Before, she’d sworn his eyes were bright, arresting blue, but tonight they were pale blue ice and utterly soulless. One look and Evangeline felt cold all over. She thought about LaLa’s claim that he’d had his heart broken by Princess Donatella. But Jacks’s next words destroyed any sympathy Evangeline might have had for him.
“So you didn’t really love him in the end. Were the scars all over, or did you just take a look at his mutilated face and run the other direction?”
Evangeline scowled. Jacks would think the worst of her, because that’s probably what he would have done. But she didn’t correct him. She’d rather have the Fate think badly of her than know that he’d been right and the real reason she wasn’t with Luc was because he had chosen Marisol, and then he’d disappeared. But Evangeline wasn’t going to dwell on that. She’d come here to forget about Luc, to find a new happy ending, and she planned to do just that, hopefully with a very different prince from the one standing before her. “I’d rather not discuss this with you, and I think they’re calling everyone for dinner—”
“Oh no, Little Fox. We have unfinished business.” Jacks dropped his apple and took her neck, cupping her pulse with his cold palm.
“Jacks—” Evangeline gasped. “What are you doing?” And what had he just called her?
His other hand slid into her hair, mussing her curls. The touch was inappropriate and intimate as the too-familiar nickname he’d just given her. She could feel her chances at happily ever after slipping further away as she heard the party chatter shifting to whispers. A hundred tongues all suddenly talking about the scandalous way Jacks was holding her right under the prince’s balcony. “Jacks, I told you I’d kiss three other people, not you.”
“Then why aren’t you pulling away?” he taunted.
“I can’t fight you—you’re a Fate.”
“Liar. I’m not hurting you or kissing you.” He moved the hand at her neck to toy with her racing pulse, softly dragging his fingers up and down over the frantic beat-beat-beat, making her heart pound even faster. “I think this excites you.”
“You’re delusional!” Evangeline finally pulled away. Her heart was racing, but it wasn’t from excitement, she was sure. Although, maybe, there was just a tiny hint of it, but she couldn’t fathom why.
Jacks laughed under his breath. “Relax, Little Fox. I’m not trying to ruin you.” He stole her wrist and tugged her closer in a mockery of a dance.
She stepped back, and he stalked forward until her thighs met the hard table. “What are you doing, Jacks?”
“I’m trying to make you more interesting.” He leaned in closer. He didn’t touch her anywhere other than her wrist, but someone watching from afar might have thought they were on the verge of kissing from the intentional way he angled his body and canted his head. Only Evangeline could see that his eyes were dead. “Earlier, you were just a minor threat, one that people imagined might disappear if they chose not to look your way. But now that I’ve noticed you, there will be no disappearing.”
“You think too highly of yourself,” Evangeline hissed.
But people were definitely watching. At least half the eyes of the party were on them. From her peripheral vision, she could see that Kristof Knightlinger had taken out a pen and started jotting things in a notebook.
“If you’re lucky,” Jacks murmured, “Apollo is watching, too, and he’s already jealous.”
“I don’t want to make him jealous.”
“You should. It will make your job so much easier, since Apollo is the first person I want you to kiss.”
In one of his preternaturally quick moves, Jacks dropped her wrist, pulled a jeweled dagger from his boot, and pricked the tip of his ring finger. Dark red blood glittered with impossible flecks of gold.
Evangeline tried to lean away, but he moved faster. He brought his hand up to her mouth and marked the seam of her lips with the blood. Metallic and sweet. Incredibly sweet. She wanted to hate the taste, but it was more like a feeling than a flavor. It was the last perfect moment before a dream ends, drops of sunshine falling like rain, lost wishes that had been found. Evangeline wanted to lick—
“No.” Jacks lifted his hand quickly, closing her lips with his fingers. “Don’t lick it, you need to let the blood sink into your lips or the magic won’t work.”
Evangeline’s euphoria turned to cold, slick dread. When she’d made the deal with Jacks, she’d been nervous about kissing strangers—it had never occurred to her that her kiss could actually hurt them, that Jacks might paint her lips with blood and infect her with his magic.