In Potions Class, Elise sits with Ryder, who asks if she wants to go out to dinner. Dante glares when he sees the two of them together. Needing to replenish her power, Elise walks across the room and bites Dante’s neck in full view of the class. Believing she has chosen the Oscura Clan, an enraged Ryder prepares to shift into his Basilisk form to attack. Elise stops him, explaining that Dante is merely her Source, a Fae that a Vampire feeds from. In response, Ryder declares that he will be her Source as well.

Dante objects, but Elise accepts both of them to maintain her neutrality between the rival gangs. Because Sources are usually weaker than the Vampires who drink from them, Bryce questions his leader’s decision. However, Ryder quickly silences him with a threatening hallucination. Later, Leon flirts with Elise and gives her a pack of her favorite cherry gum. Ryder coldly withdraws his offer to have dinner with Elise, so she accepts Leon’s offer for a date instead, leaving her sitting in tense silence with a scowling Ryder.

The novels flashes back to Gareth’s point of view. Gareth plans to blackmail Gabriel. During a free period, he sneaks onto the roof of the Vega Dormitories, which serves as Gabriel’s private sanctuary. Using a magical crystal to detect emotionally charged objects, Gareth discovers a hidden folder containing documents with seven fake identities for Gabriel. He also finds Gabriel’s dream diary, which is filled with cryptic notes from his prophetic visions. Gareth uses a burner phone to photograph the fake identities for leverage. He escapes just moments before Gabriel returns from class and sends his first anonymous blackmail message, using the codename “Faeker.”

The narrative returns to the present. Gabriel receives a cryptic message from an unnamed informant called “Falling Star” before heading to meet his private investigator, a Cyclops named Bill Fortune, at a rundown bar in Lunar territory called The Dirty Wand. Gabriel is frustrated by the slow progress of Bill’s investigation. Bill reveals he has been busy covering up a past incident involving an article about a student who died at the Academy. The young man’s death is connected to some unspecified past action of Gabriel’s that Gabriel deeply regrets.

Before Bill can share his new information, Dante’s uncle Felix leads the Oscura Clan in a brutal attack on the bar. Gabriel and Bill hide under a table as Felix’s gang slaughters the patrons. Bill creates a fire as a diversion, allowing them to escape through a back door. As Gabriel flies away, Felix throws ice shards that shred his wings. Though wounded, Gabriel escapes with the file from Bill, hoping it contains the answers he has been seeking.

During a Liaison session, Elise learns from Professor Titan that her class rank has jumped to 14th because of her strategic power play of securing both gang leaders as her official Sources. Back in her dorm, she finds a severely injured Gabriel clinging to the fire escape. He explains he was caught in Felix’s attack at the bar.

Elise uses all her magical energy to heal his deep cuts and shredded wings. Once he is healed, they share a passionate kiss even though Elise inwardly reminds herself that she hates Gabriel and shouldn’t trust him. Their intimacy is interrupted when Dante returns to the dorm. To avoid a confrontation, Gabriel flees through the window. To deflect Dante’s suspicion about the scene, Elise claims she is out of power and bites Dante’s neck to feed, but Laini’s arrival causes her to stop. She worries that she is letting the Kings get too close to her.

Leon uses a magical skeleton key to pick the locks on his classmates’ lockers, stealing small amounts of cash. He finds a dropped piece of paper with the initials “E.C.” that lists a detailed daily schedule, which he suspects belongs to Elise. Before heading to class, he uses Dante’s unlocked Atlas to post an embarrassing prank status on his FaeBook account.

During combat practice, Elise spars with Leon. He is struck by how much her mannerisms remind him of his deceased friend, Gareth. They spend the session engaging in aggressive, flirtatious combat. Leon thinks about his secret plan for Elise on the night of the school ball.

To publicly demonstrate her neutrality, Elise feeds from Ryder against the side of the bleachers on Lunar Turf and then immediately walks over to Oscura Turf and drinks beer from Dante’s chalice. Afterward, she meets a Killblaze dealer named Harvey Bloom at an old storage shed known as “The Dead Shed.” She hopes to get information from him while he is high. Watching him use the drug makes her think of her brother’s death.

Elise aggressively questions Harvey about his supplier, but they are interrupted by Ryder. He dismisses Harvey, uses his magic to bind Elise with vines, and demands to know why she is investigating the drug. He reveals that he knows the recipe for Killblaze, which solidifies Elise’s suspicion that Ryder and The Brotherhood are involved in its production and may be connected to Gareth’s death.

The narrative flashes back to Gareth’s point of view. Gabriel responds to Gareth’s blackmail with violent threats, but Gareth persists with his demands for money. Needing more income, Gareth secretly accepts jobs from both rival gang leaders. His first task for Dante is to acquire blackmail material on Principal Greyshine. Dante takes Gareth to The Black Hole, an Oscura-run fetish club where Greyshine is a regular.

Gareth is forced to wear a revealing costume as a disguise. He escorts Greyshine to a private room and plants a hidden camera to record Greyshine’s encounter with a sex worker. After the successful operation, Dante tells Gareth that he has proven his loyalty and is now his friend.

The narrative returns to the present. Dante uses the blackmail video Gareth obtained for him to force Principal Greyshine to cancel his detention. Afterward, he shifts into his Storm Dragon form and flies with his pack of Werewolves before retreating to his private sanctuary, an abandoned boathouse by Tempest Lake. Inside, he is surprised to find Elise reading a book.

Dante confides in her about his frustration with Felix, who recently led an attack that killed 13 people and is failing to consult Dante before acting. To ensure his secrets are kept, he and Elise perform a Bond of Silence spell, a powerful piece of magic that prevents them from speaking about their conversations outside the boathouse. The magical connection is intensely intimate for both of them. Under the spell’s protection, Dante reveals that Ryder’s father and his own father were Astral Adversaries, and that Dante believes he and Ryder have inherited that bond. They agree that the boathouse can be a shared sanctuary where they can be “alone together.”