Jacks had used his power to save her, after all.
Evangeline’s shoulders felt lighter, but her chest felt tighter. She waited for Jacks to say that she owed him now. He’d already dropped her hand, but he was eyeing the last remaining broken heart scar on her wrist. The reminder of the other debt that she hadn’t finished paying—the final kiss she owed.
Jacks hadn’t mentioned the debt in a while, but she felt a rush of fresh nerves as she wondered if he would collect soon—if this final kiss was what he’d referred to when he’d promised earlier that she would really start to hate him.
Havelock cleared his throat. “Pardon me, Your Highness.”
Startled, Evangeline leaped farther away from Jacks. She wasn’t sure when the guard had crept up. But one look at Havelock’s woebegone face and she knew that she didn’t want to hear what he had to tell her.
Not now.
Evangeline didn’t think she could handle much more. She wasn’t even sure she was doing a very good job of handling what she’d just been dealt. If not for Jacks, Marisol would be dead right now. Evangeline didn’t regret asking him to save her, but she couldn’t ask him for more. She needed to get away from him and from everything else. She’d been trying so hard to do the right thing, to make the noble choice, to be the hero, and she was exhausted.
Jacks often told Evangeline that heroes didn’t get happy endings, but in that moment, Evangeline wasn’t looking for happiness. She just wanted a break. A moment of peace before being confronted with another catastrophe. Was that too much to ask?
She looked at her bandaged hand now. The wound she shared with Apollo had stopped bleeding, and the rest of her—aside from her battered heart—was sound. Therefore, Apollo wasn’t in any immediate danger. Whatever Havelock had wanted from her could wait.
“I’m leaving,” she announced. “And I don’t want anyone to follow me.” She didn’t know exactly where she was going yet, but she could figure that out later. Maybe she’d go visit LaLa and her new fiancé and eat cake until the world turned sweet again, or perhaps she’d just hop onto a horse until she rode herself into a new story. All she knew was that she had to get out of Wolf Hall.
Evangeline had always thought the great Northern castle was magical, and it was—but it was full of the wrong sort of magic. Nearly every single memory she had inside these stone walls was tainted with some sort of curse or betrayal.
Her black-and-white skirts swished around her ankles as she turned away from both Havelock and Jacks.
“Your Highness.” Havelock marched after her. “You can’t simply leave—”
“I’m sorry,” she cut in. “I appreciate you, Havelock, but I can’t handle more bad news at this particular minute. So unless you’re going to tell me wish-granting unicorns have arrived, I need a moment, possibly quite a few moments, to myself.”
She quickened her steps to almost a run. Her skirts were heavy, but her boots were blessedly sturdy, making it easy to take a flight of stairs and then hurry down a hall to a door that led outside. The air was cold as she burst into the Northern night, canopied by a sky of foreign constellations that she had yet to learn.
Maybe she could just return to the south and to her home in the Meridian Empire. She could leave the North and all its curses. But even as she thought it, Evangeline knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want another story; she wanted to fix this story. She wanted to save Apollo. She wanted a chance to know him when he wasn’t under a spell. She wanted to believe that their story wasn’t over. She wanted the happy ending that she’d come here for.
Evangeline ventured deeper into the garden, frozen flower petals crackling under her shoes. Then she heard another pair of footsteps—lighter than hers, but growing closer.
The broken heart scar on her wrist started burning. Sometimes she was able to ignore the sensation, but right now, it was stronger than usual, as if Jacks wanted her to know that he was inescapable.
Evangeline hastened her pace, hoping to lose him in the shadows of the darkened garden. But Jacks didn’t stop following her, and she had a feeling he never would.
She almost laughed at the idea that she’d thought she could run away from him. That he would simply let her go.
Evangeline forced herself to stop beneath the amber glow of a garden lamp shaped like a bowing flower. Cold bit her cheeks and licked her hands, but Jacks didn’t so much as shiver as he strode toward her, indifferent to the bitter air that froze the tips of his hair and lashes. He slid through the icy night like a slow-falling star, all unearthly eyes and graceful moves.