On the carriage ride back to Wolf Hall, Evangeline avoids speaking to Jacks, but cannot stop thinking about his dismissal of the Valory Arch warning as a prophecy she does not understand. She questions whether prophecies are stories, magic, or unavoidable truths, and worries that marrying Apollo might fulfill the prediction about the rose-gold-haired girl and release something terrible.

Evangeline refuses to accept Jacks's claim that she has only one choice. She still feels responsible for Apollo, whose spellbound heart makes ending the engagement cruel, but she also believes her future should depend on her decisions rather than destiny. Since her parents would have privately investigated such a danger, Evangeline decides to do the same.

Back at Wolf Hall, Evangeline slips in through the secret passage and plans to explain her absence by saying she got lost. She goes to the Scholar's Wing and royal library, hoping to research arches, the Valors, or prophecies without drawing attention or triggering another violent reaction like the Fortuna matriarch's.

In the library, Evangeline finds books on many subjects but none about the Valors, even though they were the North's first royal family and Valorfell is named after them. The absence seems suspicious, especially because the Valors supposedly created the arches.

An ancient librarian named Nicodemus notices Evangeline searching and offers help. When she carefully asks for books on the Valors, Nicodemus says she has been looking in the wrong place and leads her deep into the library, past portraits of Apollo and strange marked doors. He stops at a rounded door branded with a crowned wolf and reveals that every story about the Valors is believed to lie beyond it, but no one has opened the door since the Age of the Valors.