After speaking with Aud and Thora, Emily goes looking for Wendell and asks him how to force the changeling to reveal his true name. Wendell is unhelpful and would rather stop meddling, but the gifts Emily has chosen for him soften the evening: the mirrors delight him, and the silver needles stir memories of his father and his lost faerie home. When Emily sees the mirrors briefly reflect a green world and notices Wendell’s grief for his kingdom, she realizes the changeling might be broken by a token of home. She searches the faerie cloak and draws out a shifting doll that she believes belongs to the changeling’s world.

Emily and Wendell go to Mord and Aslaug’s house, where Aslaug sits in a dazed state in a freezing room and Mord is absent. Emily carries a pot of embers upstairs and confronts the changeling, who attacks with frightening illusions of wolves and snow. Wendell restrains him and speaks to him in Faie, while Emily produces the doll and threatens to burn it unless he gives his true name. The changeling cannot bear the sight of the token being placed in the fire and finally screams that his name is Aðlinduri. Emily returns the damaged doll at once, and she and Wendell take the changeling away to find the door to his home.

Riding into the mountains, Emily and Wendell follow Aðlinduri’s directions until they reach a willow grove that is plainly a faerie threshold. There they meet Aðlinduri’s mother, a worn and bitter faerie woman who first attacks them with scorn and then recognizes Wendell’s rank. From her words, and from Emily’s deductions, they learn that she and her people are cursed because they supported a deposed winter king, now trapped in a tree. She sent Aðlinduri away to protect him because he is one of that king’s bastard children, and the victorious queen kills such rivals. The woman also reveals a larger horror: the reigning queen and her children freely prey upon mortals, unlike the old king, who enforced fair dealing with humans.

The faerie woman sends back the real Ari, the human child taken years before, and Emily and Wendell carry him to Mord and Aslaug’s house. Ari is weak and underfed but otherwise alive. Aslaug breaks down as soon as she sees him, Ari wakes crying, and Mord, stunned and half convinced it must be another trick, can barely comprehend his son’s return. Wendell clears away the lingering frost and enchantment that the changeling left behind, while Emily awkwardly accepts Mord’s silent gratitude before she and Wendell withdraw.

Back at the cottage, Wendell enchants the mirrors so they show a living green forest, and Emily revels in what the night has taught her about faerie politics and changeling lore. When she tells Wendell he can go celebrate with the villagers, he instead says he prefers her company to anyone else’s. He then abruptly confesses that he loves her, offers his true name as proof, and proposes marriage. Emily is shaken, tries to think through the implications, and gives him only a tentative kiss rather than an answer. When she objects that he would eventually leave her behind if he regained his kingdom, Wendell says he expects her to come with him and rule beside him, leaving Emily overwhelmed and undecided.