Feyre wakes beside Rhys at the filthy inn feeling safe and unexpectedly content. When Feyre asks why Rhys originally forced their bargain Under the Mountain, Rhys gives a cold, practical answer: he wanted to provoke Amarantha and Tamlin and keep Feyre alive without seeming merciful. His reminder that he would do anything for his people leaves Feyre feeling like a pawn again, and both of them avoid discussing the intimacy they shared the night before.

They spend the day flying and training in silence, with Feyre practicing more of her powers, including wind. Rhys repeatedly seems ready to tell Feyre something important, and at dusk he finally admits there is one more story he needs to share. Before he can continue, hidden archers attack from the forest below. Ash arrows, coated in poison, strike Rhys again and again, shredding his wings and overwhelming his magic. As they fall, Rhys uses his remaining strength to hurl Feyre out of range, and Feyre saves herself from the drop with a shield of hardened air.

Separated from Rhys in the dark forest, Feyre finds the bond between them eerily silent and realizes how badly he is hurt. Dangerous creatures begin roaming once night falls, but Feyre turns her fear into cold focus. She winnows from tree to tree, alters her eyes to see in the dark, and returns to the ambush site. There she pieces together what happened from Rhys's blood, the scattered ash arrows, and the tracks of the attackers. The captors laid false trails, but Feyre recognizes that Rhys still carries her scent from the night before, and that detail leads her toward the true path and a cave near the mountains.

After hearing the crack of a whip, Feyre arms herself with makeshift daggers fashioned from ash arrows and infiltrates the cave. She finds Rhys chained to the walls in ancient blue stone manacles that nullify his power, his back flayed and seven ash arrows still pinning his wings open. Seeing that he is alive but unable to respond, Feyre explodes into violence. She winnows through the cave, cuts down all the Hybern soldiers guarding him, and frees him from the chains. Rhys can barely speak, but he identifies the attackers as Hybern soldiers using chains sent by the king himself, and admits they likely traced the magic he used the day before. Because Rhys cannot winnow, Feyre forces them both to safety by carrying him through the dark to a hidden riverside cave.

In the shelter of the cave, Feyre removes the seven ash arrows from Rhys's wings one by one, cutting each shaft carefully so she does not cause more damage. To distract him from the pain, Feyre tells Rhys about the dresser she painted for herself and her sisters when she was human: flowers for Elain, flames for Nesta, and a night sky for her own drawer. As she speaks, Feyre realizes that even before she knew Velaris or Rhys, some part of her was reaching toward this life and these people. When the last arrow is out, Rhys tells Feyre that she saved him. Before passing out from pain and poison, he says that he was looking for her, too.