Jacks smiled at her, a rare curve of his lips that looked genuinely happy. “You like it?”
“Yes,” she moaned, and she couldn’t even be embarrassed. She hadn’t finished her first dumpling yet, and she already had a feeling she’d be stealing a bowl from one of the other tables.
“Did you make all of this?”
Jacks raised a concerned brow. “You think I cook?”
“No, I suppose not.” And it really didn’t make sense that he would have fixed all this food. “I’m just trying to figure out what this place is.” She took a bite of honey pie, and it tasted like a dream. “Why does everything feel so different here?”
“Long ago, before the fall of the Valors, an enchantment was placed on the Hollow to protect it from a threat. But magic often has unintended results. In the case of the Hollow, this enchantment didn’t just keep the Hollow safe from one threat, it protected it from all curses and kept it unchanged throughout time.”
“And that’s why the food is all laid out like this,” she said.
“Like clockwork,” he said wryly as his long fingers tore a piece of bread and tossed it into his mouth.
She didn’t think she’d ever seen him eat something that wasn’t an apple. In fact, since they’d arrived, she hadn’t even seen him eat one. It made her think again of what he’d just said about the Hollow being a place that was protected from all curses. She wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with Jacks’s apples, but it did make her wonder about something else. “Did you bring me here because I’d be protected from the curse that binds me to Apollo? Is that why the slashes stopped as soon as we arrived?”
Jacks nodded once. “I imagined the mirror curse would be put on pause if you were here. And I had hoped you’d heal faster. The magic of the Hollow is fueled by time—what feels like hours here is really days elsewhere—so people tend to heal quickly.”
“Why didn’t you just bring me here before, when you first learned about the curse on Apollo?”
Jacks tore at another piece of bread. “I don’t ever come here. The Hollow used to be my home.” His eyes turned a bleak shade of blue.
Evangeline felt the urge to say she was sorry, but she wasn’t sure what for. All she knew was that her heart had cracked when he’d said the word home.
What had happened to change things? How had he turned from a boy with a family and friends into a Fate? And why did he no longer want to come here? To her, the Hollow felt warm and wonderful, but it clearly didn’t to Jacks.
“When was the last time you were here?”
“Right after I became a Fate.” Jacks’s countenance shifted as soon as the words were out.
It was like watching a spell break apart.
The fire crackled, and the tavern grew hotter as Jacks’s entire body tensed. He dropped the bread, hardened his jaw, narrowed his eyes on Evangeline, then slowly lowered his stormy gaze to the chain around her neck. And this time, he didn’t ask if it was a gift from Luc.
“I think you’ve been naughty, Little Fox.” He made a tsking sound with his tongue. “Where did you find the truth stone?”
“I took it from Glendora Slaughterwood’s grave.” The words were out before she could stop them.
And then, before she could ask him something in return, he fired another question. “And you didn’t think to tell me about it?”
He sounded hurt or angry; it was hard to tell.
She felt a stab of guilt, but not that guilty as she realized he was now using the power on her, forcing her lips to spill the words, “I did think about telling you, but I didn’t want you to take the stone away.”
His hand shot across the table and took hold of the rock in his fist. For a second, she thought he might pull it clean off.
“Don’t, please—” Her entire body tensed, and then another truth she didn’t mean to say slipped out. “I just want to understand you, Jacks.”
He looked at her as if she was making a mistake, features softening with something like pity, and then he ripped the stone from the chain.
“Jacks!” She scrambled to chase him as he left the tavern, but he was too fast and she was still slow from her injuries. She’d never catch up. There was also a part of her that didn’t want to catch up, not when he was upset like this.
But she couldn’t let him go. She wasn’t sure how close she had to be for the truth stone to work, but there was still a ques tion she had to ask and an answer she needed confirmed. She shouted at him as he left the tavern. “Why do you want to open the Valory Arch?”