Jonas awakens from a dream of urging his battered mother to seek a divorce. He recalls that when she refused to leave her husband, he decided that love enthralls people and leads them to ruin. At breakfast, he downplays the improvements that Silla has made to the morning meal, privately lamenting the necessity of “pandering” to her so that she will keep cooking for the Crew during the journey north.

That evening, Silla counts her remaining skjöld leaves and reflects that she must reach Svarti before her supply runs dry. When she slips into the woods to distract herself by foraging, Jonas grudgingly follows to protect her. Their barbed exchange escalates until Silla shoves him against a tree. He pins her and warns her against starting fights that she will lose. Walking back to camp, Silla realizes that the rush of the encounter temporarily drove away all of her thoughts of her father and of the skjöld leaves.

The next morning, Silla laments the lies that have alienated her traveling companions. The day is dreary and rainy, and as they travel, a group of 20 warriors suddenly pours from the forest; they are the Iron Ravens, a warband claiming this stretch of road. Rey cuts Silla’s bonds and pushes her beneath the wagon.

The Ravens demand 500 sólas and access to the wagon. Rey refuses, implying that the Iron Ravens were waiting for the Bloodaxe Crew specifically and must know what they carry. Combat erupts. Rey charges through the attackers while Jonas, Hekla, and Gunnar fight in formation and Sigrún shoots arrows. Silla spots several Iron Ravens unhitching Horse, but as she seizes a fallen sword, she is discovered. Two Ravens abduct her, reasoning that with Silla as a hostage, they can force the Bloodaxe Crew to hand over the valuable rhodium blades they carry.

An Iron Ravens warrior forces Silla toward the wagon. Rey tells the warrior that he has no interest in rescuing her, but moments later, Jonas’s thrown handaxes kill both of Silla’s captors. As Sigrún treats Silla’s injured wrist, Rey and Jonas interrogate the sole survivor, Anders. They remove the man’s fingers until he names the proprietor of the Owl’s Hollow Inn as the informant who tipped off the warband about the rhodium blades. Rey slits Anders’s throat while holding Silla’s gaze, delivering a deliberate warning.

After washing blood from her face, Silla remains haunted by the cold pleasure in Rey’s eyes as he killed the man. The little blond girl reminds her of her promise to herself that she will leave the Crew if she feels unsafe. Silla slips away from camp, intending to abandon the Crew, but discovers that Rey has her weapons. Reasoning that his display was calculated to drive her away, she turns back.

The narrative shifts to Rey’s third-person limited perspective. He acknowledges that her saying about mercy matches one his father used to repeat, and he admits to himself that the brutality of his interrogation was partly designed to push her away. When Silla returns and declares that he cannot frighten her off, he recognizes that she has a warrior’s resilience.

Skraeda rides the Road of Bones after days of fruitless searching for Silla. In a flashback, she recalls being arrested for cheating at dice. Facing execution by stoning, she spoke up when Queen Signe appeared at her cell and offered to identify Warrior Galdra by their emotional signatures. When the queen mentioned needing Ashbringers—Galdra with fire magic—Skraeda claimed to know one and offered to deliver her in exchange for her own freedom. The queen agreed, warning that Skraeda’s failure would result in a fate worse than stoning.

In the present, Skraeda finds the gory aftermath of the Bloodaxe Crew’s battle with the Iron Ravens. Near a gap where a wagon stood, she discovers a scrap of red wool and locks of curly hair and deduces that Silla is traveling by wagon with well-armed companions.

Alone with Hekla, Silla apologizes for allowing the false assumption about an abusive husband to stand. Hekla forgives her, saying that a woman who cannot defend herself surrenders her fate to others. She then pledges to teach Silla to fight and promises to advocate for Silla with Rey and urge him to allow her passage to Kopa.

Silla finds her dagger returned and freshly sharpened; Rey will no longer bind her hands. Mid-meal, a severe headache strikes, and Silla is devastated to discover that the phial’s stopper was loosened at some point; only one leaf remains. She takes half. Watching her, Rey warns that skjöld is dangerous and is used by fanatics in Sunnavík. Silla is shaken by this information but protests that the leaves are a headache cure; she refuses to doubt her father’s wisdom.

