Evangeline studied Jacks’s implacable face for another beat. As reluctant as she was to trust him, she could not believe that Jacks had done this.
“Did Chaos cast this curse?”
“No,” Jacks said. “Chaos wouldn’t do anything to put you in real danger. He wouldn’t risk losing another key.”
“Did you just say another key?”
Jacks’s perfect mouth turned darkly taunting. “Did you believe you were the only one?”
Evangeline didn’t answer. She had, in fact, believed that.
“According to Chaos, the last key lived the longest,” Jacks said. “She managed to retrieve one of the arch’s four missing stones before the Protectorate chopped off her head.”
Evangeline already felt cold and shaky from their midnight swim, but suddenly, she felt very mortal, as if she’d been transmuted from iron into a thin sheet of glass.
14
That night, Luc appeared in Evangeline’s bed. The young man lay propped on his side, brown hair flopping over one eye as he smiled like a naughty boy who’d just snuck into his first bedroom. “Hello, Eva.”
She tried to move away, but her limbs were far too tired.
He flashed his fangs, white and sharp. And then they pierced her throat, tearing her flesh as he drank her blood. He drank and drank and drank, moaning in pleasure as she cried in pain … until she blinked herself into another dream.
She was back in the forest, leaves crunching beneath her naked toes and fog cloaking her bare shoulders. Her neck no longer bled, but her blood pumped faster at the sight of Apollo atop a white mare.
“I wish I didn’t have to do this.” His deep voice broke as he drew his arrow and shot it through her chest.
She felt the bolt pierce her heart, rip it into two, as her body went limp in arms that had not been there before.
Jacks’s arms. They were cool as he held her on his lap.
“I’ve got you,” he said. The way he spoke was so gentle, so very unlike Jacks, she was reminded it was just a dream again. What surprised her was how pleasant it suddenly was. How safe it felt to be so close to him.
She’d come to the Magnificent North in search of love. But maybe she just didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be untethered. She didn’t want to be a person who could disappear without anyone knowing she was gone. She wanted to be important to someone. If her heart stopped, she wanted someone else to feel it—the way she could feel Jacks’s heart now, as she let herself rest her head on his chest.
He gave her a smile both beautiful and depraved. “I’m disappointed you could forget what I am so easily.”
Then he dropped her from his arms.
She woke with a start.
Her eyes flashed open.
Jacks looked down on her from the dark nightstand where he’d perched himself. His long legs draped negligently over the edge of the furniture as his hands played with an apple and a knife.
“You talk in your sleep,” he drawled. “You said my name—a lot.”
Evangeline felt a rush of heat crawl up her neck. “Obviously, I was having a nightmare.”
“It didn’t look that way to me, Little Fox, and I was here all night.”
Her heart pitter-pattered at the thought that he’d watched as she’d slept. Was that why she’d dreamed about him?
“Don’t fret, I won’t tell your husband that you’re obsessed with me.” Jacks tossed his white apple and caught the fruit with the tip of his dagger. A dagger she recognized with another flash of mortification. It was the blade with the blue and purple jewels, the one she’d stolen from him and then lost.
“Hope you don’t mind that I took this back.” Jacks twisted the knife until the jewels caught the candlelight. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell Apollo that I caught you carrying around my knife, either. He and I are friends, after all, and I’d hate for him to get jealous.”
Evangeline snorted. “How can you say you’re still friends after everything you’ve done?”
“What have I done that’s so bad?” Jacks challenged.
“Oh, I don’t know—cursing him, multiple times.”
“Every prince gets cursed. A prince without a curse will be forgotten by history, and trust me when I say that Apollo wants to be remembered. Now—” Jacks nodded toward a gown laid out at the end of the bed—the same bed she’d been caged in the night before. “You should get dressed.”
Evangeline frowned at the garment, although the dress was actually dreamy. It had the type of long slit sleeves she’d always thought of as romantic, sheer and a very soft shade of pink. The bodice was a little deeper in color and covered in an intricate series of braided rose-gold cords that went all the way down to the hips, where layers of impossibly thin fabric, dusted with hints of sparkle, flowed out to form the skirt.