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

by Stephanie Garber

Dark was for stars and dreams and the magic that took place in between days.

He’d been infected with vampire venom, and she’d been infected with stupidity.

Happy endings can be caught, but they are difficult to hold on to. They are dreams that want to escape the night. They are treasure with wings. They are wild, feral, reckless things that need to be constantly chased, or they will certainly run away.

“Do you kiss the prince because you actually enjoy it?” Jacks asked. “Or is it because you honestly think it will magically revive him?” “Maybe I do it because I know it will annoy you,” Evangeline answered archly. Jacks flashed a smile that was far more wicked than welcoming. “Glad to know you’re thinking about me when you kiss your husband.”

“Evangeline—” It sounded like Jacks’s voice. But he’d said her name, not Little Fox. Jacks never said her name. Then he was murmuring something else. Two more words she’d never heard. “I’m sorry,” he said, just before it all truly went dark.

Jacks’s chest was heaving, his clothes were soaked, his hair was a mess across his face—yet in that moment, Evangeline knew he would carry her through more than just freezing waters. He would pull her through fire if he had to, haul her from the clutches of war, from falling cities and breaking worlds. And for one brittle heartbeat, Evangeline understood why so many girls had died from his lips. If Jacks hadn’t betrayed her, if he hadn’t set her up for murder, she might have been a little bewitched by him.

She used to think love was like a house. Once it was built, a person got to live in it forever. But now she wondered if love was more like a war with new foes constantly appearing and battles creeping up. Winning at love was less about succeeding in a battle and more about continuing to fight, to choose the person you loved as the one you were willing to die for, over and over.

“It hurts, Jacks.” “I know, love. I’m going to take you somewhere safe.”

“I mean … it’s just one night,” he said softly. “In the morning, you can forget it. You can go back to pretending you don’t like me, and I can pretend that I don’t care. But for tonight, let me pretend you’re mine.”

She meant to say, For tonight, I’m yours, but all that came out was “I’m yours.”

It would take a lot of strength and determination to seriously wound someone with a butter knife.