Page 43 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

Her body trembled. She didn’t know why this felt so wrong when it should have felt so right. It should have been easy to lean into him, to put her hands on his chest as his arms went around her waist.

His fingers were shaking, which made her feel a little better. As if maybe nerves were normal.

The first press of his lips was soft, and so was the slide of his palms as they moved lower on her body. Wearing only her thingown, she could feel so much more of him than she ever had when they’d kissed before.

Soon she was a little lost in the taste of his tongue and the press of his body against hers as they tumbled together toward the bed. Then her world was spinning sideways, plunging her into another kiss from another time.

She could feel a breeze at her back and the pressure of Apollo against her chest.

Evangeline’s heart became a drum, beating harder and faster as he pressed in closer. There were layers of clothing between them, but she could feel the heat coming off him. More heat than she’d ever felt. It was almost too hot, too hungry. Apollo burned like a fire that consumed instead of warmed. And yet there must have been a part of her that wanted to be scorched, or at the very least singed.

She wrapped both hands around his neck. Apollo’s mouth left her lips and dropped to her throat, trailing kiss after kiss down her—

A cold hand clamped on her shoulder and wrenched her free of the prince’s grasp. “I think it’s time we go.”

Archer pulled her toward the balcony stairs with supernatural swiftness. One moment, Apollo was all Evangeline could feel and then she was tucked underneath Archer’s hard arm, pressed close to his cool side as he ushered her toward the steps…

Archer.

Apollo quickly broke away from the kiss. “What did you say?”

Evangeline’s throat went suddenly tight. She must have accidentally said Archer’s name out loud.

“I just had a memory,” she blurted, and then of course she instantly regretted it. She could not tell Apollo she’d had a memory with Archer. She could maybe tell him about the first part, the kiss. But then he would probably ask why she’d said Archer, and she didn’t want to mention that he pulled her away afterward.

Although suddenly Evangeline was intensely curious as to why Archer had done that. And how could he have? Apollo was a prince. But she didn’t have time to wonder about the why of it all—not when Apollo was staring at her as if she’d betrayed him.

Jealousy far worse than what she’d seen earlier burned in his eyes. She could feel it in his hands as he clenched his fist in the back of her nightgown.

Evangeline scrambled for something to say. Anything that would change the way Apollo was looking at her now. Then she remembered the engagement story from Madame Voss. She could tell him this was what she remembered.

“I had a memory of you. It was the night you proposed. We were at a ball and you were dressed like the Archer from the old fairytale,The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.”

As she spoke, Evangeline had a picture in her head that might have been a memory, too.

Apollo went down on one knee.

She abruptly forgot how to breathe as the crowd around them increased, caging Evangeline and Apollo in a circle of ballgowns and silk doublets and shocked faces.

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 at Evangeline, it was as if the rest of the celebration didn’t exist.

No one had ever looked at Evangeline like this before. All she could see was the longing and the hope and the hint of fear swirling in Apollo’s expression.

And yet it wasn’t nearly half as powerful as the way that Archer had looked at her in the memory she’d had earlier, as if he’d haul her from the clutches of war, from falling cities and breaking worlds. She could picture him again, looking down on her as a drop of water fell from his eyelashes onto her lips.

But that was all in the past.

In the present, she was married to Apollo. Whatever feelings she’d had for Archer didn’t matter. If she could forget a year of memories, she could forget those feelings as well. But the problem was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not yet, at least. Not when she still didn’t know the entire story.

She knew it was wrong to hold on. But she also realized tonight just how little she truly knew her husband. She hadn’t known that he was jealous and that he liked to toast to curses. She didn’t know why he had blood on his boots right now.

And after telling him she’d regained a memory of his proposal, she would have expected him to look happy. But Apollo looked unmistakably alarmed.

21Jacks

Jacks had seen enough.

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