Given a day to rest after Álvaro’s death, Luzia hems one of Hualit’s old velvet gowns and broods over her aunt’s shifting tenderness versus past exploitation. Clean and dressed, she worries Santángel might discover his letters were disturbed, but when he arrives he shows no suspicion and instead notes her ill-fitting dress and produces a ripe pomegranate from his own tree.

Santángel sets out cloth and knife, opens the fruit, and tells Luzia to eat. Luzia resists, unsettled by the blood-red seeds and her guilt over killing Álvaro, and presses Santángel about why Don Víctor still intends for her to compete. Santángel insists Álvaro was “no great loss” and bluntly reminds Luzia that becoming the king’s champion would entail responsibility for far greater deaths, sharpening Luzia’s anger and confusion about what her magic did during the incident.

Asked to explain, Luzia describes singing her usual miracle but feeling the melody twist as she desperately wanted to be anywhere else. Santángel interprets this as Luzia’s magic straining to become larger—trying to offer escape by moving her from one place to another—and he cites old stories of such feats requiring a rare talisman-stone that could crack under the attempt.

He warns that pushing this “impossible” magic often ends in disaster—buried alive, drowned, or torn apart—and notes Luzia was fortunate to have suffered only an injured tongue, while Álvaro paid the price. Luzia admits she has thought “better him than you,” then confronts her own dangerous thrill at being frightening and the peril of being feared by powerful men.

Santángel reframes the pomegranate as a symbol claimed by many faiths and rulers but ultimately belonging only to the person who holds it, making the same point about Luzia’s future: she can enter the torneo or walk away. Luzia decides she will not flee with Hualit and will keep going, determined to win and build a new life. She asks Santángel for three things—information about the torneo trials, permission to eat the pomegranate, and privacy while she does—so Santángel turns his back again.