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August 30 - August 31, 2025
Her head hurt and her chest felt hollowed out, as if she’d lost more than just her memories. For a second the agony was so deep and so brutal, she clutched her heart, half expecting to find a jagged hole. But there was no wound. Her heart was still there; she could feel it beating. Yet for a devastating moment, Evangeline imagined that it shouldn’t have been, that her heart was supposed to be as broken as she felt.
In fairytales, there was always a price for magic. Nothing came without a cost; peasants who turned into princesses always had to pay.
It was all a lie. He’d never returned from the dead. He’d merely been cursed, and cursed, and cursed again. Now, for the first time in nearly three months, he was no longer under any spell, and yet he felt cursed by what he had done to Evangeline.
There’d been a constant picture of her angelic face in his mind. All he’d wanted was her—and when he’d found her, all he’d wanted was to eviscerate her. Now he still wanted her, but in a different way. When he saw her, he didn’t want to kill her. He wanted to protect her. To keep her safe. This was why he’d erased her memories.
Although, only Apollo knew who Wolfric really was. No one else on the council knew that Wolfric, along with the entire Valor family, had been locked away in the Valory until the previous day. Wolfric now went by the name Lord Vale.
It was fairly simple to do but once it was done, it was very difficult to undo. To give power was a far easier thing than to take it away.
No one would assume Tiberius was the true reason Apollo’s back was covered in scars. Only Havelock and a few of the undead were aware of the truth.
“You’re right. You keep saying Jacks is the villain. Yet you just let a man attack me with his pet bird in order to hunt another man down and kill him. You also told my guards—who aren’t very nice, by the way—not to let me leave the castle, despite promising me you’d never lock me up. So, no, I don’t know how much of a threat Lord Jacks is, but I’m starting to see you as one.”
It had been too late ever since he’d told Victor and Hansel to give Evangeline the falsified note from the tutor, to pretend to lose her in the gardens, and then to push her in the well. But Evangeline had given him no choice. She’d refused to believe that she was in danger. He had to show her that she was wrong.
She’d forgotten how hope could make colors brighter and feelings warmer, how it could shift thoughts from what wasn’t to what was possible. Her memories were not gone forever, they were merely lost, and Evangeline now had every hope that she would find them.
The Fortunas were one of the Great Houses. Even if they lost half their fortune, they would always have more than enough to eat. That’s why Apollo had been called here tonight. It wasn’t often most of the members of a Great House were massacred in a single night. Word of what had happened here would get out, and when it did, the Crown needed to be in control of what was said.
Then Apollo took his knife and stabbed the boy in the heart. Shock and pain briefly crossed the boy’s face before he fell back on the bed, as dead as the rest of his family.
The Valors had originally cast the story curse to protect their son, Castor, when he’d first been turned into a vampire. It was supposed to affect only stories about vampires. But the curse had been cast out of terror, and curses that come from a place of fear always turn out a little twisted or become far more terrible than intended.
One of the downfalls to being immortal was a propensity to remain tethered to the past, to the time before the immortal had stopped aging. No matter how many days Jacks lived, those days when he was a human were always the clearest to him and never seemed to fade with time. It was another downfall of being immortal—these endless, haunting memories that always gave humanity the illusion of being far more vibrant than immortality.
Jacks had been the one who’d told Castor’s mother, Honora, to bring him back from the dead. Castor and Lyric had been Jacks’s best friends, more like his brothers. Lyric had just died, and Jacks couldn’t lose Castor, too.
But he needed her to understand before he let her go. “Yes, I am a murderer. I enjoy hurting people. I like blood. I like pain. I am a monster, but whether you remember it or not, I’m your monster, Evangeline.”
“You would know,” said Apollo. “This scroll also said that you were the only person who successfully grew this tree.” “I was,” said Wolfric calmly. “I was also a fool to plant it in the first place. The Tree of Souls is evil.”
Deep down she knew Jacks cared for her. She believed he wanted her. But she also knew that he was so afraid of killing her, he was never going to choose her. He believed he’d already found his true love and it wasn’t Evangeline. But Evangeline had also never told him she’d loved him. He’d been scared, but she had been, too. She had said that she wished their story could have had a different ending, but she should have told him how she loved him. Love was the world’s most powerful magic. But love had failed her that night. It hadn’t been enough. She was still in love with Jacks, and yet both
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Because if Apollo was right—if this was Vengeance Slaughterwood’s missing cuff of protection—then that meant Apollo had been about to hurt her.
