At a waterside tavern in Dhomm, Raeve keeps failing to remove the iron cuff fixed to her wrist with a linchpin. Pyrok sits across from her, laughing at each failed attempt and needling her about Vruhn and Veya while Raeve broods over how much strangers keep prying into her life. Raeve admits she still wants revenge on Rekk Zharos, notices a walled-off point across the water, and learns from Pyrok that a hushling lives there.

Raeve asks for more mead because she expects to be escorted back to the Imperial Stronghold for the coming slumber and wants to be too drunk to make trouble around Kaan. While watching the cliffside hutch holes and the dragons moving through the sky, Raeve spots a Moltenmaw carter beast with a double saddle and immediately sees it as a possible way to leave Dhomm. When Pyrok returns to the booth, however, it is Kaan beside the fresh drink instead of Pyrok.

After a brief, charged exchange, Kaan takes Raeve's hand, uses the sharpening tool and rock correctly, and frees her cuff in moments. Raeve throws the iron into the Loff and feels the welcome return of Clode's sound. Freed, Raeve turns serious and demands to know whether Kaan is complicit in the abuses committed under his brother's rule: gifted children being torn from their families for conscription, null children being clipped and pushed toward exploitation, and the horrors of life in the Undercity. Raeve warns Kaan that if he accepts that system, Raeve will still find a way to kill him despite their attraction and his past help.

Kaan responds without deflecting. Kaan says he has spent many phases securing The Burn and building an armada strong enough to challenge his brothers, Cadok and Tyroth, who were already entrenched in power when Kaan found reason to seek the bronze. Kaan explains that assassination would be dishonorable in his culture and would not solve the problem of his brothers' united strength; an open war, however, would devastate the land and kill innocents, especially the very young conscripts Raeve is trying to defend. Raeve stops Kaan when the picture of that cost becomes unbearable.

Kaan notes that Raeve is not going to kill him and then gently asks Raeve to share a meal. Raeve refuses because she does not trust what is growing between them. Raeve then tries to return Kaan's málmr, saying it represents things Raeve cannot give, but Kaan says it was not lent in the first place. Unable to answer what Kaan truly wants and unwilling to confront the meaning of the gesture, Raeve leaves the pendant on the table, shoulders her satchel, and walks away.