While Jade engages with Metalbeak in a duel to teach him a lesson, Vera struggles to keep her group and mind together as they face the first challenges of their renegade mission.
- Best Friend Manual: As Alan starts seeing Vera growing increasingly tense, he wishes Albel would be with them since he'd know how to calm Vera down.
- Big "WHAT?!": Amelia lets out one when learning there's a very dangerous predator close to their path and another when Alan confirms it to be a Frostbiter.
- Blinded by Rage: Lampshaded. After Metalbeak fails to defeat Jade, she bluntly states that he should have thought of a smart way to do so instead of just letting his hatred of the Nest Butcher consume him and trying to charge at her in fury. She then uses this fact to make him realize that unless he wants to leave the Stone Nest undermanned to defend itself against a potential sneak attack, he must keep his head cool to avoid falling into any possible trap of the rebels.
- Bows Versus Crossbows: When Vera fails to get a rope up the mountainside with her bow, Alan whips out a crossbow that gets the job done (before falling apart), though Vera thinks a machine cannot compare to a true archer's talent.
- Cliffhanger: Vera gives her friends an insincere oath while internally swearing that she'll kill Metalbeak even at the cost of her own life.
- Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity: Vera's team faces the problem of having to climb a tall rock wall that separates them from the pass they need to cross. They solve this by securing a rope high up and use it to reach the pass.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Every time Metalbeak tries to furiously attack Jade to force her out of the circle in snow, she sends him flying with one precise strike. This happens exactly four times before he's too weakened to continue.
- Facepalm: Amelia pinches the bridge of her nose in her frustration when Vera refuses to give straight answers about their "secret mission".
- Family Extermination: Though Metalbeak concedes to Jade's point and defers hunting Vera down for now, he swears that once his clan is secure again, he'll ensure the Nest Butcher's bloodline won't plague his people anymore.
- Fantastic Racism: Not only does Amelia consider the Mogriffs to be disgusting creatures, but she's also repulsed by Passlings and cannot understand why Caleb and the Guardians would so much as tolerate Blunk's presence.
- Foreshadowing: While Caroline comes off as the meekest of the noble heirs in this chapter, she's hinted to have some hidden steel when she glares at Alan for insulting Amelia and tells him to be careful with his words.
- For Your Own Good: The reason Vera didn't include Albel to her renegade mission is because he knew Elyon's true orders, and she didn't want to risk him exposing her intentions to their superiors with this justification.
- Hair Flip: When Alan challenges Amelia to find a way to get the team up the rock wall, she whips her hair at his face as she walks past him.
- He Who Fights Monsters:
- After Jade prevents Metalbeak from recklessly hunting down the Nest Butcher's descendant at the cost of leaving his clan (his mate and infant son included) unprotected, she warns him not to let his anger and thirst for revenge risk him losing them.
- Vera's determination to succeed in assassinating her grandfather's killer has already led her to abusing her friends' trust in her, and she's starting to become increasingly arbitrary with them.
- Hypocrite: Vera ends up calling Amelia's misgivings insubordination even though she is the one who's leading them all on her own unsanctioned mission.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Tyrian calls Metalbeak a bloodthirsty fool, every soldier who's interacted with him stares flatly at him while mentally questioning since when he's had a problem with bloodthirstiness.
- I Can't Believe I'm Saying This: Vera admits this about agreeing with Philip that Amelia and Alan need to put their grudge aside.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Alan voicing her belief that Vera wouldn't ask them to risk facing a Frostbiter if she didn’t believe in their chances causes her to still for a moment. While she replies to him affirmatively, she internally admits she can't bring herself to care what achieving her vendetta will do to her.
- Oh, Crap!: This is the noble heirs' general reaction to learning they've stumbled upon pawprints of a Frostbiter.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Alan's friends know he prefers showing bravado instead of fear in any situation, so they know something serious is up when the Frostbiter's tracks make him open about his fear.
- Properly Paranoid: Amelia is already noticing several glaring holes in Vera's story about the team's "secret mission" and suspects her rival is hiding things from them. Vera calls her paranoid to cover herself, and the fact that Amelia's always been a Commander Contrarian to Vera means that the others mostly brush off her concerns. Vera's increasingly short fuse gets them to concede that something is wrong with Vera, though.
- Revenge Before Reason: This continues to be played straight with Vera. As a contrast, Jade manages to make Metalbeak understand that embarking on a half-cocked rampage to find the Nest Butcher's descendant is not worth risking his entire clan in their currently weakened status.
- Roundhouse Kick: This is the third move Jade performs on Metalbeak.
- Savage Wolves: The dangerous wildlife of Meridian's northern mountains is mentioned to include Schleich Wolves that are capable of hunting even in the worst of storms.
- Security Cling: Tinsley ducks behind Alan's back to escape Vera's ire at one point.
- Slave to PR: Vera invokes this to discourage Amelia from trying to abandon the mission since doing so would damage her family's reputation and standing in the new regime.
- Sneeze Cut: When Jade reassures Metalbeak that she'll protect the Mogriffs from the Nest Butcher's kin, the scene cuts to Vera sneezing. When she says she's kept sneezing for unknown reasons, Tinsley teasingly suggests someone's talking about Vera and wonders if it's Albel.
- Spotting the Thread: Amelia gets suspicious about the team's "secret mission" when she notices that the "falsely" retreating rebel army appears to be marching past the ideal defensive spot at the Broken Twins.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
- It's already been established that Alan likes to tease Amelia for her snootiness while she views him as a rube. However, this chapter reveals that much of Alan's disdain towards Amelia is rooted in the fact he blames her family for the death of his grandfather who was arrested by one of Phobos' patrols for trying to traffic rebel soldiers. Since that same patrol granted a pass for a caravan of Amelia's family, Alan alludes that the Emmonys sold his grandfather out, but Amelia denies her family having any responsibility and accuses Alan's grandfather of acting thoughtlessly. The two of them almost come to blows over this before the others ask them to set their differences aside for the sake of the mission.
- The hardships of their mission are already making the personality differences of the whole team of noble heirs clash with each other, especially with Vera's stubborn resolve to press forward and dodging of Amelia's questions.
- Tempting Fate: Amelia doubts Alan's crossbow will work since she suspects he bought it from Blunk. He successfully gets the rope secured where he's aiming for and brags he was right the bow's fail-safe... only for the contraption to fall apart.
- Trojan Horse: Jade uses the trope name to refer to the possibility of the rebel army having a plan that counts on the Phobos loyalists chasing after them and leaving both Snowpoint and the Stone Nest unprotected.
- The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: Vera is starting to think Elyon might be equally bad at ruling as her brother, albeit due to incompetence instead of tyranny.
