While Cain fights against Katsan, Benna stays by Neema’s side in the medic tent. Benna, whose hair gained red ribbons as proof of her visit from the Bear, also comments on Neema’s hair—strands of which have turned purple and blue because of her interactions with the Raven.

Benna admits that she dosed Neema with the Dragonscale oil, but hadn’t meant to kill her. All the pieces finally click, and Neema understands why. Shal Worthy described Yana falling sick at the end of her procession. They stopped at a town bordering the Dolrun forest to seek medical care before continuing on. Neema has correctly guessed that Benna, who is from the fringes of Dolrun, was one of the people who’d taken care of Yana at the end—and that she must have gotten the silver tiles and the Dragonscale from Yana. Benna also stole Ruko’s Blade, but promises that she did not kill Gaida. Hounds come to arrest Benna for disrupting a platform fight.

When Neema returns to her rooms, she finds the Tales of the Raven waiting on her bed. It introduces itself as a fragment of the Raven—the Solitary Raven, abandoned from the nest and shunned by its kin. The book transforms into the Raven, and she nicknames him “Sol.”

The Raven explains that letting the entire Raven in would have killed her, but he—a fragment—won’t hurt her. He has a plan to make her the empress, but she has no desire to rule. Instead, she wants to help Cain win. Only when he reluctantly agrees does she let him in. He absorbs into her body and makes a metaphorical home inside her ribcage.

Neema seeks out her weapons chest to pick her instrument for the next fight against Katsan. She peruses it, finding war fans—concealed weapons used by ancient Raven warriors—hidden in the padded interior. She places them neatly back, deciding to go with a hinged staff ending in fork-like prongs.

Neema misses the Tiger Trial due to her injuries. The Trial is designed to make Cain most likely to fail, as retribution for his Trial designed against Ruko. All contestants are given a position in a hypothetical castle staff and must complete that position’s task list before usurping their rivals to gain power. Cain is given an extreme disadvantage and relegated to the kitchens, where he must clean everything top to bottom.

Knowing that he will fail regardless, Cain does the bare minimum until the door opens and Rivenna’s pet tiger prowls through. Cain freezes, certain she’s sent it to kill him, but it stops at something in Cain’s gaze and gives a strange growl, drawing back. Ruko appears just after to call her off and send her from the room. He assures Cain that he wouldn’t have sent her because he fights his own battles, and leaves.

The Ox Trial is held by Fenn Fadala, who brings them to the Ox farm where 18 wagons are lined up in six rows and loaded with sacks of flour, rice, and pulses. Fenn’s only instructions are to make themselves useful. All the contenders aside from Neema assume that because the Ox Trial is always about strength, stamina, and determination, they must find a way to drag the wagons and all their surplus supplies to the nearby barn.

While they all get to work on strategizing how to do just that, Neema walks to Fenn’s office to make herself useful by doing what she does best—all his untouched paperwork. After a while, Fenn comes to find her. Following the paperwork, she’d tidied the bookshelves and found a framed photo of Fenn and the artist Shimmer. Fenn admits that they were great friends but that they argued the night she died by suicide. When he claims the argument was about fantastical ideas Shimmer had about Bersun, Neema correctly guesses why, to Fenn’s surprise—it was “about how much he’d changed” (400). When the Trial concludes, Neema is announced as the winner.

Neema and Katsan face each other for their duel that afternoon. Sol uses his limited strength as a fragment to slow time in the first round so Neema can avoid a powerful punch meant to knock her out. This gives Neema an advantage to return blows and win the round, but Vabras purposefully ends it early and gives the point to Katsan.

Sol’s power is too drained to help with the weapons round as promised, so Neema is on her own. When she goes to her weapons chest to retrieve her chosen spear, she finds the entire chest empty. Luckily, the fans are still hidden in the side padding, and she is forced to use those for the round. Since the fighting style with the fans is a long-forgotten Raven art, Katsan is unprepared to go against it. Neema not only wins the round, her fans also slice Katsan’s arm so deep that she loses enough blood to nearly die. Neema begs Katsan to cling to life and promises that, if she lives, she will tell her everything she knows about Gaida’s death.

Benna awaits her fate in the dungeons. She thinks back on her time with Yana and her plan following Yana’s death. She has spent years working her way into the court after stealing some Dragonscale oil from Yasila’s stash at Yana’s instruction. She hadn’t expected to like Neema so much. Her thoughts are interrupted by wailing from a male prisoner nearby.

Ruko arrives to speak with Benna after Neema tells him of the stolen Blade. He asks about her time with Yana. When Yana arrived at her village—the last stop before Dolrun, where Yana would be chained to the forest floor and left to die—she was very sick. Benna and her family nursed Yana back to health. Once Yana recovered, Benna helped fake a long recovery to give Yana more time to live.

Before Yana was finally taken, they created a plan to save Ruko from chasing his father’s dream. Benna left a note written to Ruko from his sister, drawing him from his room long enough for her to trash it and steal his knife. Meanwhile, Benna also poisoned Neema with Dragonscale oil, hoping the hallucinations it would elicit would help her reflect on what she’d done.

Benna explains that when she found Gaida Rack, she was already dead. Benna remembered overhearing Ruko’s contingent in the next room over while stealing the knife; they were discussing Gaida’s musical performance for the emperor and joked that Gaida would die of natural causes for that transgression. When Benna found Gaida dead from poisoning, but what could be passed off as “natural causes,” she stabbed her with the Blade to ensure that the death couldn’t go unignored and would be classified as what it was: a murder.

