The next morning, Xül explains that there will be four Trials before the Forging that burns away the contestants’ mortality. He advises her to manipulate her fellow contestants rather than befriend them and has her run and swim laps for hours. When she asks for a challenge, he uses his powers as a necromancer to summon damned souls for her to fight with her star-sword.

Next, Xül creates a magical doppelganger of Thatcher and tells her that she’ll only survive the Trials if she sets aside her emotions. Disgusted that someone who used to be mortal could be so cold, she demands, “How does your mother even look at you?” (143). The doppelganger injures Thais repeatedly, and she’s forced to destroy it to save herself. Xül compliments her, but she feels devastated and storms back to the castle.

Later, Thais barges into Xül’s study and accuses him of toying with her for his own amusement. When he warns her not to be insolent, she retorts that she doesn’t care that he’s a god. He tells the “starling” that she’s not what he expected.

After her first week of training with Xül, Thais reflects on her growing combat skills and her smoldering resentment toward her mentor. Each of the Trials is overseen by a pair of the Twelve. The first Trial is one week away and will be overseen by Davina, Aesymar of Nature, and Thorne, Aesymar of Alchemy. Xül explains that the details of the Trials are kept secret, so they can only make “educated guesses based on the personalities and domains involved” (149).

A Legend named Aelix invites Xül and Thais to practice survival skills in the forest with him and his mentee, Marx. Xül declines, but Thais accompanies them. When Grief Hounds surround the trio, Marx saves their lives. Aelix explains that most of Xül’s peers in Voldaris were cruel to him when he was young because he was mortal.

Back at the castle, Xül leads Thais to a laboratory where he conducts alchemical experiments. When she comments on his expertise on the subject, he explains that he spent much of his childhood reading and conducting research because he was judged for being “[t]oo powerful for one world, not powerful enough for the other” (162).

As he explains the rules of alchemy and teaches her how to make a ward of repulsion, he observes that she’s “drawn to the darkness” and teases her for blushing when he gets close (164). To complete the ward, Thais must add a few drops of her blood, and the resulting alchemical reaction confirms Xül’s suspicion that she has a divine parent.

Thais explains that Olinthar raped her mother, and Xül says he’s sorry. She feels a mixture of shame and relief as she finally shares her secret. Xül comments on the irony of Olinthar, the Aesymar of Light and Order, breaking the law that forbids the Aesymar from intercourse with mortals. Xül tells Thais that he will ensure that she survives the Trials and ascends so that they can wield this information against Olinthar.

Thais’s training with Xül intensifies. She spends her mornings practicing how to form different weapons from starlight, her afternoons studying alchemy, and her nights hunting and tracking with Aelix and Marx.

On the morning of the first Trial, Xül senses her nerves, holds her face in his hands, and says, “You’re going to survive this” (176). He opens a portal to a paradisiacal forest in Davina’s world, Verdara. She and Thatcher share a brief reunion in which they notice how each has grown somewhat close to their mentor. The contestants are then separated, and the Trial begins.

Davina instructs the contestants to hunt for three sacred animals: a golden stag, a silver eagle, and a moon-hare. Thais uses Xül’s and Aelix’s lessons to make her way through the forest. She meets up with Thatcher and tells him that his power is associated with the Primordials; she also notes that Xül knows Olinthar is their father. Each of the twins catches a moon-hare.

Three contestants corner Marx, and Thais kills for the first time to protect her friend. The twins and Marx work together to slay the golden stag. Suddenly, a horn sounds, and Thorne announces: “The forest has turned, and you are marked for the chase” (196). A silver eagle fuses with the golden stag’s corpse, forming an enormous monster. A contestant tries to kill the creature with his powers and is transformed into a tree.

The creature pursues Thais, Thatcher, and Marx, but they find shelter deep in the forest. Thatcher suggests that their challenge is to think like prey animals that survive by being faster and smarter than their predators. An injured contestant named Kyren asks to join their group, offers to disguise them with his ability to cast illusions, and points out that the sacred animals they killed have turned into alchemical ingredients.

The group finds an alchemical forge, and Thais uses Xül’s teachings to prepare protective wards. Thais and Thatcher use Marx’s blood rather than their own to complete the wards. This prevents the Aesymar watching the Trial from learning that they’re half-divine, but it also means that the twins’ wards don’t work. To protect their allies, Thais and Thatcher go off on their own, luring hordes of monsters. Thais injures her leg and collapses due to blood loss. The monsters surrounding the twins withdraw, and she loses consciousness.

