Chapter 3

Feyre takes her hunted hides to market, where she encounters the Children of the Blessed (faerie-worshipping acolytes) and sells her pelts to a scarred mercenary for more coin than expected. The mercenary warns her of increasing faerie attacks across the wall, describing horrifying creatures like martax. Feyre gives coins to her sisters, meets her lover Isaac briefly, and returns home—where the chapter ends with a terrifying faerie creature suddenly appearing at their cottage door.

Feyre, Nesta, and Elain travel to the village market. They encounter the Children of the Blessed, young acolytes preaching about High Fae benevolence; Nesta dismisses them aggressively while Feyre is more diplomatic. In the market square, Feyre approaches an unfamiliar mercenary woman instead of her usual buyers, the cobbler and clothier. The mercenary is impressed by Feyre's wolf pelt and doe hide, questioning how she obtained them. After Feyre explains her hunting method, the mercenary offers an unusually high price—overpaying out of gratitude for past kindness shown to her. The mercenary warns Feyre that faerie attacks have increased near the wall; she describes martax (bear-sized creatures with lion heads and triple rows of teeth) and reveals her own poisoning from a faerie bite two months prior, showing black veins still visible on her leg. Nesta pulls Feyre away, warning her to avoid mercenaries after one previously robbed her and Elain. Isaac, Feyre's intermittent lover and the eldest son of the village's wealthiest farmer, signals to her from across the square. Feyre reflects on their two-year physical relationship—passionate but emotionally empty—and his recent announcement of an upcoming marriage. She gives Elain twenty marks and leaves to meet Isaac at an old barn outside town. That evening, as Feyre's family sits by the fire, a massive, roaring faerie creature suddenly bursts through their cottage door.