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

Something wet dripped down Evangeline’s cheek. She was crying, but she couldn’t have said why. She didn’t know if her emotions were broken and leaking out all over from everything that had happened, or if it was the sight of her once beloved Luc locked in a cage, eyes staring down at her with something like adoration and terror.

“It’s really you,” Luc said. He gripped the bars with two beautiful brown hands, but he didn’t take his eyes off hers. And no power in the world could have forced her to look away from him. It wasn’t vampire allure or the shimmering gold flecks in his irises that she didn’t remember from before. His eyes weren’t exactly the same eyes she knew, but they weren’t entirely different either. They were still the impossibly warm brown that lived in all the memories she’d tried to shove away but had been unable to forget.

“There are so many things I have to tell you, Eva. But I need you to help me out of this cage—if I don’t escape by dawn, they’ll kill me.”

“Why are you even here?” she breathed, heart pounding so fast it was hard to form words. It felt like a twisted answer to a wish. Here’s the boy you’ve spent months pining for, but now he might die, and if you try to help him, you might die.

“Little Fox,” Jacks said. “We need to keep moving. He’ll tell you whatever he needs to get out of that cage and take a bite out of you.”

“No! I would never hurt you.” Luc’s voice was harsher than she remembered, desperate. “Eva, please don’t leave. I know you must be terrified, but I won’t bite you if you let me out—I don’t want to be a vampire. I only came here because I was told that vampire venom was the most powerful healer in the world and it could erase my scars and wounds.”

Every inch of his skin was flawless, more perfect than in all her memories. Too perfect. It was hard to believe there’d ever been any scars. And Evangeline wanted to tell him that she would not have cared if he had scars all over his person—in fact, she’d have preferred them to this overly polished version of him. But Luc went on before she could. “That’s all I wanted, to be healed. I—” His eyes shot around the violent room of cages.

The other changelings had gone briefly still. They watched the exchange with rapt, inhuman attention. Evangeline didn’t want to believe Luc was like them. His voice was pure human emotion. But when she searched beyond his eyes, he looked like the others, dried blood marring the warm brown of his throat and staining the white of his shirt. “I don’t want this, I swear.”

“He’s lying.” Jacks grabbed for Evangeline’s wrist and pulled.

She couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t the only room full of almost-vampires. But Luc wasn’t a vampire yet.

“Eva,” Luc pleaded. “I know you have every reason to hate me. I know I broke your heart. But I was under a curse.”

Jacks’s grip on Evangeline’s wrist slipped.

“Did you say curse?” she asked. And suddenly Luc no longer felt like the warped product of a wish. He felt like a truth that she was afraid to touch. Evangeline had felt half-mad for the last couple of months, wondering if Luc really was cursed or if she’d just conjured the idea of a curse as a way to survive his rejection.

Jacks’s cold hand tugged again on hers, another warning that it was time to go, but Evangeline ignored it.

“What kind of curse were you under?” she asked.

Luc let go of a bar to run a hand through his hair, a familiar and terribly human gesture that brought another pang to her heart. “I didn’t realize it until tonight, until the vampire venom was in me and suddenly my head cleared. I can’t describe what it was like before. All I know was that your stepsister was all that I could think about. She was the reason I came here—I needed to be perfect for her. After I got mauled by the wolf, my scars weren’t sexy scars—”

“He just said sexy scars,” Jacks drawled. “Are you really listening to this?”

“Shh,” Evangeline hissed.

“After I was attacked,” Luc said, “your stepsister took one look at me and ran from the house. I tried visiting her when my injuries had improved, but she wouldn’t even answer the door. I tried writing, but she wouldn’t reply to my letters.”

“She told me it was the other way around.”

A resentful shake of his head. “She’s a liar. If Marisol had written me, I couldn’t have ignored her letters even if I’d wanted to. She made me desperate to do anything to have her. I was obsessed. It started the same day that I proposed to her. I’d come to the house to see you, but Marisol was the one to greet me. She took my coat, and I remember her fingers brushing my neck. After that, she was all I could think of.” His tone turned disgusted.

It was just as Evangeline had believed. She hadn’t been delusional or desperate. Luc had only abandoned her and asked Marisol to marry him because he’d been cursed. The only thing she’d been wrong about was who had cast the spell. It wasn’t her stepmother, it was Marisol.

