She hadn’t even heard it open, but it must have. A girl dressed like a guard stood in the center of the tent, hands on her hips as she scanned the lavish space with a shrewd twist of her lips, which were painted with a sparkling gloss.
“LaLa!” Evangeline exclaimed, too loud. But she could not contain her excitement at the sight of her friend. “What are you doing dressed like a guard?”
“I kept trying to visit, but they wouldn’t let me. Some nonsense about how you were too overwrought to see friends. So I had to fashion a costume.”
LaLa twirled around, and as she did, her three-quarter-length skirt lifted just enough to reveal that underneath the plain burgundy fabric was a shimmery sequin petticoat that sparkled like firelight. She’d also added little puffed sleeves to her bronze jacket, and a matching belt that tied into a bow in the back.
LaLa was a number of things. First and foremost, Evangeline thought of her as a friend, so sometimes it was easy to forget that she was also an immortal Fate, like Jacks.
She was the Unwed Bride.
She’d once confessed to Evangeline that the Fates were always fighting the urge to be that which they were made to be. LaLa’s urge was to find love. She wanted it more than anything, even though she knew that it would never last. Because her love always ended with her alone at an altar, bawling poisoned tears. Because no matter how many loves she found, the love she really wanted was her first love—a dragon shifter who had been locked away in the Valory.
To deal with her urges to find love, she sewed. She sewed a lot. And she was very good at it.
“I know it’s not exactly the same uniform,” she said with another swish of her skirt, “but I think I’ve improved upon it.”
“I love it,” Evangeline said. “And I love seeing you even more.”
With her memory back less than a day, Evangeline had not had time to properly miss her friend. But now that LaLa was here, Evangeline could feel that the missing had been there all along, part of the emptiness inside her that was only now starting to feel as if it was filling up. She hugged her then, so tightly she might have feared hurting her, if LaLa wasn’t a Fate.
“Where’s your dragon?” Evangeline asked. She realized then that even though she now remembered opening the Valory Arch, she still didn’t know exactly what had been inside of it, apart from LaLa’s dragon shifter. She also had no idea if LaLa had actually reunited with him.
“Oh, he’s around,” LaLa said vaguely as she pulled away. “I’m sure you’ll meet him soon,” she added, but it was a little half-hearted, which wasn’t at all like her.
LaLa might have been a Fate, and thus her emotions weren’t quite human, but Evangeline knew that LaLa had loved her dragon shifter; she’d loved him so much that she’d actually been the one to put the Archer’s curse on Apollo, misguidedly hoping to ensure that Evangeline opened the Valory Arch.
Evangeline had been quite hurt at the time, but like LaLa, she had also made terrible decisions because of love.
“Is everything all right?” Evangeline reached out again and took her friend’s hand. “Do you need to talk?”
“It’s fine, really. It’s just . . .” LaLa paused to exhale. “The world has changed a lot since Dane was locked away, and apparently so have I. But it’s fine. Truly. What’s that saying about love? You know the one that mentions the sugar, the fire, and cost of desire?”
Evangeline shook her head. “I’m not sure I’ve heard that one.”
“Well, perhaps it’s not that much of a saying. Now, don’t get me wrong, my friend, I’m thrilled you’re asking about all of this. But I’m perplexed. I thought you had lost all of your memories?”
“I did,” Evangeline said softly. “I only just got them back.”
She then quickly filled LaLa in on how it was Apollo who’d stolen them. How he’d tried to convince her that Jacks was the villain, and he might have succeeded if Jacks hadn’t kept returning to save her life. She told LaLa of every time he had visited and how her heart remembered him even when her head did not. Until at last she found the letter she’d written that Jacks had been carrying around next to his heart.
“That’s surprisingly sweet,” LaLa said.
“I thought so, too. As soon as I read it, I finally was able to will myself to remember. That was last night—or maybe it was early this morning. I’m a little mixed up on timing.”
She smiled, but it was wobbly. She was so relieved to see her friend. She just wanted to flop down on some of the cushions in the tent and talk about nothing and everything. But there wasn’t time for that.
Not if she wanted to find Jacks and try and stop him from doing whatever it was that Chaos had warned her about.
“I didn’t want to come back here with Apollo, but when I woke, Jacks had left me, and then Apollo was there with his heroes and his guards and his lies.”
“Bastard,” LaLa muttered. “I know princes are the worst, but I wanted to hope being cursed might do him a little good.”
“I do wonder if in his own way he thinks he’s doing good.”
“But you still hate him, right?”
“Of course—I loathe him. I can’t stand the sight of him or the sound of his voice, and I want to get out of here before he returns so I never have to see him again.”
“Let’s do that then. Although I would love to wait until he returns so that I can stab him in the heart and then cook it over a fire. But I suppose I can do that another day,” LaLa mused. “So, what is our escape plan?” Her eyes gleamed as she clapped her hands together. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in a sword fight. That could be a fun route.”
“Tragically, I can’t wield a sword,” said Evangeline.
“What about those self-defense lessons you told me about? Did Jacks teach you anything, or was it just an excuse to put his hands around you?” LaLa waggled her brows.
Evangeline’s cheeks turned very warm. “He taught me a few things . . . but mostly it was a lot of his arms around me.”
“That’s what I thought.” LaLa smiled, but Evangeline could tell it was one of those trying-to-be-happy-for-a-friend smiles.
Only since LaLa was a Fate, it looked just a little more dangerous. It was a smile that also said: If he hurts you, you let me know and I will happily hurt him even more.
It reminded Evangeline of the last conversation she’d had with LaLa. Before Evangeline had lost her memories, LaLa had come to warn her about Jacks. As long as you are with Jacks, you’re not safe, she’d said.
“Do you still think Jacks is going to hurt me?” asked Evangeline.
LaLa’s forced smile faded. “Jacks hurts everyone. He hasn’t been the same since the day my brother died, and Castor died, and everything in the North went to hell.”
For a flash of a second, LaLa didn’t look like a Fate. She didn’t look vicious or powerful, or like she might kill someone just for making her friend cry. LaLa simply looked like a girl who needed a friend just as much as Evangeline did.
In addition to being a Fate, LaLa was also one of the original Merrywoods. Her brother had been Lyric Merrywood, who had been one of Jacks’s closest friends, along with Prince Castor Valor. They’d died on the same day, and even though it hadn’t been Jacks’s fault, Evangeline knew Jacks blamed himself for being unable to save Castor.