After blasting Raihn through a high window, Oraya rushes to see whether she has killed him. Raihn rises back to the spire on his wings, furious that Oraya has hidden such power while refusing to trust him. Oraya conceals that she does not understand her own sudden magic and lets Raihn believe the secrecy is deliberate. Their argument escalates into personal insults about trust, Vincent, the Nightborn, and the Rishan until Mische steps between them. Neither Oraya nor Raihn backs down, and they part in anger.

Oraya goes to her usual secret meeting place hoping Vincent will appear, because she wants answers about the violent burst of power she used on Raihn. Vincent does not come, confirming Oraya's sense that he is preoccupied with some larger matter he will not share. Alone, Oraya tries and fails to summon that same strength again, managing only the weak sparks she already knows. She recognizes that she lost control of both her magic and her temper, and she reluctantly admits that Raihn may be right that she must choose whether to be a real ally or a true enemy.

Unable to reach the human districts before dawn, Oraya wanders the Moon Palace grounds and reflects on how badly she misses the release of hunting vampires there. The craving leads into a memory of the first time she killed in the slums. During a period of intense grief and self-destructive despair, Oraya went to the human districts looking for something she could not name. Instead, she found a vampire stalking a human woman and killed him almost instinctively.

After that first killing, Oraya fled home sick with shock and certain that Vincent would punish her if she confessed. But as the day passed, Oraya realized that saving the human woman had made her feel powerful, and that her guilt came more from lying to Vincent than from killing a predator. She decided Vincent's rules were worth less than the lives of humans she could protect, and she also recognized that the violence briefly drove another painful memory from her mind. Since then, killing predatory vampires in the slums has become both a source of strength and a way to prove that, although she is mortal, she can still leave a mark on the world.

Back in the present, Oraya walks beside the Lituro River and catches the scent of tobacco, which painfully reminds her of Ilana. She discovers a stranger smoking nearby and, despite Vincent's usual warnings, approaches him to ask for a cigarillo. The handsome, sharp-featured man recognizes Oraya from the Full Moon trial and reveals that many bets had depended on her failure, though he claims he did not lose money on her. He lets Oraya keep the box of cigarillos and leaves after wishing her luck for tomorrow, marking the chapter's close with a brief but unsettling encounter.