Evangeline had once heard that Fates were not capable of love in the same way as humans. She’d taken it to mean they couldn’t feel the emotion. But she wondered if this also meant that Fates didn’t believe in love in the same way. Maybe they believed love with humans was doomed, and then acted in ways that brought that doom about.
“I know I seem naive,” Evangeline pressed on. “I know my faith in love might appear foolish. I also know it might not be enough. But I’m not doing this because I believe I’ll win. I’m actually a little afraid I’m going to lose. I no longer think love is a guarantee of victory or of happily ever after. But I think it’s a reason to fight for those things. I know my attempt to save Jacks could end in a fiery explosion, but I’d rather go up in flames with him than watch while he burns.”
But the problem with wanting something you can’t have, or shouldn’t have, is that the second it seems possible, all reason flees. Reason and wanting go well together only when the reason encourages a person to get what they want. Any reason opposed to this want becomes the enemy.
“Sorry about this.” Chaos’s hot arms went around her, nearly scorching her as he picked her up. “We need to leave before Jacks tries to kill you again.”
“Then I cannot show you the Tree of Souls.” Aurora stopped walking as the path ended and they reached the misty in-between that led to the Cursed Forest. “Either you can have immortality or you can choose to hunt Jacks, who I actually doubt you’ll ever be able to kill—not as long as you’re human. You’ve sent a whole kingdom after him, and what have you come up with? Perhaps once you’re immortal, you’ll have a fighting chance. But I don’t want you to take that chance, which is why right now, you’ll swear in blood on your life never to harm Jacks.”
“If you’re worried about Jacks winning back Evangeline or taking her away from you, you don’t have to,” Aurora said. “I’ve already taken care of it.”
The Tree of Souls was dotted with spiky burnished red leaves and full of branches the same bloodred color as the trunk. Some of the untamed branches crawled up toward the sky, while others grew outward and downward toward the ground.
“Do you want to know why I told you no when you asked me about this tree?” Wolfric continued. “Do you want to know what it costs to drink from the Tree of Souls? There is always a price to magic, and to gain eternal life, another life must be sacrificed. In this case, you would lose the life of the one you love the most. That’s the reason I was given the seed to plant this tree.”
Chaos didn’t look hungry now so much as he looked sad. “Jacks traded the cuff for his heart.”
“Everyone has two different hearts,” Chaos said. “There is the heart that beats and keeps you alive. Then there is the other heart, the second heart, the one that breaks instead of beats, the one that loves so that there is a point to all this living. This is the heart that my sister wanted.”
“Do you think this means Aurora put both curses on Jacks—the Archer’s curse, and the curse that made his kiss fatal?” “I wouldn’t put it past her,” said LaLa. “Aurora took Jacks’s heart. I think that falls under the rule of If I can’t have him, then no one else can.”
“You should,” said Aurora, still laughing. “Once Jacks finishes destroying his heart, he’ll be back and he’ll kill more than just a wild fox.”
Aurora’s last words still haunted her. It doesn’t matter if your love is the truest love that the world has ever seen. The story curse twisted the truth. It’s not Jacks’s true love who will be immune to his kiss. Only a girl who will never love Jacks can survive the kiss.
“I already told you. You are the love of my life. You are mine, Jacks of the Hollow. And you’re not going to be the end of me.” “But you were dying.” “No,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I just forgot to breathe.”
He loved her so much he’d rewritten history. He’d given up what he had believed was his only chance at love. And now he had finally broken the spell that he never thought he’d escape.
Aurora flinched at this, and when a tear fell, this time it looked real. “You’re never going to save her, Jacks of the Hollow. Apollo has taken her to the Tree of Souls.”
“Farewell, my love,” Apollo said. And then he brought his mouth to the bleeding branch. It was awful to watch. The blood stained Apollo’s lips and his chin as he drank and drank. He choked a little and sputtered, but then he finished with a scarlet smile made of red teeth and bloody lips.
When she looked up again, Apollo stumbled. He righted himself quickly, but then he stumbled again as he tried to walk away from the tree. Evangeline watched his glowing skin go gray and his handsome face contort as he attempted to take another step.
Apollo suddenly dropped to his knees and clutched the ground with one hand as if trying to find purchase. “You told me it would take the life of the person I love the most.” “It is,” Wolfric replied. “It’s taking you.”
