He kicked the door shut and brought her to the bed. “Little Fox, when I saw you, I thought—”
He broke off as he set her atop all the twisted sheets. Then he fisted her hair in his hand and tugged until she was looking up at him. His face had all the agony of a fallen star, broken and beautiful, with eyes so blue, the color of everything else looked dull.
Deliberately, his gaze fell to her lips.
Her breathing turned ragged, and she wished just once that he could kiss her.
He leaned closer and gently twisted her hair, angling her head as he brought their mouths incredibly close.
“You’re still bleeding.” He licked the center of her lips, soft and agonizingly slow. His tongue felt like heaven and hell. Like everything she wanted and all she couldn’t have. She had to stop herself from leaning closer, though she doubted Jacks would let her. She could feel his fingers against her scalp, holding her in place, keeping her lips just shy of his.
But maybe it was close enough. Maybe they didn’t have to touch. She could live like this as long as she could live with him.
Then he let her go. He dropped her hair and stepped away from the bed, making her skin go suddenly cold.
“What’s wrong?” she said. She could see him shutting down again, wiping the emotion from his face—the anger, the lust, the fear, the pain, the longing. It was just like the Hollow. This was what he’d done when she’d put the mirth stone in the pot. He’d shuttered all his feelings. He’d pretended everything had been because of the stone.
She’d suspected this was the case, but she hadn’t been certain until now.
“I have to go,” he said coldly.
“No—” She shoved up from the bed. This time, she wasn’t going to let him get away with shutting her out. “What are you so afraid of?”
A flicker of something like regret flashed in Jacks’s eyes.
“What is it?” she pressed.
Jacks raked a hand through his hair. “Do you still want to know what the stones do when they’re together?”
“Yes,” she said. But suddenly, she felt nervous. This was the answer she’d been waiting for. The one she’d been begging for. All this time, she’d been dying to know what Jacks really wanted. For a while, she’d been afraid of it, because she didn’t want him to hurt anyone. But now from the way he looked at her, she suddenly feared the only person his answer would hurt was her.
Jacks crossed over to his desk and picked up a white apple. He tossed it as he said, “When the four stones are combined, a person has the power to return to any moment in their past. It can only be done once. Once the stones have been used for this purpose, they’ll never have the power to be used like this again.”
For a second, it didn’t sound so bad. Lots of people had moments they wanted to change. That day alone there were several things Evangeline would have done differently. “What moment do you want to go back to?”
Jacks looked at the apple in his hand as he answered. “I want to return to the moment I met Donatella.”
“The princess who stabbed you?”
He nodded tightly.
For a second, Evangeline was speechless. Of all the answers, she did not expect this. She quickly flashed back to the night that she and Jacks had spent together in the crypt, when he’d finally told her the story of Princess Donatella—how he’d kissed her and it should have killed her, but instead, it made his heart beat. She should have been his one true love, but Donatella chose another and stabbed Jacks in the heart.
“Why would you want to go back for her?”
Jacks worked his jaw. “She was supposed to be my one true love—I want another chance at that.”
“But this doesn’t make sense,” Evangeline said. “Why go to all this trouble for a girl who you don’t love?” Because Evangeline knew Jacks didn’t love Donatella. She might have believed it before, when she’d first heard the story, but Evangeline couldn’t fathom it now.
Jacks never talked about her, and on the rare occasions he did mention her, he didn’t sound as if he loved her.
“Is this just because you didn’t kill her? Or do you really want to be with her?”
Jacks’s nostrils flared. “This is a pointless argument.” He bit down hard on his apple. “And you won’t remember this anyway.”
Fresh panic gripped Evangeline. This was the second time he’d said that. The first time, in the Hollow, he’d made it sound as if he hadn’t really meant it, but now, Jacks’s voice was clear and hard.