That evening, the party bathes and changes into formal Astreonan clothes. Venna reports using her Kryptos abilities to map the castle undetected, noting that the guards at every exit suggest containment rather than security. She and Meryn hide daggers under their gowns. Saela and Fredrich stay in the suite for dinner.

Felippe leads the group to the royal dining hall, where King Lucien Brightbane presides. Though ancient, Lucien looks no older than his late twenties, with white-blond hair, sharp features, and blue eyes that unpleasantly remind Meryn of Killian. She recognizes his golden-spiked crown from a foresight vision and notices an opal Goddess Tear at its center, like the one in her own crown. When Stark demands that Lucien rise and greet Meryn properly, Lucien obeys with a shallow, mocking bow. Meryn takes the seat beside him to facilitate conversation, ignoring Stark’s advice about staying away from Lucien.

As pre-dinner entertainment, Lucien stages a mock sword fight. Meryn recognizes one fighter as the human woman they tried to rescue in a Siphon town. Lucien explains that she chose the bout over imprisonment. The Siphon fighter defeats the woman with three quick cuts and then licks blood from her wound. Lucien then sinks his fangs into a woman on his lap and feeds openly.

The Nocturnans are repulsed to see Lucien and the rest of the Siphon court feeds on their human companions, who appear to feel pleasure. When Meryn refuses her food, Lucien proves it’s safe by feeding a piece from her plate to the woman on his lap.

After dismissing the humans, Lucien turns serious. He reveals the war’s true origin: his older brother, Alistair Brightbane, was exiled for creating illegal thrall bracelets and has waged centuries of war against Astreona to reclaim the throne. The group is devastated, realizing that generations of Nocturnan sacrifice stem from a brothers’ succession dispute. Meryn challenges Lucien’s credibility. He argues that mind-controlling her would undermine his goal of alliance and explains that most Siphon mental powers are limited to illusions, consensual blood bonds, or people they have recently fed upon.

To prove his account, Lucien offers Meryn his crown, its opal acting as a conduit for visions. In a vision, Lucien and Alistair’s father confronts Alistair with evidence of illegal thrall bracelets—gold cuffs with blood-red stones identical to Meryn’s bracelet. The king exiles Alistair and names Lucien heir. Alistair activates his thralls, triggering a slaughter in which the king is beheaded by his attendants. Lucien seizes the crown and uses its amplified power to fill the chamber with illusory clones of himself, confounding Alistair. Alistair’s forces fall back, though Alistair escapes and vows to reclaim the throne.

When Meryn places Lucien’s crown on her head, she collapses into the vision, leaving Stark to endure several tense minutes before she revives. She immediately asks about thrall bracelets. Lucien explains that all Siphons possess blood magic, enabling them to create thralls or spells over humans who have consumed their blood. However, the thrall bond needs to be refreshed constantly by the human and Siphon partaking of each other’s blood, consensually. Alistair bypassed this process by mixing human and Siphon blood to create a jewel that was placed into bracelets. The bracelets didn’t need to be refreshed constantly by feeding, and the mixing of blood didn’t even need to be consensual. The bracelets grant permanent, distance-proof mind control to the Siphon with no benefit to the wearer. Only the creator can remove one; any other attempt kills the wearer. Meryn realizes that Killian had many chances to collect her blood while tending her wounds.

Lucien notices Meryn’s focus on her wrist, yanks up her sleeve, and exposes her bracelet. The Siphon court recoils. Lucien holds a dagger to her throat, believing she’s in Killian’s thrall, while Stark draws his blade and Meryn presses a hidden dagger to Lucien’s ribs. Meryn insists that her bracelet targets her powers rather than her mind. Lucien relents and promises to consult the castle librarians about how to remove the bracelet from Meryn. After making a flirtatious advance toward Meryn and provoking her anger, Lucien finally makes his real offer: Meryn can have full command of the Astreonan forces if she agrees to work with him.

Stunned by Lucien’s offer, Meryn asks for time and goes outside with Stark. Their shared frustration drives them into the rocky wilderness beyond the city. Stark distrusts Lucien and fears that the offer is a trap to place Astreonan forces permanently inside Nocturna. Meryn decides to delay her answer while assessing Lucien’s intentions. When she mentions getting to know Lucien better, Stark reacts jealously. Meryn confronts him, arguing that he has no right to be possessive when he’s the one holding back.

Stark stops her and confesses that his feelings for her are as strong as ever. He vulnerably asks Meryn whether she’s certain she wants him. Meryn answers by tearing open his shirt. After confirming that she’s taking a contraceptive draught, they have passionate sex against a rock outcropping. Meryn later falls asleep in Stark’s arms until pain and terror blast through the pack bonds. She identifies Noemi as the source. They dress hurriedly, summon their direwolves, and race back to the castle.

