When Signa returns to the room, Sylas is already there and has brought her information about all of the staff aside from himself. She asks Sylas why he is helping her, and he reveals that he is doing so to help a woman he cares about. Signa feels jealous of Sylas’s mysterious friend but finds her thoughts wandering to another man—Death.

Death arrives at midnight and Signa asks him again if he knows who has been poisoning Blythe, but he only sees pieces of the lives of souls he takes. Death suggests that when she dies, Signa will become a reaper like him, and Signa begins to see Death not as a monster but as a “ferrier of souls” (220) who helps those who die to pass on. When Signa passes behind the veil, she can hear, see, and feel the lives of the dying and wonders how Death can deal with the emotions of it day after day.

Signa feels sexually drawn to Death, despite the myriad warnings about how women can be socially ruined she has heard from society and her etiquette books. Signa and Death kiss, but she stops him before they can have sex, and he admits that he likes her.