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

Evangeline was beginning to fear that time was fueled by emotions and that things like dread made it move faster. There was a curvy black glass clock atop the fireplace mantel in Jacks’s room that she didn’t notice until after he had left her. Now she couldn’t take her eyes off the timepiece. Her palms started to sweat as she watched the spinning of the second hand, twirling faster and faster each minute.

Soon it would be nightfall. Soon she would forget him. She would forget this version of her life. She might even have an entirely different life, and she wouldn’t know this life had ever existed.

She would know he existed, but he would no longer be Jacks, he would just be a mythical figure: the Prince of Hearts. She would forget that he’d been Jacks of the Hollow, and the Archer, and, for the span of one night, hers.

How could he take all of that away from her? She hated him a little for it, which made it marginally easier. But it still felt wrong. Evangeline had always believed that every story had the potential for infinite endings, but this didn’t feel like the way their story was supposed to end. She hadn’t met Jacks just to forget him.

She needed to convince him of this before he used the stones.

The door to the room creaked open. Evangeline looked away from the clock to find Chaos standing in the doorway.

He was dressed more like a prince than a warrior, in a velvet doublet of deep wine red with an elegant cream shirt underneath. His gloves were brown leather, his pants were dark, and the sword strapped to his side was gold. The weapon looked more decorative than necessary, as if tonight were some sort of special occasion. She supposed, for him, it was.

In his hands, he held a small iron chest, which must have concealed the luck stone, the youth stone, and the truth stone. She still had the jar with the mirth stone in her hand, and for a terrible second, she wished that she had lost it.

“Ready, Princess?”

“No,” Evangeline blurted. She would never be ready to have her life erased and replaced. “Don’t we need to wait for Jacks?”

She stole what she hoped was a covert glance down the hall in search of the errant Prince of Hearts.

“He won’t be joining us,” Chaos said. “I’m going to bring him the stones after you’ve opened the arch.”

“He’s not even planning on saying goodbye?” Evangeline felt her hopes crumple like paper wings that had made the foolish mistake of thinking they could fly.

“He said you wouldn’t remember anyway,” Chaos added softly, as if he knew it was the opposite of consolation.

“Do you think what he’s doing is a good idea?”

The vampire rubbed the jaw of his helm. “I think we should get going.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Chaos sighed, one part impatient, one part beleaguered. “I don’t ever think time travel is a good idea. I’ve lived long enough to know that the past doesn’t like to be changed. Jacks believes his plan will work because he only wants to alter one thing. But Jacks’s reason gets clouded when he wants something badly enough. I believe the only way that time travel works is if the past hasn’t had time to settle. The further back you go, the more Time fights against changes. And given the vindictive nature of Time, even if Jacks succeeds in changing the past, Time will no doubt make sure he loses something else in order to pay for it. So you are correct, I think he’s making a mistake.”

“Then help me change his mind!”

Chaos shook his head ruefully. “You’re not good for him, either, Princess. This is a better mistake for Jacks to make than you. If he were to stay for you, he would kill you, and your death would kill him. Trust me, Evangeline. If you care about Jacks, the best thing you can do for him is let him go.”

“That doesn’t feel like the best thing,” she said. But a part of her couldn’t deny that maybe Chaos was right. Months ago, she’d felt as if Luc was the person she was meant to be with. She’d clearly been wrong about that, and if she was wrong about Jacks, the consequences would be far worse.

“Ready now?” Chaos asked.

Reluctantly, Evangeline nodded.

As she and Chaos walked down the hall, she kept hoping to hear the rhythm of Jacks’s boots or the crunch of his teeth biting into an apple.

But there were only the sounds of her slippers, the occasional groan of an opening door, and the growing realization that she might never see Jacks again. He was not going to change his mind. He was going to go through with his plan to change the past and both of their lives along with it.

Evangeline felt numb by the time she entered a dark carriage with velvet seats that looked as if it had never been used. She supposed that for a vampire with preternatural speed, a carriage ride would feel painfully slow, but to her, it felt impossibly fast.

Just before they reached Wolf Hall, the carriage rolled past a row of ancient headless sculptures that made Evangeline think of the Valors, and she felt a sudden chill. She still didn’t know what the Valory held.

When LaLa had told her the story of her dragon shifter, it had made Evangeline think the tale about it being a prison was true.

According to Jacks, the Valory held a cure for the Archer’s curse that had been cast on Apollo, but it supposedly held no remedy for Jacks’s fatal kiss.

Evangeline looked across the coach at Chaos, who believed the Valory would let him finally remove his cursed helm. The vampire was currently stroking the jaw of it, his hand moving over the intricate carvings of images and words.

Something prickled at Evangeline then, as she remembered what he’d once said about the words—the ones that belonged to the language of the Valors. It’s the curse that prevents me from removing the helm.

“I’m curious,” Evangeline said. “If the Hollow is protected from all curses and your helm is cursed, why didn’t you ever just go to the Hollow to remove the helm?”

Chaos waited a beat before saying, “If I stepped foot in the Hollow, I would cease to exist at all. The Hollow was enchanted specifically to keep it safe from me.”

“But I thought you and Jacks were friends.”

“We are, but when I first became what I am, I was not quite in control of myself.”

Evangeline flashed back to the newsprint she’d read at Slaughterwood Castle: But some fear that these attacks are only because the Valors do not have control over the abomination they have created.

She sucked in a gasp as suddenly it all linked together. “You’re the monster that everyone thought the Valors created.”

“The Valors did create me.”

“They did?”

“Did you think they were as blameless as the stories say?” Chaos laughed, but there was nothing happy about it. “The Valors made a great number of mistakes. But you don’t have to worry, Evangeline. I have not been a monster for a long time. I just want to unlock the Valory, and get this helm off.”

The carriage reached the snow-kissed grounds of Wolf Hall seconds later.

Then it was as if Evangeline blinked and they were at the royal library, opening the door to the room with the Valory Arch.