Tau and Jabari pass through the Goddess’s Choice room and into a private courtyard, where they find Odili, the Ingonyama Dejen, the KaEid, and two Indlovu breaking down a door behind which the queen is hiding. Tau confronts Odili then quickly kills the first guard sent against him. The KaEid responds by enraging Dejen, who turns to fight Tau while Odili and his men smash through the door. Jabari follows them into the queen’s chamber to protect her.

Tau and the enraged Dejen exchange blows. Tau cracks his ribs and shatters his father’s sword, driving the jagged blade into Dejen’s face and destroying one eye. He mounts an unrelenting assault that forces the KaEid to sustain the enraging at ever-greater cost. Dejen refuses to release her even as she begs him to, knowing that losing the enraging means losing his life. The KaEid’s shroud collapses, the demons reach her, and she dies in agony. With the enraging gone and Dejen badly wounded, Tau kills him.

In the queen’s chamber, Tau finds Jabari seriously cut and fighting the last Indlovu, kept alive only because Vizier Nyah, a Gifted woman protecting Queen Tsiora, had been sapping the guard’s strength. Odili throws a jug at Tau and flees. Torn between giving chase and saving Jabari, Tau stays and kills the guard. Kellan, Hadith, and Uduak arrive moments later, having missed Odili’s escape. Kellan kneels before Queen Tsiora and informs her that Champion Abshir Okar is dead.

Moving to the battlements, Kellan briefs the queen and Nyah on the coup, Jamilah, and the Conclave’s destruction. Below, a battering ram hammers the keep’s bronze gates. Tau, Hadith, and Uduak help hold the walls alongside Kana, the Xiddeen warlord’s son, and the remnant of the Queen’s Guard. The queen appears on the battlements and promotes Kellan to Ingonyama, placing him in command. When she asks honestly whether the keep can hold, his silence answers for her. Warlord Achak’s army has now reached the city’s outer walls. Tsiora tells Kana that Omehi traitors destroyed the Conclave; Kana warns his father will kill everyone. Moments later, the gates collapse and Odili’s Indlovu swarm the courtyard.

The queen grips Tau’s wrist and asks him to kill her rather than let her fall into enemy hands. He refuses, promising to stop anyone who tries. Then the courtyard floor shatters and the captive youngling dragon bursts free from beneath the keep, incinerating dozens of Odili’s men. Tau spots Zuri below, controlling the dragon without a Hex, already bleeding from demon wounds.

Tau drops into Isihogo to help her. Her shroud is gone and demons are converging. He draws a massive amount of energy to make himself a more potent target, taunts the demons toward him, and fights them off—until an unseen demon impales him from behind with catastrophic force. Queen Tsiora then appears in Isihogo in a heavy shroud, revealing that the royal bloodline has always been secretly Gifted, and uses a power called expulsion to tear Tau from the underworld. He is ejected back to the real world with severe psychic damage.

Odili, cornered by Kellan and Scale Jayyed, orders his men to attack the dragon as a distraction and runs for the broken gates. The youngling’s retaliatory fire kills a dozen of Tau’s sword brothers. Jabari throws himself over Hadith, Uduak, and Themba to shield them and catches the edge of the blast, engulfed in flames. Zuri intervenes, drawing energy from Isihogo to drag the dragon back under control—but her shroud is still broken, the demons reach her immediately, and the freed dragon turns on Zuri and kills her. Tau collapses and wails.

Queen Tsiora takes control of the youngling herself and confronts Warlord Achak outside the walls. She takes Kana hostage and demands a one-month truce in exchange for his son’s life. Achak agrees under duress but promises annihilation when he returns. Tsiora sends Kana back and prepares to re-bind the youngling with the coterie’s help. Tau, broken, lets his swords fall from his hands.

Several days after the battle, the perspective shifts to Queen Tsiora. Vizier Nyah reports that Tau has shut himself away since the funerals, refusing to speak to anyone, including Jabari, who survived the youngling’s fire but is gravely injured. Nyah warns that Tau is unstable and too dangerous to approach alone. Tsiora goes anyway, carrying a leather-wrapped package.

She finds Tau at his window, staring at the place in the courtyard where Zuri died. She informs him that Odili has taken Palm City and elevated her younger sister, Esi, as a puppet queen, fracturing the queendom. Tau asks how she removed him from Isihogo. Tsiora explains that royal blood runs closest to the Goddess, granting her greater gifts than any other, and that expulsion—a form of enervation—can forcibly remove any soul from Isihogo, even those holding energy. She tells him this power cannot break a dragon’s hold over a person, which is why she could not save Zuri. When Tau protests, she holds firm. She tells him she needs someone to reunite the Omehi before the Xiddeen return, and when he says he is “no hero,” she tells him to “be a weapon” instead (522).

She offers him the position of royal champion, with a first task: march on Palm City and kill Odili. She then hands him the package: two new guardian swords with dragon-scale blades, their hilts taken from the remnants of his father’s and grandfather’s weapons. Tau picks up the swords and vows to kill Odili. Tsiora names him “Champion Tau Solarin,” then privately reflects that “a dragon” has been “called” and “someone would have to die” (523).