Once Upon a Broken Heart
by Stephanie Garber
This series takes place in same universe as the Caraval series by Stephanie Garber. That series caught me and wouldn't let me go, I was delighted to find out that she'd written a second series. This one follows the villain of Caraval, the Prince of Hearts, into a new land and a new adventure.
This story moves us to the Magnificent North, a literal land of fairytales. Here, all the fairytales you've heard are true. But be careful, there's a story curse, so the story you've heard might not be quite right.
See all of her work at https://stephaniegarberauthor.com/
Beware of all the spoilers. Evangeline Fox goes to the Temple District looking for a very specific temple. The Prince of Hearts’ church, a Fate who is not able to love since his heart stopped beating. He searches the world for his one true love that will make his heart beat again. Anyone else that he kisses dies from that kiss. She enters the church and walks to the front, noticing belatedly a young, blonde man sitting in one of the pews ripping the sleeves of his topcoat. She approaches the statue of the Prince of Hearts and cuts her finger with a blade, dripping blood onto the statue. She explains that both of her parents have died, her mother a few years ago and her father only a few months ago. Now the boy that she loves, Luc Navarro, has announced his engagement to Evangeline’s stepsister Marisol. One thing, Luc and Evangeline have been secretly dating, they were going to announce their relationship when Evangeline came out of mourning for her father. She believes that Luc has been cursed by her stepmother since she hates Evangeline and wanted Luc’s money and future title for Marisol instead. Their wedding is today, and she needs the Prince of Hearts to stop it. The blonde man comes to the dais, he heard her pleas and is being a bit of a jerk and very cocky when Evangeline realizes who he is. The Prince of Hearts himself. Also known as Jacks. He notices Evangeline’s odd hair color, a natural rose gold, and asks her if she was born in the North or in the Meridian Empire, where they are right now, but she doesn’t answer him. He gives her a chance to back out of her request, even trying to convince her that she hasn’t kissed enough people to know if she’s in love, but Evangeline does not waver. Jacks makes her a deal: he will stop the wedding of Luc and Marisol if she gives him three kisses, not for himself (that would kill her), but he gets to choose when and who she kisses. She gives a qualification to their deal, Jacks can’t stop the wedding by killing anyone, not even Marisol, who Evangeline doesn’t think would hurt her on purpose. He agrees and three small heart shaped scars appear on her wrist and Jacks disappears. Evangeline runs to her house, where the wedding was being held, to find all nine people who were attending the wedding turned into stone. Jacks appears at the stone wedding. He tells her the only way to undo it is if someone takes their place and indicates to a goblet nearby. Evangeline drinks the potion and wakes up about six weeks later in the palace laboratory. She’s been woken by Poison, another Fate, and he explains to her that while she was a statue, the Fates all returned. Jacks, and most of the other Fates, have now left the country and are unlikely to return. When she leaves the laboratory, Evangeline is greeted by a very welcoming crowd. Marisol is there, but Luc is not. They’re lauding Evangeline as a martyr, “Valenda’s Sweetheart Savior”, while dubbing Marisol “The Cursed Bride”. When they leave, Marisol explains why. Two weeks after Evangeline became a statue, Marisol and Luc tried to marry again. By that time, the Fates had already left, and they believed it would be safe, but Luc was attacked by a wolf on his way to the wedding. He survived but was badly injured and he has not left his house since. But the next morning, he sends Evangeline a note asking her to meet him at her father’s curiosity shop. When she arrives, she finds her father’s shop (which had been willed to her) has been closed and she realizes the note from Luc must’ve been old. She goes to Luc’s house to see him, but no one answers the door. Evangeline starts working in a different shop her father owned, a bookshop, and reminisces about her parents. Her mother, Liana, had come from the Magnificent North, a land of literal fairytales, and would tell the stories to Evangeline when she was little. Her favorite was “The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox” which tells the story of an archer who falls in love with a peasant girl who could transform into a fox, but he is cursed to hunt her and kill her. While Evangeline is working, Marisol comes to visit her at the bookshop to give her a letter that looks important. It’s from the Empress of the Meridian Empire (of which Valenda is a part) and she is inviting Evangeline to have tea with her and her sister. While Evangeline had been stone, the sisters had fought the Fates who had killed the previous heir and tried to usurp the throne. They even managing to kill one of the Fates and Scarlett became the -mostly popular- empress instead. During tea, Scarlett and her sister, Donatella, explain that they’ve been invited to the Magnificent North. It appears that Prince Apollo of the North has decided to marry and now all he needs is a bride. They ask Evangeline to go in their stead. The empress does not feel comfortable leaving when she has only just been crowned and Donatella is avoiding someone who is staying there, but they can’t ignore the invitation. Evangeline’s story has become widespread and made her quite popular, so they’d like to send her as an emissary to the Magnificent North’s Nocte Neverending, a series of festivities designed to help the prince find a wife. Plus, they thought that Evangeline might like to get away from all the publicity. Evangeline has always wanted to go to the North but agrees only if she can take Marisol with her. The poor girl can’t get away from the Cursed Bride rumors. The sisters agree and Marisol jumps at the chance. The stepsisters take a boat to the Magnificent North and as they sail into the harbor they pass Valor Row, a series of monuments erected for the Valors, the family that first ruled over the North. Oddly, the heads of the monuments are all missing while the rest of the monuments are ornate and intact. They are met at the harbor by Frangelica, who escorts them to their suite. On the way, they buy one of the scandal sheets and find out that people are betting on which woman the prince will marry. There are a few frontrunners: Thessaly Fortuna, from one of the North’s Great Houses, LaLa Lagrimas, who is new to the land and quite a mystery, but also very beautiful, Princess Serendipity Skystead, who has known the prince since childhood, and Evangeline Fox, who is a bit of a risk but still a decent bet. That evening, Evangeline attends a welcome dinner without Marisol. She passes through a beautiful archway in the middle of a bunch of trees that transports her to a beautiful forest clearing and a lively party. In the center of the party is a royal phoenix tree, which takes more than a thousand years to mature but when it does, all the leaves turn to gold. The catch is, if you pick a leaf before all of the leaves turn, the whole thing goes up in flames. She meets LaLa, who points out that Prince Apollo is sitting on a balcony high up in the phoenix tree posing for a portrait. As she looks up, she feels a jolt of cold on her back and turns around to see Jacks at the edge of the party. Jacks has quickly become a confidante of the prince, but LaLa tells Evangeline he doesn’t really talk to anyone else. It’s rumored that he’s been exiled from the south after Princess Donatella broke his heart. Jacks approaches Evangeline, she accuses him of having Luc mauled by a wolf, which he denies. He makes it look like he’s interested in her, trying to make her more interesting to the prince and maybe even make the prince a little jealous. He pricks his finger and wipes a little of his blood on her lip, telling her that she is going to kiss the prince tonight. He’s cashing in one of his kisses and if she doesn’t follow through, she will die. When Jacks introduces Evangeline to Prince Apollo, Apollo tells her that Jacks has been telling him how beautiful she is. It seems the attention worked, because the prince certainly seems to be a bit jealous. Or maybe he is just very arrogant and entitled. Or perhaps – probably - both. Just before her time with the prince ends, she gives him a gentle kiss on his lips. Apollo continues to kiss her and gets a bit carried away until Jacks escorts Evangeline away from him. The next night, there is another event that Marisol will also attend. As they get ready, someone slips a gossip article underneath the door to their rooms. It’s an exposé about Marisol, calling her the Cursed Bride. It reveals that she was seen in several spell shops today, ostensibly trying to find a way to turn Evangeline back to stone. Marisol wants to stay in, but Evangeline convinces her to go to the event anyway, and when Evangeline does not turn to stone, everyone will see that the article is nonsense. And while the two have been getting along fairly well, Marisol accidentally rips a flower off Evangeline’s dress. No real harm done, you can’t tell that there’s anything wrong with the dress, but the flower came off too easily and Evangeline begins to doubt Marisol after all. After all, she doesn’t know where Marisol was earlier that day. And anything is possible in the Magnificent North known for curses and fairy tales. When they leave to get in their coach, Evangeline makes an excuse to go back to their rooms. She quickly searches Marisol’s room, finding only books on cooking, when Marisol comes in and catches her. Evangeline says she can’t find her gloves, which Marisol locates in the common room - and it’s clear Marisol doesn’t quite believe they were what Evangeline was looking for. When they enter the arch that leads them to the party, Marisol and Evangeline get separated. Evangeline spots her shortly after arriving… talking to Jacks! Before she can find out what the two of them are discussing, Prince Apollo enters the party dressed as the Archer from “The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.” He announces that he is snubbing tradition, as he only wants to dance with one girl tonight. LaLa is convinced that girl is Evangeline: his “fox”, but he dances with Princess Serendipity instead. Evangeline is disappointed and turns to get something to drink, suddenly she hears a voice in her head. It’s Jacks, talking only to her, calling her “Little Fox”, but she can no longer see him. Behind her, Apollo speaks her name. He tells her she looks like a dream come true, asks her to call him Apollo, and explains that he wouldn’t have asked anyone to dance at all if he didn’t have to. Then he proposes to her, and she says yes. What was in the magic that Jacks put on her lips last night?! The next morning, Marisol congratulates Evangeline and tells her about how she met Jacks and how handsome Jacks is. Evangeline panics and tells Marisol that he’s dangerous, he’s not good for her, but Marisol becomes upset. Evangeline is getting all this attention and now she’s trying to take away the one person who has paid any attention to Marisol. Suddenly there is loud pounding at the door. It’s Apollo, scared that Evangeline may be in danger after seeing another gossip column. He asks her to move into his home, Wolf Hall, where he knows she will be safe. The next day, Evangeline finds a wedding dress that Apollo picked out for her. The next day, he fills her bathtub with jewels. After that, she gets a stable of horses so they can “ride off into the sunset.” In an interview, Apollo reveals that he’s gotten a tattoo of Evangeline’s name. Evangeline doesn’t feel excited or charmed by how Apollo is acting, but instead she feels nervous and unsettled, as if something is wrong (it’s called love bombing). She wonders if Jacks has done something else to cause this, but why would Jacks want her to marry the prince? Evangeline tries to push her doubts away; this is what’s best for her and Marisol. This way Marisol gets away from her cruel, overbearing mother. But she can’t let it go and writes to Jacks, requesting a meeting. They talk inside his coach, and he doesn’t admit to bespelling Apollo… but he doesn’t deny it either. Evangeline demands that he take back whatever he’s done to Apollo. She yells that it’s not true love, but Jacks insists that it feels real to Apollo. She should go back to him and get her happily ever after. Evangeline tells him