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Elend is mingling at the Orielle ball, working a group of distant Venture cousins, when an old Luthadel voice from behind cuts him off mid-sentence. It is Telden — one of the friends with whom he used to plan political theory in their youth, gone since the months of chaos after the Lord Ruler's death. Telden has put on weight and lost his old polish; he settled briefly in BasMardin and then moved inward to Fadrex for Yomen's reputation for stability. Telden confesses he never really believed Elend had taken power in Luthadel — he had assumed it was a puppet kingship — and asks, point blank, whether Elend now plans to attack the city or only intimidate Yomen into a deal. Elend says softly that he will conquer the city if he has to. Telden flushes: is the man who once preached rights and legality going to make himself another Lord Ruler? Elend surprises himself by defending his record cleanly — a parliament in Luthadel, councils in every vassal city, the deliberate decision to march on Fadrex only because Yomen took it from an ally — and tells Telden that the boy who liked legal theory could not have run this empire. Telden does not believe him, and Elend finds, this time, that the disbelief does not move him. He laughs Telden off, accepts a chiding about not having invited him to the wedding, and watches across the room as Vin holds court with the local noblewomen. As he leaves Telden he thinks, in passing, that he never told the man he killed Jastes — and wonders if Telden knows.

He gives Yomen time to settle and then approaches the high table. Yomen wears no crown; instead a single bead of atium is tied so that it hangs at the centre of his forehead, in plain sight. The servants clear space and seat Elend across from him with the rest of the table empty to either side, Elend burning zinc to gently smooth the entire ballroom's emotions at once — a feat his unusually deep Allomantic well lets him do almost incidentally. The two men talk past each other for a long time. Elend asks for alliance and is met with silence; he tries the line about the world ending and is told, evenly, that he is a flagrant and garish man. Yomen accuses him of being a hypocrite of the worst kind — pretending to give Luthadel the vote, then retaking the city by Mistborn the moment the people picked Penrod over him — and Elend has to admit the point lands. They detour briefly into political philosophy, both of them able to cite the same authors, disagreeing on which is the better foundation for divine right; for a moment Elend thinks they might respect each other as scholars. Then he gambles and asks directly about the cavern beneath the city. Yomen startles, then denies knowing of it badly. Elend tells him he doesn't care about the atium — what he wants is whatever instructions and supplies the Lord Ruler left for them to survive on. Elend offers him a vassal kingship: Yomen keeps the throne, keeps his ball, keeps his religious teachings, accepts a parliamentary council. Yomen does not even pretend to consider it. He tells Elend flatly that he would rather his people fight and die than be ruled by the man married to the woman who killed his god. Elend stands, promises to be back in a few months once the siege has bitten, and pays him a parting compliment on the party.

Across the floor, Vin is having an experience she has been quietly avoiding since her first night at a Luthadel ball. The Fadrex women crowd her, pander to her, present nieces and daughters for introduction, hang on her every report from the capital. The empress thing is half power and half hunger — they want, openly, a woman to look up to — and Vin is startled to find that she is enjoying it. The first instinct she has, the old one, is to write off the acceptance as shallow. Then, in the middle of greeting another curtseying girl, she names what is actually happening to her. The part of her that adapted to court inside a month is as real as the part that grew up on the streets for sixteen years. She had not been able to credit it because she had not had to work for it, and so had decided it didn't count — and that test had been wrong. She belongs in this room too. Tindwyl had tried to make her see this two years ago, and she had not been ready. Standing among the lavender-and-gold of Fadrex she lets herself believe that what she had taken to easily in those first court months was not a lie — and so the love Elend gave her then was not built on one.

Elend cuts in through the women, takes her arm with a cheerful apology about being a barbarian who means to monopolise his wife, and steers her firmly to the dance floor. Vin balks — she hasn't danced in four years; neither has he — and is brought up onto the slightly raised platform anyway. As the music starts Elend reaches into his pocket and produces a book. It is Trials of Monument, a copy fetched from Yomen's keep library by one of his own servants — the same book Elend had been reading on the Venture balcony the first night he met her. He shuffles through the steps with the book open in one hand. Vin swats him and demands a real dance. He puts the book away, grinning, and they move into it properly. The other couples have quietly cleared the floor, and the room watches them like an audience. Between turns Elend frets that he was too informal with Yomen — his old reflex to mock stuffiness slipping out. Vin tells him the opposite: he has spent so long teaching himself to be a king that he has crushed the man who is lovable. He has to be allowed both. He does not concede the point yet, but he is listening.

They dance with the inhibition-free grace Mistborn usually have to hide. The song winds down. They cement the next move on the way back: the next ball is being thrown by Yomen himself, at the Canton of Resource building; if the Fadrex cache is anywhere, it is under that building, and the invitation is their way in. They will go, sneak the cache, read whatever the Lord Ruler left, and decide the siege from there. Elend takes the room one last time to invite anyone who wants out of Fadrex to leave through his lines, and the two of them jump out over the watching crowd into the mist.