“No. This is where they all died.” He turned away from the window. He didn’t meet her gaze, but she could see the light in his eyes was gone. His gaze was now as gray as the world outside of the window.
Evangeline didn’t know if Jacks was actually feeling an emotion that resembled something human or if it was just the power of this terrible place.
Then she remembered Tiberius’s words about the arch stones: I saw the ruins—I felt the horrible hollowing magic. Just bringing the stones together is potentially cataclysmic. She hadn’t wanted to believe him then. She’d held one of the stones. It had felt powerful, but not catastrophically so. And yet what else could have caused this sort of desolation? What was powerful enough to destroy not just a place but all hope and joy?
“What exactly happened here?” she asked. “Is this the Great House that was destroyed by the Valory Arch stones?”
Jacks’s eyes snapped back to hers. “How did you hear that story?”
“I must have read it in a book.”
“You’re lying.” His lips pressed into a fine line. “That’s Protectorate rhetoric. The stones didn’t do this. They’re powerful, but this was not their destruction.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know what really happened here.”
Evangeline swiped the tears from her eyes and did her best to narrow them at Jacks.
He responded with a sliver of a laugh. “As much as I enjoy the theatrics, if you don’t believe me, all you have to do is ask what happened.”
Suddenly, she felt even more skeptical. Jacks was never forthcoming with information. But she wasn’t about to pass up a chance to question him. “What really happened, then?”
He turned back to the window. For a minute, she didn’t think he’d respond. Then he said in an unexpectedly muted voice, “Lyric Merrywood, son of Lord Merrywood, had the misfortune of falling in love with Aurora Valor.”
Evangeline was familiar with Lyric Merrywood. And of course, she also knew the famed Aurora Valor, the most beautiful girl to ever live.
“Lyric,” Jacks went on in that same reticent voice, “was Lord Merrywood’s only son, and he was too good-hearted to realize what a mistake it was to love Aurora Valor.”
“Why was it a mistake?” Evangeline asked. “I thought Aurora was beautiful and sweet and kind and everything a princess should be.” The last words came out a little bitter, and Evangeline realized she felt an inexplicable dislike of the princess, though as far as she knew, Aurora Valor had done nothing wrong aside from sound perfect in every tale.
“You don’t like her,” Jacks guessed.
“She just sounds too good to be true.”
“Lyric certainly didn’t think so,” said Jacks in a tone that didn’t reveal if he agreed or disagreed. “He was so desperately in love with her, he dismissed the dangerous fact that she was engaged to Vengeance Slaughterwood.”
“Aurora was his bride-to-be!” Evangeline exclaimed.
Jacks looked at her askance. “That’s what I just said.”
“I know—I just got a little excited because I saw a picture of Vengeance in a book, but his fiancée wasn’t identified.”
Jacks appeared briefly surprised by this before continuing. “Lyric said the engagement didn’t matter because it wasn’t a love match: Aurora and Vengeance had been betrothed since Aurora’s birth. Vengeance’s father, Bane, had been Wolfric Valor’s greatest friend and ally. So, when Wolfric became king, he pledged that one of his daughters would marry Bane’s eldest son.
“Aurora tried to break off the wedding to marry Lyric, but her father refused. Wolfric said Aurora was a silly girl who knew nothing of love.” Jacks’s mouth twisted wryly, and again, she couldn’t tell if he felt the same or not. “Aurora knew that no one ever won a fight with Wolfric. So she told her father that she would go through with the marriage to Vengeance. But on the morning of the wedding, she ran away. That was when Vengeance learned of her affair with Lyric Merrywood, and let’s just say Vengeance lived up to his name.…”
The coach rumbled forward as Jacks trailed off. They’d left the gray and the ruins behind, returning to a world of crisp, white snow. The sun was out again, shining its cheery light and adding flecks of iridescent color to the ice on the trees.
Jacks turned away from the window as if he couldn’t stand the sight of it all.
Or perhaps it was the sign up ahead that he didn’t wish to see.