Inside the Weaver’s cottage, Feyre realizes the stolen ring has been noticed when the spinning wheel stops and every exit seals shut. Trapped and confronted by the Weaver’s true, rotting face, Feyre panics and searches for any way out. Because she cannot open the door or window, she makes a desperate choice: she throws a candle into the woven cloth on the wall, starts a fire, and uses the distraction to climb up the chimney.

The escape nearly fails. Feyre becomes wedged in the chimney as the Weaver follows below, and terror sends her back into the same helpless panic she felt Under the Mountain. Then Feyre forces herself to stop, breathe, and think. Remembering that she is no longer powerless, she uses her strength to break loose a brick, throws it into the Weaver’s face, and frees herself. She crawls onto the roof, realizes it is made of hair, escapes into the trees, and finally finds Rhys waiting nearby.

Rhys winnows Feyre to Velaris, where Cassian and Amren see the filthy, bloodied state she is in after the escape. Feyre explains what happened, and Rhys admits the ordeal was also a test: not only to prove Feyre can track magically significant objects like the Book of Breathings, but to prove she can master her panic in danger. Angry but clearer-eyed, Feyre understands he let her struggle on purpose because she will need that control when the stakes are higher.

In the aftermath, Feyre asks Cassian to teach her to fight because she does not want survival to depend only on running or being rescued. Rhys retrieves his mother’s ring and takes Feyre back to the town house, where he pushes her toward another kind of training: using her mind. He baits her by criticizing Ianthe and, when Feyre tries to break through his mental shields, he deliberately lets her into a controlled memory.

Through Rhys’s memory, Feyre sees Ianthe in Rhys’s bedchamber a century earlier, naked and aggressively propositioning him in hopes of gaining power and producing heirs. Rhys rejects her, expels her from his court, and crushes her hand when she tries to touch him. After showing Feyre the memory, Rhys warns her never to enter a mind without controlling the exit and to expect ugly truths. The vision leaves Feyre shaken, suspicious of Ianthe’s behavior toward other males such as Lucien, and newly aware of another violation Rhys later endured under Amarantha.