She lost her footing. The slat that had been beneath her was gone.
“No—” Evangeline cried.
Archer moved ridiculously fast. He shielded her, turning her body as they fell. When they landed just shy of the broken slat, it was his back that hit the bridge with a loud crack.
She heard him grunt, as if the air was knocked from his lungs, but he didn’t let her go. If anything, he held her tighter.
She could feel his ragged breathing against her neck as they lay there on that broken bridge. Her shirt had ridden up in the fight, and his fingers were now on her bare stomach.
The rain pounded harder. Every single inch of her skin was soaked. But all she felt were his fingertips as they slowly traveled lower toward the band of her skirt.
“This is where you break free,” he said softly.
“I don’t want to,” she said, but the words came out wrong, breathless. And despite all the cold and the damp, she could feel herself go hot from her cheeks all the way down to the bare skin beneath Archer’s hands. “I mean, I just need to catch my breath.”
He made a scolding sound with his tongue. “You don’t get to catch your breath. If you stop fighting, you lose.” He moved one icy hand up to her throat and she felt the sharp tip of a knife against her neck.
Evangeline went very still, or she tried to. It was surprisingly hard not to move with a blade to her throat and a hand intimately wrapped around her stomach. “Are you insane?”
“Undoubtedly.” He slowly moved the dagger, drawing a careful line over her pulse. He didn’t pierce her skin, but the effect was still dizzying.
“Never imagine you’re safe,” he scolded. His knife traced a line from the hollow of her throat to the center of her chest all the way down to the laces of her vest.
Her breathing hitched. The tip of the blade hovered just beneath the laces. All it would take was one little flick and they would be undone.
No.
She wasn’t sure if he thought the word or if she did. It almost sounded like his voice in her head.
Then in one impossible move, Archer hauled her to her feet and released her just as quickly.
She staggered back on quivering legs.
Across from her, Archer was soaked. Water dripped from his golden hair to his pale cheeks, but he didn’t even shiver. He just stood there, gripping the knife he’d just held to her throat. His knuckles were white, but that might have just been the cold. “We’ll try again later.”
“What if I don’t want to try later?” she panted.
He smirked, an expression that said it was cute that she thought she had a choice. “If that’s what you want, then you’ll need to do a better job of fighting me off when I come into your bedroom. Until then you carry this. Everywhere.”
Archer tossed her his dagger.
It flipped, handle over tip. Jewels sparkled in the light, and suddenly Evangeline saw an image of this knife. But it wasn’t in the air, it was on a dark floor. And this wasn’t just a picture, it was a memory.
Many of the gems were missing, but the knife’s hilt still glittered in the torchlight, pulsing blue and purple, the color of blood before it was spilled.
The memory was quick.
As it faded, she looked at the knife in her hand. It was definitely the same blade. It had the same blue and purple gems, down to the ones that were missing.
She didn’t know if it had always been his, or if it had once been hers, but one thing she was certain of was that Archer had lied about knowing her.
She wanted to ask him why, and she wanted to ask him about the knife.
But once again, he was suddenly gone.
Chapter 13
Apollo
Apollo stood in front of the fire of his private study, hands clasped behind him, chin tilted up, eyes down. It was a pose he’d frequently struck for portraits, like the one that currently hung above the fireplace mantel. Of course, he had been younger in that portrait. It had been painted before he’d met Evangeline, before he’d died and seen himself replaced within a week by an impostor. And an unimpressive one at that.
Apollo knew he was still young. He’d lived only twenty years—and they’d been twenty peaceful years, which made it rather hard to live a life that inspired bards and minstrels. He liked to think that had he lived a little longer before his supposed death, his legacy wouldn’t have been so quickly discarded. Yet Apollo was still disappointed in himself that he’d squandered so much time.
Coming back from the dead had given him an edge in building a legacy that would not be so easily forgotten. But he knew that this alone wasn’t enough to forge the future that he wanted, to ensure that no one would curse him again or use him in any other way to harm Evangeline.
He had to do more.
Apollo unrolled the scroll that Lord Slaughterwood had given him two days ago. Just as before, it began to catch fire, not enough to burn him, but enough to destroy the page and render it into ashes. It started with the words at the bottom of the scroll; they always caught fire before he could read them. But he’d read enough of the story. He knew exactly what he had to do.
But first Apollo had to make sure Evangeline was safe.
The knock on the door came precisely on time.
Apollo took a deep breath, bracing himself for what he feared he would have to do next.
“You may enter,” he said, turning down his mouth as the door to his study opened and Havelock stepped inside.
The guard immediately noticed the burning page in Apollo’s hand and the ashes on the ground. “Have I interrupted something?”
“Nothing important.” Apollo dropped the smoldering page on the floor. Like all stories in the North, it was infected with the story curse. This particular story set fire to itself every time it was opened.
The page would burn until it was just a pile of ash. Then it would re-form—much like what Apollo was doing with his life and Evangeline’s.
“What news do you have about the attack on Princess Evangeline?” Apollo asked.
The guard bowed and took a beleaguered breath. “The princess’s tutor continues to maintain that she’s innocent. Madame Voss swears she never sent the princess a letter to lure her out to the well. She claims the guards are lying.”
Apollo ran a hand through his hair. “What are Victor and Hansel saying?”
“They stand by their story. They say there was a letter from the tutor and they lost Evangeline in the fog when she tried to meet her. They swear that they aren’t part of any plot.”
Apollo grimaced. “Do you think they’re telling the truth?”
“They seemed sincere, Your Highness. But it’s difficult to tell. The tutor seemed sincere as well.”
Apollo sighed and looked down at the floor where the page was almost done burning.
“Victor, Hansel, and the tutor are probably all working together,” Apollo said.
He wanted to take the words back as soon as he’d spoken them.
But it was too late now. It had been too late ever since he’d told Victor and Hansel to give Evangeline the falsified note from the tutor, to pretend to lose her in the gardens, and then to push her in the well. But Evangeline had given him no choice. She’d refused to believe that she was in danger. He had to show her that she was wrong.
He hadn’t meant for the lesson to be quite so traumatic. He’d expected the guards on garden patrol to find her sooner. That had been a mistake, but he hadn’t wanted to involve more people than necessary in his plan.