Page 57 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

But she didn’t want to defend her feelings; she just wanted to see where they led. She no longer wanted to pull away; instead she wanted to go down whatever dark path he was about to take her. And that had to mean something. Maybe it merely meant she was a fool, or maybe it meant that her heart remembered things her mind did not.

She tried once more to remember anything else. She closed her eyes and silently repeated the nickname like a prayer.

Little Fox.

Little Fox.

Little Fox.

Just the thought of Jacks saying the words made her heart tumble, but they did not bring back her memories.

When she opened her eyes, Jacks’s inhuman gaze was still locked onto hers. She could see something like hope in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I can’t remember.”

The light went out of his gaze. Jacks quickly untangled hisfingers from her hair, straightened, and pulled away. All that touched now were their wrists and their arms where the vines bound them together.

He didn’t try to cut the vines curling around their arms, and Evangeline was strangely glad of it. She might not have had her memories back, but it seemed her heart truly remembered him, because she felt it breaking a little as he looked at her with a gaze that had gone cool as shadows in a forest.

The uncanny clock in the hall struckMystery Stew,and the body of the Handsome Stranger on the floor shifted. Evangeline saw his chest shudder with something that wasn’t quite a breath. But it was definitely movement.

“We need to get out of here,” Jacks said sharply. He tugged on the flowering rope that bound him to Evangeline and several pale petals fell from the flowers.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “And how did we even gethere?”

“We’re here because I tied us together,” said Jacks. “If two people are touching skin to skin, then they’re both brought into the illusion of the person with the strongest will. Otherwise we might lose each other. Since we were trapped in different illusions, you might encounter a wall, where I would have a door.”

“So, this is your best day?” Evangeline asked. She wished she realized it sooner, or that she had more time to look around this curious inn, to see what it was that Jacks held dear.

But he clearly didn’t want to linger. He didn’t even respond to her question.

She didn’t hear any voices calling for him, but she wondered if being here hurt Jacks the same way being so close to the memory of her parents had hurt her. If he, too, felt the pull of something he wanted but couldn’t have.

He quickly opened the door leading out of the Hollow as if he couldn’t get away fast enough. Yet Evangeline saw a flicker of pain in his eyes, as if it also hurt him to leave.

Outside, he rushed down one of the cheeriest paths she’d ever seen.

Hummingbirds flitted, birds chirped, and tiny blue dragons napped on polka-dot mushrooms. The poppies lining the path away from the inn were enormous as well. They were as tall as her waist, with deep red petals that looked like velvet and smelled like the sweetest perfume.

When they reached the end of the cobblestoned path, the air turned from flower-sweet to mossy and damp. There was still a path, but it was made of nothing but dirt and lined in enormous trees that turned the world from sunshine bright to shadowed and cool.

Evangeline could hear a stream trickling in the distance—along with the sounds of voices and pounding horse hooves.

The Hunt must have been close, which meant Apollo could have been near as well.

With all that had happened, she’d forgotten about him. She wondered if he was a part of the Hunt, or if he’d gotten her message from Joff about waiting to join until she’d found him. She hoped very much he’d gotten the message and was waitingoutside of the Cursed Forest. She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if he found her now, bound to Jacks.

“Where exactly are we going?” Evangeline asked.

“First we need to get out of this accursed forest before someone else tries to kill you.”

“About that,” she said, “someone else did try to kill me earlier, before I entered this place.”

Jacks gave her a baleful look. “How is it that every day someone tries to kill you?”

“I wish I knew. Maybe then I could stop it from happening.”

He appeared doubtful. “Who was it this time? Did you see them?”

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