When Jonas and Silla kiss, Jonas recognizes that it is her first. Silla declares that their connection is only a distraction, then initiates the next kiss herself. As their motions grow more heated, Jonas suddenly registers an unfamiliar sound coming from the surrounding woods. A skógungar—a forest walker—emerges; it is very tall and has unnaturally glowing red eyes and a wide smile. Jonas notes a strong smell of decay unlike any he has encountered. Jonas warns Silla to be still and advises her that the creature will likely pass them by without incident. However, it suddenly charges without provocation, so Jonas severs its head and steers Silla back to camp.

Skraeda arrives in Svarti to find the Crew departed. A recent letter from the queen has revealed Silla’s true identity and her importance to Signe’s plans.

At the Boar’s Head Inn, Skraeda uses her Solacer abilities to question e the Klaernar Runolf’s about the Crew. She reads his emotions as colored threads, and when she finds a thin golden filament representing his free will, she mentally seizes it and compels him to describe Silla’s companions. He recalls the younger of two blond brothers mentioning a trip to Kiv to retrieve a book and face Kraki. Calculating that the Crew will be delayed, Skraeda decides to ambush them at the junction where the Kiv path rejoins the Road of Bones.

Rey and Jonas discuss the skógungar attack, agreeing that the creature behaved abnormally. Although the skógungars are docile by nature, this one was feral and smelled of decay. Rey wonders if this incident is somehow connects to the Istré job and the mysterious mist. He then announces that he and Silla will travel to Kraki’s home in Kiv alone while the rest of the Crew takes the wagon to Hver.

Uncomfortably riding pillion with Rey, Silla learns that he is using her as bait; he is counting on Kraki’s weakness for women to help them gain entry to the man’s house and retrieve the book of lore. She then analyzes Rey, correctly guessing that a past tragedy shaped who he is. He retaliates by labeling her optimism shallow and false.

Silla and Rey ride into the foothills west of Skalla Ridge. When she goes to a creek to wash her face, a vampirudýr—a blood-matted “vampire deer” with glowing red eyes—springs at her from across the stream and pins her. Certain that she is about to die, she squeezes her eyes shut. She opens them to find the creature dead, with Rey’s handaxe buried in its skull.

Rey berates her for freezing, then reveals that he was aware of the deer and had allowed the attack to proceed as a way to test Silla’s readiness; she failed. As Silla shoves him in anger, an unexpected surge of energy erupts from her hands, sending Rey flying several paces. He sits up and laughs, then tells her that she should have done that to the deer.

At camp, Rey offers Silla his bedroll. With her head throbbing, she takes two skjöld leaves, and Rey warns her bluntly that the leaves are poisonous and will ruin her life. She tells him to stop feigning concern. He replies that he simply thought she should know what she was taking. When she asks who he knows who has taken them in the past, he explains that his brother used to take them and is now dead because of them. The little blond girl appears to Silla and declares that her continued use of the leaves is a choice, not a necessity.

The next morning, the tension persists between Silla and Rey as Silla privately struggles to reconcile her father’s possible dishonesty with her lifelong trust in him. The trail rises into a sweeping alpine field beneath a snowcapped peak that Rey identifies as Fáfnir, one of the Sleeping Dragons. Rey warns her that Kraki has wandering hands but promises to protect her. He then tells her that she will need to improve her lies in order to fool the man.

They arrive at a lone house in the alpine village of Kiv. Kraki, Rey’s former mentor, greets them coldly and implies that Silla is a sex worker. Silla introduces herself as the Crew’s cook. When Kraki baits Rey into a verbal confrontation, Silla steps in and flatters Kraki with calculated praise. His pride swells, and he invites them inside. Rey spots a raised floorboard near a pile of skis—the likely hiding place for the book. Over drinks, Kraki sits too close to Silla and plays with her hair while Rey struggles to control his temper. When Kraki demands to know their real purpose, Rey states that they need the book Creatures of Íseldur. Kraki claims the book was destroyed but says he has memorized it and might share the information with the right person. Silla defuses the tension by offering to cook a meal.

After the meal, Silla works to loosen Kraki’s tongue with alcohol, persuading him to tell stories about a young Rey. Kraki recounts that Rey was physically weak when he first joined the Crew, and that a hungover 18-year-old Rey once accidentally rode off on the wrong horse—which is how he came to own the mare he now rides, Horse. When Silla asks about Rey’s past lovers, Kraki mentions a woman named Kaeja. Kraki then exposes Silla’s ploy and proposes a game of Truth or Drink. Rey objects and offers to play in Silla’s place, but Kraki refuses, spitting out Rey’s full name—Reynir Galtung—with contempt. Believing that the drinking game is her path to getting the information for Rey and eventually getting to Kopa, Silla agrees to play, on the condition that Rey supplies the questions.

Rey asks whether certain creature exists that can cloak itself in pulsing mist; Kraki suggests that draugur can pull mist from the ground but not enough to cloak themselves. Kraki asks where Silla’s father is and how he died, and when she repeats her lie about a land dispute, Kraki calls her out, forcing her to admit the deception. As she begins to feel the effects of alcohol, she drunkenly brushes an eyelash from Rey’s cheek; he quickly catches her wrist.

