The Ballad of Never After (Once Upon a Broken Heart #2)(9)

Jacks flashed a smile that was far more wicked than welcoming. “Glad to know you’re thinking about me when you kiss your husband.”

Heat flushed her cheeks. “I’m not thinking nice things.”

“Even better.” His eyes sparked, gem-sharp blue with threads of silver, and far too pretty to belong to such a monster. Monsters were supposed to look like … monsters, not like Jacks.

“Did you come here just to irritate me?”

Jacks sighed, slow and dramatic. “I’m not your enemy, Little Fox. I know you’re still angry with me, but you’ve always known what I am. I never tried to pretend otherwise, you just let yourself believe I was something I’m not.” His eyes turned metallic and utterly unfeeling. “I’m not your friend. I’m not some human boy who will tell you pretty lies or bring you flowers or gift you jewels.”

“I never thought you were,” she said. But perhaps a small part of her had. She hadn’t imagined that he’d bring her flowers or presents, but she had started to think of him as a friend. A mistake she would never make again.

“Why are you here?” Evangeline asked.

“To remind you that you can easily save him.” Jacks casually shoved his hands in his pockets, as if making another deal with him would be as simple as giving a baker some coins for a bit of bread.

Perhaps, at first, it would seem that way. If she told Jacks she’d open the Valory Arch, Apollo would wake tonight. There would be no more worries about this new heir. But Jacks would still be there—he’d be there until he found the missing arch stones. And Evangeline needed Jacks gone, perhaps as much as she needed to wake her prince. As long as Jacks was in her life, he would continue to ruin it.

She’d been trying to find a cure for Apollo, but maybe what she really needed was to find a way to get rid of Jacks.

“The answer is no, and it will always be no.”

Jacks crossed his arms and leaned against the bedpost. “If you really think that, then you lack imagination.”

Evangeline bristled. “I do not lack imagination. I merely possess determination.”

“So do I.” Jacks’s eyes flickered with something malevolent. “This is your last chance to change your mind.”

“Or what?” Evangeline asked.

“You’ll really start to hate me.”

“Perhaps I look forward to hating you.”

The corner of Jacks’s poisonous mouth twitched as if the idea vaguely entertained him. Then a clock chimed somewhere above. Seven loud strikes.

“Tick-tock, Little Fox. I was trying to be kind by giving you time to consider the offer I made in the library, but I’m tired of waiting. You have until tonight to change your mind.”

She tried to ignore the twist in her gut. If putting Apollo in a state of suspended sleep was Jacks’s kind way of trying to persuade her, she dreaded what else he might do after tonight. And yet she still couldn’t imagine that partnering with him again would leave her better off.

She turned to leave.

A hand gripped her wrist.

“Jacks—”

But the hand holding her didn’t belong to Jacks.

His skin was cool and marble smooth. The hand that had grabbed her burned.

Apollo?

Evangeline turned back to her prince, excitement surging through her. He was—

Wrong.

Moments ago, his eyes had been dull as sea glass, but now they glowed red, like burning rubies and curses.

Evangeline whirled on Jacks—or she tried to. It was difficult to move with Apollo’s hand iron tight around her wrist.

She glowered at Jacks. “I thought you were giving me the rest of the night?”

“I didn’t do this.” His gaze shot from the prince’s glowing red eyes to Evangeline’s captured wrist.

She tried to pull free, but Apollo’s fingers dug in with more force.

She tugged harder.

He squeezed tighter, painfully tight, making her yelp as she yanked against him.

His eyes still glowed that awful red, but he didn’t appear awake—he seemed possessed, or perhaps desperately fighting to wake up.

Her chest tightened with panic. “Apollo—”

“He can’t hear you.” Jacks pulled out a dagger with a shining black blade.

“What—”

“He’s going to break your bones!” Jacks slashed Apollo’s hand with the knife.

Blood spattered her skirts as the prince dropped her wrist and the red disappeared from his eyes.

Evangeline cradled her injury—Apollo had left a bracelet of blue and purple bruises.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

She was bleeding, too. But the blood wasn’t coming from the hand that the prince had taken. It was her other hand. Red welled in a diagonal cut across the back of it, mirroring the wound that Jacks had just given Apollo, as if she, too, had been sliced. She tried to swipe it away, hoping it was just spatter from Apollo. But her hand continued to bleed.

Jacks’s eyes were storm-dark as he watched blood well from the wound. Swearing, he tore a handkerchief from his pocket and hastily wrapped it around her cut. “Stay away from here, and do not kiss him again.”

“Why—what’s happening?” she asked.

Jacks spoke between clenched teeth. “Someone has just put another curse on you and your prince.”