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Nothing is different.
She doesn’t forget him. She remembers it all. The day she first saw him in his church, the feel of his teeth on her wrist. All the different ways he’d touched her, held her, first at a distance and then closer and closer to his beating heart.
The shyness of his demeanour that morning in the Hollow before she’d ruined everything. The venom in his voice at the Arch when he told her to leave.
Nothing is different. And yet nothing is the same, either, because she sees him so vividly, but only when her eyes are closed; and her memories drown her, leaving her gasping for breath in the long, dark nights.
She doesn’t forget him, but she wishes she could.
She had run as quickly as she could that day, back to the Arch. The stones were still there, glinting dully in the dusty light, but there was nobody else to be found. She hadn’t gone in, Jacks’s warning about Chaos still fresh in her mind, but she waited, and she waited, and nothing stirred.
Her confession dried on her tongue. Jacks had already gone.
She’d thought that perhaps it took a while for the stones to work. When a penitent Apollo found her there, her limbs frozen with grief, she’d thought that maybe her memories would trickle away with time. That her story wouldn’t be rewritten, the way Jacks had thought, but that Jacks would be slowly written out of it, his name scribbled away wherever it was found, and something new written atop. That with each attempt to think on her past, the details would become more muddled, as though the Story Curse had already taken hold of her tale.
So she had let Apollo lead her away, her heart too numb to feel even the fear she knew she should at the sight of him, no matter how many times he apologised and said the curse was now lifted. The red may have been gone from his eyes, but the tightness of his grip should still have shattered her reverie.
And as time brought no relief, and as Apollo’s words became harsher and his treatment crueller, Evangeline began to wonder if some curses could never truly be lifted from the heart.
Jacks certainly couldn’t.
The room is dark. There is a lone candle by her bedside, casting only enough light to make out her silhouette among the shadows, but after so long away from her, he drinks in the sight like one parched.
He shouldn’t be here, he knows, but it was a chance he couldn’t miss. Apollo is away at some distant lord’s castle, and the guards at the door are already under Jacks’s spell. He shouldn’t be here, but he already is, and all that is left is for him to step forward and see the face that has haunted him since he left.
He’d done so well, for a few weeks at least. After making sure Castor had left Wolf Hall with the rest of his family and could no longer be a threat, he’d fled. He’d shut up his flat and made it out of the North, secretly slipping down to the Meridian Empire again. He’d worn a disguise and had thrown himself outside, day after day. Had taken in the warmth and the bustle, things he would usually avoid, just to push her out of his head.
But he’d seen her in every shop window, heard her in every tinkle of a bell, felt her every time the sun gently brushed his cold hands. The hurt in her eyes at their parting was a curse of its own, and he had no escape from it.
Was this what Honora Valor had meant when she said time would take something equally valuable from him? This constant misery at being apart from her, at knowing what he had done to her… but no, this was something given to him, not taken away. Something that he had chosen to do to himself.
So was there something more, worse, still waiting? Something more that he might lose? He tried not to think about it – he’d made the right choice, the only choice, when he’d used to stones to bring her back – but as he glanced once more at the boarded-up storefront of what he knew to be her father’s old curiosity shop, anxiety scratched at his throat.
In his pocket he still had, crumpled up, a clipping from the scandal sheet from the week before: Evangeline and Apollo, hand in hand, in the gardens where Apollo had shot her, and Jacks had barely saved her. The royal couple to renew their vows… a second ceremony to smooth over the memory of the first… Jacks frowned as he pulled it out again, and his anxiety grew into agitation. There was something about it – the mention of memory, or the setting of the photograph, or perhaps the blank look in Evangeline’s face while Apollo smirked proudly – that set off a warning bell in Jacks’s head. He told himself it wasn’t jealousy – he knew this would happen eventually, when he left her to the man he himself had all but married her to – but something more, something worse.
Of equal value…
Jacks moves forward quietly. He can’t tell if she is asleep, and he doesn’t know if he’d prefer it if she never looks at him, never knows he is here. It would be easier that way, surely. The shadows sink deep into her face, and something about the way she curls up, shoulders drawn protectively into her neck, makes her look sad.