Evangeline felt as if she’d been punched in her stomach. She’d thought Marisol was another victim, an innocent, the one she’d needed to make amends to. All this time, Evangeline had been feeling so guilty over ruining Marisol’s life, but if this was true, then Marisol had upended Evangeline’s life first.

She didn’t want to jump too quickly to conclusions. But she’d seen her stepsister’s spell books, she’d been warned by Jacks, the papers, and now by Luc, who never even knew that Evangeline thought he was cursed.

“When I was bitten tonight, it felt like the first time in months I could freely think.” Luc’s eyes shone as he looked down on her. “I finally felt like myself again. But then I was being dragged into this cage, and now I’ll never leave it alive unless you help me. If you’re scared, you don’t have to unlock it. Just hand me one of the weapons from the wall and I can break the lock myself. Then I’ll prove to you that I don’t want to be a vampire. All I want is you, Eva.”

“Don’t even consider it,” Jacks said.

“But—” She stared at Luc once more through the bars. “I can’t leave him like this.”

“Evangeline, look at me.” Jacks cupped her cheeks with his cold hands and met her eyes with a brutal stare as if he could break the spell that Luc had put her under.

But she wasn’t under any vampire allure. She wasn’t sure if a part of her still loved Luc. Her feelings were such a jumbled and chaotic mess. Right now, she primarily felt the need to survive. Love felt like a distant luxury. But she couldn’t walk away from Luc and leave him here to die. He was a victim in all of this. He was the one put under a spell, then turned to stone, attacked by a wolf, and now put in a cage.

“This is partly my fault,” she whispered to Jacks.

“No, it’s not. I already told you, I had nothing to do with the wolf.” Jacks spoke quietly yet firmly.

But even if Jacks was telling the truth, that didn’t change what she needed to do.

She pulled free of his hand.

What happened next was a strange blur. Evangeline still wanted to think she wasn’t under a spell, but maybe she was a little entranced, and not by vampire allure. She was feeling the return of her hope.

Evangeline knew that Luc could never go back to being the boy he was, and she’d stopped being the girl she was. That girl would have believed that seeing Luc again meant that something wonderful would happen, that they’d receive a happy ending after all. But all this meeting guaranteed was that they would have a different ending. What sort of ending still had to be determined, but it would certainly be better than this. Even if Luc wasn’t her happily ever after, she couldn’t let their story finish here, with him in this cage and her running away.

Evangeline found a blue shortsword on the wall with a heavy hilt and a polished blade; it looked strong enough to break a lock, but it wasn’t too heavy for her to lift.

Other changelings cried out, asking for weapons and promising all sorts of things in exchange. They’d started battling with their cages again, filling the dining room with a cacophony of violent sounds as Evangeline climbed up onto a chair and used both hands to lift the sword above her head.

Luc grabbed the blade, not caring that it sliced into his hands. “Thank you, Eva.” He smiled, but it wasn’t the crooked boyish grin that she’d fallen in love with. It was lips pulling back over sharp white fangs that were growing longer.

“We’re leaving now.” Jacks took her hand, urging her down from the chair and propelling her into motion.

A crash sounded, making her trip over her feet as she started to run.

Luc had already broken the lock with the hilt of the weapon. The door to his cage dangled open. He was loose and feral and the worst mistake she had ever made.

“Sorry, Eva.” Luc leaped to the ground in a graceful arch, bared his fangs, and lunged for her.

Jacks shoved her out of the way before she could move. Lightning fast, he darted in front of her like a shield.

Luc didn’t have time to switch course, and his teeth clamped onto Jacks’s neck with a sickening tear.

“No!” Evangeline screamed and scrambled for the dropped sword she’d given Luc. The weapon felt heavier than it had been moments ago. But it didn’t seem necessary.

In the time it took her to grab the sword, Jacks had taken Luc’s head between his hands—and with one sharp twist he broke Luc’s neck.

The captives above all booed and hissed as Evangeline’s first love fell to the ground.

“You—you—you killed him,” she stammered.

“He bit me—” Jacks snarled, gold-flecked blood dripping from the wound at his throat. “I wish I’d killed him. But I didn’t. He’s a full-fledged vampire now. The only way to permanently kill one of them is to cut off its head or shove a wooden stake through its heart.”

Jacks reached for the sword in Evangeline’s hands.

