Thankfully, she was not the only fox tonight. There were a number of others dressed as foxes with pastel peasant gowns, or dressed as actual foxes with furry ears and tails attached to tawny dresses. The Archer costume was just as popular. Some of the other couples Evangeline didn’t as easily recognize, but she saw a number of Honoras and Wolfrics, Vengeances and Glendoras, mermaids—and a few mermen—along with captive sailors in billowing shirts who looked as if they’d been plucked straight from carvings of the gateway arch to the North. There was also a girl dressed as the Sun dancing with another girl dressed as the Moon. And in the middle of everyone was a handsome young man costumed like a dragon who twirled a girl who looked like glittering treasure.
It might have just been all the wine coursing through her, but for a moment, Evangeline didn’t feel as if she were in a ballroom, she felt as if she were in the center of a hundred sto ries. Love stories and tragedies and tales with endings lost to time. And suddenly, her worries felt lost as well, swept away by a feeling that her life was one of those stories. She’d known it vaguely, but it wasn’t until then that the enormity of it hit her.
She’d married a prince, she was part of a prophecy, and right now, she was searching for magic stones that could change the fate of the world. Of course, people would tell stories about her—they were already telling stories—it had just never occurred to Evangeline that these stories were bigger things, pieces of history currently being formed.
But unlike some of the doomed characters around her, Evangeline still had a chance at finding a happy end to her story.
Never mind that the odds were not currently stacked in her favor, not with all the curses and betrayals and murderous, lying princes. None of that meant she was doomed. Evangeline still believed that every story had the possibility for infinite endings, and she was going to find one of the good ones—as soon as she found the next two stones.
Excited sounds wove through the ballroom.
“Look who’s here,” people whispered. Followed by words like young, attractive, unattached.
Then, loudly, “Eva!”
A second later, Luc was there, striding up to her with a feather in his cap and a quiver of gold-tipped arrows at his back. “I knew you’d be the Fox.”
Evangeline couldn’t help but smile. Luc was, of course, dressed as the Archer, a gesture that she’d have found terribly romantic months ago—and a part of her still had to concede it was very sweet of Luc. Even though Luc had been cursed by Marisol, turned to stone by Jacks, and then transformed into a vampire, he still held on to some of his humanity. Unlike Jacks.
“I believe you owe me a dance,” Luc said.
“Not tonight, vampire boy.”
Evangeline stiffened at the sound of Jacks’s low voice. Then she shivered as he stepped into view, looking like an angel of death with the swords still strapped to his back. “This dance is already taken.”
“Yes, by me.” Luc flashed his fangs.
Jacks merely laughed. The sound was musical and very much at odds with the voice Evangeline heard in her head. I’ll give you a choice. Dance with me, or watch me use one of my swords to chop off his head.
Evangeline gritted her teeth and glared up at him. “Is this how you always get dance partners? By threatening to kill the other suitors?”
“Don’t test me tonight, Little Fox.” Jacks’s free hand flexed as if to grab a sword. But then he wrapped it possessively around her waist instead.
Her rib cage tightened and her pulse raced, but she knew it wasn’t Jacks. It was the wine, and the mirth stone, and the anger she still felt for the multiple ways he’d betrayed her. “You need to let me go.”
“That’s not an option.” His eyes flickered down to hers as if by accident, as if he meant to keep her at a distance, but he couldn’t help but pull her in. “You’re in danger again. We need to leave.”
“No, Jacks—I’m not going anywhere with you. I heard you and LaLa. I heard everything you said. I know what she did to Apollo. I know you kept it from me. And I know—” She tried to say that she knew he didn’t want to be touching her right now. But she couldn’t manage those words. Instead, she pressed her hands to his chest and shoved.
And then she turned and ran.
30
The ballroom was spinning. Musicians were playing fiddles on the ceiling. Dancers were floating in the wine-soaked air. And LaLa’s sequins were everywhere.
At least that’s how it felt to Evangeline as she fled from the dance floor and away from Jacks.