Kraki asks Silla’s honest opinion of Rey. She accuses Rey of being controlling but adds that he is secretly loyal and hides his gentler nature so that no one mistakes it for weakness. When Kraki asks whether Silla has ever been with a man, she drinks rather than answering. Rey declares the game over and pulls Silla outside, where she is violently sick. She asks whether she got him the answers he needed, and Rey quietly confirms that she did well.

Jonas sits alone in Hver on the eve of the summer solstice, consumed by thoughts of Silla. When a man spills ale on him, Jonas reacts with explosive fury, beating the man until Ilías hauls him off. He decides to sleep with another woman to get thoughts of Silla out of his head.

Rey rides back toward Hver with a hungover Silla. (After Kraki had passed out, Rey retrieved Creatures of Íseldur from the raised floorboard.) Now, he reflects that although Silla drew information from Kraki, she also exposed her own dishonesty. Her lie about her father’s death troubles him.

Silla argues that she has proven herself and asks Rey to take her to Kopa. Rey refuses and confronts her about the lie. Before she can respond, the birds go quiet and a dagger flies at them. Rey throws them both from the saddle. He gives Silla his handaxe and orders her into the pines. A red-haired woman attacks him with a greataxe. The fight goes in Rey’s favor until he is overwhelmed by involuntary visions of his younger brother, Kristjan, wasting away with fever. He then sees his brother’s burial mound. The red-haired warrior-woman wounds both his legs and kicks him to the cliff’s edge, taunting that she feasts on pain and anger. Silla rushes from the woods and strikes her from behind with the butt of the handaxe, knocking her out. Over Silla’s protests, Rey pushes the unconscious woman over the cliff.

He demands to know if the assassin was targeting Silla. Evading the issue, Silla reveals that she heard Kraki use his full name and offers a trade; she will keep his secret if he grants her passage to Kopa. Trapped by his honor and the fact that she just saved his life, Rey agrees.

Silla contains her relief as they ride toward Hver; Rey has sworn an oath, and she knows that he will take his responsibility seriously. The assassin’s identity unsettles her because the red-haired woman was the same figure she spotted on a bridge in Reykfjord. They arrive in Hver amid the solstice preparations. At The Wolf’s Den, Rey instructs Silla to tell the Crew that he was pleased with her efforts and therefore agreed to take her to Kopa.

Silla finds Hekla, shares the news, and is pulled into a warm embrace. Hekla presents her with a new lavender dress and confesses that she wanted a female friend to dance with at the solstice celebrations. Silla gives an abridged account of the trip to Kiv, omitting all mention of her blackmail, the assassin, and the drinking debacle. She notices that Jonas has a bruise on his cheek and is conspicuously avoiding her. Exaggerating theatrically, she tells the group that Rey was so grateful for her help that he invited her to Kopa. Rey growls and stalks away. Hekla explains privately that Rey’s vampire deer trick is something he has done to every Crew member.

Stung by Jonas’s coldness, Silla meets an amorous man named Asger, who flirts openly with her. When Jonas and Gunnar return, Silla aims to make Jonas jealous by telling Gunnar that Asger asked to see her again later.

Silla and Hekla join a group of women who are braiding wildflowers into one another’s hair. They follow the music into Hver’s town square, where a bonfire blazes. Watching townspeople cast offerings into the flames, Silla feels a pang of nostalgia for her father’s teachings on how to make secret offerings to Sunnvald, the old god of fire. She prays silently for safe passage to Kopa, then joins Hekla in dancing around the bonfire. For the first time in a long while, she feels entirely free. At nightfall, a crowd gathers to release flíta—small, glowing, butterfly-like creatures that spiral upward and light the sky. The sight stirs anger at her father for sheltering her from so much of life, and she recognizes that for years, she has been surviving instead of truly living.

Back at The Wolf’s Den, Silla notices Jonas at the long table with a dark-haired woman on his lap. She collects a drink, and Asger finds her shortly after. Stung by Jonas, she pulls Asger into the inn’s darkened corridor. He draws her close, but Silla feels only cold doubt. Before she can act on that realization, Asger is yanked away by an angry Jonas.

Jonas orders Asger to leave. When Asger reaches for his dagger, Silla steps between the men and asks Asger to go. Jonas admits that he was wrong to treat her coldly and confesses that he tried—and failed—to push her from his mind by pursuing another woman. He pins Silla against the wall and kisses her.

Jonas tells her plainly that seeing her with Asger made him realize he was done resisting his attraction to her. Silla asks him to take her to his room. They have sex for the first time. Jonas is intensely possessive. Afterward, Silla asks whether they can have sex again.

The narrative shifts to Jonas’s perspective. He watches Silla and finds that he cannot regret the night. She begins tracing his scars, and he describes where each one came from. The mark on his cheekbone is from his father’s ring, which Jonas sustained while protecting his mother.

He tells Silla that they must keep their relationship a secret because Rey has ordered Jonas to stay away from her, viewing her as a distraction from the Istré job. They devise a private signal for slipping away together on the road. She makes Jonas promise not to publicly ignore her again. When she teases him by floating the idea of positioning herself next to Ilías or Gunnar, he growls a possessive warning. Silla slips out and fumbles with the key to the room she is sharing with Hekla upstairs. The door opens, and a bleary-eyed Hekla takes in her disheveled state and greets her with a knowing smile.