Iris leaves the tram early and visits Attie at her family’s town house, where she briefly meets the warm, curious Attwood household before Attie takes her downstairs. In the basement, Attie reveals the violin she has been secretly hiding since stringed instruments were outlawed. The reveal matters because both women have dreamed the same song, "Alzane’s Lullaby," and Attie now suspects the ban was not only political but practical: stringed music may be able to lull Dacre to sleep.

As they compare their dreams, Attie builds the idea further. If Enva’s harp once subdued Dacre, then a violin or another stringed instrument might do the same, which means Dacre could potentially be rendered vulnerable and killed. Attie says she can play the melody, but she needs the full and correct composition, so she plans to consult a former music professor. Before they leave, Iris sees Tobias Bexley waiting outside to drive Attie’s siblings to school and Attie to work, a small personal shift amid the larger wartime tension.

Later, Tobias drives Iris and Attie to the soldiers’ encampment outside Oath. Marisol explains that Iris’s article has brought useful civilian support to the barred camp, including food, supplies, and medical aid. Iris then meets Brigadier Keegan privately and shows her Roman’s drawing of the ley-line streets and suspected under-realm doorways. Keegan cannot send forces into Oath because of the chancellor’s restrictions and the Graveyard’s hostility, but she offers a crucial insight: buildings standing over ley lines may resist Dacre’s bombs, making them possible shelters if the city is attacked.

That insight creates a new problem. The same houses that may protect civilians from bombardment may also sit over dangerous thresholds into the realm below, and Keegan urges Iris to learn more about the keys that alter those doorways and to gather more information from Roman. As Iris walks back with Attie and Tobias, she feels a vibration in the ground and realizes Dacre’s forces are nearly beneath Oath, making the threat immediate rather than theoretical.

Meanwhile, Roman spends a grim day in the Kitt estate, effectively trapped while Dacre and his officers occupy the house. Dacre takes over the transformed parlor, seizes Roman’s typewriter, and destroys pages from the family’s myth books that reveal truths he dislikes. The chancellor arrives secretly for a meeting, and Roman is pushed aside with his mother and nan, unable to reclaim control of either the house or his writing.

At day’s end, Roman returns to his room and finds what seems impossible: one of Iris’s old typed letters lying on his floor even though the typewriter is no longer with him. As he recognizes it as a letter he once carried in the trenches, Lieutenant Shane steps out of the lavatory holding a stack of the hidden correspondence. Shane throws the letters down and directly accuses Roman of being the mole, placing Roman in immediate danger.