Emily says the worst part of her captivity is the king's reception of visitors. Supplicants from the faerie court arrive with gifts and frantic congratulations, and some of those gifts are the heads of the king's enemies, especially people blamed for his imprisonment in the tree or for supporting the former queen. The heads do not bleed, but they melt, and that grotesque detail makes the spectacle even harder for Emily to endure.

Whenever such trophies are presented, the king performs outrage at the cruelty of the act. His courtiers accept this display with practiced humility, even while seeming pleased with themselves, because Emily notices that his supposed displeasure is actually rewarded. The severed heads become decorative objects in the palace, and the lords or ladies who brought them are invited to dine with the king and given favors such as furs, minstrels, or small enchantments. When Emily points out that this encourages brutality, the king answers that forgiveness is a rare virtue, revealing how he disguises vengeance as mercy.

The king also repeatedly speaks about the punishments he might inflict on his deposed former wife if he were less magnanimous. He insists that he only wants her brought before him so he can forgive her publicly and grant her a little land, but Emily has learned to fear such language and dreads the news of the queen's fate. At last word comes that the former queen has been torn apart by the king's wolves after they somehow escaped. The king weeps for an hour, yet at the next banquet he seats the lady who gifted him those wolves at his right hand, openly rewarding the queen's killer and confirming for Emily the court's hypocrisy and the king's complicity.