Kai and Paedyn are finally found outside Ilya by two Imperials. To preserve their cover, Kai immediately becomes the cold, threatening Enforcer again, humiliating the men and reminding them to fear him. When one Imperial spits near Paedyn and then strikes her after she spits back, Kai steps in with open menace and warns that if the man touches her again, he will kill him.

The Imperials remove Paedyn’s ankle cuff, but the process is deliberately rough and cuts her skin badly. Paedyn sees Kai’s remorse, and his expression silently asks her to keep pretending. Although the freedom of losing the cuff sparks her instinct to run, an Imperial warns her against it, calls her an Ordinary, and then clamps iron around her wrists instead.

As they walk toward the city, Paedyn and Kai continue the performance of hatred. Paedyn trades insults with the Imperials, but their taunts about the king killing her make the reality of her situation finally settle in: this return to Ilya may end in her death. The poppy field gives way to cobblestones and then to the city, where Kai mounts a waiting horse and Paedyn is tied behind it by the wrists for the journey through the streets.

Dragged through the wealthy district near the castle, Paedyn is jeered by Elites who call her traitor, king killer, and Ordinary while praising Kai. The public humiliation forces her to confront both Ilya’s class divisions and her own helplessness. At the palace, Kai quietly cuts the rope himself and takes hold of her arm, brushing his thumb over her skin in another private reminder to pretend.

As Kai leads her up the steps, Paedyn notices the forget-me-nots by the courtyard and remembers their first kiss there. The memory sharpens the pain of the present, because she now fears this may be the last time she sees Kai. The chapter ends with Paedyn realizing that the man she loves may be the one ordered to kill her.