Because Tamlin is away the next day, Lucien offers to take Feyre to inspect the nearby village’s rebuilding. Before they leave, Feyre confronts Lucien about lying over the naga attack, and the exchange shows both her sharpened strength and the fear and confinement that now shape her life at the manor. On the ride out, Feyre rejects Lucien’s pity and presses him for honesty.

Lucien explains that Tamlin ordered him to keep quiet and insists that the Spring Court needs hierarchy and obedience while it rebuilds. Feyre argues that Tamlin now treats her like a prisoner, while Lucien says Tamlin’s protectiveness comes from terror after nearly losing her Under the Mountain. He also tells Feyre about the coming Tithe, a biannual payment owed by the court’s people, and makes clear that as Tamlin’s wife she will be expected to sit beside him while he judges those who cannot pay.

Feyre is disgusted by the brutality of the custom and frustrated that both Lucien and Ianthe defend the same rigid expectations. Lucien asks her to give Tamlin more time, warning that Tamlin will not bend where her safety is concerned. When Feyre accuses him of withholding things and refusing to choose her side, Lucien reveals his own old wound: he was forced to watch the woman he loved be murdered and could not save her, while Tamlin heard Feyre’s neck break and then miraculously got her back. The confession makes Feyre understand more clearly why Tamlin clings so tightly.

When they reach the village, everyone stops to stare at Feyre and whispers the name “Feyre Cursebreaker.” Lucien repeatedly offers help, but each villager politely refuses and says their debt is already paid. On the ride home, Lucien admits he brought Feyre so she would see that her presence is not wanted as help but felt as a reminder of trauma, then reveals that many ordinary faeries were imprisoned in underground camps beneath the Mountain for fifty years, where starvation, madness, and violence took hold. Horrified and emptied by what she learns, Feyre lets the sense of her long, unchanging future swallow her.