With twelve hours left before the wedding, Evangeline listens from her balcony as Apollo serenades her beneath Wolf Hall with the dwindling handbell choir. Feeling guilty for helping Jacks curse Apollo but still disturbed by the prophecy and the Valory Arch, Evangeline invites Apollo up so she can question him before deciding whether to marry him.

Apollo misunderstands the invitation and climbs the icy wall to her balcony, alarming Evangeline and dismissing Havelock’s attempt to follow. Inside her room, Apollo’s enchantment makes him passionately devoted, and Evangeline stops him before the meeting becomes romantic, explaining that she wants to ask about Northern history.

Evangeline asks about the Valory Arch. Apollo describes it as a cursed fairytale with two versions: in one, the Valory is a magical prison created by the Valors and later used to seal away an abomination; in the other, it is a treasure chamber holding the Valors’ most powerful magical objects. In both versions, the arch is locked by a prophecy whose fulfilled lines form the key, and the broken pieces of the arch are said to have been hidden by either the Protectorate or the loyal Wardens.

The stories deepen Evangeline’s fear that Jacks desperately wants whatever lies beyond the arch, whether it is treasure or terror. Apollo also wistfully recalls searching for the Valory with his brother Tiberius, which reminds Evangeline that Tiberius remains absent from Wolf Hall and that Apollo has avoided explaining why.

After weighing the danger of the prophecy against the cruelty of leaving Apollo spellbound, Evangeline decides she must marry him to free him from Jacks’s curse. Shaken by the decision and by her loneliness, Evangeline accepts Apollo’s offer to stay and simply hold her through the night, even though she knows his tenderness is not truly his own and may vanish after the wedding.