Benna promises she hasn’t come to harm Ruko but to help him on Yana’s behalf because, despite everything, she continued to love her brother after her exile. On his way out of the prison, he makes good on his promise to Neema and bribes the guards to let Benna escape.

That night, both the Ox and Tiger palaces host parties to celebrate their Trial days. Neema attends the Ox palace celebration with Tala while most of the other contenders attend the lavish Tiger celebration with most of the aristocratic Venerant families. Fenn congratulates Neema on her fight against Katsan. She’s just come from explaining the entire story of Gaida’s murder and her theories on Bersun’s real identity at Katsan’s bedside.

Fenn gives a short few-sentence speech before introducing the main event—a free firework show the Tigers are putting on across the canal. As Neema stares up in awe, she is approached by Cain, who is soaking wet from his swim across the canal. Her moment of wonder at the fireworks leaves her expression unguarded, and she smiles at his presence. He grabs her hand and Neema surprises him with an impromptu public kiss.

Neema and Cain have sex in the Ox barn. Neema apologizes for not leaving with Cain the day of Yana’s exile, when he’d asked her to. He apologizes for overreacting and explains she hurt his feelings when she accused him of killing people. While he is an assassin, he escorts everyone he’s supposed to kill safely to the Scarred Lands, where they may peacefully live the rest of their lives as long as they never return.

Cain explains that the people Bersun commissions Fox assassins to murder are all Commoners whom he replaces with Venerants or others he can manipulate. He believes it’s a long and stealthy Venerant coup and suspects the emperor is in league with the top families, and that even Havoc is benefitting. Cain dislikes Havoc and explains that Havoc was promised the military position of Admiral Ryssa Stone once she returned. However, when he heard that she hadn’t planned to retire for another 10 years, she mysteriously died in a boating accident soon after. Havoc had already ordered his uniform a month prior to her death, as if it had been planned.

Cain admits that he had wondered if Neema was involved in the emperor’s shady business. She insists she would have never been involved if she hadn’t thought Bersun was on their side. Neema explains her theory to Cain about Gedrun replacing Bersun after the rebellion.

Their conversation is interrupted when the barn is surrounded by Hound warriors led by Havoc. He has been given orders to escort them to the emperor. Although Cain and Neema reluctantly agree, Havoc still orders his Hound squad to beat Cain for supposedly refusing to comply as payback for Cain breaking Havoc’s nose in their last duel.

Cain and Neema are brought before the emperor, who claims that Katsan has come forward with information about Gaida’s murder. Katsan confesses to stealing the Blade of Peace and framing Ruko for Gaida’s death. Katsan continues with her fabricated story, explaining to the emperor that she was disturbed by Gaida’s behavior toward the emperor at the opening ceremony. She found it disrespectful and thought to confront Gaida, but when she reached her apartment, Gaida was already dead from poison. Believing the Tigers were responsible, she stole the Blade and framed Ruko as revenge.

The emperor decides Gaida has died by suicide by poisoning herself. Havoc claims to have spoken to Gaida right after the ceremony and notes she was in a dark mood, corroborating this story. As punishment for her crimes, the emperor sentences Katsan to five years in the prison mines. Katsan states this is too light a sentence. She has broken the vow she made to follow the Way of the Bear and, as a fellow Bear, Bersun must understand what the punishment is. The emperor’s blank face in response to her statement confirms he is not Bersun, showing Katsan that Neema’s theories are true.

Katsan continues that she must return to the Bear monastery and leap from the monastery walls in a life-ending ritual. The emperor grants her request to sail back home for the punishment. Neema hopes this will allow Katsan to get off the island before the end of the Festival and share the news of the imposter emperor with everyone, and that she will then be forgiven for the lie about the Blade that brought her home.

After being released by the emperor, Neema visits Sunur and Tala. She informs them that Katsan has confessed to stealing the Blade of Peace and that she will be boarding a boat at dawn which will take her to the mainland. She claims this is a chance for Sunur and their daughter to escape. Tala prefers for her family to remain on the island for the Festival and hasn’t sensed the same foreboding danger that Sunur has.

Tala becomes angry with Neema and accuses her of sabotaging her to win the Trials. Neema is kicked out of the room and when she returns to her own, she finds a list from Gaida’s servant Navril of all the people who’d attended her afterparty. She finds Havoc Arbell-Ranor on the list and believes he is Gaida’s murderer.

Sol thinks about the relationship growing between Neema and Cain and disapproves. He decides to fix things to his liking by sabotaging their relationship so that her priorities will not be affected by Cain. He finds Cain asleep and healing at an unnatural speed. The Raven finds Sol’s fragment spying on Cain and warns him not to meddle with Cain. Sol ignores the Raven.

Cain wakes later to find a book on his bed, Tales of the Raven. The book opens to a story titled “How the Fox Crossed the Border.” The story tells of a Fox who cannot cross the border between the Hidden Realm and the human world until he meets a human girl who offers to carry him across. However, he stays in the human realm too long and eventually cannot cross back over to the Hidden Realm. He loses his immortality, falling victim to the aging process.

The Raven finds the Fox and instructs him to find a human host that will allow him to access the Hidden Realm when they sleep. He may also be reborn over and over, living in an endless cycle within human hosts. Unfortunately, when the human is awake, the Fox will be forced to sleep; only when his host is asleep does he wake. As the millennia pass, he lives through multiple hosts until he comes across a baby discarded in an ally by his parents. The Fox takes a liking to Cain after one night and decides to make him his new host, where he’s been ever since his infancy.

Extremely unnerved and horrified by this revelation, Cain hopes it is a trick by one of his rivals, but instinctively knows it must be true.