Apollo?
Evangeline turned back to her prince, excitement surging through her. He was—
Wrong.
Moments ago, his eyes had been dull as sea glass, but now they glowed red, like burning rubies and curses.
Evangeline whirled on Jacks—or she tried to. It was difficult to move with Apollo’s hand iron tight around her wrist.
She glowered at Jacks. “I thought you were giving me the rest of the night?”
“I didn’t do this.” His gaze shot from the prince’s glowing red eyes to Evangeline’s captured wrist.
She tried to pull free, but Apollo’s fingers dug in with more force.
She tugged harder.
He squeezed tighter, painfully tight, making her yelp as she yanked against him.
His eyes still glowed that awful red, but he didn’t appear awake—he seemed possessed, or perhaps desperately fighting to wake up.
Her chest tightened with panic. “Apollo—”
“He can’t hear you.” Jacks pulled out a dagger with a shining black blade.
“What—”
“He’s going to break your bones!” Jacks slashed Apollo’s hand with the knife.
Blood spattered her skirts as the prince dropped her wrist and the red disappeared from his eyes.
Evangeline cradled her injury—Apollo had left a bracelet of blue and purple bruises.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
She was bleeding, too. But the blood wasn’t coming from the hand that the prince had taken. It was her other hand. Red welled in a diagonal cut across the back of it, mirroring the wound that Jacks had just given Apollo, as if she, too, had been sliced. She tried to swipe it away, hoping it was just spatter from Apollo. But her hand continued to bleed.
Jacks’s eyes were storm-dark as he watched blood well from the wound. Swearing, he tore a handkerchief from his pocket and hastily wrapped it around her cut. “Stay away from here, and do not kiss him again.”
“Why—what’s happening?” she asked.
Jacks spoke between clenched teeth. “Someone has just put another curse on you and your prince.”
5
Another curse.
“It looks like a mirror curse,” Jacks said.
Evangeline tried not to panic again, but her nerves were fraying at the edges. If she were a book, she would have felt as if her pages were slowly being torn free of the spine. She was bruised, she was bleeding, her husband was cursed, now she seemed to be cursed. And Jacks was still holding her hand.
She pulled free of Jacks’s icy grip, but she didn’t feel any better. If anything, a fresh chill coated her skin.
Jacks spoke, his voice eerily calm and deliberate. “As long as this mirror curse is in play, Apollo will share any injuries you receive, and you’ll share any injuries he receives. But it’s his death you need to worry about. If he dies, you die.” Jacks’s eyes cut back to the handkerchief he’d wrapped around her hand. For a second, he looked entirely inhuman. The calm fled his expression, turning his face vengeful and unholy.
Another day and it might have pleased Evangeline to see the Prince of Hearts so affected. But she wasn’t sure she really believed his reaction. Not after he’d just warned her that she had one night left to make a deal with him or else.
“Did you do this?” she asked.
Jacks glared at her.
“Don’t pretend you’d never hurt me in order to manipulate me. You just said that if I didn’t agree to open your Valory Arch, I’d really start to hate you.”
“I hurt everyone, Little Fox. But you have to be alive to hate me.” His eyes iced over. “I do not want you dead, and I’ll kill anyone who tries.”
He stalked from the room.
The guards at the foot of the stairs unfroze, instantly released from the Prince of Hearts’ control. A rush of words and movement followed as both took in the altered scene.
“What’s going on—is that—blood?”
The soldiers rapidly converged on Evangeline, restored to their wits and duties just in time to block her from rushing up the stairs after Jacks to demand more answers.
She held up her hand, showing both guards her bandaged wound as she quickly came up with a lie. “I was attempting something new to wake Apollo, but it didn’t work. I’ll explain more later, but I have to go now.”
She needed to follow Jacks. The way he rushed from the room made her suspect that he knew who’d placed this new curse on her and Apollo, or that he thought he knew. “Both of you, please stay with the prince—and attend to his wounded hand. He needs more protection than I do.”