When Thais awakens two days later, she’s in her room in the Bone Spire, and Xül is watching over her. He reveals that the monsters left the twins alone because he hid Thais’s ward of repulsion on her person. He also states that 12 contestants perished in the forest, praises her for taking her first life, and teases her for the way her heart races around him.

When Thais’s condition worsens suddenly, a Legend named Miria comes to Draknavor and heals her. Thais asks Miria about Xül’s past, and she explains that some Aesymar view his existence as “a symbol of rebellion” because mortals and gods aren’t meant to mingle (220). During his Trials, the gods actively encouraged his fellow contestants to kill him, and the necromancer created an undead army from those who attempted to do so.

Thais meets Marx outside the castle. Marx tells her that Thatcher carried her through the portal after she fainted and that Xül himself carried her into the Bone Spire. She reminds Thais that the gods would kill her if she had an affair with a deity while she’s still mortal, but Thais insists that there’s no chance of a romantic relationship between her and Xül.

Marx shares her backstory. She was born into an extremely devout family, and her parents tortured her when her powers manifested at age 11. Marx is able to curse people, animals, and objects, and it took her years to control this ability. She spent years on the run before falling in love with a man named Finn, who died trying to shield her from the priests. His death is the reason she no longer restrains her abilities: “They want a monster? I’ll give them one. But on my terms” (231). Thais shares her backstory in return and is pleasantly surprised when Marx says that they’re friends.

The narrative moves forward two weeks. Xül continues Thais’s training but has to spend a great deal of time handling administrative responsibilities in Draknavor’s capital, the Eternal City. A banquet is held to celebrate the surviving contestants. Lyralie and the Dreamweavers prepare Thais for the event and offer her words of comfort and encouragement.

Xül tells Thais that the contestants will be expected to kneel before their mentors at the event, and she quips that she’s “found [her]self on [her] knees more than a few times” but is choosy about whom she shows “such devotion” (240). When he insists, she mockingly complies. He touches her cheek, and she feels breathless. Xül admits that he lied about the expectation of kneeling, and Thais quickly gets to her feet and tells him to invent a better excuse the next time he wants to touch her.

At the banquet, Xül is approached by Nyvora, Aesymar of Fauna and daughter of Davina. The goddess is rude toward Thais, but Thais remains tactful and composed. Nyvora invites Xül to sit with her, but he declines and sits with Thais to signal to everyone that his mentee is “worth watching.” After dinner, Nyvora insists on dancing with Xül, and he agrees with polite neutrality.

As Xül and Thais prepare to leave the banquet, a Legend named Kavik kills his mentee for daring to question Olinthar’s decisions. Xül tells Thais that he’s had to reduce his own empathy to survive the dangers of divine politics, and she rejects the implication that she could ever be capable of such cruelty.

The narrative shifts to Thatcher. After the banquet, Kavik brings Thatcher, Chavore, Nyvora, and Elysia to a volcanic cavern “where gods let loose” (256). Nyvora hopes to marry Xül so that she’ll no longer have to be at her mother’s beck and call. When Chavore criticizes Xül’s personality, Chavore retorts that Xül is the only one among them who had to work for his position. Chavore’s paramour, Elysia, tries to restore the convivial atmosphere by praising Olinthar’s mercy toward Xül’s family, but Chavore subtly rolls his eyes at the compliment toward his father. Thatcher discovers that Olinthar arranged Elysia and Chavore’s relationship because he approves of her beauty and ambition.

The narrative returns to Thais. Early in the morning, she and Xül sail for the Eternal City on his ship. She notes how at home he looks on the vessel, and he explains that he learned to sail when he was mortal. Thais feels unwanted “warmth” as Xül puts his hands on her to show her how to steer the ship.

Their first stop is a sweet shop run by a woman named Nyxis. Thais is taken aback by the warmth that Xül shows the shopkeeper and the woman’s stories about how Xül used to hide in her shop when he needed a sanctuary where “even the Prince of Draknavor could simply be a child for a while” (271).

Xül becomes cold and commanding again when he and Thais travel to the Prison of the Damned, where he interrogates and tortures a spy from Olinthar’s realm of Sundralis. After discovering that Olinthar is secretly merging his world with the Domain of War in violation of the gods’ careful balance of power, Xül erases the spy from existence. He threatens to kill everyone Thais cares about if she ever speaks of what she learned in the prison.