He takes another step forward without realising.
This time, she hears him.
Her eyes open slowly, and it takes her a moment for her to spot him, frozen a foot away from her bed. Jacks waits breathlessly as the recognition sets in and she pushes herself up against her pillows to look at him. She says nothing, and neither does Jacks.
He hadn’t planned for this. He wasn’t supposed to come here at all, let alone be seen by her, alone, in the darkness of her room. He hasn’t prepared what to say, how to act. He doesn’t know if he could go ahead with anything of the sort even if he did have something ready, not with the way Evangeline is looking at him now, her eyes devoid of the usual glint and her cheeks of the usual colour when she used to look at him before.
‘Why are you here?’ she finally asks. Her voice is rough with disuse.
Jacks feels something cold in his chest. Icy, almost, the way it burns against his ribs.
‘I came to offer my congratulations,’ he hears himself say. It’s the only thing that came into his head, but it sounds distant even in his own ears.
Evangeline bristles, and she looks more awake now. ‘I don’t need them.’
Jacks stills. She hasn’t looked at him like this in a long time. Like she wants nothing to do with him.
Not since Apollo was put under the Archer curse. Not since he saved her, again and again, and the weight of her body began to belong in his arms.
‘Evangeline–’ he begins, but his voice falters, and she senses his weakness.
‘Why do I still know you?’ she asks. ‘Why haven’t I forgotten like you said I would?’
Jacks’s mouth falls shut.
‘Did the stones not work?’ she presses, and there’s an unfamiliar viciousness to her tone. ‘Had someone already used them? Or were you too much of a coward to go ahead with it?’ She lets out a shaky breath. ‘Or was it all just a lie? Some twisted way to get me to go away? I wouldn’t know how a Fate’s mind works.’
Jacks can only stare at her – at the girl whose hope and wonder and kindness had drawn him to her, even when it spilled over into naivety.
‘I did use them,’ he says hoarsely.
Evangeline quietens at that.
‘But not – not for what I thought I would.’
The pain is still too near. He can’t bear to even think about it, much less talk about it. And definitely not with her. Not when she is looking at him the way she is.
‘I wish I didn’t remember,’ she says quietly. ‘I wish I forgot it all.’
Of equal value…
Jacks jerks back as though he has been slapped. It hurts, it aches, more than he thought possible. She is so close, just one step and she’d be in arm’s reach… but she couldn’t be further away, and it’s his own fault.
‘Why?’ he asks. He’s not sure he wants to hear the answer, but he can’t stop himself.
Evangeline pushes the sheets off of her, looking frail in her slip, and she leans forward slightly. ‘I came back, you know? To find you. To tell you I didn’t care about your curse, and that we could make it work anyway.’
She hesitates, doubt trickling into her demeanour for he first time, and she feels slightly more like the Evangeline he knows.
‘I was going to tell you I loved you.’
Jacks stares at her. Love? She loved him?
‘I was going to say that should be enough. Maybe I could love you so much it might even break the curse.’ She laughs a little, then, and Jacks thinks he would rather have heard her cry.
He feels his pulse in his throat. He wonders what might have happened if she had found him that day. Would he have had the strength to send her away again then? If he’d known she loved him?
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she says bitterly.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Jacks returns.
Is this what he has lost? Did he barter her life for her love? Time is cruel indeed, he thinks, to destroy something so good so suddenly.
Yet it should be a relief, shouldn’t it, to know that she doesn’t miss him? It should make it easier for him to leave again now and know he won’t still be hurting her.
But as he stands there, his hands trembling and his jaw clenched, he feels the ache in his chest deepen.
‘Loved, is it?’ he says. ‘Over so soon?’
What little colour there was in Evangeline’s face drains away entirely.
‘What?’
‘You’re right,’ Jacks continues ruthlessly, ‘it doesn’t matter. It’s Apollo’s time now, anyway. I don’t know why I’m surprised. You got over your heartbreak for Luc quickly enough. Why should I be any different?’ He doesn’t know why he’s lashing out at her; he only hopes she doesn’t notice the hurt in his voice at the end.
