Once Upon a Broken Heart (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

Evangeline and Jacks stumbled through the door together. The room was cold, and she thought it held the scent of apples, but that might have just been Jacks.

A skylight provided just enough illumination for Evangeline to see walls of haphazard bookshelves broken up by a fireplace, a scuffed desk piled high with papers, a sofa of dark amber velvet, and a pair of mismatched armchairs. They’d stumbled into someone’s private library. She just hoped the owner didn’t return while they were hiding there.

As soon as the door shut behind them, Jacks pulled away and fell on top of the sofa, head resting against one of its velvet arms, long legs dangling off the end.

“Jacks!” She tried to shake him awake, hoping she could get him to answer at least one more question before he fully succumbed to sleep. If he’d been more alert, he would have never admitted to asking Poison to cure her or to help lure her to the North. Not that she was entirely shocked; she’d gathered from her first night there that Jacks had been expecting her.

“Tell me more.” She softened her voice. Maybe she could get him to think she was only part of a dream. “Tell me what you want inside the Valory Arch.”

Evangeline stopped shaking his shoulder and smoothed back a lock of golden hair that had fallen across his sleeping face. She wondered why he’d dyed it before. If he’d been in disguise, the blue was a terrible choice; it was far too bold and arresting. Not that the brilliant gold was easy to ignore. Even without the vampire allure, it tempted her to stare, and it felt incredibly soft against her thawing fingers as she ran them through—

Jacks’s hand covered hers, cold and firm atop her fingers. “Bad … idea…,” he murmured.

She snatched her hand away. She hadn’t meant to touch him like that. Jacks was not a thing to idly touch. He wasn’t even a thing she liked. Although, as soon as she had the thought, she knew it wasn’t true. Not anymore. Evangeline wasn’t ready to say they were friends, but after last night, she no longer felt as if they were enemies.

An enemy wouldn’t have spent the night with someone to make sure he didn’t turn into a vampire. And an enemy wouldn’t have held her quite so close or tasted her neck the way Jacks had. Evangeline knew he’d wanted to bite her, but his tongue on her neck hadn’t been just about biting.

She didn’t want to think too much about it—sort of like the jeweled dagger she’d taken from the crypt and placed in the sheath at her hip. She was glad Jacks no longer felt like her enemy, but it would be dangerous to let it go further and consider him a friend.

Evangeline allowed herself one small smile as she felt the ruffled cape he’d placed across her shoulders. Then she stepped away from him.

A paper rustled under her foot—the newsprint Jacks had been holding.

She’d thought before that he’d clutched the crumpled black-and-white sheet like a blanket because he’d been so tired. It probably repeated the news she was wanted for murder. But one glance at the headline changed her mind.

The Daily Rumor

THE CURSED BRIDE AND THE NEW CROWN PRINCE

By Kristof Knightlinger

It’s official: the new crown prince, Tiberius Peregrine Acadian, is engaged to Marisol Antoinette Tourmaline, also known as the Cursed Bride. I know many of you will find this difficult to believe, but I would not have printed these words without confirmation from Prince Tiberius himself. “It was love at first sight,” he said. “The moment I laid eyes on Marisol Tourmaline, I knew that we were meant to be together.”

I’ve heard whispers that many members of the royal court are upset that Prince Tiberius plans to wed before his brother’s body is even in the grave. Of course, there are also rumors Prince Apollo’s body has gone missing, but no one in Wolf Hall is talking about that.

The wedding will take place tomorrow morning, and one can’t help but wonder why this event is happening so soon—

(continued on page 6)

Evangeline did not have page 6. But she didn’t need to continue reading. She had been trying to give Marisol the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t want her stepsister to be a murderer or a monster. But all Evangeline could think was that Marisol had used another love potion to put Tiberius under a spell.

And Evangeline feared that wasn’t the only thing her stepsister had done.

Evangeline had suspected Marisol of Apollo’s murder, but she hadn’t been able to think of a reason her stepsister would want to murder Prince Apollo until now. With Apollo dead, Tiberius was the crown prince. Once he married Marisol, he would become king and Marisol would be queen.

It would have been easier to just put a spell on Apollo, but perhaps Marisol had tried and it hadn’t worked because Apollo was already under Jacks’s influence. Or Marisol just found Tiberius more attractive? It was hard for Evangeline to really comprehend any of it.

When Evangeline thought of Marisol, she remembered the way she’d hugged her before the wedding as if they were really sisters. But what if that hadn’t been an I-love-you hug? Maybe it had been an I’m-sorry-I’m-going-to-kill-you hug.

It was still a little incomprehensible to think that her stepsister had tried to murder her. But Evangeline had also never imagined that it was Marisol who had cursed Luc, yet she’d done it.

