Santángel avoids the post-hunt feast and instead prowls La Casilla unseen, listening to guards and servants to learn what he can about the next day’s trial. He recalls how he identified the person who put a scorpion in Luzia’s room: a guard confessed he had been sent by Gracia de Valera’s patron, and then the guard was silenced. Santángel later releases the scorpion outdoors, repeating the words he used to subdue it: You are not where you belong.

Back at La Casilla, Santángel reflects on his long captivity under the De Paredes family and the numbness that made time indistinguishable. Since the day in the widow’s courtyard, Luzia’s presence has reawakened him—hunger, desire, and a sense of being human again—leaving him torn between resentment and gratitude, and determined to endure until he is free.

Santángel goes to Luzia’s room, telling himself it is to gather intelligence. Luzia reports that both the Holy Child and the Prince of Olives believe Gracia is a fraud, and that Teoda Halcón spoke darkly of blood and plunder. Santángel infers Teoda is sensitive to objects as well as voices, and suspects her “angel” may be a Church-friendly invention. He warns that Fortún will likely repeat Teoda’s comments, which could endanger her, then expands into a blunt critique of Spain’s empire and how conquest soaks everyone’s wealth in blood.

Luzia challenges him, saying she does not want to help Philip “bleed the world,” and then confronts Santángel with Fortún’s claim that Santángel is not what he seems. Pressed, Santángel admits he is not like other men; he deflects questions about whether Víctor kept him in a dungeon and why he once seemed not to eat or sleep. Luzia, frightened, says she has been told she must face the devil in the second trial; Santángel insists it is a metaphor and promises to learn what he can.

Santángel then probes what Luzia thinks of the competitors, and bristles when it becomes clear she sympathizes with Fortún and his coercive patroness, Doña Beatriz. Feeling jealousy and destabilizing desire, Santángel abruptly ends the conversation, telling Luzia they will practice tomorrow. He leaves to gather more information that might help her “best the devil.”