She reveals to him that she is insane: in both past and present, she is missing large portions of her memory, and she hallucinates "the Body", the beautiful woman she saw in the Locked Tomb as a child.

In the past, arriving at Canaan House, Teacher informs the heirs and cavaliers that there is a beast lying in the heart of the facility called “the Sleeper.” Except for Harrow and Ianthe, every character who died in the events of Gideon the Ninth survives in this account and vice versa.

The survivors are a vicious and embittered Mercymorn, a flippant Augustine and a stoic, relentless Ortus, who attempts to kill Harrow multiple times, deeming her a threat.

She in fact works for "Blood of Eden," a terrorist organization seeking to foil the Empire's colonialist ambitions, led by the mysterious Commander Wake.

Surprised by Gideon Nav's presence, Mercymorn and Augustine reveal a long-anticipated plan known as dios apate: using semen stolen from John, Wake artificially inseminated herself.

The child was intended as a bomb to breach the Locked Tomb, releasing its prisoner: Alecto, John's cavalier, whose "perfect lyctorhood" gave him limitless power while preserving her life.

Mercymorn destroys John's body, but he effortlessly returns and kills her, shedding his affable persona and demanding fealty from all Lyctors but the non-present Harrow.

"[3] The Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist also gave the book positive reviews,[4][5][6] as did authors Alix E. Harrow, Django Wexler, Kiersten White, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

"[8] Others were more positive, taking this as a conscious stylistic choice on Muir's part: Sheehan called it "wickedly challenging to read, deliberately impossible to comprehend in full".