that she will call off the wedding if he doesn’t fix Apollo, she knows there is some reason that Jacks is encouraging her to marry Apollo. Instead of agreeing, he takes her to her next assignment. He cuts himself just a little and puts the tip of his knife in her mouth, so she ingests the blood. She still owes him two kisses. On the way to her next kiss, he tells her that he will restore the prince and erase all his fake feelings, but only after the two of them are wed. Jacks takes her to House Fortuna. She’s worried that he’s going to hurt someone, but he reminds her that she doesn’t really have much choice but to follow through anyway. Otherwise, she will die. Besides, after meeting the head of House Fortuna, Tabitha, Evangeline won’t care about her well-being because Tabitha is awful. He brings up that he spoke to Marisol, then he warns Evangeline to stay away from her. Evangeline ignores him, but he pushes, telling Evangeline that Marisol is very jealous and not her friend. Evangeline meets Tabitha, who tells Evangeline she’s not very pretty and that Apollo will marry her granddaughter after Evangeline is out of the way, before giving them eight seconds to leave or she will have her dogs to attack them. That’s not a great start, since Evangeline needs to kiss Tabitha somehow. She edges herself closer and basically attacks the old woman with her mouth, but luckily, Tabitha becomes enamored with her instead of calling in the guards. And the dogs love her now, too. Jacks asks Tabitha to take them to the Fortuna vault, and at first Tabitha refuses but she relents when Evangeline herself asks to see the vault. On the way, Jacks sees an archway that should have been destroyed that House Fortuna has been harboring illegally. Jacks looks at the arch with eyes full of hope. Evangeline sees books in a strange language and asks if it’s the language of the Valors, giving her a quick history lesson. Honora and Wolfric were the King and Queen of the North, and they were wonderful rulers, Wolfric an unbeatable warrior and Honora a healer that could bring you back from the brink of death. They had four children, including their daughter Vesper, who could see the future, and a son who could shapeshift. When they combined their powers, they could infuse their magic into inanimate objects, or even places. They created the arches, which can serve as portals that cannot be opened unless you have the key. If an arch is destroyed, there’s no way of getting back to what was on the other side. Tabitha uses her blood to unlock this archway, leading them to the vault. Only the blood of the head of House Fortuna freely given would unlock this archway, but as Evangeline steps through she hears another voice telling her that she could have unlocked it. The voice scares her. Inside they find recipes for their line of flavored water and other treasures, including ancient dragon eggs, goblets, and hobgoblin hearts. Whatever Jacks is looking for, he doesn’t see it. He tells Evangeline to ask to see Tabitha’s collection of stones. Tabitha starts to short circuit, accusing Evangeline of being the one who will open the Valory Arch and Jacks tells Evangeline to run. But Tabitha continues by reciting: “You will know her because she will be crowned in rose gold, she will be both peasant and princess” then attacks Evangeline, yelling that she can’t be allowed to marry the prince or open the Valory Arch. Jacks incapacitates Tabitha before she can hurt Evangeline, then he tells her that Tabitha will come after her when she wakes up, but he won’t tell Evangeline any more about the Valory Arch. She will have to find her own answers. When she returns to Wolf Hall, she finds the library. But as she searches the books, she finds no information on any archways, let alone the Valory Arch, or even about the Valors. That seems weird since Wolf Hall is in Valorfell and there are giant statues of the Valors in the harbor. She asks a librarian who leads her to a door with the head of a crowned wolf on it. All the stories about the Valors are supposedly inside this room, but no one knows for certain since no one has been able to open the door since the Age of the Valors ended. She asks Apollo about the Valory Arch. He says there are two different versions of the tale of the Valory Arch. It is supposed to be a gateway to the Valory, a magical prison built by the Valors to protect the North from forces that want to destroy it, whether it be a person or a magical object. But what they really wanted it for was to lock away an abomination that they’d created. No one now knows what that abomination was, but it is the reason that the Great Houses executed the Valors and chopped their heads off. Then they locked the abomination away in the Valory and sealed the arch with a prophecy, then broke the arch into pieces and parceled them out to a secret society that would protect the pieces so the arch could not be repaired. The other version says something very different, that the Valory houses the Valors’ most powerful magical objects. That the Valors were killed because the Great Houses wanted the treasure for themselves but the Wardens, who remained faithful to the Valors even after they were killed, sealed the arch so that no one could steal the Valors’ magic. Apollo tells her that he and his brother Tiberius (who she has yet to meet) would go on quests to find the Valory when they were children. The next day Evangeline marries Apollo. They get married outside, in the cold winter air. Afterward, Evangeline keeps waiting for the spell on Apollo to break but he doesn’t act any differently. Their reception is interrupted when a man enters, and the hall goes very quiet. It’s Tiberius, Apollo’s brother, who Apollo threatens by pulling his sword. Evangeline doesn’t know what is going on but stops Apollo from doing anything else and Tiberius accuses Apollo of being bewitched, which doesn’t improve Apollo’s mood. Tiberius asks Evangeline to dance and the two of them talk. She asks why he disappeared; he counters by asking if she loves Apollo. She responds that she has hopes to love him and that she would like to be friends with Tiberius as well. Tiberius decides to leave, saying that he will tell Evangeline why he left when they next meet. Evangeline tracks Jacks down and reminds him to reverse what he’s done to Apollo. He puts a drop off his blook on her lips and tells her that the spell will be broken when she kisses Apollo again, but it must happen before sunrise. He warns her that this will not go well. Evangeline proceeds to the wedding suite, where Apollo is waiting for her, shirtless with a well-oiled chest. She takes a swig of wine and kisses him before she chickens out, but he doesn’t react like he’s woken up from a dream, instead he acts like she’s betrayed him and broken his heart. Then he collapses onto the bed, his heart not beating as his skin turns gray, dead. She screams that they need a doctor, but the soldiers who enter suspect her of killing the prince, a few tie her up as others go to find Prince Tiberius. They drag her to the dungeons. Jacks finds her there, tied to a chair, gagged, and crying hysterically. She tries to tell the guards that he is the one that killed Apollo, but she’s been gagged. Jacks compels the guards to leave and speaks to Evangeline telepathically, telling her that she’s calm and happy to see him and there’s no need to cry, but he is unable to compel her. He explains to her that he did not kill Apollo, and he doesn’t want to hurt her either. He’s here to save her. In fact, there was no magic in any of her kisses. He only did that for entertainment purposes and to create a trail that led to someone other than himself. He compelled Apollo to love her, and he chose when to make Apollo stop. But he can’t control Evangeline right now; he thinks she’s been poisoned and now she is unable to stop crying. One of the other Fates cries poisoned tears that can break someone’s heart and kill them if ingested. They need to get Evangeline a cure before she cries herself to an early grave. She thinks of the wine that Apollo had waiting in the wedding suite, it had been a little salty. They have to leave now, Jacks’ magic doesn’t work as well in the North and they need to leave before the guards’ return, so he carries Evangeline to a sled that takes them to someone who can create a cure. Jacks holds Evangeline as the woman whips up the antidote. She tells Jacks that Evangeline needs close physical contact for a full day for the antidote to work properly, and so Jacks continues to hold her. She wakes up the next day, on Jacks’ lap as he sleeps with his arms around her waist, and she sees who cured her. LaLa. The Unwed Bride, another Fate. In fact, it was her tears that poisoned her, although LaLa doesn’t know who was trying to kill Evangeline. Another gossip column drops, telling everyone that Apollo is dead, and Evangeline is missing (some say she killed the prince and escaped with her accomplice, Jacks). Prince Tiberius is worried she was kidnapped by the killer and is looking for her safe return. Evangeline says she should go back and explain what really happened, Jacks thinks that is a terrible idea and LaLa agrees with him. The only way to prove her innocence is to find the proof herself, Jacks is willing to help her with that. She agrees to work with him but puts a few rules in place: he won’t keep anything that he learns a secret from her, and he won’t leave her behind. Jacks wants to go see Chaos next, another Fate, but different from the rest of them. He’s as old as the North is plus he was in the North and free the entire time the rest of the Fates were trapped in a deck of cards. He’s the Lord of Spies and Assassins, he will know who wanted Apollo dead, and he also happens to be a vampire, which means they need to see him and get out before dawn - when he locks the doors. LaLa takes Evangeline to find something to wear, since she’s still wearing her wedding dress. LaLa explains that Fates are not unfeeling at all, if anything they feel too strongly. For example, she is the Unwed Bride, it’s her curse. All she wants is to feel loved, but she knows that every time someone falls in love with her it will end with her being left at the altar, heartbroken and crushed. It’s the same for all the Fates. Jacks’ curse gives him hope that he will find his true love someday which will restart his heart, so he probably feels the need to be loved even more strongly than LaLa. To curb her urges, LaLa sews dresses. It seems to help. LaLa tells Evangeline that she considers her a friend, but she understands if Evangeline feels differently now that she knows what LaLa is. Evangeline just hugs her and tells her that they’re friends as long as LaLa doesn’t care that she’s a fugitive. LaLa finds her something to wear and disguises Evangeline’s pink hair. When they go back upstairs, they find Jacks holding a book. It’s one of the books that Evangeline saw in Marisol’s room and suddenly she’s reminded that she didn’t come to the North alone. She needs to find Marisol and make sure she’s not in danger. When Jacks realizes what caused her to think of Marisol, he tells Evangeline that the book is actually a very dangerous spell book. When the Valors were killed, magic was banned so the names of all the spell books got changed to something innocuous so people could buy them without arousing suspicion. If Marisol had this book, then she went looking for it, it’s not sold in any of the normal bookstores. Nothing can duplicate LaLa’s tears, so she didn’t poison Evangeline this time, but she’s up to nothing good. On their way to see Chaos, Evangeline pesters Jacks about vampires. He tells her not to look them in the eyes, they’ll take it as an invitation. When they meet Chaos, Evangeline realizes that she’s met him before. More than once. He appeared as a soldier that spoke to her before she went through the gate the night she arrived in the Magnificent North and who spoke to her when she was shopping by herself, peering into a bookstore that was closed. Chaos takes her hand, and she accidentally looks into his eyes, suddenly becoming taken with that specific color of green. Jacks had warned her that the vampire curse makes people feel intrigued by them instead of horrified, but she hadn’t thought she would be susceptible. Jacks has to tear her gaze away until she comes back to herself, talking to her in her head so that only she can hear him. The only part of Chaos’ face that is visible is his eyes, he wears a helm that cannot be removed that covers the entire lower part of his face. It prevents him from biting anyone, but Jacks warns her that she still isn’t safe with Chaos, even with the