Jacks, Evangeline, and Tabitha Fortuna travel through hidden passages beneath House Fortuna to a secret arch deep underground. The arch resembles the other powerful arches Evangeline has seen in the North, but it is older, dormant, and marked in the ancient tongue of the Valors.

Tabitha panics because the arch was supposed to have been destroyed. Jacks and Tabitha explain competing versions of the Valors: Jacks calls them powerful humans overthrown by their subjects, while Tabitha reveres them as the first royal family of the North, gifted with abilities and able to create magical arches. Tabitha says the arches can open only with the proper key, and she uses freely given blood from her hand as head of House Fortuna to awaken the arch and open its door.

As Evangeline enters the vault, the arch whispers that Evangeline could have unlocked it too. Evangeline hides this from Jacks. Inside, the vault contains recipes for Fortuna’s flavored waters, strange magical objects, dragon eggs, hobgoblin hearts, mirrors, robes, and eerie paintings, but Jacks seems disappointed and uninterested.

Evangeline provokes Jacks into revealing that he wants to see Tabitha’s collection of stones. When Evangeline asks Tabitha about it, Tabitha’s enchanted affection breaks, and Tabitha recognizes Evangeline as someone connected to a prophecy: a girl “crowned in rose gold” who will be both peasant and princess and will open the Valory Arch. Horrified, Tabitha declares that Evangeline must not marry Prince Apollo and attacks with a knife.

Jacks knocks Tabitha unconscious with an emerald skull. When Jacks prepares to kiss Tabitha, Evangeline stops him, refusing to be involved in murder. Evangeline realizes Jacks arranged her marriage to Apollo because, once married, she would match the prophecy and could open the Valory Arch. Jacks refuses to explain the arch, instead insisting that marrying Apollo is the only way to break Apollo’s spell and spare him eternal heartbreak; when Evangeline challenges whether Jacks is really talking about his own heartbreak, Jacks denies having a working heart and threatens to keep Apollo enchanted forever if Evangeline resists.