Tisaanah and Max have sex, discovering each other’s wounds as they undress. Afterward, they spend hours talking through their campaigns. Max reveals he has not returned to his family estate since their deaths and that his surviving brother Brayan does not know the truth of what happened. Tisaanah agrees to accompany Max to see the house.

Max leads Tisaanah through the estate’s closed-off quarters. His siblings’ rooms are preserved untouched: Kira’s insect books, Variaslus’s unfinished sketch, Marisca’s petrified flowers, Shailia’s dull trinkets. Atraclius’s room is different: immaculate, purged of belongings but with burn marks beneath the carpet. Overcome with emotion, Max flees to a balcony and Tisaanah follows. He wishes she could have known the person he used to be; she tells him she would not have liked him then, and his family’s world would not have accepted her. She praises his refusal to compromise on his morals and tells him she loves that he is a dreamer. They embrace and have sex again. The next morning, Max concludes they must visit Ilyzath.

In Yithara, Aefe spots Caduan drinking alone, unusually despondent. He is commemorating a dead friend’s birthday and doubts his worthiness as king. He correctly guesses her father has forbidden their trip to Niraja and calls him a coward. Furious, Aefe retaliates by saying her father would never have let their house fall like Caduan’s did. Before the confrontation can escalate, a burning arrow crashes through the window. Caduan shields Aefe with his body as an explosion hurls them across the room. He gasps that humans are behind it before the floor collapses.

Max and Tisaanah arrive at Ilyzath, an ancient white tower surrounded by churning sea. Reshaye recoils in terror. From inside, they hear a single agonized scream pierce the unnatural silence. In the prison, they find Vardir curled on a bare floor, his face covered in self-inflicted wounds. He denies creating Reshaye, saying he only helped harness it. When Tisaanah shows him the albino patches on her arm, he realizes with horror she has opened a direct channel to blood magic that feeds on life. Vardir has an attack of paranoid fear and Reshaye attacks him. The prison reacts, the hallways torturing them with visions of dying loved ones and shadows reaching for Max as a voice whispers he belongs there. Tisaanah blasts the door open and Max draws a Stratagram to enable them to escape. They arrive back at the estate shaken and silent.

Lying awake that night, Tisaanah asks if Ilyzath is where Max would have been sent after Sarlazai. He confirms it, expressing guilt over the massacre and his acquittal. He was not present at his trial and only freed because Nura fought for him. Tisaanah tells him he has never belonged in such a place. Her conviction comforts him, but throughout the night he is haunted by Ilyzath’s whispers.

A letter from a young refugee named Fijra asks Tisaanah to visit Fijra’s grandmother. At the refugee dwellings, an old woman tells a long sad story before Tisaanah grows dizzy and realizes the stew was poisoned. The old woman says she would do anything for her family while strong hands grab Tisaanah’s throat. Her magic fires erratically, rotting one attacker’s flesh, but a rope tightens around her neck and Reshaye’s whisper fades into darkness.

Aefe wakes in the burning wreckage of Yithara, pinned beneath debris with Caduan unconscious beside her. She bites his wrist and drinks his blood, using the absorbed magic to call him back. They share an intense wordless connection when his eyes open. While fighting, they are diverted by humans attacking Fey travelers. Aefe is impaled and paralyzed by a scarred human’s magic before breaking free. Caduan fights back until Ishqa arrives and kills the human. Ishqa reports Yithara is lost. Aefe looks down at her wound and collapses.

Max runs drills but is distracted by Ilyzath visions, hallucinating Moth being burned and Nura scalded. Nura gives him back his mother’s silver necklace with a Morrigan’s Ice gem, given to her years ago as a gesture of inclusion. Max refuses to take it back, saying it belongs to her. Before he can respond to her questions about Ilyzath, Zeryth storms in holding Tisaanah’s butterfly necklace and announcing a serious problem.

Tisaanah wakes bound and blindfolded, her magic suppressed by Stratagrams tattooed onto her arms. In a well-appointed cell she finds Atrick Aviness and a woman named Irene of the Order of Daybreak, who implies they need Reshaye. Aviness tells her she serves a man who murdered his 14-year-old niece before Tisaanah is left alone.

In the dungeons, Max, Nura, and Sammerin interrogate a man captured fleeing the refugee dwellings. When fear magic fails to break him, Max unleashes his full power for the first time: Opening his second eyelids, his body unravels into flames. Even Nura staggers back. The prisoner breaks, claiming Tisaanah is already dead. Max draws a Stratagram and disappears.

Strapped to a table, Tisaanah realizes Irene intends to steal Reshaye. Rather than fighting, she falls deep into her own mind and seizes control of Irene’s magic, turning it against the Stratagram tattoos binding her. The shackles shatter, rotting Tisaanah’s own flesh as the tattoos disappear. Irene collapses as decay spreads over her. Tisaanah feels the pull of Max’s magic and throws open the door.

Believing Tisaanah dead, Max transforms into a serpent of fire and storms through the Capital. His power wanes just as Tisaanah appears. They share a crushing embrace and he is horrified by the wounds on her arms. A crash below reveals Zeryth’s army—sent by Nura despite his orders—attacking and badly outnumbered. Tisaanah tells Max she will not let him fight his war alone. Tas they reveal their full power, Max opens his second eyelids, and the world erupts in flames.

Aefe returns to find Yithara deliberately devastated: buildings torn down, Fey bodies including children mutilated, as if the humans were searching for something. She breaks down, smashing her knuckles against rubble until they bleed until Caduan finds her. She declares they are going to Niraja, claiming her authority as Teirness and defying her father. She apologizes for what she said in the pub and he tells her she will be a great Teirness; she tells him he will be a great king. They share a moment of intense vulnerability: Aefe wonders what it would be like to kiss him but cannot make herself that exposed. He takes her hand and they sit together in silence.

Max’s fiery transformation halts the battle. Returning to human form, he watches his soldiers’ respect become reverence. He and Tisaanah fight together until the Palace bells ring in surrender and Aviness kills himself by throwing himself from a balcony. The war ends but, still raw from the betrayal, Tisaanah tells Max she is not finished. At the refugee dwellings, she confronts those who betrayed her—magic flaring as blue fire and red butterflies—and promises that with Zeryth’s war won, she will now win theirs. She collapses into Max’s arms as he teleports them home.