Saeris drifts in a calm, star-filled darkness, reliving lifetimes until a blue-green bird’s song jolts her memory of Kingfisher and her desperate need for him. She wakes abruptly in a strange, elegant bedroom, violently nauseated, and vomits into a conveniently placed bucket.

Taladaius appears and explains her sickness as part of a “transition.” Saeris demands answers and discovers alarming physical changes: pointed Fae ears and sharp vampire canines. Taladaius states the healers believe she is something unprecedented—half-vampire, half-Fae—and confirms she is no longer human. When Saeris tries to open the curtains, the weak remaining sunlight causes intense pain, reinforcing that vampire traits have taken hold.

Pressed about what happened after Malcolm’s death, Taladaius admits he bit Saeris and placed a memory block to spare her the worst of the transition. Saeris forces Taladaius to remove it and remembers: Kingfisher carrying her through a shadow gate toward quicksilver, a tense exchange with Zareth, Kingfisher and Carrion nearly coming to blows, Lorreth keeping vigil and singing, and three days of Saeris begging Kingfisher to kill her to end the agony. Saeris also remembers biting Taladaius. Taladaius reflects that Malcolm’s control once trapped him for centuries, warns Saeris that immortality can be heaven or hell, and urges her to choose wisely.

Saeris then confronts Carrion Swift, shocked to see his true traits—Fae ears and canines—and furious he never told her he was Fae royalty. Carrion explains Kingfisher’s father, Finran, smuggled him to Zilvaren as a child to save him from Belikon, glamoring his features and leaving him books about his heritage. Carrion credits Orlena Parry, a slave who pulled him from quicksilver and escaped to the Third, for raising him under the Swift name, with the family line sheltering him for generations while he waited for quicksilver to awaken again.

The conversation turns to Carrion’s survival from Malcolm’s venom: Lorreth has already told Saeris that Carrion’s father’s bloodline enabled the blood curse that created Malcolm, meaning Malcolm could not safely drink from or enthrall living members of that bloodline. Carrion confirms it, adding weight to the revelation that Malcolm had Belikon kill Carrion’s parents because they posed a threat. Kingfisher arrives, dismisses Carrion, and reassures Saeris that her species no longer matters to him, though he anxiously asks if he made the right choice in saving her.

Saeris notices a change in Kingfisher: less quicksilver in his eyes. Kingfisher explains Te Léna and Iseabail have found a way to dampen and slowly tease the quicksilver out of him over many sessions, giving hope he won’t lose himself. Then Kingfisher reveals the immediate crisis: they are across the Darn, inside Ammontraíeth, where a vast vampire encampment waits. By vampire law, because Saeris killed King Malcolm and he named no heir, the crown passes to her—meaning in two days Saeris is to be coronated as the new queen of Sanasroth.