In the morning, Luzia steels herself to face the Inquisition, remembering Santángel’s advice about servants and planning how her refranes might help her endure. She is brought before a three-man tribunal and questioned about her family, the Ordoños, Víctor de Paredes and his wife Catalina, Teoda, and Antonio Pérez. Luzia clings to the false genealogy made for her, hides that she can read, and refuses to mention Santángel or her aunt’s true name, struggling to keep her lies consistent.

After repeated demands that she “consult her conscience” and confess, Luzia is taken to the torture chamber, stripped, and bound to a table. She prepares strategies for the potro or garrucha, and even considers unleashing the dangerous, destructive song-magic she used before if pain becomes unbearable, taking bitter comfort in choosing her own end if necessary.

Instead, the inquisitors use water torture: a cloth over her face and water poured until she cannot breathe, leaving her unable to form words or sing. Panicking and half-delirious, she relives drowning visions of her aunt Águeda/Hualit and the sea. When the questioning resumes, Luzia breaks and offers explanations they can accept, claiming trickery (lanterns, mirrors, lenses) and then confessing to witchcraft and the devil, inventing lurid details just to make the drowning stop.

Back in her cell with Teoda and Neva, Luzia is shaken, bleeding where ropes cut her wrists, ankles, and hips, and feels as if language itself has been taken from her. In the night, Teoda confirms that Luzia’s aunt Hualit is truly dead, as Teoda’s angel witnessed it, and Luzia suspects Víctor de Paredes erased her rather than any accident causing the drowning.

Later, Luzia urges Teoda to attempt escape, arguing that her milagritos could open locks and kill if needed. Teoda resists, saying her angel foretells they will all die in Toledo and that Luzia will burn on a pyre. Teoda then reveals a deeper secret: Teoda is not a child but thirty-eight years old in a child’s body, protected for years by her brother through forged records and travel. Teoda admits Donadei seduced and exploited her loneliness, likely betraying them, but Luzia insists they try anyway; Teoda agrees to ask Rudolfo to get word to her brother, even as Teoda’s visions predict doom.