From Blake’s perspective, he feels a mix of guilt and satisfaction as he invades Medra’s mind. He rationalizes the attack as a necessary lesson to prepare her for greater threats like his uncle Viktor. Blake thinks to himself that he lied to Headmaster Kim, taking responsibility for Medra’s attack on him to save her from punishment—something Medra doesn’t know.

Inside Medra’s mind, Blake sees memories from an unfamiliar place, including a city by a river. He witnesses a vision of a silver-haired woman dueling a powerful man, watched by a dark-haired man who looks at Medra with an intense love that sparks Blake’s jealousy. Suddenly, an imperious female voice inside Medra’s mind rebukes Blake for being there and violently expels him. Staggering back, Blake realizes that there’s another presence within Medra. He then realizes that Medra has now entered his mind—a feat that should be impossible for a mortal.

Orcades ejects Blake from Medra’s mind and then uses Medra as a conduit to enter Blake’s consciousness, rifling through his memories and sharing them with her daughter. Medra experiences Blake’s deep grief over killing Coregon and his anger toward her.

Orcades then shows Medra two key memories. The first is of a younger Blake playing happily on a beach with his toddler sister, Aenia, revealing his capacity for love and protectiveness. The second is of Blake in Headmaster Kim’s office after the arena fight. Medra watches as Blake lies to protect her, insisting that he provoked their confrontation. Kim reveals that consorts who attack their archons can be executed—a punishment Kim had considered for Medra. Blake refuses the punishment. After Medra sees a final memory of Blake’s intense desire for her, the connection between her and Blake breaks. Blake’s first question isn’t about Kim or his feelings but a panicked, “What did you see?” (284), regarding Aenia. When Medra confirms that she saw the beach memory, Blake flees the room.

Medra prepares a ritual from the stolen spell book from Rodriguez’s office to expel Orcades from her mind. Though Medra likes having her mother around, she and Orcades both know that their arrangement is unnatural and possibly harmful to both of them. The spell that Medra chooses to break the soul-binding requires her own blood and the blood of someone she either loves or hates, so she chooses Blake. She goes to the arena and finds Coregon’s dagger, which still has Blake’s dried blood on the hilt. According to the spell, Medra can cast the ritual to contain Orcades’s soul in an anchor—a physical object—so that her consciousness can exist in it or expel her altogether. To Medra’s surprise, Orcades chooses the non-anchor version of the spell, insisting that she has no desire to live forever.

In a grove in the Dragon Court, Medra liquefies Blake’s dried blood on the dagger with a minor spell and then presses the dagger across her palm to cut herself, rubbing her blood over the blade to mingle the two. Grieving her mother, Medra recites the incantation, but it seems to fail, as she can still hear the voice of Orcades. Medra then realizes that the ritual went wrong: Because she was holding the dagger as the blood fell, Orcades’s soul was transferred into the blade, which acted as an unintentional anchor. Just then, a tremor shakes the ground. Blake enters the courtyard, opens a secret staircase hidden under a flagstone, and descends. Medra, with the dagger now containing her mother, follows him, pulling up her hood to conceal her hair and ears.

The hidden staircase leads Medra into an underground catacomb filled with dragon skulls. Four corridors are labeled for the great houses, and she follows the Drakharrow passage, which contains the skulls of Inferni, the house’s red dragons. The tunnel opens onto a cliffside dotted with abandoned dragon lairs before descending again, running under the sea, and emerging through a cellar hatch into the storeroom of a tavern in the city of Veilmar.

The tavern is called The Wandering Page. Outside, Medra is horrified to see young blightborn children selling their blood on the street. A drunken woman explains that many are orphans whose parents were victims of recent murders in which the bodies of mortals were found drained of blood. Medra remarks that the murders seem like the handiwork of the highbloods, but the woman fervently denies highblood involvement. The woman even recites a religious creed about the highbloods’ inherent goodness and their divine right to rule. Suddenly, the fluffin appears and leads Medra through the streets to The Drained Rose, a blood brothel, outside which Medra spots Blake and Professor Rodriguez arguing outside. Rodriguez storms away, and Blake enters the brothel alone.

The fluffin leads Medra into The Drained Rose to a room with a peephole drilled through the wall, allowing Medra to secretly observe Blake in the adjacent room. She watches as he feeds on a willing blightborn woman who works there, noting his detached, businesslike manner. After Blake drinks her blood, the woman willingly offers Blake sex, but he refuses, overpays her for the blood, and departs. Medra experiences conflicted emotions throughout, including repulsion for Blake’s actions and jealousy against the woman who seemed to be in ecstasy as Blake fed from her.

As Blake leaves, an unidentified older highblood enters the room and catches Medra. He pulls down her hood, immediately noticing her distinctive hair and unusual scent. He decides to “sample” her blood. Medra stabs the man in the thigh with Coregon’s dagger and breaks free momentarily, but the man—far older and stronger than any highblood she has previously fought—overpowers her and twists her arm to the breaking point until she yells. The fluffin lies motionless on the floor, apparently kicked aside. Orades’s voice from the dagger urges Medra to fight, but she can’t overcome his strength. Suddenly, the room’s door crashes open.

Blake was on his way out of the brothel when he recognized Medra’s scream. He follows the sounds of the scuffle and finds the larger, older highblood assaulting her—her cloak torn off, her dress ripped. When the attacker declares Medra his own, the word “mine” triggers something visceral in Blake, and he attacks the older highblood, hurling him against the wall and breaking his bones. He slams the man’s head repeatedly against the wall, forcing him to verbally concede that Medra belongs to Blake. He finally kills the older man by snapping his neck.

In the aftermath, Blake internally acknowledges a possessive certainty that he can no longer ignore: He considers Medra his to protect, regardless of whether she accepts or reciprocates the feeling. He turns to Medra, expecting resistance, but she allows him to take her arm. Medra draws Blake’s attention to the injured fluffin, and Blake picks up the animal.

As they take the tunnels back to Bloodwing Academy, Medra confronts Blake about his visit to the sellblood brothel, accusing him of ignoring the exploitative inherent in the act. The argument escalates, with Blake accusing Medra of being obsessed with him and enjoying watching him feed. When Medra calls Blake a “monster” like the other violent highbloods, he becomes enraged, grabs her, and kisses her passionately. To her own shame, Medra kisses him back before Blake abruptly ends it. They return to the school in silence, where Blake gives her the injured fluffin, revealing that he has named it Neville. Back in her room, Medra recounts the events to Florence, omitting the kiss but confessing her confusion over Blake’s protective yet controlling behavior. Florence suggests that Blake’s choice to feed on a willing sellblood—instead of a thrall or a prey—is a positive trait. Alone later, Medra is disturbed by her own reaction to Blake calling her “mine” and firms up a plan with Florence to secretly return Professor Rodriguez’s book.