“What are the powers of the other stones?” She remembered the disappearing librarian had mentioned their names, but she couldn’t recall what they were.
Jacks perched on the arm of a chair and counted mockingly with his fingers. “One for luck. One for truth. One for mirth. One for youth.”
“Those don’t sound too bad,” she said.
Jacks gave her a dirty look. “Mirth has the potential to make you lose your mind even more than the luck stone did. People will kill to hold on to their youth. It could also bring about jealousy or immaturity, so that one will be tricky to steal. And truth—” Jacks smirked. “The truth is never what you want it to be, Little Fox.”
16
Evangeline should have been paying attention to the secret passage.
Chaos was guiding her and Jacks to a place where the vampire said that she’d be able to start her search for the missing stones. But instead of watching her steps or reading the words marked on the shadowy walls, all she could do was replay Jacks’s taunt: The truth is never what you want it to be.
He’d said it like a warning, as if his truth were as destructive as his kisses. Yet his words only made her wonder: What was Jacks’s truth? What did he want from the Valory, and why didn’t he want her to know?
Of course, Jacks seemed to enjoy tormenting her, so perhaps that was why he kept it a secret. Evangeline wasn’t sure she was convinced by this explanation, but at least she had the new hope that she could find out everything from Jacks once she collected the truth stone.
“Here we are.” Chaos halted at a door with an emblazoned image of a wolf’s head that had been slashed across the center by either a beast or a hand with a great set of claws. Then he handed her an iron key attached to a velvet ribbon. “I know you can unlock any door, Evangeline, but you should probably avoid spilling blood while you’re here.”
Evangeline knew she should have felt some sort of fear. But either the story curse’s effect on vampire tales was impeding it, or she was just feeling stubborn. In a world of immortals, she had one power, and she didn’t want to be told not to use it.
Of course, she didn’t say that as she turned the key Chaos had given her.
On the other side of the door, bookshelves, thick and sturdy and packed with ancient tomes, lined the rounded walls, all the way up to a ceiling so high one would need several ladders to reach it. Thankfully, there were indeed multiple ladders of aged rosewood, as well as a number of small balconies that dotted the upper shelves like iron stars.
The air shifted as Evangeline entered, redolent of old paper pages that called to her like a siren’s song. Like all admirers of fairytales, she’d always loved the scent of books. She loved the paper dust in the air, the way it swirled in the light like little sprinkles of magic. And most of all, she loved the way that fairytales always made her think of her mother and endless possibilities.
The floor underneath her slippers was covered in a tapestry carpet embroidered with the image of an arch flanked by two knights in armor, one of whom had no head. Atop the rug sat a rounded table with a lamp and some journals, all courted by two dusky velvet chairs that, thankfully, did not have any shackles attached.
“As lovely as all of this is, how is this supposed to help me find the remaining stones?” she asked. “I thought all books were unreliable because of the story curse?”
Of course, this hadn’t stopped her from looking in libraries for answers before, though they had never led her anywhere useful. When she’d searched the royal library, she’d been hunting for information on the Valors, but there had been no books on the Valors. She had supposed it was because of the story curse. But it seemed the curse hadn’t done away with the books—it was Chaos. He appeared to have every book on the Valors hidden away in this library.
The spines said things like:
How the North Became Magnificent: A Glorious History
The Wolf King
The Valors’ Court of Wonder
Wolfric and Honora: The First Epic Love Story of the North
There were also titles pertaining to the Great Houses, but the majority of books were related to the mysterious Valors. “Have you collected all these, just to find the stones for the arch?”
“I thought placing them in my library would be the best way to keep them safe. Because of the story curse, the words in most of these volumes change a little every time they are read.” Chaos’s gloved fingers traced an old leather spine, and Evangeline watched as the title shifted from Castor Valor: A Prince Among Princes to Castor Valor: A Plague Among Princes. “However, since I rarely allow them to be read, most of the stories inside have been preserved.”