10. Red Carpet Once White

A flashback to six years before the main narrative: eleven-year-old Shallan witnesses a traumatic scene involving death in her family home. Her father finds her in the aftermath, sings her a lullaby to calm her, and carries her away from the bodies while making her promise to forget what happened.

The chapter opens with Shallan as an eleven-year-old child in shock after what appears to be a catastrophic event. Her father enters and tells her to pretend it never happened, promising to protect her. He sings her a familiar lullaby while she observes corpses on the floor around them—a woman in white (identified as her mother, lying facedown) and a man who has bled heavily. As her father carries her through the room, she notices his strongbox glowing with light streaming from its cracks. Shallan's internal monologue reveals she believes herself to be a monster responsible for the deaths. Her father completes the lullaby and carries her out of the room, closing the door on the bodies behind them.