As Daria and Helena contemplate their impending wrath, Luke walks around from his seat in the corner and storms around behind the girls and says "I think I've heard enough", and orders Daria and then Helena to sleep.
The girls next feel themselves awakening as a cautious-looking ghoul dressed in commando-esque clothing pulls out the stakes that had been forced through their hearts. He points a rifle at them while two other similarly dressed ghouls move around them agitatedly. The girls find that their mouths are wet with blood and that they are locked in a dark, windowless cell. As they begin to try and make sense of their surroundings, they look in front of them and see Luke and Alfred standing on either side of the Prince, who is seated in a chair, staring at them.
While Luke and Alfred stand passively, the Prince glares at them with dispassionate anger, and asks them to justify their actions. Effectively they inform him that they lied out of fear and not out of deceit, afterall it was during the course of serving one of his knights that the offence occured...
Once they have finished explaining, he informs them that he has been merciful upon them by letting them, as illegally-sired vampires, stay in his city, and that they have betrayed him by only giving his knights half an hour to sort out their mess, lying to him and his knights, and that is why they must drink his blood. He cuts his wrist and pours the blood into a glass and offers it to Daria. Daria looks at the blood, shaking her head, and begs that he give her any other punishment, yet he refuses. He offers her the choice of drinking the blood or being set free into the city with the status of a renegade, without kindred protection while the cults are at large - afterall they have already killed our sires. Daria takes the glass and drinks the blood.
Helena tries to convince Michael show mercy on the basis that their indiscretion arose out of fear of him rather than contrived deceit, yet unswayed, he offers her the blood again. She asks whether there is any other punishment that they could receive instead, to which he does not respond. She then looks to Alfred for help, yet he says that it is not his call to make. Finally she drinks the blood.
Having finished the blood, the Prince informs them that they will now drink the blood of the Knights that they lied to, which they do. The Prince and the Knights then leave the girls locked in the cell without light. Helena and Daria find that upon their departure, they sense the images of them standing above them and watching over them.
While sitting in the room, Daria suggests that it seems that the Prince is really concerned about his rulership of the city if he is going to go to such extreme lengths to ensure his authority is obeyed. Both of them express fear about helping Alfred anymore because of the severity of their punishment should they make another mistake. They also lament over their punishment while Jennifer is walking free.
Eventually the girls feel themselves growing cold and sleep set in.
The next night Helena is concerned as she has not fed for awhile and she has used up a fair amount of blood in the confrontation with the police. She is beginning to feel really hungry. On top of that is the great hole in her chest; she fights the urge to heal the wound to preserve her blood on the basis that she did not know what was going to happen over the next days; whether she would get the option to feed or not. Daria ended up giving in to her will and healing the wound regardless, yet Daria had quite a lot of blood in her system already.
Helena's low blood situation is beginning to concern Daria. At some stage during the next night a rat starts to crawl around the room. After inspecting the room, they find no entrances in which the rats could have entered - there is a drain hole on the floor but not big enough for the rat to enter through and it is covered in a grate. Helena refuses to feed from the rat, but her hunger is growing stronger. They discover more rats in the room, and Daria can sense that Helena is getting edgy. When she starts to look at Daria and think about jumping on her to feed from her, she decides she should take the rat. She catches two, and Daria helps her catch another two.
Another day passes and eventually Luke enters the cell alone. Luke tells the two girls that he thinks that the Prince has let them go lightly, for if he were to decide what was to happen to them, he would have cut their arms off and left them in there for a month. He makes them swear that what happened will never be repeated. To demonstrate his dominance over the girls, he hands Helena a shotgun, and orders her to point it at Daria's head. Once the rifle is pointing at Daria, he orders Helena to shoot Daria in the foot. Helena finds herself moving the rifle to make the shot, however he stops her before she pulls the trigger, and takes the gun back.
He tells them that he will be taking them to the kindred meeting in the city, and that they are to stand before the vampires and tell them that they have betrayed their kindred, and for that they are sorry, and that the Prince has been merciful.
The girls are led into the same van they were brought to the building in, where Mike is waiting for them.
Meanwhile in the meeting room, Jennifer is trying not to make eye contact with the other outsiders. Jackie tries to beg and wheedle information about what is happening: "We have to know if another purge is coming." Eventually Jennifer convinces her she doesn't know anything. Jackie looks at Rita and shakes her head, then returns to her seat. Jennifer gets more tense, if that's possible.
Waiting outside the meeting room, both of the girls are looking horrific - although Daria has healed the hole in her chest, her clothes are torn and blood soaked. Helena still has the hole showing through her torn t-shirt, and her face is strewn with rat blood and filth. Both of the girls are covered in dirt and unshowered. Daria is instructed to enter the room and make her speech first, which she does. Once she has finished, the Prince orders her to go back to sit with her clan. As she moves to join them, none of the Lasombra make eye contact with her, rather continue to stare ahead unflinchingly through their masks.
When it is Helena's turn, she makes a big deal of looking fearfully at Luke and Michael, and playing up the fear in her expression so that the rest of the kindred get an indication that and Daria have been coerced into telling the vampires that they have betrayed them. Helena moves away to sit with her clan. Afterwards, the Prince tells the rest of the kindred that what has happened to the girls is an indication of how betrayal will be dealt with by the Prince; that it will not go unpunished.
Kieran, one of the outsider vampires, finding much amusement in the whole situation, hassles Jennifer for an explanation as to what has happened, yet Jennifer has nothing to tell him, she just tells him that she assumes that they lied. Unsatisfied, he moves to sit next to the still distraught Daria, and hassles her for an answer, which she refuses to give. Before he leaves her, he tells her that he would rather be in his own situation - a rejected outsider vampire than in hers, and laughs as he walks away.
After the meeting there is a lot of whispering and curiosity as to what has happened with the girls. The girls move into the bar where many of the vampires are gathering and talking, Daria sitting at the bar while Helena sits off to the side. No one talks to them. Daria asks the ghoul behind the bar for blood, which he silently does. Helena joins Daria at the bar and requests some too. After they have finished, they ask for more, but a request for a third glass is rejected by the ghoul, who coldly informs them that they have had enough; it is not a refueling station. Helena slinks back to her spot against the wall and sits with her limbs splayed, feeling too distraught and uncaring to hold herself with any dignity, or try to cover the hole in her chest, while Daria stays at the bar.
Jennifer moves to talk to Daria, and when Helena can see them talking, she moves to join them. However when Jennifer starts to talk about what she has found out in her investigations for Alfred, Helena becomes decidedly disinterested, and slinks out of the building.
Daria eventually leaves and heads back to her hotel room, while Helena books a room in another hotel for anonymity. Both of the girls stay in their hotel rooms for the next few days without contacting anyone on the basis that they are feeling extremely distraught and fearful of starting the investigations again in case they make another mistake and being punished again.
Daria and Helena individually hunt/mope their way though the night.