She clutched the weapon tighter. A part of her knew she should have let it go. Luc was not her Luc anymore. He’d bitten Jacks, and he would have bitten her. But Luc hadn’t killed Jacks.

“I won’t let you end his life,” Evangeline said. “Luc is the first boy I loved, and I’m not responsible for his choices, but this wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me. Let him live, and I’ll leave without any more stops or arguments.”

She dropped the sword and reached for Jacks’s hand.

He recoiled, not letting her touch him, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything at all.

Evangeline and Jacks silently left the way they came. She struggled to keep up with Jacks’s long strides as the rattle of chains and cages continued to chase them, yet it was his silence that was starting to make her uncomfortable.

Jacks wasn’t the sort who’d talk simply to fill the quiet, but Evangeline couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more than quiet between them. Minutes ago, he’d saved her life. He had jumped in between her and Luc without even thinking. She knew Jacks needed her alive because of the Valory Arch prophecy, but he’d acted out of pure instinct. He’d been scared for her when she’d been threatened.

But now he wouldn’t even look at her. His teeth ground together as he took the stairs, jaw tight, eyes focused, knuckles starkly white.

Was he in pain from the bite? There was a smear of blood on his pale neck, but it wasn’t that much. Luc hadn’t wounded Jacks too deeply. But Luc had bitten him. Jacks was probably still testy about that.

But that didn’t seem quite right. Evangeline remembered the way Jacks had nearly dropped her wrist earlier, when Luc had said that he’d been cursed. Jacks had been thrown off-kilter then. Had he been surprised to learn that Luc had truly been under a spell? Or … had it been something else? Had Jacks been unsettled that Evangeline had finally learned the truth about Luc? Luc had said Marisol cursed him, but what if she hadn’t achieved it on her own?

Evangeline felt a sudden wave of sick on top of everything else.

“Did you curse him?” Evangeline asked. “Did you make a deal with Marisol and put a spell on Luc so that—”

“You can stop right there,” Jacks cut in. “I already told you what I think about your stepsister. I did not make a deal with her, and I never will.”

“Then why were you so alarmed when Luc revealed he’d been under a spell?”

“It was terrible timing—and you have absolutely no sense when it comes to him,” Jacks all but growled, jaw clenching in between his words. “For most people, I’m the worst thing that can happen to them. But not you. It’s as if you want that boy to destroy you, and he’s only human—or he was until you helped him change.”

Evangeline wanted to argue. She didn’t care that Jacks was clearly right about Luc and that she actually believed him about not having made a deal with Marisol—which gave her an unexpected feeling of relief. But Jacks still didn’t have to be so cruel about it just because she couldn’t shut off her feelings the way he did. She knew there were downsides to feeling deeply; it could get in the way of logic and reason. But shutting off emotions was just as treacherous.

Evangeline took her frustration out on the stairs, quickening her pace to pass Jacks as they took another flight. They’d finally reached the levels where shackles no longer clung to the walls and Evangeline could no longer hear the desperate sounds of vampire changelings.

And yet, she still felt the occasional bite of heat at her throat. Usually, it hovered right over her pulse. But just then, she felt it on the back of her neck.

She quickly took another set of steps and reached a well-lit landing, where at last she saw the glowing doorway that would take them outside. But the burn at the back of her neck was becoming impossible to ignore.

And why couldn’t she hear Jacks anymore?

“Jacks—” Evangeline broke off as she turned.

Jacks was so close. Too close. Whisper close. She should have heard him right behind her, but he was eerily silent. And his appearance, it had changed. “Your hair—”

The blue was gone. It was gold once more, shimmering and brilliant and absolutely magnificent. She shouldn’t have stared—staring at Jacks was never a good idea. But it was impossible to pull her gaze away. His skin was flushed with color, and his eyes were brighter as well, a radiant sapphire blue. He looked part angel, part fallen star, and completely devastating.

“Evangeline—stop looking at me like that. You’re making this much more difficult.” Jacks spoke between clenched teeth, but she still caught a glimpse of his sharpened incisors, which now looked startlingly like fangs.

There are two different types of vampire bites, Chaos had said. We can bite a human merely to feed from them. Or we can infect our bites with vampire venom to turn a human into a vampire.

She sucked in a sharp breath. Luc hadn’t just bitten Jacks to feed. “He infected you with venom.”