helmet. Evangeline sees humans on the floor below them, waiting to be turned. She sees people in cages hanging from the ceiling and tries to free them, but she’s warned away. Chaos explains: vampires can bite just to feed, or they can bite to transform their victim, infecting them with vampire venom. The venom fixes their imperfections, making them more attractive than as a mere human, but they won’t become a vampire unless they feed before sunrise. They lock these changelings up in the cages and those who succeed in breaking out and feeding become a part of their order, the Order of Spies and Assassins. They’re wasting all this time and have yet to ask a question about Apollo, so Jacks tries to get them back on track. Chaos tells them that none of the order was hired to kill Apollo, but the potions master had received a request for malefic oil, which is an effective way to kill someone. The oil can be combined with some blood, tears, or hair of a person as well as a spell so that it only works on its intended target. He doesn’t know who requested the poison, but he knows it was a woman. Before they leave, Evangeline sees that Chaos is wearing a medallion with a crowned wolf’s head on it, like the door to the Valor archives. He tells her he took it from Wolfric Valor and offers to answer any questions she has - since he was there and saw firsthand what happened - in exchange for one bite. Evangeline declines and Jacks insists they leave before the changelings break free. On their way out, one of the changelings recognizes Evangeline and she looks up to see Luc. He asks her to free him. Jacks warns that Luc will tell her anything, whatever he needs to, to get her to unlock his cage. Luc disputes this, he would never hurt her! He only came because vampire venom would heal his scars and wounds from the wolf mauling. He tells Evangeline he was under a curse when he broke her heart, he only realized it when he got bitten by the vampire and his head finally cleared. He had been cursed to think only of Marisol. He had come to the house to see Evangeline, but Marisol greeted him and took his coat, her fingers brushing his neck. After that, he could think of nothing else. Again, Jacks tries to speak reason to Evangeline, but she finds a shortsword and hands it to Luc so that he can use it to try to break free. Break free he does, and he immediately jumps for Evangeline but Jacks steps in front of her, Luc bites Jacks instead. Jacks breaks Luc’s neck, which incapacitates him but will not kill him since he is now a fully-fledged vampire. You’d have to impale his heart or cut off his head to kill him, which Evangeline won’t allow. The two of them leave instead, but Jacks is no longer holding her hand to lead her out. In fact, his jaw is tight and his knuckles white and he won’t even look at her. She asks him if he made a deal with Marisol, helped her to curse Luc, but Jacks says he never has and never will make a deal with Marisol. When she looks at him, she sees that he looks even more dazzling than normal - hard to do - and that his incisors have become sharper. She realizes that Luc infected him, that Jacks is in pain trying to fight the vampire venom. Jacks encourages her to leave him, and a part of Evangeline wants to, but instead she decides to help him ride the night out. They’re still not free of the vampire lair and they can hear movements, probably changelings looking for a human to complete their transition. They run into the night where Evangeline stays with Jacks. At this point, she’s worried that even if he doesn’t bite her, he may find another human to bite. She finds a mausoleum that looks promising. They break into the mausoleum and find a metal gate designed to protect the dead from demonic spirits, which is exactly what Evangeline was hoping for. They don’t see a key, but Jacks instructs her to cut her hand and ask the gate to open, which she does, and the gate opens but of course now Jacks can really smell her blood. He walks to the other side of the gate and closes it, making sure that it locks behind him. Evangeline decides to distract Jacks, sure that he could break the lock if he really wanted to. She asks him what happened between him and Donatella. Although he originally refuses to tell, Evangeline pushes him, and he begins to tell her what happened with the Meridian princess. He tells Evangeline that he kissed Donatella the second time that he met her. He expected her to die after a few days but instead, his own heart started beating. They say that Jacks’ kiss is the kiss of death, killing anyone he kisses except for his one true love, the one who will make his heart start beating again. What happens when his one true love falls in love with someone else? Which is exactly what happened with Donatella, and then she stabbed Jacks with his own dagger. In return, he asks her about Luc, how their relationship started. It’s very underwhelming. He went into her father’s oddities shop where she worked just to see her, and he wasn’t afraid to admit that he was interested. Then when her father died, Luc was there for her… and that’s all it took. Jacks is unimpressed. He tells her that she and Luc are not well suited, it never would have worked out for them. He’s weak. He could have broken the love spell that he was under if he had really loved Evangeline, he could have saved her from being stone, but Luc chose not to. This sets Evangeline off and she lashes out, saying that Jacks can’t understand any emotions because he doesn’t have any. They get into an argument and Jacks passes her his dagger, telling her to use it on him if she wants to, then he breaks the lock on the gate keeping them separated. But instead of stabbing him, the two of them have a bit of a moment and Evangeline drops his knife. Jacks is taken over by the vampire venom and his baser instincts, until they realize that Jacks’ skin is cold once again. The venom has worn off and things get awkward. Evangeline picks up his dagger that she dropped but Jacks tells her to leave it. She keeps it for herself instead. They decide to go back to Wolf Hall to figure out who it was that bought the malefic oil from Chaos and poisoned Apollo (remember his chest was all lubed up). But first, Jacks is overcome with fatigue (probably a side effect from the vampire venom) and she needs to get him to a bed. On the way, Evangeline sees a poster announcing that she’s wanted for murder. She gets him to his house just as the rest of the city is waking up. She tells Jacks that he is so lucky she’s there to save him, and he tells her in his delirium that it wasn’t luck - he asked Poison to save her and suggest to the empress that she send Evangeline to Nocte Neverending. He wanted Evangeline here. Then he falls on the couch and into a heavy sleep. While Jacks sleeps, Evangeline sees another notice saying that Apollo’s brother, Prince Tiberius (now the crown prince) is engaged to her stepsister Marisol, who Evangeline suspects may have poisoned Apollo! In the article, Tiberius mentions love at first sight, and Evangeline suspects she may have used another love potion like she did with Luc. Unfortunately, Jacks is not waking up any time soon. Trying to entertain herself, she looks at the books on his shelf and comes across several copies of “The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox”, her favorite fairytale but she’s never been able to hear the ending. Her luck is no different today, one book is blank at the end, one keeps falling out of her grasp, then she finds one that opens to “Recipes of the Ancient North” instead of the ballad like its spine says. A few pages in, she sees a love spell that indicates it can be broken with a truth serum, the recipe for which is also conveniently located in this book. There are several strange ingredients in the serum recipe, but she manages to whip one up, hoping her scrounged ingredients will work properly. She pours the concoction into a bottle of Fortuna’s Fantastically Flavored Waters and leaves Jacks a note for when he wakes, saying she’s gone to Wolf Hall to clear her name. She breaks into Wolf Hall and runs into Marisol, who acts like she’s been so worried about Evangeline. Evangeline confronts Marisol about the cookbook that’s really a spell book, that she knows that Marisol gave Luc and Tiberius a love potion. Marisol starts crying and says she didn’t put a spell on Tiberius, she learned her lesson after Luc. She gives Evangeline a sob story about how she managed to put the spell on Luc and ended up regretting it afterward, but there was no way for her to reverse it without killing him. She asks for Evangeline’s forgiveness and in a tenderhearted moment, Evangeline admits that Marisol wasn’t the only one who did wrong. Evangeline herself was the reason Marisol’s wedding to Luc was ruined. Marisol is not as forgiving as Evangeline had hoped she would be and slaps her instead. Then she calls for the guards, telling them that Evangeline just admitted to murdering Prince Apollo. Tiberius hears Marisol calling out and rushes in, ordering Evangeline to be placed in his chambers so that he can question her himself. The guards bind her and put Evangeline in Tiberius’ rooms, placing her bottle of Flavored Water on the table. Tiberius comes in and argues a bit with his guards, then drinks some of the Flavored Water. She brings up the last time they met, that he had promised to tell her why he had disappeared from court for a while. He explains that he had fought with Apollo about Evangeline, Tiberius believed she would be the death of Apollo, and he was right. But he knows that Evangeline didn’t kill Apollo. He’s known the whole time. Even so, she’s too dangerous to be allowed to live. Tiberius is a member of the Protectorate, a society that exists to ensure the Valory Arch never be opened again, and he thinks that Evangeline may be able to open it and so he plans to kill her to make sure that she never has the chance. She asks him what the prophecy says: that the arch can be opened with a key conceived in the north but born in the south, crowned in rose gold. The key is both peasant and princess, a fugitive wrongly accused, and her willing blood will open the arch. She now checks all those boxes. She knows that Tiberius is willing to kill her and asks for one last favor. Apollo would not want Tiberius to be the one to do it, have one of his soldiers do it instead. Call them in, list her crimes, and have them execute her. But when Tiberius calls the guards in, he cannot list any crimes against her since he has unwittingly taken the truth serum, and Evangeline has done nothing wrong. She explains and instructs the guard to ask Tiberius who killed Prince Apollo. It was him; he killed his own brother on accident, thinking it would be Evangeline. He spiked their drink with Lala’s tears, having heard it only worked on women, which appears to have been a lie. Marisol comes in, hearing Tiberius sobbing, and he orders Marisol to be locked in her rooms, her love spell on him finally broken. Evangeline gets released and placed in a room, happy to have cleared her name and confronted Marisol, but worried that Jacks has not followed her to Wolf Hall. A soldier comes to her room, explaining that there’s a man (who she assumes is Jacks) here to see her. But it’s Havelock, Apollo’s guard, who escorts her to the receiving room and finally she hears Jacks’ voice in her head asking where she is. She answered that she’s on her way to meet him and he begins to sound worried. On the way to the receiving room, Havelock takes her on a detour and Evangeline tells Jacks there may be something wrong, but then Evangeline meets a young woman who tells her that Apollo is still alive. He was poisoned but Apollo didn’t die. Havelock and some others, including the woman (Phaedra the damned - who can steal secrets), have hidden him to keep him safe. They want Evangeline to go down a secret staircase to see him, Evangeline is rightfully hesitant but ultimately decides to go. She does get to see Apollo, but he looks strange. They tell her that he’s in a suspended state which pauses life, and they think Evangeline may be able to revive him. She agrees to kiss him and see if that works, but once she kisses him, nothing changes. She wonders if she should ask Jacks for more ideas but then realizes that Tiberius admitted to using Lala’s tears, but she was led to believe by Chaos that malefic oil is what really poisoned Apollo. Continuing down this line of thinking, she begins to believe that Jacks really set her up to make her a fugitive, allowing her to fill the entire prophecy, knowing that he could bargain with her to open the arch if it meant Apollo could be saved.
