The way he said I kissed her was like the way someone else might have said they’d stabbed a person in the back. There was nothing longing or romantic about it, confirming Jacks had a misshapen definition of love. And yet somehow the thought of Jacks kissing the princess made something painful wrench inside of Evangeline. “Did you kiss her because you thought she was your true love?”
“No. I needed something from her, and I told her that my kiss would kill her unless she got me what I wanted.”
“Wait—are you saying that your kiss isn’t deadly if you don’t want it to be?”
“Careful, Little Fox, you sound curious. But you shouldn’t be.” Jacks stopped pacing and drummed his long fingers against the iron gate, tapping a staccato sound. “I lied to Donatella. My kiss is always deadly. I slowed her heart so that it didn’t kill her immediately, but it should have ended her life in a matter of days, whether or not she did what I wanted.”
“Then why didn’t she die?”
“Probably because my heart started beating,” Jacks said flippantly, as if it were a small detail that could have easily been left out of the story, when there were entire stories dedicated to Jacks’s unbeating heart and the mythical girl that would finally make it beat again—his one true love.
Evangeline felt that terribly painful something churning inside her once again. Not that the idea of this girl being Jacks’s true love should have pained her. She didn’t even like Jacks. She shouldn’t have been bothered that another girl had made Jacks’s heart beat. She should have been happy the princess hadn’t died. Maybe Evangeline was just feeling sorry for Jacks because she already knew that this story didn’t end well.
“What happened then?”
“According to the stories, she was supposed to be my one true love,” Jacks confirmed. His voice was mocking, but it didn’t hide the pain clipping his words or hardening the edges of his features. “Of course, as you’ve probably guessed, that didn’t work out. She never forgave me for that first kiss. She fell in love with someone else, and then she stabbed me in the heart with my own knife.”
Evangeline took a shuddering breath, unable to imagine how such a thing would feel, especially for Jacks, whose entire driving force as a Fate was to find his one true love.
Evangeline could understand that drive. In fact, she understood it far better than she wanted to admit. She wanted to say she’d never risked killing someone for love. But she had made a deal with Jacks that had turned a wedding party to stone, cursed a prince, and ultimately led her here. She kept thinking it was fate or Jacks that was toying with her life. But it had been her own questionable choices that had started her on this path.
With Luc, she’d told herself that she was acting out of love. But she wasn’t, not really. She wasn’t making loving choices, she was making compromising choices because she wanted love. Luc wasn’t her weakness—love was. Not even just love but the idea of it.
This was why parts of Jacks’s story had twisted so painfully inside her. It wasn’t because she wanted Jacks. She didn’t want Jacks. She just wanted someone to want her the way Jacks had wanted this girl. And she didn’t want it to be because of a spell or a curse. Evangeline wanted a real love powerful enough to break a spell, which was exactly what Jacks wanted, too.
He leaned his head against the dark iron gate, and Evangeline would forever remember the way he looked just then.
He was still indescribably breathtaking, but it was all the tragic beauty of a sky where every single star was falling. His hair was a storm of broken gold. His eyes were a mess of silver and blue. The deadness she’d seen her first night in Valorfell was gone, but now she understood why it had been there, why he seemed so unable to give comfort or kindness. The girl who was supposed to be his one true love had literally stabbed him in the heart.
“I’m sorry Donatella wounded you so badly,” Evangeline said. And she meant it. She imagined Jacks was probably leaving a few things out, but she believed his hurt was genuine. “Maybe the stories have it wrong and there’s another true love waiting for you.”
Jacks laughed derisively. “Are you saying this because you think you can be her?” He eyed Evangeline through the bars, gaze bordering on indecent. “Do you want to kiss me, Little Fox?”
Something new and terrible knotted up inside her. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“You don’t sound too sure about that. You might not like me, but I bet you’d like it if I kissed you.” His eyes went to her lips, and the heat that swept across her mouth felt like the beginning of a kiss.