Unsettled by Jonas’s possessiveness, Silla decides to end her relationship with him. As they travel, she quietly takes off his talisman, leaving it in the wagon. Shortly after this, Rey signals a halt as five of the queen’s warriors approach and demand to search the wagon. When Rey refuses, fighting breaks out, and Rey sends Silla into the woods in borrowed armor.

Hidden in a hollow log, Silla finds herself surrounded by black-clad mercenaries led by a hooded magic-user whose arm is covered in wasps that he uses to confirm people’s identities. When a mercenary seizes her, Silla drives her dagger into his throat and screams a warning to the Crew. She is dragged before the magic-user, who identifies her as Eisa Volsik. She wrenches free, grabs a fallen axe, and kills another attacker. Jonas arrives, kills the magic-user, and shields them both from the wasp swarm before returning to the fight.

When the battle ends, Silla finds Jonas kneeling over Ilías, who has been dealt a mortal wound. Jonas guides his dying brother with steady words about their memories of the elm tree on their childhood farm and asks Ilías to wait there. Ilías dies. Sigrún rides away, distraught. Hekla and Gunnar confront Silla about her lies, and Hekla turns her back. Silla kneels beside Jonas and holds him as he weeps.

Jonas drinks heavily and retreats alone into the woods. Silla, staring at Ilías’s body, is overwhelmed by the conviction that she should have died in his place. She fights a sharp craving for the leaves but refuses to give in. Instead, she sets up camp and tends to the crew’s wounds.

When Hekla’s metal hand catches in the reins, Silla calms the horse and retrieves the detached arm. Hekla’s attitude remains cold. When Rey’s leg wound forces him to the ground, Hekla directs Silla to stitch the gash. Silla distracts Rey by needling him and asking pointed questions with each stitch.

Alone with Rey afterward, Silla apologizes for Ilías’s death. He tells her that he had deduced she was Galdra but had wrongly assumed the Klaernar were her only pursuers. He says that he will always regret taking her under his protection, and he holds her responsible for Ilías’s death. He says he will be glad when she is gone.

Jonas retreats into the woods and relives the battle, berating himself for abandoning his brother to save Silla after hearing the mercenaries identify her as Eisa Volsik. By the time he returned, Ilías had charged into a fight alone and had been wounded. He blames Ilías for recklessness and himself for abandoning his post, but most of all, he blames Silla for bringing danger upon them in the first place.

At the wagon, he discovers that Silla has removed his talisman. Convinced that she never cared for him, he swears to reclaim his honor. When Silla tends to his wounds and falls asleep, Jonas decides upon a cruel resolution.

The perspective shifts to Rey on the following morning. He blames himself for Ilías’s death; he misjudged who hunted Silla, silenced her when she tried to explain, and led his Crew unprepared. Something about Jonas’s decision to stay behind with Silla and bury his brother alone feels wrong to Rey, but he dismisses his unease as grief and rides on with the rest of the Crew.

After the burial, Silla goes to a stream to refill the waterskins and drinks her fill. An inexplicable euphoria overtakes her, followed by dizziness, and she realizes that Jonas has drugged her water with the leaves he stole from the phial in Rey’s bag. Seeing that she is incapacitated, Jonas tells her of his awareness that she is Eisa Volsik. He holds her responsible for Ilías’s death and says he will hand her to the Klaernar in Kopa.

As they ride, Silla identifies the phantom girl as her sister, Saga. When the drug briefly wears off and she confronts him, Jonas admits that he cared for her, but he insists that turning her in is the only way to give Ilías’s death any meaning. He then forces more leaves down her throat. He has sent the Crew ahead to Istré and now rides the Road of Bones toward Kopa, keeping her sedated.

Silla wakes to find herself locked in a prison cell in a Klaernar outpost in Kopa. The phantom girl appears, and Silla names her aloud: Saga, her sister. The thought of Saga gives her reason to survive. A guard calls her Galdra and warns her to stay quiet. Silla begins a hunger strike and succumbs to the withdrawal sickness.

The narrative shifts to Skraeda, who stands outside Kopa’s sealed gates. After finding the corpses where Ilías died, she concluded that the Bloodaxe Crew had been aiding Silla. Now certain that the Klaernar hold Silla, Skraeda sees this as her only chance to win back the queen’s favor. She bluffs her way into the city but finds the eastern garrison too heavily guarded, so she retreats to form a new plan.

Jonas appears outside Silla’s cell and tells her to eat. She confronts him over his misdeeds, accusing him of handing her to a regime that kills people. He replies that his thinking has never been clearer. Silla recognizes that the man she thought she knew is gone. She warns him that when he realizes his mistake, his shame will follow him until his death. He leaves for good.

The woman in the next cell, Metta, has been imprisoned four weeks, during which roughly 14 prisoners were taken and never returned. She explains her own arrest: She refused to give the Klaernar guards free food and was therefore charged with witchcraft. She has no galdur; the Klaernar are driven to fill a quota and require no just cause to arrest people. The confirmation that innocents are being executed enrages Silla, who vows to escape.

