While Jacks remains locked in the mausoleum to wait out the vampire venom, Evangeline worries that he could escape if he chooses. To distract Jacks, Evangeline considers the lock her blood opened and connects it to Apollo’s story of the Valory Arch prophecy, wondering if Evangeline herself might be the key the prophecy created.

Evangeline asks Jacks about Princess Donatella, despite Jacks’s immediate refusal. Jacks reveals that Donatella was the girl whose presence made Jacks’s heart beat, marking Donatella as Jacks’s supposed true love. Jacks explains that Jacks first kissed Donatella as a threat because Jacks needed something from Donatella, but the kiss should have killed Donatella until Jacks’s heart began beating. Donatella never forgave Jacks, fell in love with someone else, and stabbed Jacks in the heart with Jacks’s own knife.

Jacks’s story forces Evangeline to recognize similarities between Jacks’s desperate pursuit of true love and Evangeline’s own choices. Evangeline realizes that Evangeline’s weakness was not Luc himself but the idea of love, because Evangeline’s deal with Jacks began from Evangeline’s desire to be loved. When Evangeline offers sympathy and suggests Jacks might have another true love, Jacks turns the moment into provocation, teasing Evangeline about wanting to kiss Jacks and wondering whether becoming a true vampire might make Jacks’s kiss less deadly.

Jacks then demands that Evangeline tell Jacks about Luc. Evangeline describes how Luc visited Evangeline’s father’s curiosity shop, how Luc comforted Evangeline after Evangeline’s father died, and how Evangeline believed Luc’s simple admission that Luc wanted to see Evangeline meant love. Jacks challenges that belief, saying Luc was not strong enough for Evangeline and revealing that Luc could have saved Evangeline from Poison’s goblet and could have broken Marisol’s spell if Luc had truly loved Evangeline.

Hurt and angry, Evangeline lashes out at Jacks, accusing Jacks of cruelty, emotional ignorance, and a warped idea of romance. Evangeline suggests Donatella may have rejected Jacks because Jacks never understood human feelings or apologized for hurting Donatella. Jacks responds by claiming Evangeline sounds jealous, drops Jacks’s jeweled dagger at Evangeline’s feet, and breaks the mausoleum lock with ease, ending the chapter with Jacks no longer securely imprisoned.