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

Tears coated Evangeline’s cheeks as she released the knife and backed away from Petra’s body. Her unmoving body lay in a swell of blood. Evangeline had never seen so much blood. When she’d thought Apollo had died, there’d been no blood. He’d just stopped moving.

But Petra’s blood was there. Red and thick and damning. Even with the knife still in her chest, the blood had soaked through her white chain-mail dress and oozed onto the floor.

Evangeline started to shake, or maybe she’d already been shaking.

She had killed her. She’d chosen her life over Petra’s. It was just what Jacks had said would happen. She’d killed someone for the stones. She’d sworn she’d never kill anyone, but then the moment Evangeline had been given the choice, she hadn’t failed to act.

Yes, Petra had attacked her, but she wasn’t thrusting a blade when Evangeline had stabbed her. Evangeline brought her hands to her face, stopping when she saw there was blood on them as well. She wiped them on her skirt, but that almost made it worse, as if she were trying to wipe away not just the blood but what she had done.

“Little Fox!” Jacks’s urgent voice was accompanied by the sound of running.

Evangeline shook harder. She didn’t want him to find her right now, especially not like this. She was shaking and covered in blood, and she felt too weak to face him. Yet she’d never been so relieved to see him.

“Jacks—” His name came out like a sob. She knew he wasn’t a savior, but she didn’t want a savior just then. She didn’t want someone to hold her while she cried and tell her it would be all right. She wanted fury, she wanted rage, she wanted a villain to tell her she’d done exactly what she needed to do.

“What happened?” Jacks slowed his steps as he approached, eyes furiously going back and forth between the blood and Petra and Evangeline.

“I killed her—” Evangeline cried. Saying the words made it even realer, and the guilt was suddenly too much. Her chest was tight. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely even stand. Then Jacks was crushing her to his chest. He held her like a secret, pulling her close to his pounding heart. She remembered her vow not to let him touch her. But if she pulled away, she felt as if she might break into a thousand tears.

Evangeline let herself lean against him as one of his hands slid into her hair, gently pressing her head to his shoulder. The other hand was at her waist, fisting the ribbon tied around it as if he also knew that, were he to let her go, she would shatter.

She tried to hold back the tears, but she sobbed until his shirt went damp. “I’m a murderer.”

“There is a knife in her hand,” Jacks said. “She would have clearly killed you if you hadn’t stopped her. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But it doesn’t feel right.”

“It never does.” Jacks carefully released the ribbon at her waist and slowly rubbed a hand up and down the length of her spine.

Evangeline took a shuddering breath. She’d thought that she didn’t want a savior, but maybe a part of her needed one. Or perhaps she just needed him. Another time, she would have felt guilty at the thought, but she’d killed someone tonight. In comparison, it hardly seemed wrong to want Jacks to hold her closer, until the hallway and the body and this terrible night disappeared and all that was left was the two of them.

Jacks’s hand went suddenly still. “You should go back to your room now. Pack a bag you can carry. I’ll be there to get you shortly.”

“But—what about her—”

“I’ll take care of the body.”

Jacks let her go.

Evangeline felt numb as soon as his arms were no longer around her. It was tempting to fall apart again when she cast a look toward Petra, still on the ground with a halo of rose-gold hair exactly like Evangeline’s. Petra’s blood had stopped seeping, and her body did not stir, but Evangeline could still hear her accusing voice: I was once like you, but now you’re just like me.

“She doesn’t deserve your guilt,” Jacks said. His eyes were flinty, more silver than blue as he gazed at the body. “There are heroes, and there are villains. She made her choice between the two, and she got the ending that came with it.” Jacks said the words through gritted teeth, and Evangeline had the sudden fear that he wasn’t just talking about Petra but himself.

“You should go now,” he said.

For once, Evangeline wanted to do as Jacks told her, but she couldn’t leave just yet. She took a wobbly step toward the body.

Jacks scowled.

“She was another key,” Evangeline said.

“I gathered from the hair.”

“She also had a stone—or she said she had a stone.” Evangeline didn’t look up to see how Jacks responded to this news or how he looked at her as she bent down toward the body. It felt so wrong to search Petra’s corpse for the rock. But both Evangeline’s life and Apollo’s rested on her finding it.

