For the night, the army would make a huge camp wherever darkness overtook them. A large royal tent was set up for Derek, but there was no room for his bride. Sylvia, the future queen of Kaldwind, slept in the same tent with the servants, but not a word of complaint came out of her mouth. Besides, she realized that Derek Merkswerd would hardly be interested in her complaints. During the daytime, the princess huddled in a corner of the carriage and, looking sadly at the ruins of cities and dead trees killed by fire, thought about what awaited her in a foreign kingdom. The girl had never been naive, so she knew that every inhabitant of Kaldwind was ready to tear her to pieces, to pelt her with stones and rotten vegetables, every one of them longed for her execution, every one of them wanted to be her executioner. She was the demon everyone hated. And just how would Derek get his people to accept his choice?

"Ah, yes," Sylvia recalled with a sneer. – After all, he is a usurper, and is feared like the devil himself!"

All along the way Sylvia had been humiliated and ridiculed many times, and yet before the war and the fall of her kingdom she had met with only raptures for her intelligence and delicacy. How many of Flammehav's inhabitants had fallen at the hands of men, how many times she had cringed, how many tears she had shed, but it seemed that these barbarians were not enough. They took away her home, her parents and forced her to agree to marry a usurper, a savage and a libertine, is that not enough? How much agony lies ahead of her? Will she be able to overcome all the difficulties and hardships? If only her parents were near and could give advice and support, but alas, Varma cared only about her appearance, and Lamar was grief-stricken, humiliated and, at the departure of his daughter to a foreign land, did not even come out of his chambers to say goodbye. Sylvia was left all alone, and she would have to solve problems on her own. That was the conclusion she had drawn when she left Røvann.

When the army finally left the devastated lands of Flammehav, Sylvia looked out the window with interest to see the nature and architecture of the kingdom she would soon rule, and the contrast of the calm colors, the modest stone houses, the clouds of diverse livestock grazing on the peasant lands, the friendly faces of the people shouting with joy as they welcomed home the victors, struck her. How different Kaldwind and its culture was from the one in which she had grown up! From birth, Sylvia had been surrounded by licentiousness, lust, and vulgarity, and she had to admit it to herself. Yes, she had never found interest and amusement in the endless love affairs so common in her father's palace. She had never had an affair with any demon or lain down with any man. And yet the girl was unwittingly beginning to understand why humans despised demons so much.