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

by Stephanie Garber

All stories

are made of both truths and lies, she used to say. What matters is the way that we believe in them.

Always promise less than you can give, for Fates always take more. Do not make bargains with more than one Fate. And, above all, never fall in love with a Fate.

During her search for the missing door, she’d read that the Prince of Hearts’ church held a different aroma for everyone who visited. It was supposed to smell like a person’s greatest heartbreak. But as Evangeline entered the cool cathedral, the air did not remind her of Luc—there were no hints of suede or vetiver. The dim mouth of the church was slightly sweet and metallic: apples and blood.

According to the myths, the Prince of Hearts was not capable of love because his heart had stopped beating long ago. Only one person could make it work again: his one true love. They said his kiss was fatal to all but her—his only weakness—and as he’d sought her, he’d left a trail of corpses.

He gave her a real smile, revealing a pair of dimples that briefly made him look more angel than devil. But she imagined even angels would need to beware of him. She could picture him flashing those deceptive dimples as he tricked an angel into losing its wings just so he could play with the feathers.

“I don’t know if I can fix your broken heart, but you can take mine because it’s already yours.”

His words might have been borrowed from a popular story, but he backed them up with heartfelt actions.

The Fates weren’t dangerous

because they were evil; the Fates were dangerous because they couldn’t tell the difference between evil and good.

But hope is a difficult thing to kill, just a spark of it can start a fire,

She still wanted Luc, but what she really wanted was the life and all the love that she’d lost.

“I believe there are far more possibilities than happily ever after or tragedy. Every story has the potential for infinite endings.”

She knew some people would think this made her foolish, but it was tremendously hard to fully fall out of love with someone when you had no one else to love instead.

the Fates weren’t true immortals. They didn’t age, but they could die.

She wanted to meet the prince and dance all night and finally let go of Luc. If there was anything on earth that could make her forget about him, Nocte Neverending was it.

Then her parents would both be sure to tell Evangeline that not all loves happened at first; some took time to grow like seeds, or they might be like bulbs, dormant until the right season approached. But Evangeline had always wanted love at first—she wanted love like her parents, love like a story.

“If you wish to break the spell on Apollo, your only option is to marry him. Or do I need to remind you how desperate a broken heart makes you? How it hurts so much that it compelled you to make a deal with a devil like me? Do you really want to call off your wedding and leave Apollo like that—forever in love with someone who will never feel the same way?” Jacks’s eyes took on the same disturbing, godforsaken look from the coach. “It wasn’t that long ago that I saw you in my church, willing to promise me almost anything to make the pain stop. Was that a lie? Or have you already forgotten the way heartbreak rips apart the soul piece by piece, how it turns you into a masochist, making you long for the thing that just eviscerated you until there’s nothing left of you to be destroyed?”

But there were reasons powerful emotions didn’t vanish in a blink, reasons why a person had to become stronger than her feelings to let them go.

He held on to her as if she were a grudge, his body rigid and tense, as if he really didn’t want her there, and yet his arms were tight around her waist as though he had no intention of ever letting her go.

She still believed in love at first sight, but she no longer believed it meant forever love—if it had, she would still be with Luc, living out her happily ever after. But now it was tempting to wonder if there really was a happy ending waiting for her.

With Luc, she’d told herself that she was acting out of love. But she wasn’t, not really. She wasn’t making loving choices, she was making compromising choices because she wanted love. Luc wasn’t her weakness—love was. Not even just love but the idea of it.

Having faith was brave.

She knew what Jacks was. She hadn’t been foolish enough to believe that she was different or special and that he wouldn’t destroy her. But maybe she’d believed it a little. She’d clearly believed it enough to spend a night with him inside a crypt. And just an hour ago, she’d been terrified at the thought that Jacks had been trapped in an enchanted sleep. She’d been ready to race to his rescue because she’d also been silly enough to think that something had changed between them that night in the crypt. When he’d told her the story of Donatella, she’d thought she’d understood him. She’d thought he was opening up, that he was just a little human. But she should have listened when he’d told her that he was a Fate and she was nothing but a tool to him.