Evangeline’s arm shakes as she pushes herself out of bed and onto her feet. Jacks takes another step back.
‘You wanted to leave so bad? To throw me away and erase everything?’ she says, her voice trembling with anger. ‘Then leave. Why are you back? Make your mind up. You want me to forget, and then you don’t. You want to get rid of me, and then you don’t. What is it you actually want? What do you want from me?’
Jacks forgets how to breathe. She’s right – he didn’t have the strength to stay near her, and he couldn’t bear to be away from her. He’s trapped in some liminal space, and he’s grabbing at her to pull her down with him.
His mouth opens uselessly, and all he has to offer is silence. There is loathing in her eyes, and pain, and hurt, and… and fear.
That’s when he sees it. The darkness on her collarbone, disappearing beneath the edge of her slip. He tries to push her voice out of his head as he steps towards her, his fingers already pulling back the soft silk. He waits for her to slap him or push him away, but instead she stills, her chest rising and falling quickly, her eyes averted. Jacks frowns at that, but his attention moves quickly to the bruise he uncovers across her shoulder.
Gently, carefully, he drops his hands to her waist. Still, she doesn’t push him away. He has no room for hope at the moment, but he takes what he can get. Slowly, he steers her back to the bed and sits her down on the edge, and he brings the candle closer. It’s as though they have a hidden understanding that, for all the hurt he brings, he will not be the one to harm her.
The bruise is dark purple. Jacks feels his blood burn through him as he looks over her arms and finds more – a long scar here, an ugly green bruise there. He looks to her face to check for anything he might have missed, and is momentarily wrongfooted by her gaze fixed on him.
‘Did you know?’ she asks, her voice little more than a whisper now. ‘What he is?’
Everything that was hot within him now cools in dread at the tremor in her lip. ‘He hurts you?’ he asks instead, because no, he knew Apollo to be many things – arrogant, selfish, reckless – but not callous or violent. Not – this.
‘Not…’ she starts, before hesitating. ‘Sometimes.’ Her gaze drops to his hand loosely wrapped around her wrist. ‘Whenever he touches me, it’s too hard. Half the time, I don’t know if he realises he’s doing it, or if he’s only pretending not to know. If maybe he’s still… got some remnant of the curse. And the way he talks to me, sometimes… It’s like he still hates me a little.’
Jacks chews on his lip. It’s possible, he thinks. But then if that’s the case, she isn’t safe with him. She’ll never be safe here. And she isn’t happy. He looks up at her again, and her face is thankfully clear of marks. But the sadness and the loneliness are there to see. He hates the sight of it.
‘I didn’t know,’ he says softly, kneeling down before her. ‘About him being like this. Or that the curse might still linger. I didn’t know.’
It’s not an apology, but she nods all the same. Her anger from mere minutes ago is all but gone.
He doesn’t feel worthy of her understanding. He reaches out to her again anyway.
‘You should go,’ she says, clearing her throat and sitting up straighter, leaning away from his outstretched hand. ‘If he finds out you were here, he’ll be angry.’
Jacks’s hand hovers and then falls gently to the edge of the bed, just shy of brushing her knee. ‘He won’t find out. He isn’t here.’
Evangeline frowns. ‘How do you know?’ she asks quickly, before adding, more carefully, ‘Are you sure?’
So Apollo doesn’t tell her anything. He shuts her up in here, leaving her in the dark. Jacks bites down on his anger: this isn’t the time or place.
‘I’m sure. He won’t be back for another day, at least. And the guards won’t say a thing.’
Evangeline doesn’t respond. Jacks reaches for her wrist again, and this time, she doesn’t pull away. Her skin is warm against his palm; he thinks he could kneel like this forever.
‘Why are you here?’ she asks again, her words now worn by weariness.
Jacks looks up at her. ‘Come with me. Leave this place.’
Evangeline’s expression doesn’t change. ‘And go where?’