Three days after Ilías’s burial, Rey arrives at Kopa alone. He sent the Crew ahead to Istré after finding no trace of Jonas or Silla, and he is now determined to investigate. The main gates are sealed, but Rey uses his childhood knowledge of a hidden passage in the western wall and secretly slips inside, where he kills a guard and then faces 23 Klaernar. He unleashes his hidden galdur—dark, smoky tendrils that burn his victims from the inside out—and kills 21 of his foes. The terrified kaptein realizes that Rey is the Slátrari and reveals that Silla is held by Kommandor Valf at the eastern garrison; she is to be shipped to Queen Signe. Rey kills the kaptein and heads for the garrison, belatedly realizing that he has allowed one soldier to escape. He feels a twinge of foreboding that the man knows his face and has seen his powers.

Guards deliver Silla, in a restrictive red gown and manacles, to Kommandor Valf’s quarters. He removes her restraints and offers her food. Valf confirms that he knows her as Eisa Volsik and reveals that the queen is arranging her passage to the palace at Sunnavík; Jonas disclosed her true abilities. He mentions Maester Alfson, the queen’s adviser, who specializes in understanding how magic functions and has no compunctions about taking things apart.

The food contains a catalyst that forces Silla’s galdur to the surface; cold white light begins to emanate from her veins. Valf cuts her palm to test whether her blood glows; it does not. Drawing on her combat training, Silla tries to struggle free, but he restrains her and cuts off a lock of her hair as a trophy. She notices that the tapestries are woven from human hair and deduces that he has assaulted many women in this way. He begins to strangle her, but his grip inexplicably falters and his eyes grow blank. Silla clubs him with a heavy jug, then drops a basalt sculpture on his head, crushing his skull. She takes his cloak, climbs out the second-story window, and flees as a guard spots her.

With guards in pursuit, Silla finally finds Skeggagrim’s house and knocks; Skraeda opens the door and pulls her inside at knifepoint. Meanwhile, Rey overhears that Valf is dead and that Silla has escaped.

Skraeda reveals that she caused Valf’s fatal hesitation, as berskium powder makes Klaernars’ free will easy for her to seize. She shows Silla Skeggagrim’s body. Skraeda’s aim is to force Silla to ingest “míkrób”—tiny organisms that absorb galdur. Skraeda then wants to harvest Silla’s magic for herself, after which she will kill her. Silla blasts Skraeda across the room with a surge of galdur, smashes the phial, and stabs Skraeda. Confused by the fact that Silla possesses both Ashbringer and Breaker (strength) abilities, Skraeda launches a psychic assault. Silla breaks the Solacer’s hold by exploiting Skraeda’s guilt over sacrificing her twin sister, then kills Skraeda, whose final expression is relief. Silla places a blade in the woman’s hand to see her through to the afterlife and steps outside, right into a waiting group of Klaernar.

Silla flees into the forest, where Rey grabs her from the underbrush and holds her still until a search party passes. He then carries her to the hidden passage. Outside the city, Silla sees the burned, melted bodies of the Klaernar Rey killed and assumes that the Slátrari was nearby. Rey is oddly unconcerned.

Silla tells him that his oath is fulfilled, but Rey refuses to leave her; he came for her because she is Crew, and the Crew does not abandon its own. He directs her to Kalasgarde, a settlement in the Nordur lands, where she can find safety. Silla tells him about Jonas’s betrayal, Valf’s attempted sexual assault, and her slaying of both Valf and Skraeda. Rey responds with respect, calling her a fighter with a warrior’s spirit. She pleads with him to go back for the imprisoned Metta; he refuses but promises to contact someone on her behalf. He bandages her palm, apologizes for his harsh words, and takes the blame for Ilías’s death upon himself. As they ride Rey’s horse together, Silla holds the reins and finds herself beginning to believe that true safety might be a person rather than a place.

The narrative shifts to Saga Volsik, a young woman living as a royal ward at Askaborg Castle in Sunnavík. She has spent four weeks confined to her chambers, haunted by dreams of her sister Eisa. Saga possesses a telepathic ability—her Sense—which she restrains behind conscious mental barriers. Queen Signe, who adopted Saga but has never shown her genuine affection, orders Saga to resume her public duties and assist in negotiations with the incoming delegation of Zagadkians. Saga must undergo a bloodletting ritual for Ursir and begin preparations for her arranged marriage to Prince Bjorn.

Overwhelmed, Saga flees into the castle’s hidden passages, which only she knows about. From within the walls, she overhears Signe and Maester Alfson discussing a girl who escaped Klaernar custody in Kopa with help from the Slátrari. Signe states that they cannot allow Eisa Volsik to escape again. Realizing that her sister is alive, Saga resolves to find her.