An unexpected "reunion" cuts right to Essex's heart. Pax weighs dark options. Draconas consider their place in a political nightmare. The Humans scramble, anticipating an opportunity. Those with power scheme to hang on to it at any cost. Mermaids still have no rights. And more people will be dead by morning.

Phaedra and Pax sit down with Phinneas and his son, Devaki. This is the first time they’re met. They have some stilted small talk as Phinneas asks about how long she’s known.

She says she’s there to get him to help—he’s connected, so he can perhaps protect them from the queen’s influence. She also believes the Kiros Three, who she met earlier, as trying to pin the recent problems on him. He laughs and doesn’t think he has as much influence as she thinks. If he was, he wouldn’t have stayed estranged from her.

Phaedra says this is the end of the Elves as a political force and the humans are trying to maneuver to take over. Phinneas doesn’t believe the queen would kill her son but Phaedra says he must have known of something very damaging.

Phinneas says he knows someone that can help and leaves. Devaki shows Phaedra a magical painting that, when she touches it, fills her with the feelings and memories Phinneas has of her—a sort of magical scrapbook. Phaedra is filled with her own emotions, long repressed.

Phinneas comes back, with Ividor, the queen’s chief magician. Phaedra assumes he’s part of the plot and pulls her gun but Phinneas assures her he’s there to help. He shows her a Taka—the fuzzy animals long thought extinct. He discovered that people are experimenting on them in the bowels of the castle, although he doesn’t know what the goal is.

Phaedra makes a plan and recruits all the others to help. Before leaving, Phaedra bonds a little with her half-brother, Devaki, saying thank you for showing her the magical memoriy repository. They split up.

Pax flies with Phaedra to the castle. There’s a party going on, which distracts the inhabitants from noticing their approach. They break in.

Phaedra recalls how she and Pax met. He was the only Black Cloak to agree to work with her, but he was excited about it because he respected her work.

They continue to go down in the lower areas of the castle. Hadrian, her brother, finds them. He threatens them but doesn’t seem to consider that they’re armed. They tie him up a gunpoint. They continue down and find a giant room filled with Taka in glass cages.