives her a sedative, and when she wakes up, she is bruised.

One day, Kaine leads Helena into a dark tunnel, bringing her to the High Necromancer, Morrough. She is shocked by how awful he looks, and he is resting on a throne made of necrothralls, seemingly gaining power from them. Morrough reiterates his desire to access her lost memories, blaming Kaine for making so little progress with her. When Morrough performs a transference session, he determines that Helena is the animancer who erased her own memory in “an attempt to escape” (190). Kaine apologizes for failing to determine this sooner, swearing allegiance to Morrough and promising to keep Helena from the Eternal Flame.

Afterwards, Kaine informs Helena that she was responsible for the bombing of the West Port Laboratory at the end of the war. Helena is shocked and confused, knowing that she was just a healer and far from the front lines, but tries to hide her feelings. Instead, she confronts Kaine for having allegedly killed Principate Apollo, Luc’s father, when he was 16. Kaine explains what happened without getting upset.



Helena has a revelation. She now understands that the Undying are the source of Morrough’s power. Morrough is afraid because he knows the Resistance figured out how to kill the Undying. Morrough derives his strength from the stolen souls of the Undying, and as they die, Morrough weakens.

Helena has a dream memory of Shiseo sitting in a laboratory with her, helping her to choose nickel-titanium alloy for weapons. When she regains consciousness, Kaine is gone. She showers, trying to piece together her memories. Afterwards, she studies herself in the mirror. She looks physically healthier, but there is no spark in her eyes. That evening, Kaine finds her and resumes their conversation about Morrough and the Undying; he confirms that Morrough is weakening.

Kaine starts to distance himself from Helena, only visiting during transference sessions. During the sessions, she muses on who Kaine really is and what he really wants. When she is alone, she ruminates on why she would have wiped her own memories. Kaine is gone from the estate much of the time, as Morrough has him hunting the last members of the Eternal Flame; when he returns to the estate, she can tell if he’s been unsuccessful because Morrough has obviously tortured him. She doesn’t know what Kaine is; he seems to have the healing capacities and agelessness of the Undying, but she can’t sense that element of lumithia inside him that all the Undying have.

In early spring, Aurelia hosts an equinox party. Helena sneaks around and eavesdrops on the attendees’ conversations. She is horrified by the wartime atrocities they discuss, including using Stroud’s breeding program for sex; she fears for the safety of the women at Central, where the breeding program is located. They also discussed building panic rooms and escape plans, a result of their worry about the remnants of the Resistance, who seem to be successfully killing and disappearing the Undying. 

As she is returning to her room, Lancaster attacks her sinking a needle into her neck.

Helena wakes up as Lancaster is trying to take her off the estate so that he can rape her. Kaine appears and intercedes, threatening to kill Lancaster if he ever returns. Kaine takes her to her room and stabilizes Helena.

The next day, Aurelia visits Helena while Kaine is away from Spirefell. She tells Helena that Aurelia’s parents had her specifically so they could marry her to Kaine, desperate for an alliance with Kaine’s powerful iron guild family—her family is also iron but not as powerful. Aurelia insists she has tried everything to be a good wife, but Kaine has pushed her away. She is furious with Helena for stealing Kaine’s attention, too.  She attacks Helena and tries to gouge out her eye, convinced Kaine won’t be able get back to the estate in time to save Helena. Suddenly, the house animates itself and attacks Aurelia, the iron breaking her bones and holding her, saving Helena.

Helena is shocked by Kaine’s control of the iron that runs through Spirefell’s power. Then Kaine himself appears and insists she guide him through the procedure to restore her eye, which is hanging from its socket. Although sick and shaken, she gives him instructions.

Over the following days, Helena’s eye gradually heals. One day, Dr. Stroud checks in on her, unconcerned about the eye. She informs Helena and Kaine that Morrough has a new plan—for Helena to get pregnant with Kaine’s child, joining their alchemical powers. Helena was sterilized in her youth, but without her knowledge, Stroud reversed the process with her vivimancy. Morrough wants her child because she is an animancer. Stroud tells Helena and Kaine that they have two months for Helena to become pregnant; then, she will be transferred into the general breeding program.

After Stroud leaves, Helena and Kaine discuss the new arrangement. Helena is devastated, but an unfazed Kaine insists he needs to please the High Necromancer.

Over the following weeks, Helena and Kaine start having sex; they are both reluctant, and Kaine vomits after the first time. Helena feels cold and alone after each coerced encounter.

One day, Dr. Stroud gives Helena a pill that will distance her during Kaine’s rape that evening. She is horrified later when she enjoys sex with Kaine. She feels ashamed of herself. Meanwhile, she keeps trying to make sense of what Morrough and Kaine each really wants. She senses that Kaine has a larger plan, beyond Morrough’s, but she can’t tell what it is.

Kaine doesn’t appear in Helena’s room for so long that she becomes convinced that the Eternal Flame have killed him. Then one night, Helena finds Kaine drunk in his room. He greets her affectionately, insisting she has caused him emotional pain. Helena isn’t sure what to feel. They kiss.

Helena and Kaine share a passionate kiss. Helena is overcome by desire but pulls herself away and flees to her room. Upset and ashamed, she repeatedly slams her head into the wall. Kaine finds and stops her. He reminds her that she must survive and assures her she hasn’t been disloyal to Luc; he insists Luc and the Holdfasts didn’t value her the way he does. A furious Helena tells him she doesn’t want him.

When Stroud examines her two weeks later, she discovers that Helena is pregnant. She becomes so upset that Kaine sedates her. Just as she loses consciousness, she hears him apologize.

Helena wakes in her room with Kaine. He tells her that she is not allowed to do anything that might harm the baby. He gives her a book on maternity and reminds her to take care of herself. She tells him that she will only take care of herself if she doesn’t have to see him.

When Helena weakens, Dr. Stroud checks in on her. She tells Kaine why Helena is unwell; she has been using all her resonance to hide her memories from the High Necromancer, and now the pregnancy is demanding some of that same energy. “The Toll” might also be taking its effect, a known dissipation of energy that vivimancers experience over time if they overuse their power. The Eternal Flame believes that the Toll is a divine punishment for healing; each healing takes something from the healer and requires atonement.

Helena wakes up in a panic. She is overcome by memories of terrible things people have said to her. She hears Jan Crowther blaming her for endangering the Eternal Flame, Kaine criticizing her for having sex with him, and friends accusing her of betraying them. Her mind breaks open and she feels like she’s falling. She remembers everything.