Nesta spends her library shift sore, hungry, and humiliated by how weak training has left her. While struggling to shelve books by hand, she is interrupted by Gwyn, who is shocked that Nesta is not using magic. Gwyn reveals that she accidentally gave the scholar-priestess Merrill volume eight of The Great War instead of volume seven, and she is panicking because Merrill is cruel, intolerant of mistakes, and someone Gwyn desperately does not want to fail. As they talk, Gwyn also explains that the priestesses live in the library for safety and healing, rarely leaving the mountain, and that music and worship are central parts of their lives.

After Gwyn leaves, Nesta decides to help her. She quietly asks the House for volume seven of The Great War, and the sentient House drops the book onto her cart. Nesta then asks another priestess for directions to Merrill’s office and makes the painful climb upward, choosing to intervene even though she has nothing to gain from it.

In Merrill’s office, Nesta finds a brilliant but abrasive scholar who is beautiful, young-looking, and immediately hostile. Merrill confirms Gwyn has not yet returned, so Nesta improvises a distraction by pretending she has been sent to the wrong office for someone named Roslin. While Merrill fumes over the mistake, Nesta covertly swaps volume seven onto Merrill’s shelf and takes volume eight from it, covering Gwyn’s error before Merrill notices.

Nesta later finds Gwyn searching the reading area and singing to herself as she checks stacks of books. She gives Gwyn volume eight and explains that she corrected the shelving mistake, earning Gwyn’s intense gratitude. In response to Nesta’s questions, Gwyn explains that Merrill once researched theories about multiple overlapping worlds and now studies the vanished Valkyries, an elite order of female warriors destroyed in the war five hundred years earlier. Their history survives only in fragments, and Merrill is trying to assemble it into a single record.

Nesta returns to her room exhausted but privately satisfied by what she has done. The House has prepared food and a hot bath for her, and she lets herself rest rather than attempt the stairs again. For the first time in a while, she sleeps deeply without nightmares, though in her half-sleep she thinks someone familiar opens her door and leaves behind a beckoning scent before disappearing.