Evangeline could hear a stream trickling in the distance—along with the sounds of voices and pounding horse hooves.
The Hunt must have been close, which meant Apollo could have been near as well.
With all that had happened, she’d forgotten about him. She wondered if he was a part of the Hunt, or if he’d gotten her message from Joff about waiting to join until she’d found him. She hoped very much he’d gotten the message and was waiting outside of the Cursed Forest. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if he found her now, bound to Jacks.
“Where exactly are we going?” Evangeline asked.
“First we need to get out of this accursed forest before someone else tries to kill you.”
“About that,” she said, “someone else did try to kill me earlier, before I entered this place.”
Jacks gave her a baleful look. “How is it that every day someone tries to kill you?”
“I wish I knew. Maybe then I could stop it from happening.”
He appeared doubtful. “Who was it this time? Did you see them?”
“It was Lord Byron Belleflower. Do you know him?”
“We’ve met. Spoiled, rich, mostly useless.”
“Do you know why he would want me dead? He said something about Petra?”
Jacks flinched. It was so quick, almost imperceptible, that Evangeline wondered if she’d imagined it.
When he spoke again, he sounded almost bored. “Petra was a nasty wench. She was Belleflower’s lover until she died recently. But you had nothing to do with that.”
“Then why does he want to kill me?”
“I have no idea.” Jacks sounded slightly annoyed now. “At this point, I’m just assuming everyone wants you dead.”
“Does that include you?”
“No.” There wasn’t even a second of hesitation. “But it doesn’t mean I’m safe.”
He looked at her then, meeting her eyes for the first time since he’d pressed his forehead to hers and pleaded with her to remember. He had the brightest, bluest eyes she’d ever seen. But as they stood there in the forest, his eyes looked paler than before, a ghostly shade of blue that made her think of lights on the verge of flickering out.
“I don’t believe you’re going to hurt me,” she said.
The color of his eyes became dimmer.
You’ll feel very differently soon.
The words were only in her head, but they sounded just like Jacks’s voice, and for a second, there was a terrible falling feeling in her stomach.
A bird cawed above, loud and shrill.
Evangeline looked up.
A dark, familiar creature with wings circled above them.
Her heart skipped over a beat as she had a flash of the very same creature biting her shoulder. “Oh no!”
“What’s wrong?” Jacks asked.
“That bird,” Evangeline whispered. “It belongs to the leader of the Guild of Heroes. He’s hunting you.”
With his free hand, Jacks pulled a knife from the holster on his leg.
“No!” Evangeline quickly grabbed his wrist.
Jacks scowled. “Don’t tell me I’m not allowed to kill birds now.”
“It’s a pet, and it shouldn’t be condemned because of its master.”
Jacks looked at Evangeline as if she made absolutely no sense to him. But he put away the knife. “Let’s just hope this pet bird is living its best day full of fat rabbits and not focusing on us.”
“Thank you,” said Evangeline.
“I don’t think I really did you a favor.”
“But it was what I wanted.”
Jacks looked as if he wanted to say something else about her wants, but then he tugged her forward through the forest by her wrist.
Evangeline didn’t know how long they walked after that, but eventually the vivid forest turned to mist. The flowers and the vines binding them together disappeared, fading like a dream that could live only in the sun.
She could still see Jacks and feel his wrist pressed against hers, now tied with simple rope, but the world around them was growing dark. The sky was a swirl of gray and charcoal and hovering clouds about to break.
The first drop felt like a surprise. Then more rain began to fall in relentless silver-gray lines that muddled the stars and the dark of the night.
Evangeline quickly lifted the hood of her green velvet cloak, but the rain had already soaked her hair through. “Does this mean we’re officially out of the Cursed Forest?”
“Yes.”
“But where are all the tents for the Hunt?”
“We’re on the other side of the forest now,” Jacks said without pausing as it continued to pour.
Evangeline once again lost track of time as they trudged through the rain. It was dark when they’d escaped the forest and it was dark still. Jacks had grown very quiet, and she had become rather hungry.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten or had anything to drink. It hadn’t seemed to matter inside the Cursed Forest. But now her stomach was growling and her legs were tired, and every rock and acorn looked like something worth taking a bite of.
She was starting to feel the effect of going an entire day without eating or drinking. At least . . . she thought it had been a day. She wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed since she’d gone to the forest.
All she knew was that it was night again, her mouth was dry, and her legs felt as if they would collapse underneath her. Jacks kept pace beside her, but she imagined she was slowing him down.
Her cloak was drenched and starting to leak through to her chilled skin.
“We’re almost there,” he said. Rain dripped from the tips of his golden hair to his cheeks before running down his neck to his doublet. Unlike Evangeline, he wore no hood or cloak, just the rain—and like everything else, it looked good on him.
He glanced at her sideways. “You shouldn’t stare at me like that.”
“Then how should I stare?”
“You shouldn’t stare at me at all.” He abruptly looked away.
Evangeline felt a stab of something close to hurt. Jacks had tied her to him, he’d saved her life, and now he was saying not to look at him.
“What is it we’re doing, Jacks?”
“We need to get out of the rain,” he said.
As soon as he spoke, the inn appeared in the distance, like a picture in a pop-up book. A rainy pop-up picture book. But Evangeline didn’t care as long as it was warm and she could get something to eat. Her shoes were soaked; her cloak was drenched and clinging to her person; even the rope tying her to Jacks was sopping wet. But as they drew closer, she could see that even in the pouring rain, the inn looked warm and cozy.
The building was all glistening redbrick with overflowing flower boxes full of fluffy fox-leaf flowers covered in fat drops of rain. The chimney on the moss-covered roof, with puffs of gray piping from it, filled the wet air with a woodsy sort of smoke, as the sign in front of the inn swayed with the wind.
Ye Olde Brick Inn at the End of the Forest: for Wayward Travelers and Adventurers.
Beneath this sign was another swaying sign that contained the word: Vacancy.
And then hooked beneath that was an even smaller sign that read: One Bed.
Chapter 28
Apollo