Rune and Gideon disembark on the island after a storm, and Rune is immediately relieved to be back in the landscape that feels like home. Even so, she knows the island is dangerous witch-hunting territory, and she has already cast Ghost Walker in case Gideon’s plan has turned into a trap. Wanting distance from him and from the betrayal she overheard, Rune asks for Gideon’s horse so she can go straight to Wintersea House.

Gideon stops her by revealing that Wintersea House now belongs to Noah Creed, who claimed it after Rune fled. The news devastates Rune because it means she has lost not only her status but also her belongings, her horse, and the last place that felt fully hers. With nowhere else to go, she reluctantly follows Gideon to his apartment in Old Town.

Inside the tenement, Rune is overwhelmed by memories of both intimacy and betrayal, because it is the same place where she once slept with Gideon and where he later turned her over to the Blood Guard. In daylight, she notices the apartment’s modest furniture, its books, and a small wooden deer that Gideon says belonged to his dead sister, Tessa, and was carved by his father. The figurine and Gideon’s casual promise to cook dinner make Rune think about the family life he had and the loneliness she has long carried.

The quiet is broken when soldiers begin pounding on the door below. Rune panics that Gideon has summoned them for her arrest, but Gideon says they have come for him because of something he failed to do, and he expects them to search the apartment. To keep Rune hidden, he opens a window, helps her and her suitcase onto the roof, and tells her to stay there until he returns.

After Gideon shuts the window, Rune hides low on the tiles and watches from above as Blood Guard soldiers bring Gideon out with his hands bound and force him onto a horse headed toward the palace. Once the rest of the soldiers finish searching the apartment and leave, Rune remains alone on the roof. There she finds the names Tessa, Alex, and Gideon scratched into the tiles, realizing the Sharpe siblings once played there and that Gideon used a childhood hiding place to protect her, even as he has now been taken away.