Slowly, she straightened, pretending that every inch of her skin wasn’t prickling like her scar as Jacks swaggered forward.
He was dressed with more care than usual. A series of silver links secured the midnight-blue cape at his shoulders. His velvet doublet was the same deep blue, save for the smoke-gray embroidery that matched his fitted trousers, which were tucked neatly into polished leather boots.
She shot a look past him, toward Havelock and the other guard at the foot of the stairs, but they were doing nothing. Jacks must have magicked them. Most people believed that the Prince of Hearts’ only power was his deadly kiss, but Jacks also possessed the ability to turn humans into puppets at his will. His Fately power was more limited in the North, but he could still control the emotions and hearts of several humans at a time.
Thankfully, these powers didn’t allow him to control Evangeline. He’d tried before, but she had simply heard his thoughts. He could also hear her thoughts if she projected them. But sharing her thoughts with Jacks was not something Evangeline desired to do right now.
“Do you kiss the prince because you actually enjoy it?” Jacks asked. “Or is it because you honestly think it will magically revive him?”
“Maybe I do it because I know it will annoy you,” Evangeline answered archly.
Jacks flashed a smile that was far more wicked than welcoming. “Glad to know you’re thinking about me when you kiss your husband.”
Heat flushed her cheeks. “I’m not thinking nice things.”
“Even better.” His eyes sparked, gem-sharp blue with threads of silver, and far too pretty to belong to such a monster. Monsters were supposed to look like … monsters, not like Jacks.
“Did you come here just to irritate me?”
Jacks sighed, slow and dramatic. “I’m not your enemy, Little Fox. I know you’re still angry with me, but you’ve always known what I am. I never tried to pretend otherwise, you just let yourself believe I was something I’m not.” His eyes turned metallic and utterly unfeeling. “I’m not your friend. I’m not some human boy who will tell you pretty lies or bring you flowers or gift you jewels.”
“I never thought you were,” she said. But perhaps a small part of her had. She hadn’t imagined that he’d bring her flowers or presents, but she had started to think of him as a friend. A mistake she would never make again.
“Why are you here?” Evangeline asked.
“To remind you that you can easily save him.” Jacks casually shoved his hands in his pockets, as if making another deal with him would be as simple as giving a baker some coins for a bit of bread.
Perhaps, at first, it would seem that way. If she told Jacks she’d open the Valory Arch, Apollo would wake tonight. There would be no more worries about this new heir. But Jacks would still be there—he’d be there until he found the missing arch stones. And Evangeline needed Jacks gone, perhaps as much as she needed to wake her prince. As long as Jacks was in her life, he would continue to ruin it.
She’d been trying to find a cure for Apollo, but maybe what she really needed was to find a way to get rid of Jacks.
“The answer is no, and it will always be no.”
Jacks crossed his arms and leaned against the bedpost. “If you really think that, then you lack imagination.”
Evangeline bristled. “I do not lack imagination. I merely possess determination.”
“So do I.” Jacks’s eyes flickered with something malevolent. “This is your last chance to change your mind.”
“Or what?” Evangeline asked.
“You’ll really start to hate me.”
“Perhaps I look forward to hating you.”
The corner of Jacks’s poisonous mouth twitched as if the idea vaguely entertained him. Then a clock chimed somewhere above. Seven loud strikes.
“Tick-tock, Little Fox. I was trying to be kind by giving you time to consider the offer I made in the library, but I’m tired of waiting. You have until tonight to change your mind.”
She tried to ignore the twist in her gut. If putting Apollo in a state of suspended sleep was Jacks’s kind way of trying to persuade her, she dreaded what else he might do after tonight. And yet she still couldn’t imagine that partnering with him again would leave her better off.
She turned to leave.
A hand gripped her wrist.
“Jacks—”
But the hand holding her didn’t belong to Jacks.
His skin was cool and marble smooth. The hand that had grabbed her burned.