YOU ARE ENTERING THE LANDS OF HOUSE SLAUGHTERWOOD
Welcome, if you are a guest!
Beware, if you are not …
Evangeline doubted she would have felt warmed by this sign under any circumstances. But after Jacks’s story, the greeting felt especially unsettling.
She reminded herself that the story curse could have twisted part of Jacks’s tale. But his story explained the two different engagement pictures she’d seen of Vengeance, and Jacks hadn’t struggled for words. His quiet voice had possessed an understated confidence as if he’d not just heard the story but had been there to experience it.
Jacks had repeatedly told her he didn’t care about anyone or anything. But it was hard to believe him right now. Maybe that’s why he’d turned his head away from the light—so it wouldn’t shine on him and illuminate how he really felt.
The thought made something inside of her ache for him. Before she could think better of it, Evangeline leaned across the carriage and put her hand atop his.
Jacks sighed as if disappointed. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Little Fox. I told you, this place makes everyone sad.” He pulled his hand away with a scowl. But it couldn’t quite hide the sorrow that was still deep in his eyes.
She couldn’t help but feel for him. Again, she considered the idea that Jacks was hurting because he was Castor Valor. The last of the Valors, the only survivor of a royal family whom the people of the North had seemed to love until they’d brutally killed them, and friend to a young man who had also been murdered. But Castor Valor hadn’t been in this story, and neither had the third member of the Merrywood Three, the Archer.
Evangeline might not have pressed the matter. But Jacks had made it clear he didn’t want to be treated with care. And the more she thought about the story, the more she wondered if Jacks had only told it to her so that she’d feel as if he’d opened up and she wouldn’t ask more questions.
“Your story didn’t mention Lyric’s friends—Castor Valor and the Archer. Did Vengeance Slaughterwood kill them as well?”
“Only Castor,” Jacks said flatly. “He was the noble one out of the group. He’d tried to warn Lyric of the attack, but he ended up getting killed as well.”
Evangeline watched Jacks’s handsome face closely for any sign that he was lying—a flicker of something that would tell her he was really Castor—but Jacks could be so difficult to read sometimes. All she sensed was that he fit somewhere into this story and that it had something to do with why he wanted to open the Valory Arch.
“If you really weren’t a member of the Merrywood Three, then how do you know all of this?”
“Everyone who was alive then knew the story. Aurora Valor was a princess, Castor was a prince, and Lyric and Vengeance were sons of lords.”
“What about the Archer?”
“He was no one,” Jacks said coldly, “except maybe to the Fox. But I’ve already told you how that story ended.” He gave her a smile that was all teeth, as if warning her away.
For a second, she wondered if perhaps she was wrong about him being Castor. Maybe Jacks was actually the Archer, and he wanted to open the Valory Arch to somehow save the Fox.
The thought should have felt romantic, but instead, it struck a false chord with Evangeline.
“Now,” Jacks said sharply, “it’s my turn to ask questions, and I want to know where you heard that ridiculous story about the arch stones destroying one of the Great Houses.”
Evangeline hesitated.
“Come now, Little Fox, you can’t expect me to tell you things if you won’t tell me things.”
“I went to see Tiberius,” she confessed.
“You what?” he snarled.
“Oh no—you don’t get to be upset. You were gone. You wrote me a note that was practically two words and left me alone in a castle full of vampires.”
“And because of that, you just thought you’d go have a chat with the person who tried to kill you twice?”
“I wasn’t having any luck in the library. I thought he might know where the stones were hidden.”
Jacks’s only response was a look that said he wanted to pull over the coach, take her up to an isolated tower, and throw away the key.
“He’s locked in a prison,” she said. “It was perfectly safe.”
“He wants you dead. That’s a powerful motive to try to escape.”
“But he didn’t,” Evangeline persisted. “What else was I supposed to do? You said yourself the books all lie.”