Emily finally learns the date and is relieved to recover a firm sense of time after feeling lost in Faerie. When two outside dressmakers arrive to work on her wedding clothes, she tries to exploit the fact that they are not palace servants by demanding to be taken into the forest to hunt a hare for a grisly wedding veil. The tailor indirectly warns her that the king’s enchantments bind and guard her too tightly for such an escape, showing Emily that brute attempts to leave the palace will keep failing.

As the fitting continues, Emily notices the tailor’s unusually fine silver needle and the strange behavior of the silent assistant. She dismisses most of her attendants, and the tailor magically puts the last servant to sleep rather than harming her. Emily then realizes the ugly tailor is Wendell Bambleby in the physical form of one of the oíche sidhe, while the mute woman is Shadow under glamour. Wendell explains that glamour alone was too risky in the king’s enchantment-heavy palace, and that he has already tried and failed to rescue Emily by force, killing several of the king’s nobles in the process.

Wendell tells Emily that Aud and the whole village have been helping plan her rescue because she saved their children and cast out the changeling threat. Emily is shaken to learn that the villagers care enough to risk themselves for her, especially because she knows her motives were never purely selfless. Wendell describes the rescue plan: during tomorrow’s gift-giving ceremony, when the king briefly opens his realm to mortal visitors, the villagers will present a poisoned wedding gift that will incapacitate the king. In the confusion, Emily and Wendell will flee.

Wendell adds that the old queen, whom he tracked down in the mountains with her firstborn son, will attend in disguise. Her supposed death was faked by allies at court, and once the king is weakened, she and sympathetic nobles intend to kill him. Wendell also reveals that he has known since the expedition to the white tree that Emily was enchanted, but believed she would have been unable to admit it; instead, he tried to hint at the truth in her journal. Emily asks whether the king could be imprisoned rather than killed, but Wendell says the king is too old and powerful to be safely contained, especially within his own realm.

Emily remains troubled that killing the king may restore the old queen’s dangerous court and its predations on mortals, but Wendell dismisses this concern beside the immediate threat of endless winter in Hrafnsvik. He gives her his journal, marked at entries about the villagers’ rescue planning, as proof of their loyalty and as a thoughtful gesture meant for her scholarly habits. Before leaving, he jokes with Emily about his transformed appearance and restores the sleeping servant to wakefulness.

After Wendell turns to go, Emily asks the date and learns she has misjudged the passage of time by a month rather than by years. She tries awkwardly to thank him for everything he has done, but Wendell deflects the sentiment and departs to finish her dress. Left behind, Emily realizes with uncomfortable clarity that she has missed him and does not want him to leave, a recognition that marks an emotional shift in her feelings toward him.