Once Upon a Broken Heart (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

Last night, when Evangeline had exited her coach, there’d only been clouds of fog and the arch. But now, as she and Marisol arrived at the first night of Nocte Neverending, Evangeline barely saw tonight’s new arch in between all the brawny ax jugglers and the acrobats doing flips on the backs of armored horses.

Music from minstrels in puffed sleeves floated around white-haired men dressed as sorcerers with long silver robes and large cauldrons full of everything from sparkling cranberry cider to foaming luck punch. Although more people appeared to be drawn to the woman beside them who sold gem-bright bottles of Fortuna’s Fantastically Flavored Water.

Evangeline wasn’t even inside the official ball, and already it felt like the start of a Northern fairytale, when everything was just a little more than it should have been. The happiness felt touchable, the magic in the air was tasteable, and the sky seemed a little closer to earth. If Evangeline had a dagger, she imagined she could have sliced into that night as if it were a cake and stolen a piece of it to take a bite of all the wondrous dark.

Despite some flinching at a few of the slightly magical things, Marisol appeared to be enjoying herself as well. All the earlier awkwardness and doubt was gone, and Evangeline hoped that nothing would happen tonight that might bring any of it back.

Evangeline cast a quick look about for Jacks, relieved that he wasn’t in the throng of people waiting to enter tonight’s arch. Not that she could picture the Fate lining up for anything. If Jacks was there, he was probably already inside the actual ball, leaning indolently against a tree and dropping apple cores on the dance floor.

The dormant butterflies inside Evangeline began to stir. She really hoped to see Apollo tonight before Jacks spotted her.

There were only two more people ahead of her and Marisol now. Both were girls, dressed in gowns with bodices formed of leather book spines and skirts made of love story pages.

Evangeline heard the first bookish girl giggle as she approached the entry. It was a different arch from last night. The words May You Find Your Ever After were boldly emblazoned across the top, and instead of a variety of symbols, there were two figures carved on either side—a groom and a bride. The groom’s strong face was that of Prince Apollo, but the bride carving shifted so that she looked like whichever girl was about to step through next.

Evangeline could see pure delight on the faces of the girls who entered just ahead. Hope spilled through them, clear as light filtering through glass, as they no doubt imagined that Prince Apollo might choose one of them.

Perhaps that was the true magic of Nocte Neverending—not the minstrels or magicians, but the incredible hope that everyone found. There was something fantastically bewitching about the idea that a person’s destiny could change in one single, wondrous night. And Evangeline felt that power as she stepped underneath the arch.

Warm, curling wind brushed her skin, and she heard a rasping whisper: We’ve been waiting for you …

Another step and the air turned spicy with the scent of mulled cider and possibilities. Evangeline tensed as she caught a whiff of apples. But the remaining two scars on her wrist weren’t burning, and she didn’t see any painfully handsome young men with waves of dark blue hair.

This evening, she was in the ballroom of an aged stone castle, and Evangeline had never seen so much wonder on so many faces. Most of the ladies—and several of the gentlemen—appeared to be looking upward toward the tapestries and decorative balconies in search of Crown Prince Apollo, but just as many seemed to be losing themselves in the party, literally.

All around the great room were tall doors with words like chance, mystery, or adventure burned into the center of them. Evangeline watched as a pair of young men holding hands slid through the door labeled love. Just beyond them, a girl with straw-gold hair topped off with a paper crown took a shuddering breath as she stepped onto an enormous black-and-white checkered board. There were other players on the board as well, all either wearing bishops’ cloaks over their colorful doublets, gloves of pawns, or other identifying markers as they played a type of chess where the human pieces kissed one another instead of kicking each other from the board.

Evangeline felt a curious blush as she watched a pawn lock lips with a knight dressed in black leather.

“The game is really rather fun,” said LaLa, appearing by her side in a spark of shimmering gold and orange. Her strapless gown matched the dragon fire tattoos on her brown arms, and the slit of her skirt flickered around her exposed leg as if it were aflame.

“You look marvelous!” Evangeline said. “Candles all over the world must be jealous of you tonight.”

“Thank you! I’ve always wanted to make fire envious.” LaLa executed a little bow. “Now back to the game,” she continued, nodding toward the chessboard where the young woman in the paper crown was now standing on her tiptoes to kiss a tall young man in a black bishop’s cape. The girl’s hands were trembling, but her cheeks were flushed with excitement, and the boy appeared almost as nervous. He stood completely still. Evangeline couldn’t tell if he was afraid of the kiss or afraid that the girl might change her mind.

Evangeline wondered if the game might be good for her stepsister, if it might improve her confidence, but it seemed Marisol hadn’t come through the arch yet.

“Are you going to give it a go?” LaLa asked.

“I’m not sure I even understand how it works,” Evangeline said.

“There aren’t many rules to kissing chess. Each side has one player who moves their human pieces about, coupling them up with opposing pieces until a pair decides that they’d rather kiss each other than anyone else.”