Prepare for everything to be spoiled... Evangeline writes herself a letter, warning herself that she will start to trust Jacks again, but she must fight against it because he will deceive her. All he wants is to open the Valory Arch and the most honest time he’s been with her is when he warned her himself to stay away. She seals it and leaves it for when she needs to read it again. There’s a door in Wolf Hall that bears a crowned wolf’s head and cannot be opened, but now Evangeline understands that she is a key. She decides to sneak to this door and open it, but she runs into Jacks before she gets there. He refuses to apologize for manufacturing Evangeline’s prior fugitive status to fulfill a prophecy, but he does point out that he did not kill Apollo. Evangeline tells him that she may not have stabbed him in the crypt (see Once Upon a Broken Heart), but that was a mistake and given another chance, she would not hesitate. She vows that she will never open the Valory Arch for Jacks, not even to save Apollo. Besides, she’s sure there’s a cure for his suspended state behind the locked wolf door. They’ve arrived at the door; Jacks doesn’t think she’ll find what she’s looking for here. He leaves before Evangeline opens it. When she does, all she finds behind the door is an archway. Maybe what she’s looking for is through the arch? When she tries to activate the arch with her blood, she realizes that THIS is the Valory Arch. The librarian that originally showed her the wolf door appears behind her and points out the missing stones along the top. Four small stones that need to be found and replaced to open the arch. One for luck, truth, mirth, and youth. He implores her to find the stones but be careful, they are tricky things. He tells her that opening the arch is not a mistake, it is her destiny, but then the fairytale curse cuts off his speech and he disappears in a cloud of smoke. Evangeline receives news that the new heir apparent will be arriving at Wolf’s Hall soon, now that Apollo is presumed dead by the masses and his brother Tiberius has confessed to Apollo’s murder, the new heir is a distant cousin of Apollo’s: Lucien Jareth. Evangeline has to find a way to wake Apollo up before Lucien arrives, manages to find a wife, and takes the throne. She goes to visit LaLa. LaLa has been off “adventuring” and returned a newly engaged woman, to a Lord Slaughterwood. It is incredible that his family can convince anyone to marry that with that name, but it’s an old rich family so that probably helps. Evangeline tells LaLa about Apollo not really being dead and what happened with Jacks. LaLa explains that she doesn’t know how to release Apollo from his suspended state, but she agrees that Evangeline should open the arch. Evangeline refuses to entertain the idea. Evangeline goes to visit Apollo where his body is being kept. Jacks follows her and tries to convince her again to open the arch, but she stays steadfast. He tells her that she has until midnight to decide to do it herself, otherwise he will have to persuade her. Evangeline turns to storm off, but she’s stopped when someone grabs her wrist. It’s Apollo. Apollo has grabbed her arm and won’t let go, in fact, he continues to squeeze tighter, his eyes glowing red. Jacks did not make this happen and cuts Apollo’s hand with a dagger, releasing Evangeline before anything gets broken. She looks down at her opposite hand, which is now bleeding from a cut that she did not receive. Jacks looks upset, he instructs Evangeline not to come see Apollo again. Someone has put another curse on the two of them. A mirror curse, whatever happens to Apollo will also, magically, happen to Evangeline and vice versa. She accuses Jacks of cursing them, but he points out that he needs her alive to open the Valory Arch and this will make it very easy to kill both Evangeline and the prince in one fell swoop. When Evangeline leaves Apollo’s hiding spot, she’s told that Lucien has arrived at the palace early and is requesting her presence. When she meets the new prince, she realizes they’ve already met. It’s her ex-boyfriend and newly turned vampire, Luc. Luc tells her that Chaos is helping him. The new name may be a lie, but Chaos insists that Luc really is a distant cousin of Apollo’s. Outside, Evangeline can hear a woman who says she’s been invited to dinner by the new prince and Evangeline realizes that with the unfettered power of a king, Luc could feast on the people. Havelock, Apollo’s most loyal guard who is now helping Evangeline, appears and insists that Evangeline come with him. It seems serious so Evangeline turns to go, even though she doesn’t want to leave Luc alone. But before Evangeline gets far, Luc grabs her hair and pulls her to him. He’s going to bite her. Before Luc can bite her neck, Jacks arrives and pulls her away, carrying Evangeline out of the hall to safety. Jacks tells Evangeline that he’s arranged to have Luc “subdued”, but it won’t last forever, and the hall is no longer safe for her. Just then, Evangeline sees that the woman that Luc has invited to dinner is her stepsister, Marisol. She warns Marisol not to go in, telling her to leave the North altogether, but Marisol ignores her and says some nasty, spiteful things to Evangeline before going in to meet the new prince anyway. Evangeline has been hurt many times by Marisol and knows that they will never have a real relationship, but she can’t let Marisol get killed so she asks Jacks to compel Marisol to leave the palace. Ultimately, he does so, and Marisol leaves the palace in a panic, but he only does it to save Evangeline from going back in after Marisol. Evangeline announces that she is leaving the hall, and she does not want anyone to follow her. She doesn’t know where she will go, she will figure that out later, she just knows that she cannot stay there any longer. She only gets to the garden before Jacks catches up to her. She stops to argue with him, but she suddenly feels like they’re being watched. She sees a horse and rider in the distance. The horse moves slightly, and Evangeline sees the rider’s face clearly in the moonlight. It’s Apollo and he looks fully in control of himself. Jacks speaks inside Evangeline’s head, telling her they need to leave, but Evangeline says he is welcome to. She is going to stay. Jacks is worried that something is wrong, that this is dangerous, but Evangeline believes that Jacks is only worried that his leverage over her is now nonexistent. Apollo gets closer, his eyes are back to normal. He tells Evangeline that he doesn’t want to hurt her, that he heard her when she would visit and talk to him - he wants to forgive her for marrying under false circumstances. His face is getting more contorted, his voice tighter, and then he tells her to leave because he doesn’t want to hurt her. Next, he pulls out a golden arrow. Jacks pulls Evangeline to safety and yells at her to run just as Apollo’s eyes turn red again. He shoots the arrow at her and hits her thigh. He continues to shoot at her but misses as she runs from him. She’s bleeding from her leg wound and cannot run for long. Luckily, she makes it back into the hall. She hears Jacks call her name and hears him say he’s sorry before she passes out. Jacks takes Evangeline to Chaos, who can heal her. She has vague dreams of Jacks holding her while she was still unconscious. She wakes up with dressings around her leg and shoulder, wearing a thin slip that does not belong to her. Jacks comes in and Evangeline is told that one of the female vampires is going to bite her and infect her with vampire venom to heal her wounds. As long as Evangeline doesn’t drink any human blood while infected with the venom, she will stay human herself, and this is the only way to heal her quickly. Evangeline puts up a small fight but agrees after not that long, and once she’s bitten her perceptions change. Things become richer, brighter, softer, just… more. When she looks at Jacks, she’s filled with immense longing. Good thing she’s locked in a cage. Jacks quickly exits the situation, his blood is human enough to complete the change, but Chaos stays with Evangeline. One thing they didn’t plan for: Evangeline’s new long incisors have nicked her lip and she’s able to press her blood to the cage and ask it to open. Chaos is forced to go in and restrain her physically because all Evangeline wants to do is find Jacks. She yells that Jacks only cares if Evangeline can be used as a key, but Chaos tells her no, Jacks would not want her to be a vampire. Chaos also explains that yes, he’s here to help Jacks out of loyalty, but he's also here to try to remove his helmet. Evangeline’s blood won’t unlock that curse but if she opened the Valory Arch, it holds the key to releasing him. Jacks reenters the room and finds them in a compromising position as Chaos restrains Evangeline. Chaos screams at him to leave, he can barely hold Evangeline with Jacks in the room, and Jacks does so but is so mad that he breaks off a piece of the thick wooden door with his bare hand as he holds on to it. Still, he turns to leave. The morning comes and Evangeline is back to normal. Normal senses, normal strength, normal incisors, higher than normal amount of embarrassment and discomfort. Chaos had restrained her the whole night, and he finally lets her go. She’s exhausted, parched, and starving. Chaos feeds her and gives her water, and she manages to put on a new dress that someone found for her. She heads for the nearest exit, insisting on leaving right that second. She stumbles through the door to the outside, trying to figure out which direction will lead back to Wolf’s Hall. The trees are dense, and she gets lost, ending up at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Then she hears hoofbeats. She, as quickly and as quietly as she can, tries to hide in the shadow of the trees. The horse and rider arrive and the rider, Apollo, is clearly looking for her. He calls out that she needs to run. He has control right now and he won’t chase her, but he doesn’t know how long that will last. Hunting her is all he can think about. He’s literally being pulled toward her. He begs her to find a way to help him. Then he pulls another arrow out of his quiver, shaking, fighting himself. Before Evangeline can do anything, Jacks grabs her from behind. He puts one hand over her mouth and the other wraps around her chest and arms, pinning her back to his chest. He says in her mind to not make a sound, or Apollo will know where she is and will kill her. As he pulls her to safety, Jacks tells her that she and Apollo have been cursed…again. In the Ballad of the Archer and the Fox, the archer was cursed to hunt and kill the fox at all costs. Apollo has been cursed in the same way and in his particular case, because of the mirror curse, it will also cost him his life. Jacks isn’t sure who’s cursed her and Apollo, but he swears it wasn’t him. Evangeline wants to believe him, but she can’t trust herself and steps away from him, further into the trees and away from both Jacks and Apollo. Turns out, Evangeline is not the outdoorsman that she thinks she is, and she is quickly pursued by Apollo. Jacks screams for her to run, and she does, but not fast enough. He shoots at her, grazing her cheek. Evangeline is quickly coming to the cliff’s edge when Jacks appears next to her. He tells her to jump but Evangeline can’t swim, so he tells her to hang on while he grabs her by the waist and throws them both into the ocean. Jacks tows Evangeline to shore but she still swallows quite a bit of water. He tells her that he will not let her die as he carries her out of the ocean. While he carries her, he tells her that the curse will only be broken when Apollo kills her, unless she opens the Valory Arch. It will take time; it will be nearly impossible to do so, and it’s far more likely that Apollo will kill her before she manages it, but it’s also her only hope. Evangeline wants to find out who cast the curse, but Jacks thinks that is a waste of time, they wouldn’t be able to undo it anyway. She asks if it could’ve been Chaos, but Jacks doesn’t think so. Chaos wouldn’t risk the possibility of losing another key before the arch was unlocked. This shocks Evangeline, who thought she was the only key. Nope, the last one was killed by the Protectorate after finding only one of the four stones… and she’s the one that stayed alive the longest. The stakes just got a lot higher for Evangeline. Evangeline agrees, she’s going to have to open the Valory Arch. They go back to Chaos’ lair and wait for him in his room, where Evangeline finds a very sparkly gemstone. When Chaos takes it away from her, Evangeline is willing to fight him for it. The stone WANTS to stay with her. She only comes back to her senses when Chaos puts