Farris and Ariadne join Emily in her research to find lost stories that support her hypothesis about curing Wendell’s realm. The decisive story Emily locates is an obscure version of a faerie tale called “King Macan’s Bees” (163). In the story, a minor Faerie lord inhabits a mound called King Macan’s tomb. As time goes on, he begins to be known as King Macan, though the lord is not royalty. The lord now considers himself King Macan and shows off his castle within the mound. One winter night, a deposed prince, who is now a peddler, seeks refuge at Macan’s castle. The prince enjoys Macan’s hospitality and then bludgeons Macan in his bed later that night. Throwing Macan’s body in a nearby stream, the prince assumes Macan’s title and marries Mona, Macan’s wife. However, the first Macan is not dead.

Badly injured, the first Macan crawls to the shore and curses the mound and its inhabitants, then continues to live in the land as the curse itself. The inhabitants of the land are wracked by ghoulish nightmares. The second Macan and Mona search for the first Macan so they can kill him and lift the curse, but to no avail. Finally, they question the first Macan’s personal servants, who reveal three crucial clues about the whereabouts of the old Macan: His favorite dish was snail’s head mushrooms, he often withdrew to a secret palace, and a nearby boggart may know of this place. On the condition that the second Macan and Mona allow him to reside at their castle, the boggart leads them to the old Macan’s secret lair, where he has been dwelling all this while. The second Macan kills the first, and the land is restored. But just as the second Macan exits the secret palace, a swarm of bees, loyal to the first Macan, surround and kill him too. The boggart becomes the third Macan. Mona marries him and the two live in the first Macan’s castle in relative harmony.

Emily believes this story holds the clue to finding Arna and healing the land. She decides to leave for Silva Lupi via County Leane, Corbann the next day.

The morning of Emily’s departure by train to Corbann, Farris invites her for a private breakfast. He confesses that his presence in Dublin was not a coincidence; he has been tracking Emily for a while, as he needs to share something important with her. Farris hands Emily old journals, with handwriting similar to hers and bearing her initials. She realizes that the journals belonged to her grandfather Edgar Wilde, who was always interested in Faeries and died of a heart attack when Emily was very young.

Farris reveals that he and Emily’s grandfather were close friends, and he knows how Emily’s grandfather really died. Emily’s grandfather is the friend of whom he has told Emily in the previous books: the human who was besotted with a faerie, followed her into the faerie realm, and was attacked by her kinsfolk. Hung by the beard from a tree, Edgar died from his injuries in Exmoor. The journals are a record of his last days: thankfully, they don’t contain anything grisly, as Edgar did not anticipate the attack. However, the very fact that the attack was so unpredictable says a lot about the nature of the Folk. Farris wants the journals to serve as a warning for Emily before she marries Wendell.

Emily is shocked at Farris keeping such important secrets from her. She tells him that Wendell is a different person from the woman with whom her grandfather fell in love. Farris implores her to read the journals before she commits to taking a throne in Faerie. Emily leaves in a bad mood but takes the journals with her.

Emily immerses herself in Edgar’s journals on the train to Corbann. The entries suggest that he did not know he was in danger; he describes grand banquets he attended in Faerie and makes fawning references to the Faerie who enchanted him, the lady from Exmoor.

In County Leane, Emily drops in to say hello to Lilja and Margret and is overjoyed to see Wendell waiting for her at the cottage. She and Wendell dine with their friends, after which Lilja shows Emily her exquisite wooden carvings of Poe, the needle-teethed faerie who was a tremendous help to Emily in Ljosland. As Emily admires the sculptures, Lilja too shares her misgivings about Emily taking up a throne in Faerie. Having suffered at the hands of the Hidden Ones—the capricious faeries of Ljosland, Lilja knows how unsafe mortals are in the company of the Folk. Worse, Folk are easily corrupted by power, so Wendell himself may change after he becomes king. Emily reassures Lilja that Wendell is trustworthy. Later, she shares the conversation with Wendell, who tells her that he understands Lilja and Farris’s doubts. Wendell suggests he give his true name to Emily, granting her power over him, but Emily refuses.

When Emily and Wendell return to Faerie, they find that the door has shifted from Wendell’s quarters to the forest outside. As they walk toward the castle, they notice the same dark mist that had engulfed the yew grove. Half the castle and the grounds have been infected by the curse. Emily and Wendell rush toward the castle.

