Grace and Faith rescue Renee

Grace and Faith's first meeting with ranked vanguard members occurred after Grace's incident with Medea.

Grace, Faith and Eliah were staying at the town of Seliph when Grace and Faith stumbled across Molly who told them that she and her hunting party were ambushed by the apex and were captured. Grace immediately set off to rescue them. Meanwhile, Nina allowed Kahlan to escape if Renee awakened, setting her free when Renee began to awaken herself. Grace and Faith encountered the apex members near the entrance to an underground cavern where the hunting party was being kept. Grace ran in alone while Faith stayed behind, pretending to be a prostitute, to scatter and rout the bandits outside so that Grace wouldn't need to fight them and incur a possible death warrant. Grace ran into Armand who attacked her. Kahlan met up with her and helped her fight after Faith gave her sword. Grace left Armand to Faith and Kahlan while she ran to save Renee, passing by Nina who dismissed her as an extremely weak warrior. Upon seeing Renee almost fully awakened, Grace tried to stop her from awakening, refusing to kill her when she said she wanted to be killed for being so useless. Grace used the broad side of Renee's sword to hit Renee's metallic protrusions, claiming she made an excellent musical instrument. Upon seeing Renee's strength when Renee punched through a rock wall and after being injured by Renee's attack, Grace tried to tell her that she most certainly wasn't useless and said that Renee was disgracing Regina's sacrifice. Grace synchronized with Renee and unwittingly used the "Heart of Darkness", sucking in her yoki and returning her body to normal. She broke off the sacrifice, having gained a small piece of Renee's yoki and regained her strength, amazing Renee who had observed the process with yoki perception, describing it as a current which sucked into Grace. They tried to save Kahlan who had begun to attack Faith thinking she needed to kill at least one awakened being but Armand killed her by punching her through a rock wall, opening up a passage for Grace and Renee to enter. Together, Grace and Faith attacked Armand, distracting him while Renee powered up her "One" attack. Renee used her attack to destroy Armand's lower body completely and tried to kill Nina but was easily subdued. In exchange for defeating Armand, Nina allowed questions from the 3 survivors. She told them that they were vanguards serving under Messire and told Grace Blanc's current location, shocked that she had Blanc's medallion and asked about him. Faith was amazed to see Nina hide her aura so thoroughly while escaping, leaving no trace of her presence. While Grace lay unconscious from overexerting herself, Faith told Renee to report about the vanguards but not about how she was traveling with Grace for Grace's safety. Upon returning to Seliph, they found the town razed by the bandits Faith let escape and Eliah kidnapped. After interrogating Crow, Grace and Faith found that she had been taken north.