Tisaanah attends a library meeting with Zeryth and Council members, including Iya, a silver-haired Valtain man who attempts to probe her mind. Zeryth announces Max is besieging Antedale and asks for support. Iya argues the Orders should remain independent, glancing meaningfully at Tisaanah. Afterward he approaches Tisaanah, admiring her commitment to serving all Wielders. She replies that people like her have always had to fight. Back in her room, she finds a warm letter from Max and sits down to write him back.

Max besieges Antedale. His Valtain illusionists stage a feint at the southern gates, leaving the main gates vulnerable and Max’s forces take them with minimal bloodshed. Fighting intensifies on the Twin Serpents staircases. Entering the keep, he offers Gridot peace in exchange for surrender. Gridot declares he would rather die by a war hero’s hand, attacks with a dagger, and forces a fatal counter-strike. Gridot dies smiling. Back at camp, Max tells a horrified Moth this is what winning looks like. He feels only numbness, despite the low death toll.

The group arrives at a mist-shrouded, eerily silent House of Reeds, built as a series of maze-like corridors. Ishqa and Ashraia scout and confirm the city is deserted. Entering the central temple maze, Aefe and Ishqa find a faceless creature that lunges at them. Ishqa’s blade barely affects it but its touch causes intense pain. They kill it, then find hundreds of disfigured Fey faces staring up from beneath the water. These creatures burst forth and attack. When one injures Ishqa, Aefe bites his forearm and drinks his blood, taking his magic power to grow herself wings. Ishqa recognizes her as an “Essnera”—one who has this blood-drinking power—and coaches her through the agonizing transformation. They launch skyward but begin to fall. Aefe wakes on the ground screaming, Caduan holding her hand while Ishqa guides her to retract her wings. She passes out from the pain.

War becomes routine for Tisaanah. She unleashes spectacular power to force surrenders, but unavoidable deaths haunt her dreams. Reshaye grows restless, its nightmares tangling with hers. Tisaanah is often ill from the result of magic and Nura consistently tends to her. Tisaanah notes that Zeryth’s health is deteriorating and that his depletion seems linked to the magic potions he gives a Syrizen named Eslyn. Asked whether the life-binding spell is real, Nura says she has been instructed not to tell, but tacitly agrees. Between battles, Tisaanah collects the names of Threllian refugees’ loved ones, keeping them beside her growing stack of letters from Max. One day she is urgently summoned to the refugee dwellings.

Max repeats his strategy across multiple cities, minimizing casualties. He finds himself taking over his soldiers’ training, learning their names, and feeling the weight of each loss, personally writing to fallen soldiers’ families. With his troops exhausted and Zeryth demanding an inhuman pace, he detours to Meriata to find an old friend who may have answers about Zeryth’s life-binding curse on Tisaanah.

Tisaanah finds a table covered in letters bearing the same red seal. These are demands from the powerful Zorokov family that she be surrendered to face justice for killing the Mikovs. If not, the people enslaved by the Zorokovs—all relatives of the refugees—will be harmed. Filias, a community leader, confirms that Zeryth knew about this and said nothing. He argues the refugees must return to Threll under their own volition. Tisaanah pleads with them to wait. Vos, a disfigured former acquaintance whose face was mutilated as punishment for Tisaanah’s escape, challenges her publicly. She can only offer a weak promise of future liberation, failing to convince either Filias or Vos.

Aefe wakes, afraid now the others know she is an Essnera. Siobhan explains that the group escaped when Caduan raised and froze the tidewaters around the creatures. Ishqa states that Aefe is an Essnera and Ashraia spits the slur “curved,” meaning “tainted. Siobhan defends Aefe and calls her “a good soldier,” reinforcing Aefe’s sense of value through usefulness. Caduan silences Ashraia, noting Aefe’s magic saved lives. Ishqa thanks her directly and declares they must burn the House of Reeds to “grant mercy” to the corrupted Fey. Caduan argues against this but later helps accelerate the fires, remarking bitterly that the humans are making the Fey kill their own kind.

In Meriata, Max asks his old friend Eomara whether a spell could bind two lives together. She theorizes it would require dangerous deep magic, demanding enough life force to kill someone, and that breaking it would be nearly impossible. She suggests he seek answers from Vardir, a “mad mage” who created Reshaye. Max refuses but Eomara tells him Vardir is imprisoned in Ilyzath.

Woken by a mental scream, Tisaanah finds Eslyn writhing in agony from A’Maril—magic toxicity worsened by Zeryth’s potions. The scream intensifies until she collapses and Nura drags her away. Tisaanah intuits that Nura once tried to Wield Reshaye as Reshaye shows her flashes of those brutal attempts. Nura suggests Tisaanah should have been more ruthless and confesses that Eslyn was once her friend. Tisaanah joins her in a toast to the dead.

Caduan dissects a creature taken from the House of Reeds and confirms its blood is tainted with human blood—evidence of a failed Fey-human hybrid experiment—and argues they must visit the exiled kingdom of Niraja for answers. When Ashraia and Ishqa refuse, Aefe sides with them, citing duty to her father. That night Caduan confronts her and she reveals that her father attempted to strangle her when she was 10, after a priestess identified her as Essnera, then spared her life but removed her from the succession. Caduan realizes she has been projecting her father’s opinions and challenges her. An argument turns into a fight when Aefe pins him against a tree. Caduan reverses their positions and the tension becomes sexual. Aefe relents and agrees to write to her father recommending a visit to Niraja, knowing he will likely refuse.

Max discovers several of his men murdered at their inn. A young enemy soldier boasts of killing them for the “true king” before Moth distracts him, allowing an attack. In the melee, Moth is forced to kill the soldier to save Max, his first kill, which stuns him. The attackers are from the House of Morwood, a powerful new enemy ally. Zeryth orders Max’s force back to Korvius. Max finds Moth alone by a brook and urges him never to get used to killing, admitting it is a lesson he is still learning. He reflects that his home is now Tisaanah, and he is deeply homesick.

Eslyn suffers from A’Maril for three days before dying. Nura suggests her death could appease the Zorokovs. Realizing the Zorokovs want her specifically, Tisaanah asks Sammerin to alter Eslyn’s corpse to resemble her. They decapitate the body and Sammerin reshapes the head to match Tisaanah’s features while Tisaanah rots the eye sockets to disguise Eslyn, a gory detail she knows the Threllian Lords will appreciate. The convincing counterfeit is meant to buy time, but both feel sick about what they have done.

Max meets a shockingly gaunt Zeryth, who mocks their bloodless war and argues a repeat of the bloodshed of Sarlazai would have been more merciful. Max refuses to repeat it. Zeryth insists their combined strength could take the Capital now; Max counters that Morwood must come first. Noticing Zeryth studying journals of former Aran kings, Max asks why he wants the throne. Zeryth contrasts his low birth with Max’s privilege, tells him to ask Tisaanah the same question, then mutters about whether the world’s problems run too deep to fix before dismissing him.

The group travels to Yithara, a neutral trading city built among massive trees. Retrieving letters, Aefe notices Ishqa receive one from his six-year-old son that draws a rare smile. When he expresses worry that his boy is a dreamer, Aefe wonders if her father ever felt that way about her. A letter from her father is brief and cold: He forbids Niraja, scolds her for questioning the terms of exile, and closes with a cutting reminder not to make him regret choosing her for this mission.