Wendell wounds his hand so his shed blood can drive the curse away from the castle grounds for now. An emergency meeting of Wendell’s council is called in the banquet hall so Emily can share the story of King Macan. Niamh agrees that the story holds vital clues in the search for Arna. Scouts are sent to locate Arna’s loyal servants for questioning. As the councilors discuss next steps, there is a deafening sound of rustling leaves from the bloody oaks that have gathered outside the banquet hall. Wendell telepathically communicates with the oaks, and they quiet down. Taran is surprised at Wendell’s power over the sentient trees, since the last monarch who shared such a connection with them was his great-grandmother. Meanwhile, a guard returns with the news that he has located a butter faerie who made Arna breakfast every day.

The terrified faerie is hiding in a tree. Niamh tells Emily that the faerie’s kind are from Somerset, which reminds Emily of something she cannot yet recall. Meanwhile, The Lady in the Red Cloak suggests torturing her for answers, but Emily dismisses the bloodthirsty suggestion. Instead, Emily suggests questioning the tiny, plump faerie in her home—a creamery under the palace—to put her at ease. Wendell reassures the little faerie that she will not come to harm, and she leads them through endless caverns into her underground creamery. She shows Wendell one of Arna’s breakfast favorites: snails with silver stripes that Arna herself brought from her long walks. The snails are found exclusively on islands, which suggests that Arna’s secret palace may be on an island. Since there are no islands nearby, Emily believes the snails may have come from the far-flung coast of Wendell’s kingdom.

Niamh pulls Emily aside for a query: in the Macan story, the second Macan also dies, stung by bees. She wonders if Wendell will have to die as well. Emily tells Niamh she hopes such a thing will not be required. Emily has read one iteration of the Macan tale in which the second king lives.

The second clue arrives via Arna’s hairdresser, the same faerie who has been doing Emily’s hair daily. The fairy demands Wendell triple his pay in exchange for his divulging Arna’s secrets, to which Wendell reluctantly agrees. Though the hairdresser fairy does not know where Arna is now, he recalls that her hair would be frequently tangled with horn-like thorns, indicating that she often visited a place thick with thorny vines.

The third clue takes much longer, with interviews from the attendants yielding no answers. Wendell finally suggests reaching out to a boggart, just like the boggart in the King Macan story. Emily, Wendell, and the rest of the council head to the Gap of Wick, a narrow pass between mountains in the hinterlands of Wendell’s realm, where the kingdom’s only boggart lives.

Emily brings Edgar’s journal on the treacherous ride to the gap, paying more attention to her grandfather’s descriptions of his fairy lover. Like Wendell, the fairy is golden-haired and beautiful, but the similarities end here. Prone to anger, the fairy kills her enemies at the smallest slight. In fact, Emily’s grandfather writes, she has sent so many to their deaths that she is familiar with the little-known Door to Death.

Meanwhile, Emily and the others arrive at the hill in the pass where the boggart’s stone tower is located. On their way to the tower, they pass a field strewn with the remains of humans: killed no doubt by the treacherous bogles or goblins who reside in the area. The boggart—which takes the forms of other entities, itself being bodiless—appears as a courtly Fae, with a face that is a mishmash of Wendell and Taran. The boggart complains about its surroundings and insults Wendell and his biological mother and stepmother. However, when the boggart disparages Emily, Wendell uses a terrible voice to stop him. Capitulating to Wendell’s authority, the boggart agrees to help him on two conditions: that he be allowed to live in the castle with the rest of the courtly Fae and that a great banquet with music be held on his arrival. An annoyed Wendell agrees. The boggart reveals that Arna’s hideaway is an island. Emily responds that they already know this (as the snails Arna favors are only found on islands). The boggart must give them a different clue. The boggart relents and fetches a piece of sailcloth with which Arna once bandaged her injured knee.

The courtiers look at the sailcloth in puzzlement, till Taran recognizes it from one of the sailboats of Silva Lupi. The nobility sail these boats on Lake Silverlily on summer days. This suggests the island is in the lake itself, though visibly the lake contains no islands. Wendell thanks the boggart for the clue and promises to invite him to the castle once Arna has been defeated.