In the winter of 1934, Miquel Moliner’s brothers finally evict him from his home on Calle Puertaferrissa, stripping him of possessions and dignity. Nuria Monfort only learns the truth when she finds hired men inventorying and selling what little Miquel has left. She discovers Miquel living in a windowless pensión room on Calle Canuda, brings him to her apartment, and soon realizes his “cold” is tuberculosis when a doctor diagnoses him after weeks of worsening cough and bloodstains.

With Miquel bankrupt and terminally ill, Nuria and Miquel marry quietly in February, keeping it secret from everyone, including Miquel’s family and Nuria’s employer, Gustavo Barceló Cabestany. Months later, Jorge Aldaya arrives, broken and sweating with cold, seeking contact with Julián Carax and claiming he carries an important message from his deceased father, Don Ricardo Aldaya. Miquel lies that he has lost track of Carax, but Jorge leaves chilling words: Inspector Fumero sends congratulations on the marriage, convincing Nuria and Miquel that Fumero is watching them.

Time passes with no direct word from Julián Carax, though Nuria remains at the publishing house to feel close to him. Carax sends a short, distant note: he is writing a new novel titled The Shadow of the Wind. Meanwhile, Miquel works obsessively under multiple pseudonyms, depositing nearly all his earnings into a savings account in Nuria’s name and urging her to remarry and have children after his death. Nuria grows deeply tender toward Miquel and guilt-ridden that she cannot love him as fully as he loves her.

At the end of 1935, Carax’s manuscript arrives, and Nuria sends it to the printer unread. The same week, Miquel’s doctor warns Nuria that Miquel will die unless he rests and leaves Barcelona’s harsh air. When Nuria goes home early, she hears Miquel arguing with a visitor and hides, glimpsing a cold, black-eyed man in black. Miquel admits the visitor was Fumero, who claims Julián Carax is getting married in early summer 1936 to Irene Marceau, the much older owner of the club where Carax plays piano; Miquel interprets the “marriage” as a protective contract rather than love, and worries Fumero is revealing it for a reason.

That reason emerges when Jorge Aldaya soon storms into Nuria and Miquel’s home, furious after Fumero feeds him a romantic fantasy of Carax marrying into wealth. Fumero omits that Irene Marceau runs a brothel and that the match is likely charity, using Jorge’s envy and hatred to keep him burning. Miquel recognizes Fumero’s long game and sends Julián a warning note, but the chapter explains Fumero’s true strategy: he tells Jorge the wedding is imminent, urges him to go to Paris and challenge Carax to a duel, and supplies a pistol that the Paris police will later report as faulty—meant to explode in Jorge’s hands. Fumero coaches Jorge to confess that Penélope’s breakup letter was forced and false, intending to provoke Carax into shooting Jorge and, failing that, to drive Carax back to Barcelona seeking Penélope, where Fumero plans to be waiting.