As Silla practices self-defense with Hekla, she grows distracted by watching Jonas chop wood. Hekla warns that Jonas, whom the Crew calls the Wolf, does not treat women well.

Silla dreams of her dying father trying to speak the names of her blood parents—names that vanish when she wakes. She spends the day consumed by grief.

When Jonas goes into the woods for firewood, Silla follows, and the two trade sharp words until she whispers that she does not want to win their game—she just wants to play. He cups her jaw and warns that he may be a danger to her, but as her boldness collapses into despair, she admits that she needed a “distraction.” He examines her bruised wrist and gently touches her neck, but they are interrupted when Ilías calls to Jonas from camp, complaining that the fire has gone out.

During training, Silla asks about Hekla’s prosthetic arm, and Hekla explains that it was built by a metal-crafter that Rey’s grandmother recommended. When Silla asks if her independent, relationship-free lifestyle gets lonely, Hekla reveals that she has a casual arrangement with Gunnar.

Jonas watches Silla practice, and Rey asks him to escort her to the Svarti market, explaining that Jonas is the only Crew member whom Silla has not yet managed to influence or manipulate. He orders Jonas not to sleep with Silla, citing his suspicion that she is still hiding something from them. Jonas privately reflects that Rey’s order inclines him to disobey.

South of Svarti, Skraeda is summoned to a crime scene: two corpses with burned faces. The crowd believes that the mysterious killer known as the Slátrari has murdered the local Gothi. The Klaernar kaptein implies that he knows Skraeda is Galdra.

She offers a reward for news of a woman in a red cloak. An older man reports that some warriors passed by yesterday with a curly-haired woman in their wagon. Skraeda realizes that Silla is less than a day ahead.

As the Crew approaches the town of Svarti, Silla is consumed by her craving for skjöld. Still trusting her father’s wisdom, she dismisses Rey’s warning about the leaves and resolves to resupply at an apothecary in town. The Crew stops at The Boar’s Head Inn, and Jonas informs her that he has been ordered to escort her to the market.

In a private moment, Silla is overwhelmed with grief over her recent misfortunes, but the little blond girl gives voice to the hardest truth—that her father’s real name was Tómas, not Matthias. Silla insists that he was her true father regardless of blood, then goes to meet Jonas.

Walking through Svarti, Jonas gives Silla his black cloak. In the pocket, she finds his silver talisman—a disk etched with three interlocked triangles. He seizes it back: The triangles represent family, respect, and duty, and the talisman and Ilías are all that remain of his former life.

Realizing that there is greater depth to Jonas, she asks him to share something true about himself. He admits that the thrill of his work has gone; he stays to earn money and protect Ilías. She describes her dream of a farmstead, but he says that dreaming is pointless. Silla grows nervous as two Klaernar approach and pass them without comment. At the market, someone roughly shoves Silla from behind. As she hits the ground, she is convinced that she has been caught.

Jonas pins down the man who shoved Silla and forces him to apologize, insisting to Silla that anyone who disrespects her has disrespected him. After they stock up on supplies, Silla stops at an apothecary to refill her skjöld phial and immediately takes a leaf. When Jonas mentions Rey’s warning, she defends her father’s decision to give her the leaves and abruptly ends the conversation.

As Silla and Hekla sit in the Boar’s Head mead hall, four Klaernar enter and sit beside them, much to Silla’s dismay; one of them, Runolf, returns Silla’s red cloak, which she had inadvertently dropped. She overhears them saying that the Slátrari has killed two more people south of Svarti and that Reykfjord’s berskium mine has been destroyed. Hekla mentions that Rey assigned Gunnar to guard the wagon and its rhodium blades.

Jonas and Ilías join the table. Silla excuses herself and goes to the bar, where she overhears several women admiring Jonas. She encourages one—Dagny—to approach him, claiming that he responds best to bold women. She gives Dagny a suggestive phrase to whisper in his ear. The moment Dagny delivers it, Jonas’s eyes snap to Silla. She flees, colliding with Rey outside, and Jonas comes after her, holding her red cloak. He returns it quietly, the warning clear in his expression, and Silla retreats.