“Is there a winner to the game, or is it just an excuse to make people kiss?” asked Evangeline.

“Does it matter? It’s kissing…” LaLa finished on a sigh.

“Why don’t you play?” Evangeline asked.

“I would, but I can’t help but try for a chance with Prince Apollo.” She made a show of lifting her face toward an empty inner balcony and affecting a longing stare.

Evangeline stole a moment to look about the ball, scanning for a different prince. It would have been easy to get swept up in the gala, but she needed to stay vigilant. The scars on her wrist still weren’t burning, but she found it hard to believe Jacks wasn’t there yet. Everyone else seemed to be. The castle was filling with people faster than water could pour into a sinking ship.

Maybe she just had to search harder. Her eyes darted from gentleman to gentleman, cutting across the bustling ballroom until—Jacks.

Her heart leaped over a beat.

He was near the edge of the dance floor, lounging on a winged chaise and tossing a black apple with one hand.

He looked like a bad decision some unfortunate person was about to make. His midnight-blue hair was unruly, and his sable half cape was rakishly crooked, hanging over one shoulder to reveal a partially buttoned, smoke-gray doublet.

He dropped his apple, shoved off the lounge, and approached a nearby girl in a frothy pink sugar gown. A girl that bore an unnerving resemblance to Marisol.

Evangeline blinked as if the vision before her might shift and she’d see Jacks conversing with the pink fountain of punch instead. But the girl was definitely Marisol, and she was beaming so brightly, Evangeline could see her glow from across the ballroom.

When had she even entered the party?

Evangeline assumed that the arch would have deposited her stepsister the exact same place it had brought her, but either it hadn’t, or Marisol had crossed the ball after failing to see Evangeline and then walked straight over to Jacks like an innocent bunny hopping into the path of a hunter.

Evangeline watched in horror as Marisol smiled coyly. Jacks turned his mouth into a tempting twist, and he gave her a gentlemanly bow. Last night, Jacks had ignored everyone except for Evangeline and Apollo, but now it appeared he was asking Marisol to dance.

Something uncomfortable tightened around Evangeline’s rib cage. Of all the young men that her stepsister could have met at Nocte Neverending, why did it have to be Jacks? Evangeline doubted it was purely a coincidence. She still had no idea of what sort of game Jacks was really playing, but she couldn’t let him drag poor Marisol into it as well. She’d already been through enough.

Evangeline needed to stay far away from Jacks, but she couldn’t let him hurt her stepsister.

She turned to LaLa, about to excuse herself from their conversation, when the entire castle began to rumble and quake. The stone balconies filled with trumpeters in crisp copper coats.

Every head looked up. Then every head turned as a door labeled Majesty flew open, and Crown Prince Apollo Acadian rode into the ballroom on a thundering golden horse.

“Your Highness!”

“Prince Apollo!”

“I love you!” people shouted as if they couldn’t help themselves.

Apollo looked less refined than he had last night. He’d forsaken his crown, and he didn’t even wear a doublet. Tonight, he was dressed like a hunter in rugged boots, wood-brown breeches, an open-collared shirt, and a fur vest decorated with crisscrossing leather straps, which held a golden bow and a quiver of arrows against his straight back.

He could have been the Archer from Evangeline’s favorite Northern tale, The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox. As he searched the ballroom, his eyes burned with the same level of intensity they’d had when he’d watched her leave the balcony last night.

“I think he wants to find you!” LaLa threaded her arm through Evangeline’s, tugging her close as she squealed, “You must be his Fox.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Evangeline murmured. “I still don’t know how that story ends.”

“No one can remember how that story ends, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not trying to re-create the tale. He’s making a romantic gesture!”

Evangeline was at a loss for words. Apollo must have been truly affected by last night’s kiss.

She was tempted to look for the Prince of Hearts again, to see what he was thinking of this. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the prince of the Magnificent North as his golden steed slowed its steps and stopped in the center of the ballroom.

“Good evening,” Apollo announced, his deep voice quieting the sound of his subjects. “I know I’m supposed to ask five ladies to dance, but I can’t hold up this full tradition tonight.” He paused, looking briefly torn. “This evening, I only wish to dance with one girl.” His dark eyes finally locked onto Evangeline’s. And they were ravenous.

Her legs turned to custard.

Ladies all over the ballroom swooned.

“I knew it,” LaLa crowed.

“You’re right beside me. He could be looking at you,” Evangeline whispered.

“We both know he’s not.”

More swooning followed.

Apollo dismounted his horse, and then he was striding her way with unabashed confidence, the way only someone who’d never been rejected could move.

Evangeline unlinked her arm from LaLa’s and stepped forward to curtsy.

But Apollo stopped a few feet away and reached his arm out for another girl, a very pretty girl in a champagne gown with a shining curtain of straight black hair, topped off with a slender golden circlet.

Evangeline could have turned back into stone.

LaLa quickly took her arm once again and drew Evangeline back into the crowd, but it wasn’t before several laughs and snickers reached her ears.

