Saeris wakes ready to confront Kingfisher about the new bird-shaped living-ink tattoo on her chest, only to find he has opened a shadow gate and expects her to step through alone. In the war camp, she catches up to him and demands he remove the mark. Kingfisher refuses, saying it will probably fade but cannot be taken back, and suggests she cover it with ordinary ink.

Kingfisher then insists Saeris go to the healer for something to prevent pregnancy after their night together. Saeris laughs and reveals she cannot have children because she was “cleansed” at fourteen—sterilized under Madra’s long-standing Third Ward policy that marks most girls as forbidden to breed. The revelation visibly shocks Kingfisher; he abruptly shuts down, orders Saeris to find the forge and work, and storms off.

Saeris struggles to locate the forge up a steep hill and finds her tools waiting, but the quicksilver is hidden again. Using her ability to sense it, she tracks it farther up the mountain to a cave where Carrion is waiting with the box. Carrion reveals he was raised to believe in the Fae because his grandmother Gracia kept a book on Fae creatures and drilled survival knowledge into him. Carrion hands over the quicksilver, admits the box made his hand prickle, and eagerly agrees to help Saeris run more experiments.

Saeris and Carrion run multiple alchemical trials that fail, including one with antimony that ignites and produces fumes so violent they both vomit in the snow. After they recover and eat outside the forge, Kingfisher appears, bruised and bloodied from training, and questions why they are not working. Saeris challenges his habit of hiding the quicksilver; Kingfisher claims he is forcing her to improve at detecting it over distance.

Kingfisher dismisses Carrion as useless and uses a gust of shadow-smoke to knock food from Carrion’s hands, ordering him to find Ren for work. When Carrion needles him, Kingfisher sharply forbids Carrion from calling Saeris “Sunshine” and instead delivers an intense, ominous description of what Saeris is and could become, saying Carrion should call her “Majesty.” Embarrassed, Saeris tries to refocus on work, but Kingfisher ends the day’s forging tasks for her and says he needs something else from her.