Evangeline scrambled for something to say. Anything that would change the way Apollo was looking at her now. Then she remembered the engagement story from Madame Voss. She could tell him this was what she remembered.
“I had a memory of you. It was the night you proposed. We were at a ball and you were dressed like the Archer from the old fairytale, The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.”
As she spoke, Evangeline had a picture in her head that might have been a memory, too.
Apollo went down on one knee.
She abruptly forgot how to breathe as the crowd around them increased, caging Evangeline and Apollo in a circle of ballgowns and silk doublets and shocked faces.
Apollo took both of her hands in his warm grip. “I want you, Evangeline Fox. I want to write ballads for you on the walls of Wolf Hall and carve your name on my heart with swords. I want you to be my wife and my princess and my queen. Marry me, Evangeline, and let me give you everything.”
He brought her hand to his lips again, and this time, when he looked at Evangeline, it was as if the rest of the celebration didn’t exist.
No one had ever looked at Evangeline like this before. All she could see was the longing and the hope and the hint of fear swirling in Apollo’s expression.
And yet it wasn’t nearly half as powerful as the way that Archer had looked at her in the memory she’d had earlier, as if he’d haul her from the clutches of war, from falling cities and breaking worlds. She could picture him again, looking down on her as a drop of water fell from his eyelashes onto her lips.
But that was all in the past.
In the present, she was married to Apollo. Whatever feelings she’d had for Archer didn’t matter. If she could forget a year of memories, she could forget those feelings as well. But the problem was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not yet, at least. Not when she still didn’t know the entire story.
She knew it was wrong to hold on. But she also realized tonight just how little she truly knew her husband. She hadn’t known that he was jealous and that he liked to toast to curses. She didn’t know why he had blood on his boots right now.
And after telling him she’d regained a memory of his proposal, she would have expected him to look happy. But Apollo looked unmistakably alarmed.
Chapter 21
Jacks
Jacks had seen enough.
If he stayed on the balcony any longer, if he kept watching, he’d kill Apollo, or at least make it impossible for him to touch Evangeline ever again.
Jacks reminded himself she was safe with Apollo. As a princess, she’d have anything she ever wanted.
But she wasn’t supposed to want to kiss him. It wasn’t fair of Jacks to hate her a little for it. But feeling hateful was the only thing that made it possible for him to leave. And he really needed to leave.
Evangeline was safe. That was what mattered.
If Jacks stayed, if he stormed in the room and used his powers to make Apollo watch as Jacks told Evangeline that she wasn’t nothing to him. That she was everything. That he’d turned back time to keep her alive, and he would make the same choice again. If Jacks made her remember that he was the one she should have wanted to kiss. She wouldn’t be safe anymore. She wouldn’t even be alive.
If Evangeline was going to have any future, Jacks could not be a part of it.
Quietly he leaped from the balcony. His boots made no sound as he landed in the darkened courtyard below. Although he should have timed it better. He could hear two guards on rounds approaching.
Normally, he’d have used his abilities to control their emotions so that they might turn around. But he was a little drained from all the guards he’d controlled earlier. He could also hear the conversation of these guards, and the words blood and massacre caught his attention.
Jacks moved closer to the stony walls of Wolf Hall and hid in the shadows as the guards drew closer and the taller one said, “Quixton was there and he said it wasn’t possible that one person could kill so many people. He said it was like a demon did it.” The guard paused to shudder. “I don’t have any love for the family of House Fortuna, but no one should have their throat ripped into and their heart ripped out.”
Jacks disagreed with his last statement. But he was less concerned that a royal guard could have such an irrationally soft heart than he was about this guard’s use of the word demon.
Demons didn’t exist.
But Jacks did know of a creature that humans often mistook for one, especially in the North, where the story curse made it nearly impossible for tales about vampires to properly spread. When they did, the curse prevented humans from being reasonably fearful. So whenever a human was truly afraid, they usually referred to the vampires as demons.
And Jacks feared he knew exactly which bloodthirsty demon these guards were speaking of tonight. Castor.
The Valors had originally cast the story curse to protect their son, Castor, when he’d first been turned into a vampire. It was supposed to affect only stories about vampires. But the curse had been cast out of terror, and curses that come from a place of fear always turn out a little twisted or become far more terrible than intended.
Jacks wondered if the Valors would attempt to reverse the curse now that they were back. It would be interesting to see if Honora and Wolfric would choose to reshape the North, or if they would simply live a quiet life in the rebuilt Merrywood Manor.
He had yet to visit them there. He’d seen most of the Valors after the arch had been opened, but he’d been half dead at the time, thanks to Castor’s appetite. Since then, Jacks had seen only Aurora. He knew she wouldn’t turn him in to Apollo or his soldiers. He was less certain about her parents, Wolfric and Honora.
First, there was the matter of honor, which they both had. Then there was Apollo, who had bestowed the status of Great House upon their new name and gifted them Merrywood Forest, Merrywood Manor, and Merrywood Village.
The forest, the manor, and the village weren’t much of a gift in Jacks’s opinion. Their history was as ugly as they were. Most people simply said they were cursed or haunted. Even Jacks didn’t like traveling through those lands.
But he thought again about the guards talking about a murderous demon. Then he pictured that same murderous demon, ripping into Evangeline’s throat, killing her, again.
Jacks mounted his horse and rode hard for the Merrywood.
He could already sense a change as soon as he reached Merrywood Forest. He could hear the life teeming on either side of his path. Rabbits, frogs, birds, deer, and trees as they began to grow again.
The Valors might have returned only a few days ago, but there was a reason they were the Valors, a reason that even when they’d been long dead, the stories about them had lived and grown, transforming them into beings that sometimes sounded closer to gods.
Jacks knew they weren’t.
The Valors could bleed and die like everyone else, but they didn’t live like everyone. They weren’t content merely surviving. He wasn’t even sure they were capable of it. Before they’d been locked away in the Valory, they’d started a kingdom that spanned half a continent. Jacks didn’t know what they would do now that they were out, but he had no doubt the Valors would create another indelible shift in the world.
He hopped off his horse and tied it to a post just outside Merrywood Village. The Valors hadn’t started their rebuilding of the manor yet. They were beginning with the village first. Jacks imagined they’d all be staying somewhere in the vicinity, and therefore Castor would most likely be nearby instead of at his old crypt in Valorfell.