The Ballad of Never After (Once Upon a Broken Heart Book 2)

That night, Luc appeared in Evangeline’s bed. The young man lay propped on his side, brown hair flopping over one eye as he smiled like a naughty boy who’d just snuck into his first bedroom. “Hello, Eva.”

She tried to move away, but her limbs were far too tired.

He flashed his fangs, white and sharp. And then they pierced her throat, tearing her flesh as he drank her blood. He drank and drank and drank, moaning in pleasure as she cried in pain … until she blinked herself into another dream.

She was back in the forest, leaves crunching beneath her naked toes and fog cloaking her bare shoulders. Her neck no longer bled, but her blood pumped faster at the sight of Apollo atop a white mare.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this.” His deep voice broke as he drew his arrow and shot it through her chest.

She felt the bolt pierce her heart, rip it into two, as her body went limp in arms that had not been there before.

Jacks’s arms. They were cool as he held her on his lap.

“I’ve got you,” he said. The way he spoke was so gentle, so very unlike Jacks, she was reminded it was just a dream again. What surprised her was how pleasant it suddenly was. How safe it felt to be so close to him.

She’d come to the Magnificent North in search of love. But maybe she just didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to be untethered. She didn’t want to be a person who could disappear without anyone knowing she was gone. She wanted to be important to someone. If her heart stopped, she wanted someone else to feel it—the way she could feel Jacks’s heart now, as she let herself rest her head on his chest.

He gave her a smile both beautiful and depraved. “I’m disappointed you could forget what I am so easily.”

Then he dropped her from his arms.

She woke with a start.

Her eyes flashed open.

Jacks looked down on her from the dark nightstand where he’d perched himself. His long legs draped negligently over the edge of the furniture as his hands played with an apple and a knife.

“You talk in your sleep,” he drawled. “You said my name—a lot.”

Evangeline felt a rush of heat crawl up her neck. “Obviously, I was having a nightmare.”

“It didn’t look that way to me, Little Fox, and I was here all night.”

Her heart pitter-pattered at the thought that he’d watched as she’d slept. Was that why she’d dreamed about him?

“Don’t fret, I won’t tell your husband that you’re obsessed with me.” Jacks tossed his white apple and caught the fruit with the tip of his dagger. A dagger she recognized with another flash of mortification. It was the blade with the blue and purple jewels, the one she’d stolen from him and then lost.

“Hope you don’t mind that I took this back.” Jacks twisted the knife until the jewels caught the candlelight. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell Apollo that I caught you carrying around my knife, either. He and I are friends, after all, and I’d hate for him to get jealous.”

Evangeline snorted. “How can you say you’re still friends after everything you’ve done?”

“What have I done that’s so bad?” Jacks challenged.

“Oh, I don’t know—cursing him, multiple times.”

“Every prince gets cursed. A prince without a curse will be forgotten by history, and trust me when I say that Apollo wants to be remembered. Now—” Jacks nodded toward a gown laid out at the end of the bed—the same bed she’d been caged in the night before. “You should get dressed.”

Evangeline frowned at the garment, although the dress was actually dreamy. It had the type of long slit sleeves she’d always thought of as romantic, sheer and a very soft shade of pink. The bodice was a little deeper in color and covered in an intricate series of braided rose-gold cords that went all the way down to the hips, where layers of impossibly thin fabric, dusted with hints of sparkle, flowed out to form the skirt.

But just because Jacks had helped her out of another sticky spot last night didn’t make them allies. Her dream about his arms being safe was clearly a delusion.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You need to stop ordering me around.”

Jacks ignored her comment. “Once you get dressed, we can start our search for the missing arch stones.” He hopped off the nightstand, crossed over to the gown, and tossed the dress at her face.

“Jacks!” She caught the gown with her hands. It was wonderfully soft against her fingers and far cleaner than she felt. But she wasn’t about to let him bully her. She dropped it on the bed. “I still haven’t agreed to help you open the arch.”

He gave her a look that said he didn’t think her joke was funny.

But she wasn’t kidding. “I want to know why you want to open it so badly.”

Jacks flashed a dazzling smile, curving and perfect and utterly cruel. “I’m flattered you’ve taken such an interest in my wants. But you really should start thinking about your husband more than me.” His eyes turned dagger-sharp. “In case you’ve forgotten, Little Fox, Apollo is under the Archer’s curse. If you don’t agree to open the Valory Arch to break it, he will kill you. Just like the Archer murdered his fox.”

Jacks pulled the apple from his knife and gave it a perversely cheery toss.

Evangeline gritted her teeth; she knew it was pointless to argue with him. But he’d ruined so many other things, she wasn’t going to let him destroy her favorite fairytale as well.

“You don’t know that,” Evangeline said. “No one knows for sure if the Archer killed the Fox.”

“Oh—” Jacks laughed, hard and nasty as his smile. “The Archer definitely killed the Fox.”

“That’s not what I believe. He could have fought the curse! Or the Fox could have found a way to break the curse. No one knows how the story ends, so anything could have happened.”

“But it didn’t,” Jacks snapped back. “Ballads never end happily, everyone knows that. No one has to actually read the whole story to know the Archer has blood on his hands. Open the arch, Evangeline, or die just like the Fox.”

Jacks stopped tossing the apple and stabbed it with the dagger.

Evangeline frowned as the dark juice from the fruit dripped onto the floor.

She really didn’t want to give in to him. But her refusal to open the arch was starting to feel like stubbornness instead of wisdom. After what LaLa had said, Evangeline wasn’t quite as fearful that the Valory contained something horrible, but she still didn’t want to give whatever it contained to Jacks. She didn’t want to partner with him or have anything to do with him. But she did want to break the Archer’s curse—she needed to break it, or she would spend the rest of her life running from Apollo, and he would spend the rest of his life hunting her.

She supposed in a way it was a sort of ever after. The curses linked the two of them inextricably, promising their lives would forever be intertwined, but this wasn’t the way she wanted them to be together.

“Fine,” Evangeline said.

“Does this mean you’re going to open the arch?” Jacks quirked a brow. A tiny thing, and yet she could tell he was genuinely pleased.

She was briefly tempted to keep fighting him. But now that she had made up her mind, she was ready to get on with it. The sooner they found the stones to open the arch, the sooner she’d be rid of him.

“Yes, I’ll help you open the arch,” she said. “But I’m not getting dressed while you’re in here.”

“That’s too bad,” Jacks murmured.

Then he was gone.

And Evangeline was grateful he could not see her sudden blush.