After the whipped sentry is cut down, Feyre stays at the barracks to help the healer clean and treat him. Bron and Hart escort Feyre back to the manor, thank Feyre for caring for their friend, and admit their own shame for not stopping Ianthe’s abuses sooner. Feyre realizes the sentries’ loyalty is shifting away from Tamlin and Ianthe. When Ianthe announces that she will join the next trip to the Wall, Feyre prepares for the journey, and that night Alis quietly says goodbye, revealing that she and her nephews are leaving for Summer Court territory. Feyre and Alis part as friends despite the blood ruby that marks Feyre as an enemy of Summer.

On the trip to the Wall, the sentries remain cold toward Tamlin, and the repeated winnowing leaves Feyre exhausted. At camp, Feyre asks to share a tent with Ianthe instead of Tamlin, partly to shield Lucien from Ianthe. During the night, Feyre fights the urge to kill Ianthe and steadies herself by thinking of her true family in the Night Court and the larger purpose of her mission. At dawn, Feyre wakes with a knife in hand over Ianthe, chooses not to kill her, and instead leaves Ianthe unsettled with a quiet threat.

While Tamlin and Jurian hunt and the others scatter, Feyre stays near Brannagh and Dagdan as they inspect the crack in the Wall. By needling their pride, Feyre gets them to reveal crucial information: this breach is strategically closer to the strait, Hybern plans to use the Cauldron here to study and magnify an existing weak point in the Wall, Hybern commands roughly two hundred thousand soldiers when allies from Vallahan, Montesere, and Rask are counted, and Amarantha was allowed to rule Prythian as part of Hybern’s long game. With those facts in hand, Feyre decides she has everything she needs. She reflects that she has already primed Spring Court for collapse by turning its sentries and people against Tamlin and Ianthe, and she finalizes her plan to disappear so that the court will believe Hybern brutalized her while Tamlin and Ianthe failed to protect her.

Feyre slips into camp, takes the pack she prepared for escape, steals Tamlin’s fighting knives, and heads for the northern trees, intending to winnow home. Before she can leave, she hears Ianthe cornering Lucien in the woods. Feyre finds Lucien shackled to a tree with blue stones that nullify his magic while Ianthe gropes and threatens him. Feyre abandons her restraint, uses her daemati power to invade Ianthe’s mind, forces Ianthe to free Lucien, and then commands her to smash her own hand with a rock as punishment. Feyre implants commands that Ianthe will never touch another person against that person’s will, will not remember what happened, and will live with fear if she ever tries again. As Feyre finishes and turns to Lucien, Brannagh and Dagdan step into the clearing, recognize what Feyre is, and name her power aloud: daemati.