the stone in an iron box. Jacks and Chaos explain that that stone is the luck stone, so one stone down, three more to go. This is the stone that the previous key managed to find. This stone makes people act recklessly, and as the key, Evangeline feels the power of the stones more strongly than others. Chaos takes Jacks and Evangeline to his library, where he has a ton of books he’s been trying to preserve. Because of the story curse, every time you read a tale it changes slightly, but these books have been read so few times that they are almost completely preserved. They’ll start their research here, trying to figure out where to find the remaining stones. Evangeline reads about the Valors, about the thirteen original Great Houses. She investigates House Slaughterwood, for LaLa’s sake, but she can’t find anything. Then she looks into House Merrywood. She reads that there were three friends that lived in the Merrywood village who were renowned for their charm, good looks, and being scoundrels: Prince Castor Valor, Lord Merrywood’s son Lyric, and an unnamed but very cocky archer. When Chaos comes in, she asks about Slaughterwood and he tells her not to bother, there’s nothing exciting to learn about them. He directs her to another book about the Valors and when she looks up, both he and the book about the Merrywood Three have disappeared, leaving only a yellowed paper behind. Evangeline looks at the lone piece of paper, which lists the missing stones with little symbols underneath them. Luck, which has been crossed out and a dragon underneath it, truth has a skull and crossbones, mirth is a garden of flowers with little stars, youth has a shield with flames at the bottom. She doesn’t know what the symbols mean, neither does Chaos, and she can’t find them in any of the books. She finds out from the gossip column that LaLa and her new fiancée are throwing a party, and that Prince Tiberius has been apprehended after trying to escape. Evangeline decides to pay Tiberius a visit. She heads out without telling anyone where she’s going, as if she isn’t being actively hunted by her husband and goes to the Tower where Tiberius is being held. She uses her blood to get in and is busy convincing the guards to let her see Tiberius when she hears Jacks’ voice in her head, telling her what a bad idea this is. When he sees Evangeline, Tiberius isn’t feeling particularly kindly toward her. She tells him that Apollo is still alive, but is under a curse, or several, actually. Tiberius doesn’t believe her she uses her knife to carve the words “where are you apollo?” into her arm. He watches as the words “don’t look for me” appear followed by “I don’t want to kill you.” She asks for Tiberius’ help with the stones, but he refuses. He’d rather lose his brother than unleash whatever is being held by the Valory Arch. On her way back from the Tower, she runs into Luc. Evangeline is not having a great day. He invites her to come with him to the costume party that LaLa is throwing. The words at the top of the invitation say “Mirth, Merriment, and Marriage” and her gaze catches on mirth. She refuses Luc’s invitation, but she may know where one of the stones is! She quickly finds Jacks and tells him her theory. He is not happy about all the words carved into her arm, but he agrees she may be onto something with the party. One catch. They can’t tell Chaos they’re going to House Slaughterwood, because Slaughterwood is why they’re all in this mess in the first place. Jacks makes up some story and Chaos supplies them with a bunch of outfit options to wear. As Evangeline decides what to wear to the party, she finds the book that Chaos encouraged her to read about the Valors. “The Rise and Fall of the Valors: Beloved First Royal Family of the Magnificent North.” But as she looks at the book, the title changes to “The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.” She opens the book to see she’s been deceived, the book is playing tricks on her, she opens it to a picture of Vengeance Slaughterwood and an unnamed but beautiful young woman, his soon to be bride. She flips through the book and sees other portraits until she comes across a portrait of three young men: one clearly high born, one friendly, and one Jacks. The Merrywood Three. Is Jacks really a Merrywood, a Valor, or the unknown Archer. There’s no way of knowing from the picture and Jacks enters the room before she can investigate further. She questions him but all Jacks says is that the Merrywood Three died long ago, and he was not one of them. He tells her not to trust the story books, just because she saw his picture does not mean that it really happened. That may be true about the books, but she saw his reaction and she doesn’t believe he wasn’t one of the Merrywood Three. They go to LaLa’s party. They go through a section of road that gets much colder, with thick fog, and it smells of decay. Jacks tells her not to worry, it’s just because of where they are. She sees out the window a sign announcing Merrywood Manor. When she looks to where the house was, all that is left is one large staircase. Jacks tells here that this is where the Merrywood Three died. Lyric Merrywood fell in love with Aurora Valor. Lyric was the Lord’s only son and did not care that Aurora was already engaged to Vengeance Slaughterwood. They’d been betrothed since Aurora’s birth and Aurora tried to break off the wedding, but her father refused. Aurora ran away on the morning of her wedding, Vengeance found out about her affair with Lyric and destroyed House Merrywood. Vengeance also killed Castor, because Castor had tried to warn Lyric. He starts to ask her some questions now, and she confesses that she went to see Tiberius. This really upsets Jacks, who seems to be very concerned with Evangeline’s safety and thinks she’s too trusting. They arrive at the manor where they see LaLa, who is ecstatic to see them. Jacks chastises her for getting engaged to a Slaughterwood, and she chastises him back for framing Evangeline. LaLa takes Evangeline into House Slaughterwood and Evangeline sees portraits of Vengeance Slaughterwood’s second bride-to-be after Aurora and who became his wife, Glendora. Evangeline is given a room, and Jacks insists on sleeping in the room next door, since people keep trying to kill Evangeline. LaLa and Jacks leave, but Evangeline can overhear them in the room next door. He is asking LaLa if she can break the curses on Evangeline, and it appears it’s not the first time he’s asked, but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he want her curses broken when that is the only reason that she’s agreed to open the Valory Arch. It doesn’t matter anyway, LaLa can’t break them. They go to the party, where everyone ignores Evangeline to gossip about her. A beautiful dark-haired woman enters the party, Jacks says she looks vaguely familiar but it’s clear that he recognizes her as he won’t look away. Evangeline mills through the party but she doesn’t feel a pull from anything that could be the magical stone. Evangeline notices that Jacks is getting quite a bit of attention from the women at this party, yet anytime a man approaches her, he is there to rebuff them. They go to greet LaLa and her fiancée Robin and then they have dinner, where Evangeline is separated from Jacks. Evangeline keeps watching one of the Darling sisters flirts with Jacks and she is jealous - a powerful, strong, jealousy. Intense emotions like she felt when she was near the luck stone and Evangeline realizes the stone must be nearby! Just then, the empty seat next to her is taken by the dark-haired woman Jacks couldn’t stop watching, Petra Youngblood. As they talk, Evangeline realizes that Jacks has left with the flirty Darling sister. But she asked him not to kill anybody! Petra points her toward the door behind the portrait and Evangeline stalks over to where the portrait of Glendora had been pulled away from the wall. She calls out to Jacks in her head, but no one answers and finally, Evangeline comes upon the two of them canoodling in the hall. After a silent fight, Jacks sends the other girl away and turns his attention to Evangeline. After a few tense moments, he leaves Evangeline alone in the hall. Evangeline goes back to her room that night without finding any stone and just keeps telling herself that there is nothing between her and Jacks other than his incredible good looks. Once there, she looks at her word-changing book to find that it is now a history of House Slaughterwood. How convenient. Inside she finds and old gossip column, detailing how a monster killed Bane Slaughterwood (father to Vengeance). It appears that this monster, which appeared after Vengeance had allegedly killed Prince Castor, is targeting Slaughterwoods. Had the Valors created a monster in retaliation of Castor’s death, leading the North to turn on them? Was this the monster locked behind the Valory Arch? Evangeline turns to the obituary of Glendora, praising her as good and honest, but saying that Vengeance had never loved her as stuck on Aurora as he was. The write up specifically mentions grounds of flowers and rooms full of mirth – and it just so happens the symbol under mirth stone was a flower. She sees in a picture that Glendora was wearing a long necklace with a jeweled pendant, and Evangeline believes she’s found the mirth stone. She sneaks back down to the secret hallway behind the portrait of Glendora, she holds her dagger out in front of her in case of danger. At the end of the secret hallway, she faces a monument flanked by weeping angel statues. Luc shows up behind her, having come to the party and following her into the hallway like a vampire stalker, but it’s good that he’s there since she needs to open the marble coffin and it’s too heavy for her to move alone. But when they lift the lid, all they see is dust and Glendora’s teeth. She reaches into the dust that used to be Glendora’s body and pulls out a pendant with a yellow stone. She hides the pendant in her clothes and leaves Luc in the hallway. On her way back to her room, she sees Petra sneaking down a hallway and she can’t shake the feeling that Petra is coming from Jacks’ room. She knocks on his door and tries to call to him telepathically, but she gets no answer. She magically opens the locked door but he’s not inside, she settles in on his bed to wait for him and falls asleep. He appears while she’s sleeping, and Evangeline mentions Petra. Jacks says to stay away from her, he claims to not know her, but he doesn’t like her. And Petra certainly doesn’t like him. The next night is a costume ball, and the costume LaLa has picked for Evangeline portrays her as “the Fox”. Evangeline has not told Jacks about the stone, and she’s decided to wear it to tonight’s party. She leaves her room to find Jacks, and she manages to overhear him talking to LaLa again. LaLa shows Jacks a gossip column that doesn’t mention Evangeline by name but says someone matching her description is at the party. It also mentions that Tiberius has escaped the Tower, again. Evangeline also overhears a bunch of stuff that hurts her feelings: LaLa may be responsible for the curses on her and Apollo, Jacks is just using her to find the stones, and Evangeline flees to the ballroom. Jacks follows not too long after and tells her they need to leave, for her safety. She reveals what she overheard and runs away from him, right into Petra. Petra says she knows a way out, a secret passage, and takes Evangeline through a concealed door. As she talks to Petra, Evangeline catches Petra in a lie and Petra appears to not know how to recover from the slip. Evangeline wonders if this may not be the mirth stone, but the truth stone. Remembering the stone that she’s wearing, Evangeline realizes she needs to get away from Petra but Petra is faster than that. She pulls out a knife and attempts to stab Evangeline in the heart, luckily Evangeline is able to jump away. She grabs Petra’s hair and realizes that it’s a wig! Petra has pink hair, too! Petra is also a key, and it appears that she is in possession of the youth stone. Petra is the one who found the luck stone, then faked her own death and disappeared when she found the youth stone but before Chaos found out. Petra keeps trying to kill Evangeline until Evangeline is forced to stab her. Finally, Jacks finds Evangeline and runs to her, pulling her into his chest. He comforts her as she struggles with the knowledge that she just killed a woman. She searches Petra for the youth stone and finds it in a cuff around her wrist, a beautiful blue stone. Jacks tells Evangeline to go pack her things. He will grab the stone and take care of Petra’s body. Evangeline runs to her room, and Luc shows up not long afterward. He’s a danger all the time, but especially right now