The next afternoon, Meryn trains with her neighbor and mentor Igor in his cluttered side yard, practicing kicks and knife-throwing despite exhaustion from her morning shift at the laundry where she's worked since dropping out of school at age twelve to support her family. During training, Meryn confides her anger about Leesa Sawyer's kidnapping and the growing threat of the Nabbers—Siphons from the enemy nation of Astreona who steal children and drain their life force. Igor shares her cynicism about the king's indifference, and Meryn proposes teaching neighborhood children basic self-defense so they can resist or raise an alarm. Igor agrees, and Meryn commits to the plan alongside her own continued training.

After leaving Igor's, Meryn walks west to the wealthier Central Quarter to pick up her ten-year-old sister Saela from the advanced secondary school she attends on a scholarship recommendation. On the walk home, Saela is troubled by a classroom discussion about the war with Astreona and the Siphons' blood-feeding nature; some classmates treated it as exciting rather than horrifying. Meryn reassures Saela that Sturmfrost is far from the front, though she privately knows the reassurance rings hollow given the kidnappings. To lift Saela's spirits, Meryn takes her to window-shop at Diersing's Bakery in the Central Market, where Saela picks out a plum cake she dreams of having for her upcoming nameday.

Their outing is interrupted by a commotion: four Bonded—the king's elite warriors who ride massive, magical direwolves—are riding through the commoner quarter, something highly unusual. Meryn elbows through the crowd with Saela to watch. She notices the fourth rider, a tattooed, powerfully built man in his late twenties on a massive black direwolf, dragging a hogtied, bloodied commoner behind him. Meryn recognizes the captive as the man who threatened her at the fight ring the previous night.

The tattooed Bonded rider announces that the captive is a deserter from the front and proceeds to publicly execute him by gutting him with a dagger and feeding his body to his direwolf. Meryn shields Saela's eyes and ears but forces herself to watch the gruesome spectacle. She locks eyes with the Bonded man twice—first feeling a visceral fear at his kill tattoos and cold demeanor, then defiantly lifting her chin. She internalizes the scene as proof of the Bonded's cruelty and the deep injustice separating the elite from commoners, concluding that this man, not the Siphons, represents the true face of evil.