Through the mating bond, Feyre can only watch as Rhys stands alone on a Hybern warship facing the King of Hybern. Rhys had realized the ship was a trap connected to the power-dampening spell affecting him and the others, but he came anyway to try to find its source and, if possible, capture the king alive for information about the Cauldron. Feyre urges Rhys to kill the king immediately, fearing that delay will give Hybern time to spring another hidden attack.

Rhys and the king trade taunts while Rhys quietly searches the ship and the king for the mechanism behind the spell. The king needles Rhys about Amarantha and then turns to Feyre, praising her for killing Amarantha, the Attor, Dagdan, and Brannagh, and revealing that Tamlin hates what Feyre did to the Spring Court. He also boasts that Feyre’s sabotage only made it easier for Hybern to move more troops into Tamlin’s lands, forcing Feyre to realize one of the unintended consequences of her actions.

As the battle around the harbor begins turning in the Summer Court’s favor, Rhys weighs whether to strike or retreat. The king keeps provoking him, threatening that even if Rhys gives everything to stop him, it will not be enough, and that after Rhys dies he will take Feyre for himself or hand her to Tamlin. Rhys keeps his composure outwardly, but Feyre feels his fury through the bond.

When Rhys asks why Hybern is waging this war, the king answers openly. He frames the conflict as revenge for being excluded by those who claimed to build a fairer world, and he argues that Hybern intends to reclaim power, territory, and dominance from humans and from those faeries who protect them. His speech confirms that the war is ideological as well as territorial, rooted in old resentments and supremacy.

Rhys finally attacks with a precise blast of power, only to discover that the king before him is merely an illusion. The real King of Hybern was never physically present; the encounter was meant to taunt Rhys and demonstrate Hybern’s reach while the dampening spell held. Once the illusion vanishes, the spell on Rhys’s power disappears as well, and Rhys immediately slaughters the Hybern soldiers on the surrounding ships, turning the trap into a massacre.