as she is covered in Petra’s blood. As she tells him to leave, a terrible pain travels down her back. Someone is hurting Apollo. Jacks walks in and instructs Luc to go find Chaos before Evangeline is killed. Find Chaos and have him find Apollo, protect him, and heal his wounds. Luc leaves and Jacks holds Evangeline, he calls her his love and tells her that they are going somewhere safe. He takes her to the Merrywood forest, to a place called the Hollow: an inn. He lays her on a bed and cuts her dress off so that he can see her back, which is covered in wounds. He cleans them and dresses them, both of them being far more honest than they usually are. As he bandages her back, Evangeline sees measurements in the wood. Measurements with the names Aurora, Lyric, Castor, Jacks, and the Archer. She asks about the names and Jacks tells her that he was friends with Lyric and Castor, Aurora was a pest, and he wouldn’t call the Archer a friend exactly. Back then, they all believed that it would all work out in the end. He went to Merrywood Manor the day that his friends were killed, but he was too late - everyone was already dead except for Castor. Castor had been stabbed, but was still alive, and Jacks took him to Honora to heal. Jacks doesn’t say what happened, just that he was never meant to be a savior, and that life is not kind. Later, once Evangeline’s back is not so painful, she explores the Hollow a bit. She finds on the clock in the main room that someone has carved “Aurora + Jacks”, and then Jacks catches her snooping. He’s not wearing a shirt, since he’s loaned it to her, and the sight of him really flusters Evangeline. She asks if he was in love with Aurora, and he says no. He didn’t even know that carving was there. Good, she’d be crazy with jealousy if he had been. He notices that she’s wearing the pendant necklace, she still doesn’t mention to him that it is the truth stone. Jacks tells her that he brought her to the Hollow because the magic here might protect her for a short time from the mirror curse and may help her heal faster. The Hollow used to be his home, but he never comes here now, he hasn’t been back since he became a Fate. Then he realizes what he’s saying and guesses that she has the stone. He’s upset and she asks him not to take it, she just wants to understand him. He takes the pendant from her anyway and starts to walk away. Before he gets far, she asks why he wants to open the Valory Arch. Turns out, he doesn’t really want to open it at all. She guesses if Jacks doesn’t want to open the arch, he must want the stones for something. Tiberius had said that together, the stones possess great power. She tracks him down again and asks if he will let her open the arch, he doesn’t answer her question, which she interprets as a no. Evangeline has a dream at the Hollow where she is approached by a “handsome stranger” since he won’t give her his name, even in the dream. He mentions that Jacks likes her, that Evangeline is a bit like Jacks’ first fox. Was that just a dream or is Jacks the Archer? Evangeline decides to dismiss the idea, learning from her experience with Petra that not all helpful strangers are there to help. Evangeline looks through the Hollow for something to wear and stumbles upon Aurora’s journal. In her journal, Aurora mentions being forced to marry Vengeance and Evangeline sees LaLa’s name, and LaLa’s brother’s. Although it’s not explicitly mentioned, Evangeline figures out that LaLa must be Lyric Merrywood’s sister and she realizes just what LaLa lost before becoming a Fate, although she’s still mad at her for placing the Archer’s curse. Evangeline realizes how much time has passed since she last saw Jacks. When he does show back up, he’s terribly injured. It appears that he’s been stabbed in the rib cage. She helps Jacks to a room and prepares to stitch his wound together, but instead she watches as his skin heals itself quickly. Jacks, barely conscious, starts saying things he shouldn’t be saying and wraps her in an embrace as he sleeps. He says it’s only one night, in the morning she can go back to pretending she doesn’t like him, and he can continue pretending that he doesn’t care. But for just tonight he wants to pretend that she is his. Evangeline dreams of the Handsome Stranger again, who warns her against Jacks since he’s not “in his right mind right now.” LaLa enters the dream. She apologizes for cursing Apollo, and it turns out she is the one that stabbed Jacks, since she believed he told Evangeline about what she had done. She explains that she doesn’t want Evangeline hurt, just to have her open the Valory Arch. She cursed them with the Archer’s curse to make sure Evangeline would have to open it, and also with the mirror curse to stop Apollo from hurting her (since he would be hurt too). Unfortunately, that logic didn’t pan out. Evangeline demands to know why LaLa wants the arch opened and so Lala tells her a story. She once loved someone more than anyone else, someone who could transform into a dragon. She is unwed not because her grooms leave her, but because she cannot stop loving her dragon. Her dragon is in the Valory. Before the dream ends, LaLa tells her that they think Jacks has the mirth stone and it is clouding his judgement. In fact, Jacks and Evangeline have been missing for weeks! Evangeline wakes up next to Jacks, who is still sleeping. She’s afraid the way that he was acting was only due to the mirth stone and feels inside his pockets, but she finds nothing. She goes to the main room where a grandfather clock stands and sees a little tiny dragon trying to get into the case to collect the gems in the pendulum. Evangeline opens the clock’s door for the dragon and is overwhelmed with power, the power of the mirth stone. Everything she or Jacks felt here was fake. When Jacks wakes up, she tells him what she’s found and that everything that happened was the influence of the mirth stone, but Jacks is hurt by this - that she can only imagine caring for him under the influence of a rock. She puts the stone in an iron jar, where its effects cannot be felt, and the feeling of the whole Hollow shifts. Now they’ve found all the stones and it’s time to leave. They go back to Chaos’ lair, where Apollo is being guarded, to retrieve the final stone. Jacks plans to use the stones first, and then Evangeline can use them to open the arch. Until that time, Evangeline goes to a room to rest. Evangeline is so hurt by how Jacks is acting that she lets the mirth stone out for a while, so she doesn’t have to feel the pain. She also doesn’t realize when Apollo sneaks into her room. He kisses her, and then he tries to strangle her. This causes him to choke as well, and she is able to get away from him. She traps Apollo in a cage (all too easily accessible in a vampire lair) and goes to leave the room, but Jacks is in the doorway. Jacks picks her up and holds her as tightly as he can. He was so worried about her, but just as they’re about to let their emotions run away from them, Jacks decides to leave. This infuriates Evangeline and Jacks decides to tell her something she’s been wanting to know. What the stones do when they’re brought together. When combined, a person has the power to return to any moment in their past, but it can only be done once. After that, the stones will lose that power. Jacks wants to use the stones to go back to the moment he met Donatella, who he believes is his one true love. He wants another chance for that love. This does not make Evangeline any less angry, but he tells her that she won’t remember him anyway. Most things will play out the same. She will still find her way to the North, she will still meet Apollo, but she and Jacks will never meet. He will still remember Evangeline, but he will ensure they never meet each other. She makes him promise that this is what he really wants, and he does. He tells her that he wants to erase every memory of her because otherwise, he will kill her just like he killed the Fox. And he tells her the end of the Ballad of the Archer and the Fox. He knows it, since he is the Archer in question. He ran away from the Fox, trying to leave so he would not hurt her, but the Fox chased after him. She was convinced that he really loved her and that he could fight the curse, that he would not kill her. The same things that Evangeline has started thinking. The Fox convinced him but as soon as Jacks kissed her, the Fox died. And so has every other girl except for Donatella. Jacks leaves Evangeline alone in his room. Chaos comes to fetch her; it’s time for Evangeline to open the arch. Jacks isn’t there. After the arch is opened, Chaos will deliver the stones to him. The two of them go to Wolf Hall. She asks Chaos why he doesn’t just go to the Hollow and remove his helm, since the Hollow is immune to curses. Chaos tells her that when he first became a vampire, he was not in control of himself, and the Hollow was enchanted specifically to keep it safe from him. The Valors created him, he is the monster that they made, he is the monster that took vengeance against the Slaughterwoods. But that was a long time ago, all Chaos wants now is to remove his helm. It’s been a long time since he was a monster. They make their way to the Valory Arch and Evangeline puts the missing stones in their places. She pricks her finger and asks for the arch to open. Chaos uses the knife to take a lock of her hair, so that the Archer’s curse can be broken, and enters the archway. He asks Evangeline to wait outside. He should know her better than that. Evangeline steps inside the archway, which she sees is definitely not home to a prison. She sees a line of people lying on the floor holding hands, and she recognizes one as Aurora Valor. She realizes that the Valory arch holds the Valor family. Honora stirs from her place on the floor and sees Chaos, she calls him Castor. Seeing Castor reunited with his family makes Evangeline realize something, that she needed to tell Jacks that she loves him. It could just save him. Perhaps if they were willing to fight for their love, and they never stopped fighting for it, they could win. So what if he can’t kiss her. His love would be enough even without that. She turns to go find Jacks, but a flash of light distracts her. She turns around to see that Chaos’ helm is now broken. He wrenches it off and she realizes that he is the Handsome Stranger from her dreams. Chaos looks up and realizes that Evangeline is there, he introduces his family to her. As he does so, she makes eye contact with him (an invitation for a vampire), and Chaos (who’s starving) tears into her throat. Jacks arrives and pulls Castor away; Jacks pleads with Evangeline to stay with him. But it’s too late. He holds Evangeline as she dies. Chaos is distraught, he apologizes to Jacks and then flees. But Jacks cannot leave Evangeline. He asks Honora, the best healer ever, to save Evangeline but she can’t. Bringing Castor back from death is what caused him to become the vampire he is now; Honora will not make that mistake again. He carries Evangeline’s body back through the arch and takes the stones out of the archway. Honora warns that time will take something of equal value to him, but he says there is nothing more valuable to him than Evangeline. Evangeline wakes up as Chaos comes to get her, ready to open the archway (for the second time – unbeknownst to her). This time, Jacks joins them. Once Evangeline opens the archway and Chaos takes her lock of hair, Jacks tells Evangeline to leave. He is mean to her, trying to drive her away. She won’t let that work, and he finally warns her about Chaos. Jacks says he doesn’t want to hurt her, and she asks him not to use the stones. She begs him to come with her instead. They hear Chaos roar inside the archway, and Jacks is desperate for Evangeline to leave. She says she wishes their story had a different ending. He responds that he doesn’t want a different ending - he just wants her to leave. Evangeline runs from Jacks, she’s heartbroken. Her confession to Jacks did not work (she’d had the same epiphany outside of the archway as she’d had seeing Castor with his family). She runs right into Apollo, who tells her that their curses have been lifted. He tells her that he’s thought of her so much, that he never wanted to hurt her. He grabs her and brushes his thumb against her temple. She can feel Apollo taking her memories, but she realizes too late what’s happening. Everything between the two of them, between her and Jacks, is gone as if she has amnesia. Apollo leaves her in the hallway crying. She doesn’t even remember why she’s crying or where she is. He pretends to find her in the hallway and introduces himself as her husband. He tells her that she’s safe now, and he’s never going to let her go again.
