At Griffin Antiquities, Bryce monitors the door feed and lets a filthy, exhausted Danika inside. The friends trade barbs as Danika stashes her famed heirloom sword in the supply closet and asks to use the archives’ shower. Bryce warns that Jesiba hates Danika using the gallery as a locker, while the narrative underscores Jesiba’s dangerous power, the Vanir’s lethality, and the building’s heavy security, bolstered by a generator after a recent firstlight outage.

Amid jokes about unwashed dance gear and fresh tattoos, Danika explains the grime came from breaking up a satyr–nightstalker fight. Bryce grants her the shower and notes Danika’s stiff tension, the sword hidden away, and the unusual need to clean up, deducing a meeting with the City Heads. Background surfaces: Danika’s fraught relationship with her mother, Sabine; the Prime grandfather; and the family sword that chose Danika, stoking rivalry.

Danika confirms higher stakes: Philip Briggs, a human rebel bomb-maker previously caught by Danika and the Pack of Devils with plans to target the White Raven, will be released due to a bureaucratic technicality. She vows to push back at the meeting, even if it means confronting Archangel Micah Domitus. The chapter sketches Crescent City’s political order—six Heads for the lower Houses, humans without representation, and Micah’s overarching authority.

Danika descends to the archives, greeting the chimera Syrinx and sparring verbally with Lehabah, the fire sprite who guards the collection. The moment underscores the archives’ importance and the competing priorities of duty and friendship within the gallery.

As Bryce considers the implications of Briggs’s release and Danika’s impending confrontation, Jesiba calls. Her warning is unambiguous: tell Danika to stop using the supply closet or face being turned into a lizard, reasserting Jesiba’s control and the precarious balance Bryce maintains.