“Did you see her?”

“She thought the prince was coming for her.”

“Ignore them,” LaLa said. “I thought he was going to ask you, too.”

“I suppose I’ve learned my lesson about listening to what they say in the gossip pages,” Evangeline tried to joke, hoping to staunch any embarrassed tears.

LaLa was kind enough to laugh, but the sound of it was quickly drowned out by all the other voices. The pretty girl Apollo had chosen was the favored Princess Serendipity Skystead, and it seemed everyone else had expected it.

“I knew it.”

“She’s so sophisticated—and she speaks twenty-seven languages.”

“Her family has such good blood. There really was no other choice.”

With every comment, Evangeline felt herself grow smaller, shrinking inside the crowd as she tried to drown the voices and quell her growing humiliation.

It was silly. She didn’t even know him. She shouldn’t have felt so rejected, but it was hard to believe that this was how her adventure in the North would end, before it had even truly begun. And a part of her really had thought that their kiss had left an impression, but maybe it had just left an imprint on her.

Evangeline extracted herself from LaLa’s arm. “I think I’m going to go get some punch.” Maybe enough to drown in.

Self-pity doesn’t look good on you, Little Fox.

Evangeline froze.

The low voice in her head sounded a lot like Jacks’s. She had never heard his voice like this. She wasn’t even certain it was really Jacks—it could have been her imagination—but it did remind her of Marisol and that Evangeline still needed to rescue her.

Evangeline scanned the ball for her stepsister and Jacks. But she didn’t find them. The crowd had grown too dense.

“Excuse me,” a deep voice said from right behind her. It sounded a lot like Prince Apollo. But Evangeline knew better than to give into another mortifying delusion and imagine he’d find her hiding by the punch fountain.

“Evangeline…” The voice was a little louder and followed by a brush of soft leather gloves touching her bare shoulder. “Would you mind turning around? Lovely as your back is, I’d much rather see your face.”

Evangeline hazarded a cautious look over her shoulder.

Prince Apollo stood right behind her. She swore he was taller than she remembered as he looked down on her with a smile that was a little shier than the one he’d flashed the ballroom. Just a subtle tilt of lips.

“Hello again.” His voice went hoarse and soft. “You look like a dream come true.”

Something inside Evangeline melted. But after her earlier assumption, she was afraid to imagine why he might be standing there, staring at her as if he really meant what he’d just said.

A small crowd started to form around them, and no one even pretended that they weren’t watching.

Attempting to ignore them, Evangeline finished turning and managed to give the prince a steady curtsy. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Your Highness.”

“I’d hoped that after last night, you’d just call me Apollo.” He took her hand to his lips and gave her knuckles a careful, almost reverent kiss.

The touch sent soft shivers across Evangeline’s skin, but it was the look in his burning bronze eyes that stole her breath. She could feel her legs going boneless again, and her hope imagining things it shouldn’t.

She waited for him to say more, but the prince only swallowed. Several times. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He appeared to be at a loss for words. Nervous. She was making the prince who’d draped himself across a balcony last night nervous.

It gave her the burst of courage to say, “I thought you were only asking one lady to dance tonight.”

“I wouldn’t have even done that, but there’s an unfortunate law that says I had to ask at least one girl.” Another swallow, and then his voice went a little deeper. “I would have asked you, but I knew that if you were in my arms, I wouldn’t get through an entire dance before doing this.”

Apollo went down on one knee.

Evangeline abruptly forgot how to breathe.

He could not be doing what she thought he was doing. She didn’t even want to think about what she thought he was doing—not after how she’d made such a fool of herself earlier.

But all the people she was trying to ignore must have been thinking the thing that she was trying not to think. The whispers were starting up again, and the crowd around them was increasing, caging Evangeline and Apollo in a circle of ball gowns, silk doublets, and shocked faces. She could see Marisol among them, grinning widely. Evangeline didn’t spy Jacks, but she wondered what he was thinking of this. She still didn’t know what he wanted. But if Jacks was Apollo’s rival, she couldn’t have imagined Jacks had planned for this turn.

Apollo took both of her hands in his warm grip. “I want you, Evangeline Fox. I want to write ballads for you on the walls of Wolf Hall and carve your name on my heart with swords. I want you to be my wife and my princess and my queen. Marry me, Evangeline, and let me give you everything.”

He brought her hand to his lips again, and this time, when he looked down at Evangeline, it was as if the rest of the celebration didn’t exist. His eyes said a thousand exquisite words. But the word she felt most was wanted. Apollo wanted her more than anyone else in the ballroom.

No one had ever looked at Evangeline like this before—not even Luc. In fact, she couldn’t even picture Luc anymore. All she could see was the longing and the hope and the hint of fear swirling in Apollo’s expression, as if she might say no. But how could she?

For the first time in months, her heart felt full to bursting.

And so when Evangeline opened her mouth, she said exactly what most girls would say if a royal prince were to propose to them in the middle of an enchanted ballroom. “Yes.”