Tierney James walks through Garner County on Veiling Day wearing a red ribbon, feeling exposed as men openly stare at her.

Tierney's father enters the chapel during the Veiling ceremony carrying a veil, revealing she has received an unknown marriage offer.

Michael gives Tierney a gardenia and reveals he has chosen her as his bride at the Veiling ceremony.

Kiersten threatens to make Tierney pay for stealing Michael as the grace year girls leave Garner County.

Laura fills her pockets with stones during the canoe crossing and sinks to the bottom of the lake.

The girls arrive at the ruined encampment and discover a tree covered in the severed body parts of past grace year girls.

Kiersten accuses Tierney of stealing from the larder and banishes her from the encampment into the dangerous woods.

A poacher named Ryker captures Tierney outside the fence but nurses her back to health rather than harvesting her body.

Tierney discovers a jar of hemlock silt and realizes the contaminated well water has been driving the grace year girls insane.

Anders finds Tierney at Ryker's hunting blind and threatens to kill her unless she leaves that night.

Tierney returns to the encampment after leaving Ryker and finds it overrun with disease, filth, and violent chaos.

A spike trap Tierney built in the woods catches Hans, revealing him as the camp's stalker and the killer of Olga Vetrone.

Ryker is killed when a poacher drags a knife across his throat as he and Tierney attempt to flee the island.

Tierney removes her cloak upon returning to Garner County, revealing her pregnant belly to the entire shocked crowd.

Tierney gives birth to a daughter with a strawberry birthmark, names her Grace, and sees a vision of Ryker walking toward her as she bleeds out.

Pool 1 follows the headline events of Tierney James's journey through Garner County's brutal tradition. It begins on Veiling Day, when Tierney unexpectedly receives a marriage offer from her childhood friend Michael, making her an immediate target for the jealous Kiersten. Inside the encampment, Kiersten seizes power and eventually drives Tierney out into the dangerous woods, where a poacher named Ryker saves her life instead of harvesting her body. Tierney uncovers the scientific truth behind the girls' madness and falls in love with Ryker before being forced to leave him to protect them both. When Tierney returns to the county visibly pregnant, Michael publicly claims responsibility to save her life. The story closes with Tierney giving birth to a daughter she names Grace, seeing a vision of Ryker as she bleeds out.

The essential story of Tierney's grace year, from Veiling Day to childbirth.

Tierney meets Michael secretly in the woods, where he urges her to keep an open mind about her future marriage.

The women of Garner County are locked inside the chapel together to await the annual Veiling ceremony.

The previous year's grace year girls return to Garner County emaciated and broken, with nine having been killed by poachers.

Kiersten taunts Betsy until she bolts from the group and is captured and tortured overnight by waiting poachers.

A shrouded poacher corners Tierney alone in the dark woods during the march to the island but allows her to escape.

Guard Hans privately tells Tierney he will come to her aid personally if the encampment fence is ever breached.

Tierney spends the first day in camp teaching the other grace year girls how to collect wood and build a fire.

Kiersten orders the veiled girls and unveiled girls to sleep on opposite sides of the lodging house, formally splitting the group.

Gertrude privately reveals that the lithograph that destroyed her reputation depicted a naked grace year girl in a sexual act.

Tierney follows Helen outside the barrier fence to rescue her after Kiersten convinces Helen she is invisible to poachers.

Ryker reveals that the county secretly pays poachers to kill grace year girls in order to reduce the female population.

Ryker and Tierney share their first kiss before Anders violently bursts into the hunting blind and accuses Tierney of bewitching Ryker.

Helen is found strangled with her red ribbon in the woods, wearing Tierney's stolen cloak.

The grace year girls open the encampment gate and pull Tierney inside as Anders and the poachers close in around her.

Michael secretly destroys the cabinet at the apothecary that contained the harvested body parts of dead grace year girls.

Pool 2 captures the crucial secondary events that deepen the stakes and texture of Tierney's story. From her private meeting with Michael in the woods to the terrifying march past the outskirts, these moments reveal how Garner County's systems shape every interaction and relationship. Inside the encampment, Tierney's early attempts to help the girls — teaching them to build fires and fetch clean water — are gradually undermined as Kiersten consolidates power and splits the group along lines of status. Ryker and Tierney's developing bond is explored through the moments of tenderness, revelation, and conflict that eventually end in tragedy. The pool closes with Michael's quiet but decisive act of rebellion — destroying the cabinet of dead girls' body parts at the apothecary — signaling that change is quietly taking root inside Garner County itself.

The key supporting moments that build Tierney's world before, during, and after the grace year.

Tierney realizes her father has been secretly visiting the apothecary at night to buy the remains of dead grace year girls.

Tierney spots the same red flower from her recurring dream clutched in Mrs. Fallow's hand as she is publicly hanged.

Ravenna performs a ritual claiming to make the sun set, and Kiersten removes her red ribbon to mark the achievement.

Tierney wakes one morning to find the girls have begun destroying her practical improvements and harming themselves in Kiersten's rituals.

Kiersten drags Gertrude to the punishment tree and cuts off her braid, tearing away a bloody patch of scalp.

Lightning strikes and paralyzes Tamara during a storm, and Kiersten orders the girls to throw her outside the fence to the poachers.

Tierney breaks through lake ice with an axe to escape a poacher, and Ryker pulls her out of the freezing water.

Tierney realizes Anders's supposed family curse was actually smallpox and that her father visited the apothecary to search for a cure.

Ryker asks Tierney to run away east with him and live together as man and wife, away from Garner County.

Tierney secretly slips out of Ryker's hunting blind while he sleeps, choosing to return to the encampment to protect him from danger.

Tierney uses ghost stories about the dead grace year girls to convince the others to drink clean spring water instead of the poisoned well.

Kiersten forces Tierney to drink from the contaminated well in front of all the girls as a public act of humiliation.

Tierney ties her red ribbon to the punishment tree, publicly declaring she will no longer submit to the county's rules.

Tierney's mother reveals she leads a secret underground movement of county women who hold forbidden gatherings in the woods during full moons.

As Tierney bleeds out after giving birth, she sees a vision of Ryker walking toward her.

Pool 3 focuses on the pivotal revelations and emotional turning points that reframe everything Tierney believes about her world. From discovering her father's secret trips to the apothecary to recognizing the red flower from her dreams in Mrs. Fallow's dying hand, Tierney's understanding of Garner County deepens before she even leaves for the grace year. In the encampment, escalating rituals, deliberate self-harm, and Kiersten's brutal punishments mark the moments when the grace year truly spirals into darkness. Once exiled and sheltered by Ryker, Tierney uncovers the scientific truth behind the girls' madness and makes the agonizing choice to leave the man she loves in order to protect him. The pool ends with two powerful acts of revelation — Tierney literally abandoning her red ribbon — and her mother's disclosure of an underground resistance that has been hiding in plain sight all along.

The discoveries, decisions, and emotional shifts that change the course of Tierney's story.

Kim Liggett

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