The chapter opens with King Edric anticipating that a seamstress—Adena—will enter the final Trial, a move he orchestrates to hurt Paedyn Gray. He admits Adena is a pawn taken from the castle and thrown into the Pit to punish Paedyn for “killing the woman he loves,” Queen Iris.

From his glass viewing box, Edric watches Paedyn’s visible distress and takes pleasure in her helplessness. He considers it fortunate the Trials did not kill Paedyn because he wants that power for himself, underscoring his personal vendetta.

Edric fixates on a rose atop Iris’s jewelry box as the portent of his own downfall. His hatred began when he believed an Ordinary was born of him. He later recognizes that he and Paedyn share no blood or values and that Paedyn is the daughter of Queen Iris and a Fatal, making her a princess by birth but still an Ordinary without power.

In Edric’s final moments, he spills blood and spews hatred at Paedyn, determined to deny her knowledge of her lineage. He wants her to die ignorant of her royal blood and of the extent to which she has haunted him for eighteen years.

Edric carves a circle into Paedyn’s chest, mirroring what Iris used to draw on him, but he twists the symbol into punishment and proclamation. He sees the wound as inscribing the truth of Paedyn’s birth, his love for Iris, and the hatred born from that loss, marking Paedyn to carry Iris’s touch in pain.

The chapter closes by noting that Edric himself is buried by secrets and betrayal. He dies without learning the full truth about those he loved or how they loved each other, leaving his last acts steeped in ignorance and vengeance.