After Starfall, Feyre and Rhysand carry new, unspoken tension into the next day. Feyre remembers dancing with Rhys until dawn and waiting in vain for him to come to her room afterward. At lunch, the Inner Circle is subdued as Amren continues working on the Book and Azriel departs to gather intelligence, while Feyre wrestles with guilt over wanting Rhys so soon after leaving Tamlin.

Mor winnows Feyre, Rhys, and Cassian to an Illyrian war-camp in the northern mountains. Feyre is struck by the camp’s brutality and lovelessness and by the knowledge that Rhys, Azriel, and Cassian were raised there. When Devlon, the camp-lord, greets them with hostility, Rhys orders him to let the girls train before doing chores and to clear out his mother’s old house for their stay. After Devlon insults Feyre, Rhys publicly claims Feyre as his and threatens death if anyone touches her, then leaves with Feyre while Cassian and Mor remain behind.

During the flight to a secluded training ground, Feyre asks about the camp and learns more about Illyrian customs. Rhys explains that he outlawed wing-clipping but cannot fully stop it in the mountain camps, and that Cassian has spent a century trying to build a female fighting force despite fierce resistance. Rhys also explains the Blood Rite, the brutal trial in which he, Cassian, and Azriel survived by finding one another and fighting through the mountains together.

Once they land, Rhys turns training into a bargain: if Feyre shows him her magic, he will answer questions about Tamlin. Feyre summons water into shapes while Rhys reveals that he once befriended Tamlin, taught him Illyrian fighting techniques, and believed Tamlin was better than his cruel family. Rhys then tells Feyre the truth: Tamlin revealed where Rhys’s mother and sister would be traveling, and Tamlin, his father, and his brothers went into the Illyrian wilderness and slaughtered them. In revenge, Rhys and his father attacked the Spring Court manor; Rhys killed Tamlin’s brothers, Rhys’s father killed Tamlin’s mother despite promising not to, and Rhys stopped his father from murdering Tamlin. Tamlin then killed Rhys’s father, and in that moment both Rhys and Tamlin inherited their courts as High Lords.

The revelation devastates Feyre, especially because Tamlin never told her the truth. Her grief and fury trigger successive bursts of ice, fire, darkness, water, and wind, and she realizes her stolen powers are not separate gifts but forces she can combine into something entirely her own. When Feyre asks why Rhys never told her sooner, Rhys says he did not want to manipulate her against Tamlin. Seeing him clearly at last as both dangerous and protective, Feyre goes to Rhys, embraces him, and says that she wants to paint him, signaling the return of a part of herself she had lost.