Marisol had also acquired Northern books of magic so dangerous LaLa and Jacks acted as if Marisol was a villain just for owning them. Marisol could have easily been the witch who’d gone to Chaos’s crypt for the malefic oil.

The motive was the only thing that didn’t feel entirely right to Evangeline. She could understand her stepsister putting a love spell on someone. But she couldn’t imagine Marisol killing multiple people for a crown. That didn’t seem like something Marisol would do. But maybe Evangeline didn’t really know what things Marisol would do.

Evangeline flashed back to the horrible words she’d overheard Agnes say:

“Look at you. Your complexion. Your hair. Your posture is like a damp ribbon, and those circles beneath your eyes are hideous. A man might be able to overlook your little cursed reputation if you were something to look at, but I can barely tolerate the sight—”

Evangeline believed in love and fairytales and happy endings, because that was what her parents had taught her. But Agnes had told Marisol that she was unattractive and unwanted. Was that why she had done all this?

It was all so ugly either way.

“Jacks, wake up!” Evangeline put a hand on his chest, hoping the touch might jolt him awake, but his sleep was so deep, she might have suspected him dead if not for the rise and fall of his chest and the steady beat of his heart.

His heart.

It really was beating. It might have felt a little slower than a human heartbeat, but Evangeline didn’t let her hand linger. She would have liked his help for this, but if he didn’t wake up soon, she couldn’t spare the time to wait for him.

It wasn’t just that Evangeline needed to prove her innocence or that she wanted to save Tiberius from the person who might have murdered his brother. Evangeline wasn’t physically capable of merely sitting in this lost library and waiting. She needed to know if she was right about Marisol.

And she knew exactly how to do it. There was a way to prove if Marisol was either innocent or guilty. Evangeline needed to find a cure for a love spell. If it worked on Tiberius, it would reveal Marisol’s guilt. The same for her innocence if the cure failed.

But Evangeline would have to work quickly to discover a cure and administer it before tomorrow morning’s wedding.

According to Luc, vampire venom could break a love spell. But Evangeline didn’t want to risk another visit to Chaos, and infecting Tiberius with vampire venom might cause more harm than good.

She’d have to find another way.

After lighting a fire in the hearth, Evangeline wandered closer to the bookshelves. It seemed a little too coincidental that she’d find a spell book with an antidote for a love potion, but at least it was a place to start.

Tall and scuffed, the bookshelves covered nearly three-quarters of the library’s walls, and their owner did not care much for organization.

For example, on the first wall of shelves, nearest to the front door, Evangeline found a number of different books about time travel, but none of them were grouped together. They were scattered haphazardly, placed next to volumes on topics like the color blue, how to write poetry, an encyclopedia for the letter E.

Having determined these shelves did not hold any spell books, or cookbooks disguised as spell books, she moved on. She was about to attack another set of shelves when she noticed the desk in the corner—or, more specifically, the pop of color that came from the bottles of Fortuna’s Fantastically Flavored Water sitting on top of the desk. They came in four flavors—luck, curiosity, sunshine, and gratitude—and all were tied together with an elaborate purple bow that clashed with the rest of the room.

She shouldn’t have touched the bottles; they were clearly a gift. But one look at their brilliant colors and she couldn’t help herself from picking up a cerulean-blue bottle of curiosity.

Her throat went suddenly dry as she tried to remember the last time she’d had something to drink. She’d never tried Fortuna’s Fantastically Flavored Water, but she’d seen it on several occasions, and like the bottle’s label, she was curious.

The liquid bubbled on her tongue, and it tasted like cotton and—safety pins? It was far from a fantastic flavor, and yet she finished the entire drink.

She meant to put the bottle back and return to her task, but she was still thirsty. She grabbed a shiny bottle of luck, wondering if it might taste better. The liquid inside was a sensational shade of green, but it tasted of grass and old celery.

How were these drinks so popular?

Unless it was not the flavors that actually drew people to these waters? Evangeline studied the gleaming green bottle in her hands. Maybe the drinks inspired some sort of thirst compulsion? Despite her best efforts to put the drink down, Evangeline couldn’t help but continue to guzzle the bottle of luck.

When she finished, she was tempted to grab yet another. And she might have done it if she hadn’t noticed the pile of missives sitting next to the lovely bottles.

Evangeline didn’t make it a habit of reading other people’s correspondence. But she was giddy with physical fatigue and the strange rush provided by the drinks, and she noticed something familiar about the folded letter on the top of the pile.

The note was in her handwriting, and it was addressed to Lord Jacks. It was the letter she’d written him last week.

She picked through a few more notes. All of them were written to Jacks. No wonder the bell had been ringing so wildly—this place belonged to him.