Go ahead and click, if you're ready. Evangeline Fox wakes up to find herself in the arms of a man claiming to be her husband, in a land that she doesn’t recognize. She has lost her memories, the last thing she remembers is when her father died; but she knows her father has been dead for some time. What little she does remember is fuzzy and unclear. Apollo, her alleged husband, explains that her memories have been stolen by someone trying to keep them apart. A crowd starts to form around the two of them, turns out Apollo is more than just Evangeline’s husband - he’s also the soon to be King of the Magnificent North. He opens his shirt to reveal a sweet tat on his chest of Evangeline’s name and a bunch of scars on his back. He announces to the crowd that Lord Jacks killed him and stole Evangeline’s memories. He must be found! But Evangeline is full of questions for Apollo, questions he isn’t answering. If he just woke up from the dead, how does he know what happened to her? Of course, we as the audience know that Apollo wasn’t dead at all but cursed to track Evangeline down and kill her (see The Ballad of Never After). Evangeline feels like there’s something very important she must tell someone. She just can’t remember what. Or to whom. Meanwhile, Apollo is having a slight early life crisis. He’s not living up to what a prince should be. He’s lying to his people about dying and fighting to return to them. Not to mention, he’s the one that stole Evangeline’s memories! It was all to protect her – according to him. The first King of the Magnificent North, Wolfric Valor, has been released with his family from the Valory and is now going by Lord Vale. He’s been given a great house and is now on Apollo’s council. When they were released, his wife Honora cured Apollo from his curse and the family agreed to live quietly, they have no plans on usurping Apollo. Evangeline tries to see scandal writer Kristof Knightlinger, hoping that he will be honest with her and answer some of the questions she has. This is when she realizes that although Apollo says she’s not a prisoner, she’s certainly not free to do as she pleases. Her guards won’t let her leave the palace. She confronts Apollo, who just introduces her to Garrick of the Greenwood, leader of the Guild of Heroes. They “kept order” when Apollo was supposedly dead and there was an imposter prince on the throne (see The Ballad of Never After). Apollo has asked them to track down Lord Jacks. Garrick wants to use the mark Evangeline has on the inside of her wrist, a sort of tattoo that Jacks gave her, to track him down. To do so, they’ll need her blood. When she asks them if she can think about it before she gives them any bodily fluids, Garrick has his pet bird bite her and he collects the blood he needs. Apollo is on board with making his wife bleed to find Jacks; he reveals to Evangeline that some of his advisors think that Jacks took her memories from her so that she could not betray him, that they were working together and that she helped Jacks kill Apollo. Lord Slaughterwood shows up at the palace. Apollo had asked him to look for a legendary cuff made by Vengeance Slaughterwood. He hasn’t found the cuff, but he did find a scroll that Apollo may be interested in. That night, Apollo leaves the palace without telling Evangeline. The next day, Evangeline’s royal tutor asks to meet with Evangeline in the Wishing Garden for their lesson that day. She adds that she may not be there when Evangeline arrives but should be there soon after, Evangeline should feel free to make a wish while she waits! When Evangeline gets to the garden, it’s empty; as she prepares to make a wish and is inspecting the well, someone pushes her from behind. She hits the water hard and can stay afloat only after untying her cloak and dress and finding a wooden plank to hold on to. It’s a small plank that will only stay floating if she helps by kicking, but the cold is sapping her strength and energy. If she’s not found soon, she will drown. Luckily, a man whose voice Evangeline does not recognize realizes what happened and throws the bucket down for her. She’s able to hold on while he pulls her up to the ground. When she gets a glimpse of his face, Evangeline remembers half a memory but no more than that; then the man disappears. Evangeline is taken back to the palace and visited by the doctor, who prescribes hot tea and rest. The tea tastes weird, as if it’s been spiked with something - perhaps a sedative. Evangeline elects not to drink it and pours it into a plant holder. In the night, Jacks comes to her room, announcing that she’s going to learn to protect herself. He introduces himself as Archer and takes her to the water gardens. He teaches defense in the same way some people teach their children to swim by tossing them into the deep end. The fighting gets pretty…intimate… for a second. Archer says they will practice more self-defense later, but in the meantime, she should carry a dagger with her at all times. When he gives her a dagger to carry around, she gets another flash of memory. We learn that the scroll Lord Slaughterwood brought Apollo has a story written on it, a story that catches fire every time someone starts to read it. In fact, Apollo has never been able to get all the way to the end since the fire starts at the bottom of the page. He’s also had Evangeline’s guards and tutor questioned about how and why she was tossed in the well. They all maintain their innocence and seem sincere, which makes sense, since Apollo is the person who gave the guards that note for Evangeline, told them to lose track of her in the gardens, and push her into the well. The tutor knows nothing. He wanted to prove to Evangeline that she is in danger. Apollo still orders the tutor tortured and the guards killed. Everything he does is to protect Evangeline: his personal mantra. Evangeline decides to find Archer…and her memories. But instead, she must attend a dinner with Apollo and his entire court. Apollo toasts to everyone finding love and curses those who stand in its way. Seems pretty irresponsible in a land teeming with curses and fairytales. Evangeline meets Aurora Vale and her parents (the old king and queen). They’ve been given Merrywood, which had been burned down. Aurora tells Evangeline the tale: Vengeance Slaughterwood razed the manor, village, and forest of Merrywood when he found out his betrothed ran away with the son of Lord Merrywood on the day she was supposed to be married to Vengeance. The Vales are now planning to rebuild everything. Prince Apollo gets called away, leaving Evangeline alone, so she decides to slip away and find Archer while everyone else is toasting. Aurora sees her and stops her just long enough for Evangeline’s guards to catch up, ruining Evangeline’s plans. Aurora is playing sweet, but Evangeline is very suspicious. That night, when Evangeline is in her room, someone sneaks into her suite. Evangeline thinks it’s Archer at first, but it’s not and this intruder has a knife. Luckily, Archer does come in while she’s being attacked and saves her. The would-be assassin doesn’t know who hired him, but he was told to make Evangeline’s death slow and painful. Archer kills him instead, but when he turns to leave, Evangeline grabs his hand and is engulfed in a memory. When she comes back to herself, Archer is gone. It turns out, Apollo had been called away to the massacre of one of the great houses: the Fortunas. There is only one survivor, a young teenage boy who loves to draw. Apollo questions him and is told that whatever the thing was that killed his family, it was not a man; it was feral. Apollo asks him to draw something, telling the boy what he wants in the drawing, and when the drawing is complete Apollo kills the boy; making it look like a suicide. The picture that Apollo requested is of Lord Jacks, who Apollo will accuse of this massacre, even though he knows the culprit is a vampire. Apollo returns to the palace and goes to Evangeline’s room. They share a kiss, and Evangeline has a memory (the first not triggered by Archer) of the first time they kissed. When she tells him that she had a memory, a second memory is triggered. She also sees something in Apollo that makes her think he doesn’t want her to regain her memories. When Jacks/Archer leaves the palace that night, he hears two of the guards talking about a massacre. He believes the perpetrator is Castor. Castor was the son of the Valors, now the Vales, who have taken over Merrywood Manor. He also happens to be the vampire that killed Evangeline, casing Jacks to do whatever he could to save her life. Jacks ended up using Valory arch stones to turn back time, he thinks that’s what caused her to lose her memory and essentially caused him to lose her. But he tells himself that at least she was still alive. And he plans to keep it that way, so he rides to Merrywood to talk to Castor. When the scandal sheets report the news of the massacre, they include the Fortuna boy’s drawing of the “murderer”; Evangeline sees the sketch and realizes that Archer and Jacks are one and the same. Until now she thought that Archer was a guard who had been charged to teach her to defend herself. She has to tell Apollo that Jacks has been sneaking into the palace. Problem is, Apollo is never where you think he is and he has already left for The Hunt: a yearly event that takes place in the Cursed Forest. It’s a very popular event, so practically everybody is there, and Evangeline can’t find Apollo in the mass of people and tents when she arrives. Aurora shows up and directs Evangeline in one direction, while Lord Byron Bellflower tells her Apollo is actually on the other side of the camp. Evangeline already doesn’t trust Aurora, so she sends one of her guards with Aurora with instructions that if they find Apollo first, tell Apollo to find Evangeline before going on The Hunt. Evangeline and her other guard go with Byron. They’re almost to the edge of the camp, about to enter the Cursed Forest, when Evangeline realizes something is wrong. Byron kills her guard and grabs Evangeline, dragging her toward the forest while screaming about Petra (see The Ballad of Never After). She’s able to cut Byron’s wrist with her dagger and run into the forest. A child sees the whole scene and immediately runs to tell Apollo – the child seems to have no problem finding the prince at all. While Evangeline makes her way through the Cursed Forest, she suddenly finds herself on a familiar street. The street where her father’s shop was on the day before her twelfth birthday, the best day of her life. She can hear