Her fingers felt clumsy as she removed the first glove from Petra’s hand. Evangeline hoped to find a ring or a bracelet, but Petra’s arm was bare of jewels.

“Which stone did she say she had?” Jacks asked.

“The youth stone.” Evangeline pulled off Petra’s other glove, and gooseflesh covered her arm.

A shining golden cuff was hooked around her wrist, and in its center was a glowing stone the perfect blue of Jacks’s unearthly eyes.

Evangeline didn’t want to touch it. She’d thought it was dangerous last night when it had made her half-mad with jealousy. Now she thought again of Jacks’s warning when they’d first arrived: If the stones are here, people are going to die at this party.

Now someone had, but it wasn’t just because of the stones’ power, it was because of this quest to open the arch. Evangeline wondered once again at what it held. What could be so valuable or so dangerous that it would need to be locked with life-altering prophecies and magic stones that would require killing to retrieve?

“Evangeline.” Jacks’s voice was soft but urgent. “We can’t linger here. You need to go pack. I’ll take care of the stone.”

There was so much blood on Evangeline’s eyelet dress. One of the embroidered foxes was covered in a great smudge of red. She needed to take it off. She needed to change and pack. She’d killed someone, and because of Kristof’s article, Apollo and Tiberius could be on their way here to kill her right now.

But Evangeline was feeling overwhelmed.

What should she do first? Take off her bloody clothes? Wash the blood streaked on her face and the red staining her hands? Or should she pack? And what did one pack when one was fleeing for her life?

She’d brought so many party gowns to LaLa’s, but she wouldn’t use them now.

She needed a cloak and boots and—

Through the wardrobe mirror, she saw her door edge open.

Evangeline went very still, or she tried to, but her limbs were trembling again as she watched a leather boot step in—one that did not belong to Jacks.

“Eva, are you in here?” Luc’s head poked through the door next. “I was worried about—”

He stilled as soon as he saw her, eyes going wide and fangs coming out at the sight of the blood on her dress and face.

Her chest erupted with panic. “Luc, you should go—”

“But you’re bleeding!” He sounded concerned, but his eyes were on fire with hunger. “What happened?”

“It’s not my—” Before Evangeline could finish, pain lashed down her back in horrible streaks. “Argh!” It hurt so much she couldn’t breathe. She doubled over, barely able to remain on her feet as she felt the skin on her back split open.

“Eva!” In a flash, Luc had an arm wrapped around her waist to keep her from falling to the floor. But it didn’t stop the pain.

It burned. It ached. It bled.

She glimpsed a lengthening of fangs, but there was nothing she could do to push away from Luc—the pain was all she could think about. At first, she didn’t know what was happening. She thought maybe she was being punished for killing Petra. But then she remembered Apollo and the mirror curse. Someone must have been torturing him, and by default torturing her. She could feel blood seeping through her dress as she cried out again. “Ahhh—”

“Oh, gods, Eva—your back.” Luc’s voice was thick with hunger, and the arm around her waist felt almost painfully hot.

“Get away from her!” Jacks roared from the doorway.

Evangeline tried to tell him it wasn’t Luc who’d done this—Apollo was being tortured, and he needed to be saved—but she could only moan. She couldn’t even see beyond the sword Jacks was holding—it took too much strength to keep her eyes open.

“Hey—it wasn’t me,” Luc protested, but his voice sounded dim and far away. “Something has possessed her.”

“Apollo,” Jacks muttered.

“She’s possessed by her dead husband?” Luc dropped her on the ground.

Jacks growled.

Evangeline crumpled into a ball, her back hurting so much the fall didn’t really matter.

“Look at me, vampire boy, and listen very carefully, or Evangeline will die,” Jacks gritted out. “You need to go and find Chaos. Fast.”

“Oh, he’s not very happy with me right now. I was supposed to stay away from Eva—”

“I don’t care,” Jacks cut in. “Evangeline dies tonight unless you tell Chaos to find Apollo, get him out of danger, and make sure his wounds are healed. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you still here?” Jacks spat.

A whoosh of Luc’s footsteps followed.

“Evangeline—” Jacks’s low voice sounded distant, but he must have been there because she could feel him. She could feel the cool of his arms sliding gently under her legs and carefully under her neck as he cradled her to his chest.

“It hurts, Jacks.”

“I know, love. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”