The air turned redolent with the thick scents of balsam and wood as they reached the top of the steps. Above them, tawny and gold leaves rustled, and Evangeline spied at least half a dozen guards in matching tawny-and-gold tunics sitting on the branches that formed the roof of Prince Apollo’s balcony suite.
She darted Jacks a panicked look.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “No one is going to shoot you with an arrow for kissing the prince.”
But something would happen when she kissed the prince. Evangeline should have tried harder to get out of this. She thought about trying now.
Prince Apollo was standing at his balcony rail, his back to Evangeline as he looked out on the scene below. But then he had to go and turn around.
He was tall, but not as impossibly attractive as Jacks.
Apollo’s face was more interesting than classically handsome. He possessed a slightly crooked aquiline nose, which might have overwhelmed another person’s face, but all his features were a bit intense, from his thick dark brows to his deep-set eyes. His skin was olive. His hair was heavy and dark and cropped closer to better show off his strong features. He’d forsaken the antler crown, but he was still obviously a prince. Utterly commanding as he leaned one elbow against his balcony rail and gave her a smile that said, I might not be the most handsome person in the room, but you know that you’re intrigued.
Evangeline couldn’t deny that she was. Though she wasn’t sure if it was because he was simply a prince or if it was the way he managed to smolder at her. Luc had tried to smolder, but he’d never quite mastered it like Apollo—his eyes were deep brown and amber with tiny flecks of glowing bronze.
“You’re drooling a little,” said Jacks, and he didn’t even have the decency to be quiet about it.
Apollo laughed, darkly musical and absolutely mortifying.
Evangeline considered hiding, but the balcony’s lounge was too low to the ground to duck under, and the prince was already striding closer.
“Don’t feel bad, Miss Fox.” Apollo finished closing the short distance between them. She was surprised that despite the intensity of his face, he appeared to be only a couple of years older than she was. Nineteen or twenty-one at the most. “I think our mutual friend is jealous. He’s been telling me for weeks how gorgeous you are, but until now, I thought he was exaggerating.”
“Jacks told you about me?” Evangeline didn’t even try to hide her shock as her gaze shot to Jacks.
He’d already left her side to wander the small suite, and he met her stare with the same taciturn disinterest he’d shown everyone else when he’d first entered the party. If looks could speak, this one would have told her, Just because I said it doesn’t mean I believe it.
But he had said it. She didn’t care if he’d meant it or not. Jacks had acted as if her appearance that night was a surprise and all of this was unplanned, yet he’d known she was coming for weeks. He’d been setting up this kiss. Why? What did Jacks want? What would happen when she kissed the prince?
Evangeline couldn’t come up with a single new theory. She tried, but it was growing difficult to focus. Something felt very wrong with her heart. It had beat faster when she’d first met with Jacks, but now it was almost as if she had two hearts—her pulse was going wild, pounding painfully in her chest as if it might soon run out of beats.
When she looked back at Apollo, her heart began pounding, Kiss him. Kiss him. Kiss him.
It didn’t feel like a desire so much as a need.
Apollo was close enough that she could just take one step, tilt her head, and then press her lips to his. And yet, Evangeline couldn’t, not until she’d at least tried to learn why Jacks had set this up.
Instead, she managed to say, “How well do you know Jacks?”
The prince’s bold smile faltered. “I’m not accustomed to ladies coming up here and asking about other young men.”
“Please don’t mistake my question as interest in Jacks. I’m not interested in Jacks—”
“And yet you keep saying his name.” Apollo’s words came out as teasing, but his gaze was not. He looked at her the way that Evangeline imagined portraits stared at people when their backs were turned. No more magnetic smiles. No smoldering brown eyes. It was the gazing equivalent to pulling out a knife and tilting it so it caught the light.
It seemed Prince Apollo’s confidence had its limits, or maybe he wasn’t that confident after all. Perhaps he and Jacks were more rivals than friends? Maybe that’s what this was somehow about? Evangeline still didn’t understand what Jacks was really after or what this kiss would do, but she didn’t have time to figure it out.