In this chap­ter, Nes­ryn finds her­self trapped by a mys­te­ri­ous spi­der-like crea­ture who reveals the shock­ing truth about Maeve, the sup­posed Queen of the Fae. The spi­der claims Maeve is actu­al­ly the Queen of the Valg, a dark and pow­er­ful race from anoth­er world. Nes­ryn, des­per­ate to buy time as her com­pan­ion Falkan attempts to free her, asks the spi­der to tell her the sto­ry of Maeve’s ori­gins. The spi­der agrees, fram­ing it as a “gift” for Nesryn’s bold­ness, and begins a tale of decep­tion and con­quest.

The spi­der recounts how Maeve orig­i­nat­ed from a dark, cold world ruled by three Valg kings—Orcus, Erawan, and anoth­er unnamed broth­er. Maeve, a queen of extra­or­di­nary pow­er, mar­ried Orcus but grew rest­less. Using her abil­i­ties, she dis­cov­ered a way to trav­el between worlds, even­tu­al­ly arriv­ing in the Fae realm. She manip­u­lat­ed the minds of the Fae rulers, Mab and Mora, mak­ing them believe she was their long-lost sis­ter. Over time, she erased all mem­o­ry of her true iden­ti­ty, embed­ding her­self as a per­ma­nent fix­ture in Fae his­to­ry.

When the Valg kings pur­sued Maeve across worlds, she dis­guised her­self as a Fae queen, using her knowl­edge of their strate­gies to wage war against them. She stole their mag­i­cal keys, which allowed trav­el between worlds, and ban­ished two of the kings, includ­ing Orcus. How­ev­er, the third king, Erawan, escaped her grasp when the fire-king Bran­non inter­vened, tak­ing the keys with­out ful­ly real­iz­ing Maeve’s true nature. The spi­der hints that Maeve’s dark pow­er allowed her to manip­u­late even Brannon’s per­cep­tions.

The chap­ter ends with Nes­ryn piec­ing togeth­er the impli­ca­tions: Maeve is not Fae but a Valg queen who has deceived an entire civ­i­liza­tion for cen­turies. The spider’s tale under­scores Maeve’s cun­ning and the depth of her decep­tion, leav­ing Nesryn—and the reader—to grap­ple with the rev­e­la­tion that one of the most pow­er­ful fig­ures in their world is a hid­den ene­my. Mean­while, Falkan’s slow progress in free­ing Nes­ryn adds ten­sion, as time runs out for her escape.