“Is that really you?” Honora had a slight accent that spoke of times before and a voice just as delicate as her appearance. “Castor?”
Evangeline leaned closer, unsure she’d heard the name right. Castor was dead. Jacks had told her how he’d died. Except now that she thought back, Jacks hadn’t finished the story. He’d just ended by saying he wasn’t meant to be a savior.
Evangeline watched as Honora embraced Chaos. “How long has it been?” she asked.
Chaos said something too low for Evangeline to hear. But she thought she caught the words “I’ve missed you, Mother.”
Honora started sobbing.
Evangeline felt like a terrible intruder, yet she couldn’t look away. If she was putting this together correctly, the Valors hadn’t created a monster to avenge Castor’s death—he’d become the monster. Chaos was Castor Valor. This was why he really wanted to open the arch. Not just to take his helm off. He wanted to save his family. He missed them. He loved them.
It hit Evangeline then, how she could save Jacks. It was so simple, she cursed herself for not considering it before. Love was how she could save him. She didn’t just care about him or want him. She loved him. She just needed to tell him that.
The thought terrified her a little. He’d already rejected her; it was tempting to fear he would do it again. But that was the whole problem: fear. Jacks was only rejecting her because he was afraid that he would kill her. But if she told him that she loved him, hopefully it would be enough to make him want to stay and try for more than what he was settling for.
Some of her ideas about love might have changed since coming North, but she still believed it was the most powerful force in the world. If two people really loved each other and they were willing to fight for that love, if they were willing to go to war for each other, day after day, then it didn’t matter what they were up against. Love would always win as long as they never stopped fighting for it.
If Jacks loved her the way she loved him, they could find a way to make it work.
It didn’t matter if he stayed forever cursed. Although a part of her couldn’t help but believe that maybe her love would be enough to break his curse. She knew the stories said that Jacks only had one true love—and he’d already found that girl—but the stories also twisted the truth. The Valory proved that.
With a surge of hope that felt like wings powerful enough to soar to the moon and stars and beyond, Evangeline started to turn around. She needed to find him, she needed to tell him how she felt. She—
—startled to a halt as a flash of blinding light came from the room with the Valors.
Chaos made a sound that might have been a sob, pained and deep.
Evangeline turned back to the cracked door, just in time to see the cursed helm on Chaos’s head was now broken.
He wrenched it off with a roar and threw it across the room. The helm crashed so hard against the wall that it shattered as it fell to the ground.
“Finally,” he said, his voice somewhere between a cry and a roar. And for the first time, Evangeline saw what he looked like. He had a face that made her breath catch in her chest. Glittering eyes, clean-cut jaw, smooth olive skin, and a smile that made her heart flip.
“The Handsome Stranger,” she gasped.
Honora and Chaos both turned her way.
Evangeline froze in the doorway.
“Looks as if we have a visitor,” Honora said, angling her head in a way that could have been either curious or wary.
“Mother, this is Evangeline,” said Chaos. His voice was different without the helm, all velvet without the smoke, more similar to the voice he’d used in her dreams. “She’s the one who unlocked the arch.”
Suddenly, Chaos was at the door, opening it wider and giving her a smile that rivaled any immortal’s she’d ever met. “I truly can’t thank you enough.” He took her hand and gently kissed it.
Without his helm, Chaos was a different kind of monster, possessing all the charm of a prince and the power of a vampire. It made Evangeline a little breathless as he smiled down on her. His eyes were the most arresting shade of green, a thousand different facets, all shimmering with magic until they flared with heat.
Evangeline caught her mistake too late—she shouldn’t have looked into his eyes. Before she could scream, Chaos’s smile turned to fangs, and then those fangs were on her neck, tearing into her throat.
46
Everything was teeth and breathless pain.
Evangeline tried to escape. She tried to cry out.
She thought she heard Honora cry out as well. But Chaos didn’t release her. One of his hands held her neck while his lips drank her blood. He drank and drank, draining her with violent pulls of his mouth and tongue and the occasional scrape of teeth, piercing more skin and drawing more blood.