Feyre wakes after several hours of sleep and leaves the townhouse with Rhysand. Outside, she sees Velaris for the first time: a thriving, beautiful city untouched by Amarantha, full of calm people, sunlight, art, and the sea. The sight overwhelms her, and her awe quickly turns to bitterness as she demands to know how Rhys kept this place safe while the rest of Prythian suffered. Rhys says Velaris survived because it was hidden by ancient wards and secrecy, not because he abandoned the world lightly, but he refuses to explain more yet.

Rhys takes Feyre through Velaris’s markets and neighborhoods, showing her the Palace of Thread and Jewels, the Palace of Bone and Salt, and the artists’ quarter called the Rainbow. Feyre notices that the city’s people greet Rhys warmly instead of fearing him, and that no one seems especially interested in her. But the artists’ quarter hits her hardest, because it reminds her of the creative self she has lost. Her grief and rage rise so sharply that she wants to lash out at the city and its innocence, until Rhys quietly reminds her that his people are blameless.

As they walk back uphill, Rhys tells Feyre that his Inner Circle will dine with them that night at the House of Wind and explains their hierarchy: Amren is his terrifying Second, Mor his Third, and Cassian and Azriel are his Illyrian warriors. When Feyre’s thoughts drift toward death as a kind of release, Rhys physically stops her and angrily tells her never to think that way. In that moment Feyre accidentally slips past Rhys’s mental shield and briefly sees herself through his eyes, realizing how starved and broken she looks. Rhys then deduces that she may have inherited some of his mental gifts and warns her about daemati, rare people who can enter minds, steal information, and enslave others unless she keeps strong mental shields in place.

Back at the townhouse that night, Feyre resists going to dinner because the House of Wind can only be reached by flight or a brutal climb. Rhys insists on flying her, but he also makes the larger offer clear: meeting his Inner Circle and helping him against Hybern are both choices she is free to refuse. Feyre finally agrees, and during the flight to the mountain house, the view of Velaris at night and the sensation of flying ease some of the tightness in her chest. Rhys shares a memory of sneaking out to fly as a boy and of his Illyrian mother joining him, revealing a gentler part of his past.

On the balcony of the House of Wind, high above the city, Rhys proposes that they each speak one honest thought. Rhys admits that after fifty years Under the Mountain he never expected to see Velaris again, wishes he had been the one to kill Amarantha, and fears war may soon take nights like this away. Feyre, in turn, confesses a painful realization about Tamlin: she may have loved the first person who offered her kindness and safety when she was lonely and desperate, and that kind of love may have suited who she was before but not who she has become now. Their exchange is cut short when Cassian and Azriel appear in the doorway, ready to begin the dinner.