Orual and Redival's mother dies, their heads are shaved, and the Fox arrives as the girls' Greek tutor.

The King's second wife dies in childbirth, and her daughter Istra is born, whom Orual and the Fox call Psyche.

Psyche heals the fever-stricken people of Glome and collapses with the fever herself; people leave offerings sacred to Ungit at the palace.

The Priest of Ungit declares Psyche the 'accursed' and demands she be sacrificed to the Brute on the Grey Mountain.

The King agrees to sacrifice Psyche and beats Orual violently when she throws herself at his feet begging for mercy.

Orual bribes her way past Bardia to spend a final night with Psyche in the tower room before the sacrifice.

Psyche, dressed and painted like a temple girl, is carried out of the palace to be sacrificed on the mountain.

Orual and Bardia travel to the mountain to retrieve Psyche's remains and find her alive and well in a valley.

Psyche insists she lives in a divine palace and that Orual stands at its very gates, but Orual cannot see it.

Orual returns to the mountain and forces Psyche to take a lamp and look upon her sleeping husband's face.

The god appears, banishes Psyche from the valley, and tells Orual that she 'also shall be Psyche.'

Orual refuses her father's command to remove her veil, wins the battle of wills, and never fears him again.

Orual defeats and kills Prince Argan of Phars in single combat, securing her claim to Glome's throne.

Orual finds a temple to the goddess Istra and hears a sacred story blaming her jealousy for Psyche's exile.

Orual reads her complaint aloud before a divine court, finally grasps her own selfishness, and is reunited with Psyche before dying.

Orual grows up as the ugly, unloved eldest daughter of Glome's king, finding her only true bonds in her Greek tutor the Fox and her radiant younger sister Psyche. When Psyche's extraordinary beauty provokes Ungit's jealousy and Glome suffers plague and famine, the Priest demands she be sacrificed to appease the goddess. Orual travels to the mountain expecting to find remains but discovers Psyche alive, claiming to be married to a god in an invisible palace. Unable to accept her sister's happiness apart from her, Orual forces Psyche to betray her husband, causing Psyche's banishment. Orual becomes queen of Glome, and many years later she discovers a temple story that blames her jealousy for the whole disaster, prompting her to write her own complaint against the gods. Only in a final vision, reading her complaint aloud before the divine court, does she understand her own selfishness and earn reunion with Psyche.

The headline events of Orual's life and her complaint against the gods.

Redival is caught in a secret tryst with a soldier named Tarin, who is then castrated and sold as a slave.

A peasant woman asks Psyche to kiss her daughter for beauty; Redival mockingly calls her sister a goddess.

Psyche spends an entire day laying hands on the sick people of Glome and then collapses with the fever herself.

The people of Glome turn against Psyche, calling her 'the accursed' and throwing stones at her in the street.

Orual offers to be sacrificed in Psyche's place, but the King holds a mirror to her face and refuses.

Orual attacks Bardia with a sword outside the tower room; he pities her grief and agrees to let her inside.

Psyche describes how the wind god freed her from her chains, disembodied voices served her, and her husband visits only in darkness.

Unable to sleep in the mountain camp, Orual walks to the river and glimpses what may be Psyche's palace.

Back in Glome, the Fox reasons that Psyche has been tricked by a mortal criminal hiding on the mountain.

Orual drives a dagger through her own arm to prove she will kill herself unless Psyche agrees to test her husband.

Orual gives the Fox a partial account of her mountain visit, concealing how she coerced Psyche with the threat of self-harm.

The old Priest of Ungit dies and is succeeded by Arnom, who installs a woman-shaped statue of the goddess.

After securing the throne, Orual formally frees the Fox from slavery; he considers returning to Greece but chooses to stay.

Orual hears a girl crying throughout the palace for years and finally has the underground well walled up to silence it.

Bardia dies and his widow Ansit confronts Orual, accusing her of devouring the lives of those she claims to love.

The troubles in Glome begin with Redival's scandalous affair and escalate as Psyche's miraculous healing draws the dangerous attention of the goddess Ungit. As famine and plague worsen, Psyche is publicly condemned and then sacrificed, with Orual powerless to stop it despite her desperate offer to take her sister's place. On the mountain, Orual hears Psyche's account of her divine marriage and catches a fleeting, uncertain glimpse of the palace she cannot fully see. Driven by the Fox's rational theory that Psyche has been deceived by a mortal criminal, Orual uses extreme self-harm to coerce the test that destroys Psyche's happiness, then carefully conceals the truth on her return. During her long reign, Orual frees the Fox from slavery, suppresses the mysterious crying she hears in the palace, and buries herself in the work of queenship. Bardia's death and his widow's devastating accusation finally force Orual to confront the consuming damage her possessive love has caused.

The supporting moments and background events that shaped the story's path.

The Fox carelessly declares Psyche more beautiful than a goddess, filling Orual with dread of Ungit's jealousy.

The Priest stands unmoved as the King presses a dagger to his chest, convincing Orual that Ungit is truly real.

Orual threatens Redival in the palace corridor, vowing to torture her when she one day becomes queen of Glome.

In the tower room, Psyche tells Orual that her only real fear is that the gods might not exist at all.

Orual drags herself injured to the palace staircase to watch Psyche carried out to the sacrifice, too weak to intervene.

Bardia offers to teach Orual sword fighting, and she finds physical training a far better cure for grief than philosophy.

Orual learns that Psyche's husband visits only in darkness and has forbidden her ever to look upon his face.

After weighing the Fox's and Bardia's theories, Orual resolves to be both mother and father to Psyche and rescue her by force.

Psyche warns Orual that her demand is a new kind of love close to hatred and that something between them dies there.

Orual declares herself queen and negotiates with the new Priest Arnom, trading land for control over Ungit's temple guards.

Trunia proposes marriage to Orual, who refuses him, then agrees when he asks for Redival's hand instead.

Tarin arrives as ambassador and reveals that Redival felt lonely and abandoned by Orual in childhood, not the favored sister Orual remembered.

During the Ungit festival, Orual stares at the goddess's sacred stone and sees a face taking shape in the pooled sacrificial blood.

In a vision, Orual's dead father leads her to a mirror and she sees that her own face is the face of Ungit.

The Fox leads Orual through cave paintings showing that her own suffering on the mountain helped Psyche complete her divine tasks.

From the Fox's careless praise of Psyche's beauty to the final revelation in the cave of the gods, this pool traces the moments that shattered and rebuilt Orual's understanding of herself and the divine. The Priest's terrifying, unmovable faith is an early crack in Orual's rationalist armor, while Psyche's warning on the mountain that demanding love borders on hatred goes tragically unheeded. Orual's bold assertion of queenship and her shrewd political maneuvering give her power, but the arrival of Redival's old lover Tarin decades later cracks her self-justifying view of the past for the first time. A waking vision in which she sees her own face as Ungit's forces her to confront the dark truth about her possessive nature and drives her to attempt suicide. The Fox's revelation that her own suffering on the mountain unknowingly helped Psyche complete her divine labors finally breaks open Orual's heart, completing the transformation that makes reunion and forgiveness possible.

The pivotal decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that transformed Orual.