Tara Burgess is buried in Glasgow in a quiet funeral marked more by thoughtful melancholy than open grief. Despite the crowd, the mood stays restrained, and many mourners feel unsettled seeing Lainie Burgess alive without her twin, as if something in the world has slipped out of balance.

Lainie greets each attendee with smiles and jokes, speaking of Tara as someone not entirely gone while admitting she feels diminished without her: her sight, hearing, and sense of self feel halved. Mme. Padva and Mr. Barris remain close beside Lainie, often mistaken for family, while Chandresh takes credit only for the white roses among the many flowers, including a single black rose of unknown origin.

At the grave stands a performer dressed as a snow-white angel with feathered wings, known in the circus as the Snow Queen. Her presence echoes a tradition the Burgess sisters began at Le Cirque des Rêves: living “statues” who hold impossibly still in elaborate costumes, blurring the line between performer and automaton. As the coffin is lowered and rain intensifies, the burial speeds up and the ceremony dissolves into mingling rather than formally ending.

Some distance away, Isobel and Tsukiko speak under Isobel’s umbrella. Isobel repeats the official explanation that Tara was hit by a train, but Tsukiko presses for what “really” happened, suggesting Tara may have stepped in front of it or that something about the circus made such an end more likely.

Tsukiko points out a disturbing pattern: since the circus began, no one seems to fall ill or be injured, and no one has died until Tara; no children have been born since the Murray twins. Calling them “fish in a bowl,” Tsukiko implies unseen watchers control outcomes, and warns that if Tara’s death was accidental, then the watchers are careless. Tsukiko predicts the situation will come apart as cracks show, while Isobel admits she is still tempering the circus but doubts it is helping. The chapter closes on the Snow Queen alone at the grave, holding the black rose as rain tears feathers from her wings into the mud.