Jacks looked like a debauched stable boy who’d stolen his master’s coach. He lounged across one side of the carriage, one scuffed leather boot propped carelessly up on the cushions. A smoke-gray doublet was crumpled on the soft leather seat beside him, leaving him in a linen shirt with rolled-up sleeves and half-done buttons. Evangeline caught a hint of a rough scar on his chest, right as he set his jeweled dagger to a silver apple and began to slice.
“Do you stare at everyone like that, or just me?” Jacks looked up. Vivid blue eyes met hers.
It shouldn’t have made her blood rush the way that it did. It wasn’t even that much of a gaze, more of an idle glance before he went back to slicing the metallic peel off his apple, filling the air with crisp sweetness.
Evangeline decided to get straight to the point. “I need you to undo whatever you’ve done to Prince Apollo.”
“What’s the matter?” Slice. “Has he hurt you?”
“No, I don’t think Apollo would harm me. He practically worships me—that’s the problem. I’m all he thinks about. He gives me bathtubs of jewels and tells me that I’m the only thing he needs.”
“I fail to see how that’s an issue.” Jacks’s sullen mouth settled somewhere between a frown and a laugh. “When you first came to my church, you’d lost your love. Now I’ve given you a new one.”
“So this is your doing?”
Jacks’s eyes met hers, returning to ice. “Leave, Little Fox. Go back to your prince and your happily ever after, and don’t ask me that question again.”
In other words: yes.
One by one, the tiny bubbles of hope inside of Evangeline broke. Pop. Pop. Pop.
She had known it was all too much to be true. She sensed that she was living in an illusion and if she looked closely, she’d see that everything she’d thought was stardust was really just the burning embers of a wicked spell. Apollo didn’t love her; for all she knew, he didn’t even like her. He’d once said she was his dream come true, but she was really his curse.
“I’m not leaving this carriage until you fix Apollo.”
“You want him to fall out of love with you?”
“Apollo doesn’t actually love me. What he’s feeling isn’t real.”
“It feels real to him,” Jacks drawled. “He’s probably happier than he’s ever been in his life.”
“But life is about more than happiness, Jacks!” She hadn’t meant to yell, but the Fate was absolutely maddening. “Don’t pretend you’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Wrong and right are so subjective.” Jacks sighed. “You say what I’ve done to Apollo is wrong. I say I’ve done him a favor, and I’m doing one for you as well. I suggest you take it—marry the prince and let him make you a princess, and then a queen.”
“No,” Evangeline said. This was not as bad as when Jacks had turned an entire wedding party to stone, but Apollo’s condition wasn’t something she could live with. She wanted to be someone’s love, not their curse. And if Apollo knew what had been done to him, she imagined he wouldn’t want to live with it either.
She also didn’t believe for a second that this was some sort of favor. Jacks wanted this wedding to happen. She still didn’t know why, but he’d gone to a lot of trouble for it.
“Fix Apollo, or I’ll call off the wedding.”
Jacks smirked. “You’re not going to break an engagement with a prince.”
“Try me. You didn’t believe I’d drink from Poison’s goblet either, but I did it.”
Jacks clenched his jaw.
She smiled, triumphant.
Then the coach started rumbling ahead.
Evangeline clutched the cushions to keep from falling forward into Jacks’s lap. “Wait—where are we going?”
“Your next assignment.” Jacks’s gaze landed on her wrist, and the two remaining broken heart scars started to burn. Prick. Prick. It was like hot teeth digging into her skin.
Evangeline gripped the cushions tighter, suddenly feeling queasy. She was still dealing with the consequences of her last kiss. She wasn’t ready for another one. And she was engaged, at least for now.
Jacks’s blue eyes twinkled as if he found her worry amusing. “Don’t fret, Little Fox. This will be a different sort of kiss. I’m not about to ask you to do something that could put this wedding in jeopardy.”
“I already told you. There’s not going to be a wedding if you don’t fix Apollo.”