She could hear conversation, but it was barely there. Mostly low words and growls of two arguing voices, with a few scattered words.
“She … venom.”
“… human … risk…”
“… want … die…”
“No—”
Her captor tightened his grip, pressing her against a chest clad in leather that smelled of metal and smoke. Definitely not Jacks.
Evangeline felt a sudden rush of alarm. “Let … go,” she managed.
“Relax,” said a voice she didn’t recognize. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No.” She tried to claw at her kidnapper, but she couldn’t move her fingers. Her body was failing. She was made of useless limbs and broken eyelids. Her skin was drying blood, and her thoughts were turning gray.
But there was one thought brighter and more frightening than all the others. If she was injured, then so was Apollo. He was bleeding somewhere else, probably outside, in the dark garden.
“Apollo,” she finally managed. “Prince Apollo … needs … help.”
Her captor tensed. Then she heard another voice, so quiet she knew it was in her head. I’m sorry, Little Fox. Apollo isn’t who you need to worry about. He’s—
Evangeline started to lose consciousness once more before she caught the rest of Jacks’s thoughts. Although she knew what he was going to say. Prince Apollo was the cause of her injuries.
* * *
Seconds passed as if they were hours. Evangeline could not stay awake for long, but when she did, the pain extended every moment into a century, a lifetime of hurt in exchange for one moment of consciousness.
She was just aware enough to feel cool arms cradling her now. Jacks’s arms. Everything was fuzzy and distant, but she knew, somehow, that these arms held her closer than the hot arms ever had.
And yet …
Evangeline found herself drifting away from the arms and into a dream that felt like the pages of a story yellowed with age: The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.
Evangeline had always loved this story, though as she returned to it now, it was tainted with a sadness she could not recall feeling before.
The tale began the same as it always did, with the most gifted archer in the Magnificent North. He was young and handsome and admired, and he’d been hired to hunt a fox.
It was the craftiest fox he’d ever met, and he hunted it for weeks. The Fox would catch him sleeping—it bit his ears and chewed his shoes and made his life misery—but the Archer never managed to capture it.
The only joy the Archer had while hunting the Fox was on the days he saw the girl. He didn’t know her name at first—she was just a pretty peasant who lived in the forest—but he found himself wanting to chase after her instead of the Fox.
She talked to him in riddles, and when he got them right, she’d bring him little treats.
He slowed his hunt for the Fox, wanting a reason to stay in the forest with this peasant girl. She was clever and sweet, and she made him laugh.
But the peasant girl had a secret. She could change into a fox—the very fox he was hired to hunt.
After learning this, the Archer believed those who had hired him had made a mistake. He returned the coins he’d been given and told them the Fox was really a girl.
But his employers already knew this, and they were not happy that he refused to hunt her. So they put a curse on him, one that compelled him to hunt the girl that he now loved.
Evangeline’s heart began to race at this part. Whenever her mother had told her this tale, she always forgot what she was saying right before she finished the story. And now, Evangeline was starting to reach the end.
She could feel the Archer’s confidence, mingling with his fear, as he sat in the forest outside his beloved’s cottage.
The Archer had always been so very sure of himself and what he could do. He’d never been given a task he could not complete. There was no beast he could not track, no target he could not hit. He could shoot an apple from the hand of a friend at a thousand paces away—while it was being tossed in the air! He was a legend, he was the Archer, and he would have sacrificed it all to save her.
Yet, even as he thought the words, the Archer looked down to see he was already notching an arrow, getting ready to shoot the girl he loved as soon as she stepped out of her cottage.
The Archer threw down the bow and cracked the arrow on his knee, wishing it was as easy to break this spiteful curse. He’d been told it would only lift when he killed the girl. The one way to save her would be to stay away. But he couldn’t believe they were never meant to be. There had to be an … o … ther …