Inside the castle, Fredrich confirms that Saela is safe and leads them to Lucien’s chambers. There, royal guards restrain a bleeding Noemi, Venna rifts to distract them, and Lucien watches with a serious shoulder wound and cold amusement. Lucien says that Noemi ambushed him with a poisoned dagger. Noemi shouts that he deserved to die for treating human women like property. Meryn persuades Lucien to allow a private conversation.

In Lucien’s office, Noemi reveals that her father arranged for her to serve as King Cyril’s companion during her Bonding Trials—a nonconsensual arrangement made when she was 12. Watching Lucien feed from human women fully triggered the buried trauma. Meryn privately recognizes the echo of her own coercive history with Killian, comforts Noemi, and persuades her that the alliance requires a sincere apology. Before leaving, Noemi expresses happiness for Meryn and Stark, clarifies that her bond with Stark is platonic, and reveals that she’s attracted to women.

After extensive negotiations, Lucien accepts Noemi’s apology and sends the group to bed. Meryn lies awake beside Stark all night, thinking about the bracelet, the alliance, and the Goddess Tears.

The next morning, Meryn catches Venna and Saela conversing in sign language (Venna has hearing loss) and feels left out. Alone with Venna, she laments that her sister knows a language that she doesn’t. Venna scolds Meryn for neglecting to learn sign language and failing to accept Saela’s Siphon identity. Meryn is stung but acknowledges the criticism.

Meryn takes Saela and Venna to the Astreonan Royal Library, where Lucien is researching her bracelet. When Meryn reveals Saela’s sire bond with Killian, Lucien is angered. Saela explains that her Tear necklace blocks the connection. Lucien reveals that he also wears a hidden Goddess Tear, and when Meryn briefly holds it, her power surges. He proposes that Saela trade her necklace for Siphon-enchanted jewelry designed to block a sire bond, freeing Meryn’s Goddess Tear.

A psychic blast suddenly blanks Meryn’s vision. She experiences Siegrid’s death through Siegrid’s eyes: a desperate battle against the defected Phylax forces, where Jonah—Stark’s former charge—delivers the mortal wound to Siegrid. Meryn gasps back to the library floor and tells the group that Nocturna has fallen.

Concurrent with Chapter 38, Stark finds Noemi barely eating and takes her for a walk through Brightbane’s back gardens. He feels guilty for failing to shield her from Cyril during her Trials. Noemi confides that she had suppressed the trauma until watching Lucien feed brought it back. Stark tells her that surviving is its own form of strength.

A shock of pain then blacks out his vision. He enters a shadow world containing a well of power deeper than anything he has felt, surrounded by battlefield sounds. A clear declaration reaches him: The Sovereign Alpha is dead. His bond with Cratos confirms it. Siegrid is gone, and her title, along with connections to all four pack bonds, has transferred to Stark. He snaps out of the vision, tells Noemi what happened, steadies himself, and thinks of Meryn.

Following the news of Siegrid’s death, the direwolves outside howl in mourning. Meryn concludes that Killian has taken control of the front lines. Reaching Alpha Egith through the bonds, she learns that Egith is retreating with survivors. Meryn tells Lucien that her country has fallen and that she needs his support more than ever.

Lucien agrees to maintain the alliance on one condition: Meryn must marry him. Furious, Meryn’s shadow magic surges, but Lucien remains unbothered. He argues that marriage would keep the Goddess Tears balanced between their nations and legitimize the ceasefire. Meryn inwardly refuses but says she will consider it.

She finds Stark suppressing his grief and urging an immediate return to Nocturna. Meryn uses foresight and sees that rushing back ends in catastrophic defeat. Accepting Lucien’s proposal also ends in their deaths. A third vision shows her a dark tower by the sea, a motionless body, and Stark shouting over it. The vision is fragmented to interpret, leaving Meryn with no answers. Shaken, Meryn tells Stark about Lucien’s proposal, and his expression closes off.

Stark admits that as Sovereign Alpha, he probably should advise Meryn to accept Lucien’s proposal for political reasons. He says that on a personal level, he would damn everyone else to stay by her side. Meryn confirms that the marriage also ends in defeat and describes the unclear tower vision. She says that she must enter the dreamworld that night to get information from Killian directly.

With Stark and Anassa standing guard, Meryn sleeps and enters the shadow realm. She pretends to be loyal to Killian, claiming that Stark kept them apart. Killian reveals that the border attack was Alistair’s decision and that Alistair is now inside Nocturna searching for something unspecified. Killian proposes that he and Meryn work together to defeat both brothers, Alistair and Lucien, and shows her proof of his power: the Mother Priestess’s signet ring—a fifth Goddess Tear, which he says compels worship and bypasses normal Siphon mental-control limits. He wants more Tears to use against both brothers. To build his trust, Meryn reveals that Lucien has a Goddess Tear necklace. Killian tells her to stay in Astreona, appear loyal to Lucien, and bring him Lucien’s Tears when summoned. When she asks about her bracelet, he insists that it was designed to share her power rather than control her. Meryn forces herself out of the dream and wakes to tell Stark that Killian has the fifth Goddess Tear and is hunting for more.