The Ballad of Never After (Once Upon a Broken Heart #2)(3)
Jacks took one look at the door and chuckled, quiet and mocking. “You think you’ll find a cure for Apollo in there?”
“I know I will.”
Jacks laughed again, darker this time, and took a cheerful bite of his apple. “Let me know when you change your mind, Little Fox.”
“I won’t change my—”
He was gone before she could finish. All that lingered was the echo of his ominous laughter.
But Evangeline refused to be nettled. She’d been told by an old librarian that this door led to every missing book and story about the Valors. Although the North’s first royal family was human, it was widely accepted that they all possessed remarkable powers. Honora Valor, first queen of the North, was said to be the greatest healer of all time. And Evangeline had very good reason to believe that among the stories on the other side of this door were tales about her healing, which hopefully included a way to bring someone back from a state of suspended sleep.
Evangeline pulled out her dagger, a jewel-hilted blade with a few missing gems. It was actually Jacks’s—the same one he’d tossed at her the night they’d spent in the crypt. He’d left it behind in the morning, and she still wasn’t sure why she’d picked it up. She didn’t want to keep it—not anymore—but she hadn’t had time to replace it yet, and it was the sharpest thing she owned.
One prick of the dagger and her blood welled red. She pressed it to the door and whispered the words “Please open.”
The lock instantly clicked. The knob easily twisted.
For the first time in centuries, the door swung open.
And Evangeline understood why Jacks had been laughing.
2
Evangeline stepped through the door, and the ground beneath her crumbled as if her slippers had found crackers instead of stones. It was rather like her hope: rapidly disintegrating.
This room was supposed to hold shelves of books on the Valors, answers to her questions, a cure for Prince Apollo. But there was only a wheeze of cloudy air, wafting in swirls around a dramatically carved marble arch.
Evangeline closed her eyes and opened them as if she could blink the arch away and the precious books would appear in its place. Sadly, Evangeline’s blinks did not contain magic.
Still, she refused to give up.
In the Meridian Empire, where she was from, this arch would have just been a decorative curve of carved rock, large enough to frame a set of doors. But this was the Magnificent North, where arches were something else entirely. Here, arches were magical portals built by the Valors.
This arch had mighty angels clad in armor carved into the columns, like warriors on opposite sides of an eternal battle. One of the angels had a bowed head and a broken wing; it looked almost sad, while the other appeared angry. Both had their swords drawn and crossed over the center, warning away anyone who might wish to enter.
But Evangeline wasn’t just anyone. And if anything, the forbidden nature of the arch made her want to look inside even more.
Maybe this arch was a gateway to the books and the cure that she needed for Apollo. If the old librarian was right about this room containing all the stories on the Valors, perhaps the angels were protecting the books from the story curse so that they would stay uncorrupted. Maybe all she needed to do was press her blood to one of their swords and they would politely step aside to let her enter.
She took another step, feeling a hopeful thrill as she pricked her finger on the dagger once again and pressed her welling blood to one of the angels’ swords.
It lit up like a candle. Glowing gold veins spiderwebbed across the stone swords, the angels, the entire arch. It was bright and light and magical. Her skin tingled as the dust on the arch floated up and sparkled all around her like tiny bursting stars. Air that had been cold was now warm. She’d known she was meant to enter this room, to find this arch, to open—
Suddenly, the breath whooshed from her lungs as the thought triggered the warning Apollo’s younger brother, Tiberius, had given her: You were meant to open it. Magic things always do that which they were created to do.
And Tiberius believed that Evangeline was created to unlock the Valory Arch.
She staggered back, hearing the memory of Jacks’s laugh again. This time it didn’t sound dark at all. It sounded amused, entertained, happy.
“No,” she whispered.
The stones still gleamed with gold threads that wove around the columns. She watched as they spread across the top, lighting up a series of curving words that had not been visible before.
Conceived in the north, and born in the south, you will know this key, because she will be crowned in rose gold.
She will be both peasant and princess, a fugitive wrongly accused, and only her willing blood will open this arch.
Evangeline’s blood ran cold.
These were not just words. This was—she didn’t even want to think it. But pretending would not erase or change anything. This was the Valory Arch prophecy, the one that Jacks had manipulated her to fulfill. Which meant that this wasn’t just another arch. This was the Valory Arch.
Panic replaced every other feeling.
It shouldn’t have been possible. The arch was supposed to be in pieces. Although there were two conflicting tales about the Valory’s magical contents, everyone had agreed about one thing: the Valory Arch had been broken into pieces and hidden across the North to keep anyone from knowing what the prophecy was and to prevent anyone from putting the arch back together.