Once Upon a Broken Heart (Once Upon a Broken Heart, #1)(13)

“I hope that’s not a threat, Agnes.” Evangeline spoke with all the bravado she could muster. “You never know who might still be listening, and it’d be a shame if word of your true nature made it to someone like Kutlass Knightlinger.”

Agnes’s nostrils flared. “Kutlass can’t protect you forever. I would think you’d know how quickly a young man’s attention can shift. Kutlass Knightlinger will either turn on you or soon forget you like your beloved Luc did.”

The barb hit Evangeline straight in her chest.

Agnes smiled as if she’d been itching to say those words. “I was going to wait and share this with you after Marisol saw it, but I’ve changed my mind.” Agnes reached toward her table of applications, retrieved a folded page, and held it out for Evangeline.

Cautiously, she unfolded the note.



* * *




Marisol, my most precious treasure,

I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye this way. But I’m hoping this will not be a true farewell. I’m leaving Valenda in hopes of finding a healer. The next time I see your beautiful face, I will be the Luc you first fell in love with, and we can be together again.

With every heartbeat from my heart—



* * *



Evangeline couldn’t read any more. She didn’t need to reach the end to know the handwriting belonged to Luc.

Luc had written her letters, but they were usually brief, like the note she’d found last night. He’d never called her his most precious treasure or mentioned his heart beating.

“This can’t be real,” Evangeline breathed. “What have you done to him?”

Agnes laughed. “You really are a stupid child. Your father used to say you believed in things you couldn’t see as if it were a gift. But you should start believing in the things that you do see.”



* * *



Luc Navarro’s family lived on the fashionable far edge of town, where the houses were larger and farther apart. The type of neighborhood that always made Evangeline feel the need to take a deep breath as she approached.

On the day that Marisol had announced her engagement to Luc, Evangeline had run all the way here. She’d knocked on Luc’s door, sure that when it opened, Luc would tell her it was all a great misunderstanding.

Luc was her first love, her first kiss, her heart when hers had stopped working. It was unimaginable that he didn’t love her, as impossible as traveling through time. A part of her had known there was a chance it could be true, but her soul had told her that it wasn’t. She had expected Luc to confirm it. But Luc never told her anything. The servants sent her away and slammed the door. They did the same the next day and every day that followed.

But today was finally different.

Today, no one answered the door when she knocked.

Evangeline heard no footsteps in the house, no voices. When she found a crack in the drawn curtains, all she saw on the other side were sheets covering the furniture.

Luc and his family had left, just as Luc’s note had said.

Evangeline didn’t know how long she stood there. But eventually, she recalled Jacks’s words, and she wondered if he’d been right when he’d said, If he loved you back, he wouldn’t be marrying someone else. End of story.





8


Time passed.

Days cooled.

Leaves changed.

Apple stands popped up on street corners, selling tarts and pies and harvest treats. Every time Evangeline walked by a stand and caught a hint of its fruit-sweet scent, she’d think of Jacks and the debt she owed, and her heart would race like a horse hoping to escape her chest. But it seemed Jacks had forgotten about her, just as Poison had said.

Luc never returned either, and the curiosity shop did not reopen.

Evangeline convinced Agnes to let her work in her father’s hidden bookstore. It wasn’t as magical as the curiosity shop, but it gave her something to look forward to. Although some days she felt like one of the dusty used books on the store’s back shelves. The volumes that had been popular once, but no one picked up anymore.

She was still too well known for her stepmother to toss onto the streets, but Evangeline feared it would happen one day. The scandal sheets had printed the rumor about her kiss turning gentlemen to stone. Since then, her name only made brief, infrequent appearances. Kutlass was starting to forget her, too, just as Agnes had said.

But Evangeline refused to give up hope.

Her mother, Liana, had grown up in the Magnificent North, and she had raised Evangeline on their fairytales.

In the North, fairytales and history were treated as one and the same because their stories and histories were all cursed. Some tales couldn’t be written down without bursting into flames, others couldn’t leave the North, and many changed every time they were shared, becoming less and less real with every retelling. It was said that every Northern tale had started as true history, but over time, the Northern story curse had twisted all the tales until only bits of truth remained.

One of the stories Liana used to tell Evangeline was The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox, a romantic tale about a crafty peasant girl who could transform into a fox and the young archer who loved her, but was cursed with the need to hunt her down and kill her.

Evangeline loved the story because she, too, was a Fox, even if she wasn’t the sort who could turn into an animal. She might have also had a tiny crush on the archer. Evangeline made her mother tell her the tale over and over. But since this story was cursed, every time her mother neared the end, she would suddenly forget what she’d been saying. She could never tell Evangeline if the archer kissed his fox-girl and they lived happily together forever, or if he killed the fox-girl, ending their story in death.