her parents calling her and she desperately tries to find them, but they are always just out of reach. Chaos appears and explains: the Cursed Forest gives you just enough for you to chase but never lets you catch what you really want. What you see is different for everyone. Chaos is here to ask for Evangeline’s help with Jacks, who is about to make a terrible decision. Suddenly, Jacks is there too and can’t stand to see Chaos near Evangeline – he did kill her once – and he stabs Chaos in the chest. But don’t worry, he’s a vampire so Chaos won’t stay dead for long. Jacks is desperate to get Evangeline away to safety before Chaos wakes up, but Evangeline doesn’t exactly trust him right now, still thinking that he murdered the Fortuna family, and so Jacks binds their wrists together. Doing so shifts Evangeline to Jacks best day ever, in the Hollow. Jacks tries to get her to remember that day (it’s with her) but she can’t, and they leave the forest together. They make it to an inn which has vacancy…one bed. Apollo meets Wolfric and Honora Vale. We finally get to find out what is on the burning scroll: a story about the Tree of Souls. The tree’s branches are filled with blood. If one can find the tree and is brave enough to drink from the branches, they will become immortal. He implores Wolfric to tell him where the tree is; Jacks probably has Evangeline by now and Apollo cannot beat Jacks if he’s mortal. The Vales chastise Apollo, he’s sitting in his cushy royal tent instead of looking for Evangeline right now so how worried could he really be, and they leave without telling Apollo how to find the tree. Jacks and Evangeline take the single bed room and when they enter the room, Jacks tries to sprinkle some sort of gold dust on her. Evangeline doesn’t think he would hurt her, but she thinks the dust will make her fall asleep and that he will be gone when she wakes up. She’s not having it, so she knocks the dust out of his hand and the dust flies everywhere. Evangeline won’t let Jacks leave her and - forgetting that she’s supposed to be married - she starts to undo his shirt under the pretext that they’re soaked from the rain. Which is technically true. Jacks ends up succumbing to the dust and falling asleep on the bed just as Evangeline runs her hand under his shirt. She feels a piece of paper that he keeps next to his heart. Pulling it out, she finds the letter that she once wrote to herself. She reads it and all her memories flood back to her, she remembers everything. The ordeal of having her memories return exhausts her and when she wakes up, Jacks is gone but there’s a new, clear, glass cuff on her right wrist that is impossible to remove. Noticing blood on the doorknob and the doorframe, Evangeline goes downstairs to find the bodies of three people, killed by a vampire. None of the bodies belong to Jacks. She runs out of the inn and directly into Garrick - and his bird. He’s brought a bunch of his men as well as Apollo. She is overcome when she sees Apollo and slaps him in the face but quickly remembers that having her memories back would put her in more danger, so she pretends that she was startled when he touched her and didn’t mean to slap him. Apollo and Garrick try to blame these murders on Jacks too, but Evangeline is not having it and insists that it was a vampire. She goes so far as to claim she saw one in the forest. When they leave, Apollo doesn’t take her back to the palace but to Merrywood Village instead. The Vales are having a festival to encourage people to help rebuild the manor and village. Aurora greets them as they enter the village, Evangeline thinks she sees Aurora slip a note to Apollo. Apollo takes Evangeline into the tent that they will be sharing, which leaves Evangeline very few opportunities to escape. He embraces her, and when she tenses up, Apollo just grabs her tighter. Suddenly, he is in sharp pain and must let her go, and he sees the cuff on her wrist. He believes it is Vengeance Slaughterwood’s cuff of protection, the same cuff he had been looking for when he found the burning scroll. Turns out, Evangeline is right about Aurora slipping a note to him and Apollo goes off to meet her in secret. After Honora cured Apollo of his curses, Aurora showed up and gave him the elixir that would allow Apollo to remove Evangeline’s memories. It wasn’t until later that Apollo realized who Aurora was, which means he was just taking elixirs from strangers. At their meeting, Aurora agrees to take Apollo to the Tree of Souls - if he will clear Jacks name of all the charges Apollo has been accusing him of. Aurora assures Apollo that Jacks will not win Evangeline back, she has already taken care of that. They go to the tree together, which is terrifying, but then Wolfric appears, and he is not happy. He explains that all magic has a price; to have immortal life the tree will take the life of that you love the most. Realizing that it would be Evangeline’s life, Apollo agrees not to drink from the tree. Lala shows up in Evangeline’s tent and they talk about Jacks. Evangeline hypothesizes that the story curse changes all the stories, so maybe the story they know about Jacks isn’t the real one either. She believes that she is Jacks’ true love, and she will fight for him, for them. Lala and Evangeline make an escape plan, deciding they will sneak out of the tent separately and meet at the glowing spring to search for Jacks together. Evangeline goes first and suddenly Jacks appears before her. Something about this feels wrong but Evangeline tries to ignore it, wanting to believe in her and Jacks. But then Chaos also appears and warns her away from Jacks. Jacks comes towards Evangeline, trying to kiss her, and the cuff reacts to him. Chaos saves Evangeline, whisking her away to the glowing spring. He explains to Evangeline about the cuff: it was supposed to be a wedding gift from Vengeance Slaughterwood to his bride, Chaos’ twin sister Aurora, but Aurora refused to wear it. Jacks has now bargained with Aurora for the cuff so that no one can hurt Evangeline. He traded the one thing that Aurora wanted, Jacks’ heart. Not the physical heart that keeps you alive, but the metaphorical heart that can love and can break. Aurora may have run away from her wedding with Lyric Merrywood, but she has always loved Jacks, who was never interested in her. Chaos doesn’t know what Aurora’s plans are, but he’s not optimistic. Apollo returns to the tent to find Evangeline gone. He knows that she has her memories back and sends the guards to find her. Lala and Evangeline travel to a little hideaway that Aurora had in the Hollow, where Chaos believes she has taken Jacks’ heart. They do not find Jacks’ heart, but they find a journal and book of spells; in which Aurora writes about how her sister Vesper had a vision of Jacks falling in love with a fox. So, Aurora did something to stop it. Not only did she inflict him with the Archer’s Curse, but possibly the curse that makes his kiss fatal as well. Evangeline and LaLa then look for Aurora instead, planning to trail her until she leads them to Jacks’ heart, and they follow a trail of flowers. Aurora is extra and used to sprinkle flower petals wherever she walked so that people would believe flowers sprouted wherever she went, LaLa thinks these flowers will likely lead straight to Aurora. But instead, the flowers stop at the base of a tree, where there is a dead fox and a note for Evangeline. The note is from Jacks, warning her away. Evangeline doesn’t listen; she still wants to save Jacks. Aurora comes into view, she’s been roughed up, and says that Evangeline is too late to save Jacks. She didn’t take Jacks’ heart; he gave it to her willingly. But he just came to Aurora and demanded it back. Aurora refused to give it up, so he knocked her out. Now he and the heart are both gone. Jacks wants to destroy the heart himself, and he plans to go to the phoenix tree to do so, its fire is one of the only things that can destroy a heart. Before they leave to find Jacks, Aurora reveals that the legends about Jacks ARE wrong. Jacks’ kiss doesn’t kill everyone except his true love; Aurora cursed him so that only a girl who could never love him can survive his curse. Evangeline and Lala find the nearest archway, and Evangeline coaxes it to take her to the tree, alone. She walks through, leaving LaLa behind. She arrives to the phoenix tree before Jacks does. The phoenix tree is a beautiful thing, the leaves slowly turn to gold over the course of a thousand years. But if one leaf is plucked before all the leaves change to gold, the whole thing catches on fire. Jacks arrives, his heart in a glass jar, and the whole scene is heartbreaking. Evangeline makes a rousing speech about how she loves him and then kisses him before he can stop her. He drops the jar, breaking it and releasing his heart, which returns to its rightful place. And Evangelilne does not die from his kiss. They get a moment together, to relish the fact that being in love won’t kill either of them, but then Apollo appears. Honestly, I hate this guy. He picks a leaf and the whole tree is engulfed in flames. Jacks is able to push Evangeline away from the tree and she takes off running, but she doesn’t know where Jacks is or if he’s gotten away from the fire. Apollo grabs Evangeline around the waist and hauls her away, taking her through an archway. Meanwhile, Jacks is surrounded by thick smoke and desperate to find Evangeline. He follows what he thinks is her voice, but it turns out it’s just Aurora pretending. This girl just does not give up. In a fit of raging bitchiness, she tells Jacks that Apollo has gone to the Tree of Souls. Apparently, Apollo has really lost it and no longer cares if Evangeline dies, he wants to become immortal. Allegedly to defeat Jacks, but honestly just because Apollo is that kind of person. Jacks meets Apollo and Evangeline at the tree and finds Evangeline tied up. He starts to fight Apollo, but he is stopped by Dane and Lysander Vale, Wolfric’s other two sons. The Valors are so much stronger than they should be, and Jacks cannot shake them off. Wolfric appears as well, but he won’t let them release Jacks. Apollo cuts into the tree, tells Evangeline goodbye, and drinks the tree’s blood. Turns out, the person that Apollo loves most in the world is Apollo; as quickly as the tree heals him it destroys him. The tree, for lack of a better word, eats him and his screaming face becomes a part of the tree’s trunk. The Valors become the reigning family in the north again, and Jacks and Evangeline walk away - into the rest of their life together. 5 out of 5 stars!
