By the end of Chapter Six, the struggle over Barrenwood has begun to take shape, but the twins still see only fragments of it. Chapter Seven enters a room where some of the city’s most powerful families are trying to decide what to do. Fereshteh Imbetta arrives at their rare gathering in place of her ailing father, determined to prove that she can lead her house through a changing city.

Fereshteh understands why the old families feel threatened. Gaventas is acquiring property and influence faster than they can respond. Yet she also sees that the houses have spent too long protecting their traditions while Barrenwood has grown beyond them. Her father’s instructions to uphold the Imbetta name carry real weight for her, even as his doubts about her readiness make the coming transfer of power painful.

The meeting exposes the limits of any alliance. Anuk Persembe links the killings near Ellegiac Hills, the uprising in Mortestrate, and Gaventas’s expansion, though he cannot prove who is behind the violence. Michael Ellington has sold Gaventas his family’s waterfront holdings and entered a partnership on a new energy factory. Pressed by the others, he agrees to suspend further business for the year and contribute to the guard, but refuses to treat Gaventas as an enemy. The houses leave with money for their defense and no shared understanding of what they face.

Then the conversation turns to a power Fereshteh did not know was available to them. Anuk asks Minasha Darkglass for the kind of help House Revan has given in past conflicts. Minasha says she can contact the gods, revealing that her father entrusted this knowledge to her rather than to Gerald, the house’s new duke. She agrees to try, on one condition: Fereshteh must accompany her.

Editorial Note:
Chapter Seven brings the political conflict into focus through Fereshteh. The threat from Gaventas is concrete in the waterfront sale and the proposed energy factory, while the suspected link to Mortestrate remains an accusation rather than a settled fact. Watch the tensions inside the houses as closely as the conflict between them: Fereshteh’s claim to leadership, Ellington’s willingness to profit from Gaventas, and the divide between Gerald’s title and Minasha’s knowledge. Minasha’s final request draws Fereshteh toward the older forces that have been gathering at the edges of the novel.