The dream dissolved, like raindrops washing away peddler chalk on a sidewalk. Evangeline fought to hold on to it. She wanted to know how it ended. But the harder she tried to remain in the dream, the more it began to fade, until she couldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming at all.
* * *
Everything hurt when she woke. She was no longer being held by hot arms or cold arms or any arms at all. She was on her back, every inch of her burning, aching, despite the softness of the bed she’d been placed in. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, adjusting to the light. There was just enough for Evangeline to see a set of heavy cagelike iron bars crisscrossing above her.
She jolted upright.
Her wounded shoulder screamed in pain, and she fell gracelessly back on the mattress.
“Welcome back, Princess.” The voice was velvet smooth, and it did not take long for Evangeline to identify the source.
Chaos, the Vampire Lord of Spies and Assassins, leaned casually against one dark bedpost with the ease of a being that had nothing to fear.
Evangeline tried to muster a bit of bravado, but she felt instantly immobilized. She now knew why there were cagelike bars over her bed. She was in Chaos’s underground castle.
Evangeline had only visited once before, but she vividly remembered all the human-size cages hanging amid the old-world elegance of the halls. She shuddered to think why she might be here.
Frantically, she sifted back through her memories. The last several hours were blurry, until she reached the moment right before she passed out. She’d been inside Wolf Hall, bleeding everywhere, and Jacks had said her name, Evangeline, not Little Fox. Then he’d said he was sorry. Was this why? Because he’d given her over to Chaos?
“Am I a prisoner?” she asked.
“You can leave anytime,” Chaos said. “But I doubt you’ll get far on that injured leg.” He nodded toward her wounded thigh.
The vampire’s face was impossible to read due to the cursed bronze helm he wore. It wrapped around his forehead and jaw, covering his mouth so that he could not bite her. Yet she still felt far from safe in his castle.
Evangeline gritted her teeth and looked about the room for an escape. It was around the size of her suite at Wolf Hall, with a fireplace full of candles, dark velvet lounges for sitting, and a dresser for clothes and jewels. It also had a great rounded door, but it was on the opposite end, a distance that seemed insurmountable with her wounded leg. But she could not stay in this bed. She needed to get out of here. She needed to figure out why Apollo had attacked her.
She didn’t believe that Apollo had wanted to hurt her. That was clearer to her now. He’d looked pained, anguished. He’d told her to run. He’d tried to save her before he’d tried to kill her. She needed to figure out why.
Evangeline started to push down her sheets, but stopped as she realized that her clothing had been removed. She was practically naked. Instinctively, she clutched the sheets tighter. She didn’t even want to contemplate who had undressed her. She wore nothing, save for a short, thin silk slip and the cloth bandages that wrapped around her wounded shoulder and thigh.
She couldn’t get out of bed like this. Chaos might not be able to bite her, but if they were in his lair, then other vampires could—and they probably would. Walking around in a scrap of silk felt like an open invitation.
“If I really can leave, then I’d like some clothes and shoes,” she said.
Chaos laughed softly, the sound deceptively young. He appeared just a few years older than she was, but Jacks had once told her that Chaos was as old as the North. “I may have exaggerated when I said you could leave at any time.”
The rounded door opened with a groan that betrayed its age. Then, silently, Jacks stepped inside.
Their eyes collided across the room. His gaze slowly lowered to the sheets that she held over her barely there slip. But then, before she even had time to blush, he looked away.
Evangeline felt a strange stab of disappointment as Jacks went back to tossing the shimmering black apple that he held in his hand.
The cloak he’d been wearing earlier was gone. She remembered that he’d carried her, but there was no blood on his soft gray doublet.
“Have you told her the good news?” he asked cheerfully.
“Not yet,” Chaos replied.
Evangeline divided a look between them. Confused did not begin to describe how she felt. Jacks loathed vampires—or at least that’s what she’d thought. The last time she’d been here with him, he’d seemed to hate every moment. Now Jacks appeared completely at ease, and the comfortable way that he and Chaos spoke made it seem as if they were almost friends.