Page 39 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

“That’s an order. This victim has been through enough torment tonight. I don’t want him to feel as if he’s being interrogated.”

The guard dutifully stepped aside.

Apollo entered the dim room and shut the door behind him.

A boy who looked to be about fourteen sat curled up on a large sleigh bed, holding his knees as he rocked back and forth.He was skinny, most likely going through a growth phase rather than malnourished.

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.

This sort of news could either cast a further pallor on Apollo’s reign or make it stronger.

“Hello there,” Apollo said as he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed.

The boy curled tighter into himself.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said the boy, voice cracking. “Nothing could hurt more than this.”

“No,” Apollo agreed. “I’ve never seen anything so horrific, which is why I’m here. I want to make sure whoever committed this atrocity is caught so that it can never happen again.”

“You can’t catch him,” the boy murmured, rocking back and forth. “He’s not human.”

“Why do you say that?”

The boy finally looked up. The terror on his face was so raw he looked like a skeleton with skin painted on. “He moved so fast. I was up here when I heard the first scream. It was my sister.She’s always so dramatic. I ignored it at first. Then there was another and another.”

The boy brought both hands to the sides of his head and covered his ears as if he were still hearing the wails.

“I knew it was bad—evil. I ran downstairs, but as soon as I saw all the blood, I hid in the closet.”

“Did you see who did this before you hid?”

The boy nodded shakily. “He looked feral.”

“Did he look like Lord Jacks?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?” Apollo asked.

He didn’t actually believe it was Lord Jacks. Only one type of creature could cause this sort of devastation. But he wanted the boy to say it was Jacks. It would make everything so much easier.

“It wasn’t him. I would have recognized him. Lord Jacks was friends with my grandmother before she passed. This man—I don’t think he was even a man…”

The boy brought the palms of his hands to his eyes and quietly cried.

Apollo, never having been comfortable with crying, pushed up from the bed and took a quick survey of the room. There was a desk near the window with an easel to the side of it. It seemed this boy was the family artist. Propped against the easel was a half-finished watercolor that looked rather nice. On the desk there were even more drawings and sketches and notebooks.He seemed to favor animals and people. Although there was one drawing of an apple.

Apollo hated apples.

Just the sight of the fruit brought his anger back to the surface. He looked from the outline of apple to the blood on his boots to the boy still crying on the bed.

There was nothing he could do for the boy or about the blood. But all the artwork and the apple made Apollo realize there was something he could do about Jacks.

“You’re quite talented,” Apollo told the boy. “Some of this art is good.”

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