Raeve enters Sereme’s purple office already hostile, mocking her treatment of Ruse and openly provoking her. The sight of the runed vial on Sereme’s necklace immediately reminds Raeve of the blood-bind that controls her, and their exchange quickly turns into a fight over money, obedience, and the false mercy Sereme claims to have offered when she bound Raeve to the Fíur du Ath. Sereme says she summoned Raeve to confirm she received a recent message.

Sereme then reveals the real reason for the summons: Rekk Zharos’s Moonplume is in the city, and the Crown has hired him to hunt the rebellion. Raeve instantly offers to kill him, eager to remove a brutal threat, but Sereme refuses. Instead, Sereme orders Raeve to lie low, take no jobs, answer no cries for help, and leave home only for food or if summoned. Raeve objects that Rekk will kill someone if left alone, and she realizes Sereme is willing to let a less valuable member become bait.

The argument widens into strategy and principle. Raeve says saving intercepted elemental conscripts is only a temporary fix while King Cadok Vaegor still rules, and she accuses the Ath of caring less about nulls and the starving Undercity than about politically useful elementals. Sereme admits she docked Raeve’s reserves to cover the recent null rescue and claims the operation endangered the cause. When Raeve keeps pushing, Sereme uses the blood-bind vial to inflict pain, forcing Raeve to feel exactly how much power Sereme holds while insisting that only the Elding can decide when the rebellion moves against the king.

Raeve argues that killing King Cadok would protect the cause and suggests Queen Dothea should rule instead, but Sereme counters that the Tri-Council would never allow it and mentions the absent Prince Turun. Sereme then bluntly explains why Raeve is protected: Raeve’s affinity with Clode, skill with a blade, and frightening violence make her an essential weapon. Raeve bitterly reframes their history, saying Sereme did not save her so much as recognize a broken person, promise revenge, and chain that brokenness to the rebellion through blood.

Sereme insists Raeve chose life and benefited from the bind’s healing, but Raeve thinks only of Fallon, the dead girl whose dreams of freedom once gave her a reason to endure. The memory nearly overwhelms Raeve, and she uses her familiar inner ritual of burying painful thoughts beneath ice to regain control. Coming back to herself, Raeve tells Sereme that her life has never been on her own terms and that she will not call this existence living. She veils herself, pointedly restores Sereme’s scattered quills, rejects Sereme’s demand to stay, and slams the door behind her.