- Azalea looks for the sword in the icy water, but can't find it. She manages to ride back to the castle, where she loses consciousness, and when she wakes up, she finds a note from Bramble saying that they've gone to the ball without her.
- Azalea rushes to the passage, and down the stairs—but they don't lead to the pavilion, they lead to a storage room with Yuletide ornaments.
- Then she sees the figure of her mother, lying unmoving. Azalea rushes to her, and starts trying to get her out of there; she rubs the silver handkerchief on the D'Eathe mark to open the passage.
- Seeing tears on her mother's face, she uses the handkerchief to wipe them—but then her mom's face starts to melt—ew—so Azalea tosses the handkerchief down on some coals near the fire, which burn it up.
- Azalea's mother then pushes her back down the stairs into the storage room. When Azalea next sees her, she sees dead eyes: Keeper's eyes. Keeper (who still looks like her mom) mocks Azalea for being stupid enough to believe that he could trap anyone's soul.
- Keeper summons hollow-eyed people to hold Azalea as he thanks her for destroying the handkerchief, which was the last piece of magic trapping him. He put her sisters inside the palace mirrors, where they'll die shortly.
- Enraged, Azalea manages to lunge at Keeper and knock the broach off him, at which point he resumes his normal form. This, he says, is why he keeps things: objects carry a piece of their owners inside them.
- Keeper says he's off to murder the Captain General and leaves—Azalea struggles against her captors, and passes out when she hits the ground hard.
- She has the dream with her mother again, and her mother says that she's done a good job taking care of her sisters, but not of her father. Azalea makes excuses but her mother makes her promise to take care of her whole family, and produces the silver handkerchief for Azalea to swear on.
- So Azalea makes the promise, and feels her mother's love spreading through her, and then wakes up—and when she does, she's holding the silver handkerchief. Her captors back away, then disappear.
- Azalea springs up, knowing she's got to save her family.