“Thank you for doing this,” Evangeline said.
“What is the point of having friends if they’re not there to support your bad decisions?” LaLa gave her a final hug just as the bell tolled. “You should go now.”
Evangeline darted outside right on time for the changing of the guards. One appeared to glance her way, but the evening sky must have helped to cloak her. The torches everywhere filled the night sky with plumes of smoke that gave everything a slightly ethereal look. It made Evangeline feel as if she was skirting the burnt pages of a storybook. A story she was eager to leave.
The dinner hour was winding down as she wove her way through the royal encampment. The atmosphere was slightly drunken, celebratory, and flirty. Some of the merriment from the Merrywood rebuilding festival had finally infiltrated the royal encampment.
From a glance, it seemed that men and women from other camps had come to mingle with the royal guards, which was good for Evangeline. Yet she still held her breath until she reached the edge of the tents.
Her insides felt warm from the wine, but she was growing nervous again as she slipped behind a pile of lumber just off the path, to avoid the soldiers who watched the entrance to the camp.
She was careful to be quiet, although the night was full of songs and laughter and crackling fires. The noise died down as she entered Merrywood Forest, and soon there was only the crunch of her footsteps, the low croaks of frogs, and the occasional howl of a wolf, which set off a chorus of even more howls in the distance.
Evangeline held out her lantern to check the map that LaLa had drawn to the glowing spring.
She had thought the path on the map was an actual road. But Evangeline didn’t see any road in the forest. Either she’d missed it or LaLa’s path was just the route she was supposed to follow, not an actual road.
As Evangeline tried to memorize the path on the map, the forest grew very quiet—eerily quiet. The rustle of squirrels was gone, as were the sounds of the deer and the baby dragons. She couldn’t hear a thing save for the very loud crack of a twig.
She jumped.
And then Jacks was there.
He was alive.
He wasn’t injured.
She couldn’t see so much as a scratch on his beautiful face. Evangeline felt as if she could breathe again. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized just how worried she’d actually been.
“Did I scare you, pet?”
“No—I mean, yes—not really,” she said, flustered, although she couldn’t have said why. She was going to go out searching for him and now here he was. Being very Jacks-like.
He tossed a pale white apple as he moved through the forest, the way a shadow might move at sunset. Slow and quick, all at once. He’d been several feet away, but now he was in front of her, looking down on her with clear blue eyes that shone in the dark.
“I remember,” she breathed.
“Do you now?” He smiled, and just like everything else, it was a very Jacks-like smile. Sharper at one corner, giving the impression of being both cruel and playful all at once. It reminded her vaguely of the first time they’d met, when she’d thought he looked like a half-bored young noble, half-wicked demigod.
“Tell me, pet, just how much do you remember?” The tips of his cool fingers found the base of her neck.
Her pulse spiked. Just a little, and yet it was enough to erase some of the warmth inside of her as Jacks slid his fingers from the hollow of her throat up to the line of her jaw.
This, too, felt like Jacks.
And yet . . . her heart was beating wrong, wrong, wrong, and she was now thinking about how he’d called her pet twice. Not Little Fox, not Evangeline.
But the problem with wanting something you can’t have, or shouldn’t have, is that the second it seems possible, all reason flees. Reason and wanting go well together only when the reason encourages a person to get what they want. Any reason opposed to this want becomes the enemy. A distant part of Evangeline told her that Jacks was acting strange, and that she didn’t like it when he called her pet. But the part of Evangeline that wanted Jacks to love her tried to ignore this instinct.
“I remember all of it,” she said. “I remember everything from the moment we met in your church to the night at the Valory Arch. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jacks said flippantly, still smiling crookedly as he dropped the apple in his hand. It fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
“Evangeline. Back away from him,” called a smoky voice through the trees. It was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it until Chaos carefully stepped closer. “He’s not safe right now.”
“I’m never safe,” Jacks said. Then with a smirk toward his old friend, he added, “Playing the hero doesn’t suit you, Castor.”
“At least I don’t give up just because I fail.”
“I’m not giving up,” Jacks drawled. “I’m giving the girl what she wants.” His fingers moved down her jaw to Evangeline’s chin. For a second, time seemed to slow as he carefully lifted her chin in a way that made her think of only one thing: kissing.
Evangeline felt suddenly sober.
“Isn’t this what you want?” Jacks whispered.
Yes, she wanted to say. But again, she could hear that small, reasonable voice telling her that this was wrong. Jacks was supposed to tease her, taunt her, touch her, but never try to kiss her. He didn’t believe they could kiss. He believed in doomed love and unhappily ever after.
And Evangeline still wanted to prove him wrong.
She might have felt suddenly terrified as he leaned in closer. Yet she couldn’t make herself pull away as Jacks brought his lips to—
He immediately doubled over in pain and cursed loudly, saying words Evangeline had never heard anyone utter. His face contorted, turning bone white as he clutched his ribs before dropping to his knees with a groan.
“What’s happening?”
She bent down to help him. And that’s when she noticed the words on the cuff around her wrist had started glowing again.
“Sorry about this.” Chaos’s hot arms went around her, nearly scorching her as he picked her up. “We need to leave before Jacks tries to kill you again.”
Chapter 35
Apollo
Aurora dropped flower petals on the path as she walked. She tossed them out before her like some fairy goddess of the forest. And the path to the Cursed Forest treated her as such.
It always rained on the roads to the Cursed Forest—except where Aurora Valor walked. As soon as she tossed her petals and took a step, the rain fell no more. All Apollo felt was a subtle breeze as he walked in step beside her on a path paved in shoes and lined in overturned carriages, some of which still had wheels spinning.
“You haven’t told me what this will cost,” said Apollo, “or where we are going.”
“I’m taking you to the Tree of Souls.”
“Your father—”
“Is very stubborn,” Aurora interrupted. “He knows a great many things, but he does not know everything.”
Something twisted inside Apollo—a feeling that told him either he’d eaten some bad mutton earlier or this was a very poor idea. He knew better than to trust Aurora. She was not half as sweet as she looked as she continued to pull flower petals from her silver cloak and toss them onto the path.