As night settles over the mountains, the Phobos loyalists at Snowpoint celebrate their victory, Vera's team tries to prepare for tomorrow, and their desertion is noticed by their commanders.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Lampshaded. When Quinn expresses disbelief at Rosetta being romantically interested in Tyrian and another soldier complains that the madman has better luck with women than him, a third soldier guesses that a dangerous man is loved by women.
- Anything but That!: Albel is so nervous about having to tell Vera's mother about her daughter's renegade actions that he practically begs to be sent on a dangerous assignment.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Sult has a low opinion on the nobility who exploited the lower class during the reigns of Queen Weira and her mother, and the one thing he respects about Phobos is that the prince was able to keep them in line without having to bend down for them.
- Berserk Button: Bastian Bromwood considers himself a reasonable man, but he has no tolerance for insubordination committed against his or Elyon's orders for egotistical reasons, as Vera's desertion has really vexed him off.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- When Alan suggests catching some Snowpuffs for lunch, Tinsley and Caroline (along with Amelia) immediately forbid it with murderous looks, scaring him.
- Albel dreads the prospect of telling about Vera's desertion to her mother; while normally a gentle woman, she can be terrifying when angered.
- Big "NO!":
- Tinsley yells this along with a Big "WHAT?!" when Alan considers killing one of the elks for food.
- Albel yells this when he refuses to believe Vera would let herself and the others get killed.
- Bonfire Dance: Deciding to have some fun at the celebration, Jade starts dancing around one of the bonfires and summons several Shadowkhan along, much to the surprise of the soldiers before many of them join them, including Tyrian who's asked by Rosetta to dance with her.
- Call-Back:
- Jade's still suspicious of the rebel army's retreat since she has no experience of the enemy giving up just like that. The closest equivalent to this she can think of is when the Enforcers showed up for their first attempt to reform themselves.
- Phobos' act of mass murdering the rest of Meridian's nobility to eliminate any rival claimants to the throne, first mentioned in Kage, is brought up again. However, while it was claimed all the noble families were wiped out, it's clarified in this chapter that the capital's immediate area suffered the worst of the purge, while some more remote families, like the six in Castwell's Peak, were spared.
- Cliffhanger: As Vera's team settles for the night, the Frostbiter they wanted to avoid starts tracking them by following the scent of Caroline's blood.
- Crush Blush: Rosetta does this several times when asking Tyrian for a dance and when he praises her. Just like with Tinsley towards Alan, it happens to her often in her future interactions with Tyrian.
- Dance-Off: Tyrian challenges a random Ninja Khan to a dance duel when Jade makes a joke about it, and the Khan (whom Jade "downloads" with everything she knows about dancing) gets just as into the dance as Tyrian does. It becomes much more impressive when it turns into a knife juggling contest like the Mamushka, and Tyrian ends up winning by sword-swallowing the last knife the ninja throws at him.
- Description Cut: When Philip hopes the enemy is also having a shortage of food, the scene cuts to Snowpoint where the situation is quite the opposite.
- Didn't Think This Through: Vera realizes that she was in such a rush to carry out her renegade mission before her superiors discovered it that she didn't account for how to get into the Stone Nest to find Metalbeak, or whether he'd even still be there rather than elsewhere. Refusing to consider everything going to waste, she insists to convince herself and everyone else that Metalbeak wouldn't leave the nest so soon after the battle.
- Friend to All Living Things: Tinsley is shown to be an animal-lover to the point that she doesn't want Alan to hunt for food the elk mother and fawn she spots or any Snowpuffs.
- Green Around the Gills: Alan's face turns green as he dreads to imagine what kind of ingredients Caroline took from a Passling village to apply to her repellent.
- Hypocritical Humor: Amelia tells Tinsley, who just objected to Alan's suggestion to bring down one of the elks they saw for food, that their survival is more important than the cute animals. However, when Alan thinks about finding some Snowpuffs to eat a moment later, Amelia immediately joins Tinsley and Caroline in forbidding it.
- I Can't Dance: Though Tyrian doesn't say this, he's nervous when Rosetta asks him to dance with her since he never thought any girl would do that. She advises him to relax, and he gets over his nervousness as he starts impressing her with his agile tricks and even ends up engaging in a dance duel with a Ninja Khan.
