Wendell sleeps through most of the previous day, weak and shivering, while Emily keeps vigil and tries to convince herself not to hope for a sudden cure. She gives him one of Poe’s sulphur-scented cakes; Wendell eats it and immediately drops back into sleep, seeming slightly more solid than before.

Emily forces herself to work, interviewing villagers while Ariadne and Rose search the Grünesauge again, but her attention keeps slipping back to Wendell’s condition. At home, she has Shadow lie beside Wendell for warmth, repairs the salt circle disturbed by the severed foot under her bed, and realizes she has neglected her mapbook. Restless and desperate to escape the cottage, Emily abruptly leaves into the evening.

At the lake, Emily hears a distant, ragged voice screaming “Dani!” and recognizes Professor Eichorn’s cries. She finds fresh blue ribbons tied as trail markers and follows the sound cautiously until she spots a slight, cloaked figure descending the rocks. Believing it may be Professor de Grey, Emily calls out and mentions Cambridge and the nexus; the figure gives no answer and suddenly steps off a bluff. Emily glimpses a lined face and green hair as the figure falls and vanishes, leaving Emily unsure whether she witnessed de Grey or a fae echo.

Fog rolls in and the landscape begins to shift: the steps disappear, the bluff becomes a ridge, and easy paths seem designed to lure her toward doors. Emily chooses the most difficult route, injures her ankle in a fall, and resists a seductive opening in the fog that briefly reveals strange, dark mountains and then an overgrown rose garden. She climbs a seemingly impossible cliff path that turns easier as she goes, only to reach an unfamiliar terrain where the way she came is erased again.

As Emily waits, Wendell’s voice calls to her through the fog; she doubts it, fearing another trick, until his swearing and complaints prove it is real. Wendell finds her with a small summoned light and explains she has wandered into overlapping borderlands rather than fully into Faerie, drifting more than a mile from the village. Seeing Emily’s injured ankle, Wendell proposes camping; he enchants Emily’s cloak into a tent and produces blankets from its folds.

Inside the tent, Emily decides to stop avoiding the “complicated” state of their relationship: she admits she will always fear marrying Wendell and becoming queen of a nightmare land, but wants to settle what she can between them. Emily kisses Wendell, and he returns it, and the night becomes an intimate turning point as they choose closeness despite the larger, unresolved stakes awaiting them.