Page 83 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

“If Aurora had really wanted to call off her engagement to Vengeance in order to marry Lyric, our father would have been upset, but he would have let her do it. He isn’t a tyrant. But Aurora enjoyed being the object of desire. She liked having both Lyric’s and Vengeance’s attentions, and I think she kept hoping it would make Jacks jealous.

“Of course it all went wrong. I don’t think it ever occurred to Aurora that after she left Vengeance he’d come after Lyric and raze the entirety of the Merrywood lands. But that’s the problem with my sister. She never thinks things through, and I know she’s not thinking now.”

“Do you know what she plans to do with Jacks’s heart? Is she going to put a love spell on it?” Evangeline guessed aloud. Although she knew from experience that a person didn’t need someone’s heart for that. Love spells could also be broken.

“I have a feeling she plans to do something more permanent,” Chaos said darkly.

“Like what? Give him an entirely new heart?”

“I don’t know. But I imagine when she’s done, Jacks will finally be hers.”

Evangeline wanted to throw up and pace, or maybe pace and throw up. She couldn’t stomach the idea of Jacks with Aurora—and she couldn’t imagine that Jacks would want that either.

How could he have done this? How could he give away his heart? How could he give up on her like this? Although she very much doubted he saw it this way. Jacks probably told himself he was doing something right, something noble by sacrificing his heart to protect her.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t what he’d really done. Jacks might have told himself he’d given up his heart to save her, but Evangeline feared he’d also done it to make it easier for him to let her go.

There had to be a way to change this. To fix this. To stop Aurora from forever changing Jacks’s heart or giving him another heart entirely. Who would Jacks even be if that happened?

“How do we get his heart back?” Evangeline said.

“Not we, just you. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Why not?”

“I would, but I believe my sister has hidden the heart in the one place I can’t go. I think it’s somewhere in the Hollow.”

“Evangeline!” LaLa’s singsong voice trilled through the surrounding trees. “I hope you weren’t waiting too—” LaLa’s voice cut off abruptly as she stepped out of the wood and caught sight of Chaos on the other side of the glowing spring.

“What are you doing here?” Her lips twisted with displeasure.

“I just saved your friend’s life,” Chaos replied sharply.

And was it just Evangeline’s imagination, or did he puff out his chest? Until that moment, she’d still been thinking of him as Chaos. But now as he sat up taller, with his cape rakishly tossed over one shoulder, she could see him as Castor Valor, the cocky young prince of the Magnificent North.

“Well, I’m here now, so—” LaLa waved a hand toward the forest.

“Did you just dismiss me?” Castor asked.

“I tried,” LaLa said. She was the smallest in stature of the three, and yet there was something about the way she glared at Castor that gave the impression of her looking down upon him. “Don’t you have virgin blood to drink or something?”

“Virgin blood?” Castor smiled one of those devastating vampire smiles as he shoved a hand through his hair in very devil-may-care fashion. “What kind of stories have you been reading about me?”

“I don’t read any stories about you,” LaLa huffed, but Evangeline swore there was a deeper color on her cheeks.

“So it’s just a coincidence that you’re quoting one of them?”

“I know you drink blood,” she said.

Castor’s gaze turned heated.I’d like to drink your blood,it seemed to say.

And suddenly everything felt a little hotter than it should have been. LaLa did not seem to like Castor, but Evangeline surmised that the vampire felt quite differently about her.

“I think we’re getting off topic,” Evangeline interjected before the vampire took a bite out of LaLa. “Jacks is in trouble.”

LaLa immediately looked away from Castor.

Evangeline quickly explained to LaLa what the vampire had told her about Aurora and Jacks’s heart.

---