- It's All My Fault: Albel blames himself for failing to see Vera's desertion coming and keep her safe as he promised to her mother.
- I Was Just Joking: Jade only means to joke when she tells Tyrian it looks like he wants to impress Rosetta by challenging the Ninja Khan to a dance duel, but when he really does that, she goes along with it out of curiosity.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Sult, angered by the noble heirs going rogue, comments that many noble houses Phobos rooted out exploited the commoners during the reigns of the prince's mother and grandmother, and Phobos at least didn't curry favor with them. Oskar admits the times before Phobos' tyranny weren't as perfect as people make them out to be, though he still states Phobos took things too far by wiping out all the noble houses around the capital.
- Leg Focus: Rosetta's wearing the nightgown she took as loot in Chapter 21 while having her legs fully naked.
- Loud Gulp: Albel does this when he's ordered to deliver bad news to Vera's mother and told about Phobos' purge on nobility.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: This chapter introduces Snowpuffs that are pigeon-sized combinations of owls and cats.
- Not So Above It All: The Ninja Khan Tyrian challenges to a dance duel somehow gets into it as much as he does.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Though Vera still doesn't confess she lied to her friends, Tinsley and Alan's words of honest concern and support do incite in her a flash of guilt before she curbs it down.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Tyrian of all people feels a chill of fear when he accidentally crashes onto a Ninja Khan, afraid he's angered his goddess with that faux pas. He gets over it quickly though as he apologizes and explains himself.
- Albel has this reaction, complete with a Loud Gulp, when he's tasked with telling the governor of Castwell's Peak about her daughter's rogue actions.
- Out-of-Character Alert:
- Albel berates himself for not suspecting anything when Vera excluded him from the conversation she had with the others in Chapter 20, for it was the first time she has sent him away from such a meeting.
- The rebel army leaders deduce that Vera duped her friends into following her when Captain Bakurk remarks that Amelia wouldn't agree with Vera's poorly planned mission of this magnitude and if Philip had known this to be desertion, he'd have reported it immediately.
- The Pollyanna: Tinsley's ability to keep up her optimistic disposition despite their situation is lampshaded by Caroline who also notes that it's concerning that the blonde is visibly upset by Vera's stick-in-the-mud attitude.
- Retcon: The original story implied that all the noble houses on Meridian were extinguished by Phobos, but the existence of the noble families in Castwell's Peak has already contradicted this claim, and it's established here that only most of the noble houses are extinct. It's possibly justified because Blunk made the original claim in Kage and said to have heard it from his mother, making it a case of an Unreliable Narrator.
- Shout-Out:
- When Vera's team enters a mighty tundra, they spot a mother elk and her fawn grazing in the snowy terrain.
- The music playing during the Bonfire Dance is "Evening in the Tavern".
- Tyrian's dance fight with a Ninja Khan seems to be modeled on the Mamushka.
- Silly Song: In an effort to cheer the group up, Tinsley sings with Alan a song Vera's grandfather taught her about a Passling who, in a vain effort to win a queen's love, tried to bathe in the sea, only for it to turn green.
- Sword Sparks: When Tyrian and the Ninja Khan he's dance-dueling with whip out knives, they use them to make sparks.
- Tastes Like Chicken: When Jade reluctantly tastes a roasted Snowpuff, she tries to pretend it's a roasted chicken and discovers that its taste does resemble chicken.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Caroline unwittingly lures the Frostbiter her team wanted to avoid on their trail when she replaces the bandage on her bleeding arm and the wind brings the old bandage right to the beast that finds the scent irresistible enough to follow it out of its usual territory.
- Worthy Opponent: Tyrian treats with respect the Ninja Khan he's dance-dueling with. When the ninja wordlessly declares him the winner, Tyrian tells him to be proud of his performance and finishes the dance with him in camaraderie.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Caroline confides to Tinsley that she feels like a failure for never having been gifted in the art of sewing her noble family is famous for, so Tinsley gives her a pep talk by saying that joining them on their dangerous mission and being the best potion maker in Meridian gives her family a reason to be proud of her.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Both Rosetta's romantic interest in Tyrian and the latter's dance duel with a Ninja Khan elicit this reaction from Quinn.
