The morning after Apollo’s party, Evangeline tries to enjoy the Magnificent North with Marisol despite whispers about the scandal sheets. Locals gossip that Evangeline kissed one of Prince Apollo’s friends, and Marisol loudly defends Evangeline, not realizing that much of the report about Jacks was true.

Evangeline is relieved the gossip focuses on her reputation rather than on anything terrible happening to Apollo after their magically charged kiss. Evangeline notices that one of the broken-heart scars on her wrist has vanished, confirming that one of Jacks’s owed kisses has been collected. Because Jacks hinted he will demand another kiss tonight, Evangeline resolves to avoid Jacks while still attending Nocte Neverending and trying to understand what happened with Apollo.

While waiting for a dragon-roasted apple, Marisol leaves to buy Glacial spices, and Evangeline receives the treat alone. The apple is supposed to taste like true love, but to Evangeline it tastes like Jacks, which unsettles her enough that Evangeline gives the apple to a pair of little blue dragons and leaves.

Near sunset, Evangeline returns to Lost and Found Stories & Other Distinguishables, hoping to buy The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox, a Northern story her mother used to tell her without revealing the true ending. The shop remains closed with a strange old sign saying the proprietor has gone for lunching and should return eventually.

As darkness suddenly overtakes the spires, the bronze-helmed soldier from the previous night appears behind Evangeline. Though he teases Evangeline, the soldier also warns that the spires are unsafe at night and that many people who get lost there are never found. When Evangeline looks again at the aged shop sign and then back, the soldier has vanished, prompting Evangeline to flee toward the inn.

Evangeline returns late to the Mermaid and the Pearls, where Marisol is already dressed for Nocte Neverending in a gown suited to her love of baking. Evangeline dresses quickly in a flower-covered gown inspired by her mother’s garden, but when Evangeline enters the sitting room, Marisol is frozen in distress over a sheet of black-and-white newsprint that someone has shoved under their door.