‘Anywhere,’ Jacks says hurriedly. ‘The Hollow, the south – anywhere. Just not here.’
‘And then what?’ she returns. ‘At what point do you leave me again, when you no longer have a use for me? By the side of the road, or in some foreign country?’
Jacks shakes his head. ‘I won’t.’
Evangeline’s mouth twists into a bitter smile. ‘You have to understand why I find that difficult to believe.’
‘I don’t have a use for you,’ he says. ‘Come with me anyway.’
‘Why?’ she demands.
‘You’re not happy here. You’re not safe.’
‘What’s that to you?’
Little Fox, he tries.
‘Get out of my head,’ she snaps. ‘What’s that to you?’
Jacks tightens his hold on her wrist. ‘I changed my mind. I’m selfish and I changed my mind. I’m taking you back.’
‘Who says I haven’t changed my mind?’
Jacks glares at her. ‘You’d rather stay here? Renew your vows and actually be married to a man who makes you miserable?’
Evangeline wrenches her wrist free of his grip. ‘You left me here. You pushed us together in the first place. And then you abandoned me. And now I’m supposed to just, what – run away with you like nothing happened? Like I’m just some toy you don’t want to share anymore?’
Jacks gets unsteadily to his feet. He looks down at her wrist, at the single broken heart scar that is left. ‘You still owe me a debt.’
Evangeline lets out a sharp breath. She, too, rises to her feet. Her voice is silky – dangerous, almost – when she says, ‘Are you serious?’
Jacks can’t look away from her. Even in the candlelight, even in her anger and misery, she is bewitching. ‘Yes.’
She says nothing, and her gaze is fierce.
‘You still owe one more kiss,’ Jacks says, ‘and until then, I’m not leaving you alone.’
He tries to say it like a threat, but it comes out of his traitorous mouth sounding more like a promise. A promise of forever, and a bond that will never break.
A promise that dies on his lips when Evangeline kisses him.
He’s struck dumb for a moment, his heart pounding loudly against hers. Her shivering hands cling tightly to his collar, and her mouth is warm and firm on his. All he can think of is the feel of her hair in his hands as he leans in and holds her; the sweet, sharp inhale she takes as he kisses her back, gently at first, and then more hungrily, more desperately… It’s all he’s ever wanted, and all he never thought he would have…
All he shouldn’t have.
No…
He breaks the kiss and grips her shoulders.
What have you done? he thinks frantically. What have you done?
Evangeline stares back at him, her eyes glassy, her mouth red.
Why did you do that? he asks again. Begs, almost. He doesn’t trust his voice not to shatter.
I don’t know, she says shakily in his head.
No, no, no…
‘Jacks,’ she says hoarsely.
‘We have to go – now.’ Jacks grabs a cloak from the stand by the wall and flings it at her. ‘Get your shoes.’
‘Where?’ she asks, still panting.
‘The Hollow,’ is all he says. It’ll freeze the curse. Buy us time while I try to find a way to stop you from dying.
But my debt is paid.
Jacks snaps his head up to look at her. Her mouth is set, her eyes watery, when she shows him her wrist – where the last broken heart is already fading.
You still want me to leave with you? she asks.
Jacks is speechless for a moment. What is she talking about–?
‘Evangeline, you’re going to die if we don’t leave.’
She’s standing frustratingly still. ‘So you’re taking me to the Hollow to keep me alive?’
‘Yes.’ Jacks takes the cloak out of her hand and hurriedly wraps it around her shoulders. ‘Why aren’t you getting dressed?’
‘For how long?’
He stares at her, and through the impatience and the fear coursing through him, he sees a flicker of something of the old Evangeline in her eyes.
‘Forever, if I have to,’ he says. He thinks he feels some of it himself. Hope, or determination, or whatever it is. ‘I’m not losing you again.’
And Evangeline must hear something in his voice, because she fastens the cloak around her throat and slips on her shoes, her eyes never leaving his face.
Her hand trembles in his when he takes it, but she grips his fingers tightly.
‘Time will not take you from me, Little Fox.’