Evangeline’s heart stopped.
She searched Jacks’s eyes, but all she saw was darkness, and all she felt was the press of his hands. He held on to her the way a person might grasp the edge of a cliff, knowing once they let go, there was no taking hold again.
And Evangeline could no longer avoid the truth she hadn’t wanted to see. Jacks was the Archer from The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox. That was the reason why he’d known so much about the Archer’s curse and why he’d been so insistent there was no way to break it, why he’d said he wasn’t friends with the Archer. He was the Archer.
Evangeline had feared it was true as soon as the Handsome Stranger had mentioned the first fox. But she’d dismissed it because she hadn’t wanted to be right. She hadn’t wanted that to be Jacks’s story—she wanted to be his story.
A tear slid down her cheek as she tried to imagine Jacks as the Archer, fighting not to hurt the girl he loved and failing. No wonder he was so damaged and cruel. No wonder he’d perfected the art of not caring.
“Sorry to break your fairytale, Little Fox, but ballads don’t end happily, and neither do the two of us.”
His hands dropped from her shoulders, and he started for the door.
“I’m not that fox!” Evangeline cried.
“You don’t understand.” He tossed a dark look over his shoulder. “Every girl is another fox. You want to know how the story really ends? You want to know the part of the tale that everyone forgets?”
Evangeline told herself to shake her head. For so long, she’d wanted to know the end of this story, but now she wanted to forget it all. She wanted Jacks to simply be the Prince of Hearts again—the heartsick Fate looking for true love—rather than a fallen hero who’d found the love of his life and killed her.
“I thought you just told me how the story ended,” she said.
“I told you that I killed her, but I didn’t say how.” A dangerous intensity slipped into Jacks’s voice. “I didn’t tell you that I ran away, that I tried to leave her so I wouldn’t hurt her. I didn’t know if I really loved her, or if my feelings were all from the curse, because it wouldn’t let me stop thinking about her. But she had more faith in me than I did. She chased after me. She was convinced I really loved her and that I could fight the curse. And I did. I never laid a hand on her. I overcame the Archer’s curse. But it didn’t matter, because as soon as I kissed her, she died.” Jacks’s mouth twisted bitterly. “Since then, every girl I’ve kissed has died, except for one. And you are not that girl.”
44
Evangeline was beginning to fear that time was fueled by emotions and that things like dread made it move faster. There was a curvy black glass clock atop the fireplace mantel in Jacks’s room that she didn’t notice until after he had left her. Now she couldn’t take her eyes off the timepiece. Her palms started to sweat as she watched the spinning of the second hand, twirling faster and faster each minute.
Soon it would be nightfall. Soon she would forget him. She would forget this version of her life. She might even have an entirely different life, and she wouldn’t know this life had ever existed.
She would know he existed, but he would no longer be Jacks, he would just be a mythical figure: the Prince of Hearts. She would forget that he’d been Jacks of the Hollow, and the Archer, and, for the span of one night, hers.
How could he take all of that away from her? She hated him a little for it, which made it marginally easier. But it still felt wrong. Evangeline had always believed that every story had the potential for infinite endings, but this didn’t feel like the way their story was supposed to end. She hadn’t met Jacks just to forget him.
She needed to convince him of this before he used the stones.
The door to the room creaked open. Evangeline looked away from the clock to find Chaos standing in the doorway.
He was dressed more like a prince than a warrior, in a velvet doublet of deep wine red with an elegant cream shirt underneath. His gloves were brown leather, his pants were dark, and the sword strapped to his side was gold. The weapon looked more decorative than necessary, as if tonight were some sort of special occasion. She supposed, for him, it was.
In his hands, he held a small iron chest, which must have concealed the luck stone, the youth stone, and the truth stone. She still had the jar with the mirth stone in her hand, and for a terrible second, she wished that she had lost it.
“Ready, Princess?”
“No,” Evangeline blurted. She would never be ready to have her life erased and replaced. “Don’t we need to wait for Jacks?”