Leaving the throne room after her marriage to King Kitt, Paedyn walks with Kitt in strained silence toward her chambers, both acknowledging their union is for Ilya and for Kai’s protection. When Kitt coughs up blood, he brusquely dismisses her concern and departs, leaving Paedyn unsettled and alone.

Inside, Paedyn changes into a simpler white dress for a visit to Loot and arms herself with her dagger. She opens Queen Iris’s jewelry box to choose an accessory but is disturbed by the opulence. In a hidden drawer she finds a dried rose and a secret note arranging a midnight garden tryst signed with enduring affection, followed by a stack of similar cryptic rendezvous notes. A photograph of Queen Iris—whose features mirror Paedyn’s, down to blue eyes and freckled nose—shocks Paedyn with a sense of recognition.

Calum enters carrying Paedyn’s pink rose bouquet and freezes at the sight of the letters. The roses jolt Paedyn’s memory of Calum’s comment about “roses from my garden” and Ellie’s mention of the palace’s old private rose garden, aligning with the clandestine notes. A cascade of clues—handwriting on Resistance messages from the Purging Trials, Calum’s omnipresent timing, and King Eloy’s past admission that a “friend” told him of Resistance plans—coalesces in Paedyn’s mind.

Paedyn methodically lays out the evidence: the identical looping handwriting in the books Calum gifted her and in the secret notes, the historic rose garden tied to the trysts, and Calum’s position that would explain the king’s constant advantage. She deduces Calum was King Eloy’s Mind Reader and simultaneously Queen Iris’s lover.

Recalling Calum’s earlier statement that “that is not the only royal you have killed,” Paedyn realizes he was not referring to Alice, the woman she believed to be her mother, but to Queen Iris, who died giving birth to Paedyn. Confronting him with the photograph, Paedyn asks whether she looks like her mother. Calum finally meets her gaze, sifting through her thoughts, and hints at the remaining likeness she carries.

In the charged silence, Paedyn pushes the conclusion to the forefront of her mind. Calum reads it, and with a shared, shadowed smile between them, Paedyn acknowledges the truth: Calum is her father.