Page 85 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

LaLa was a good distraction, suggesting setting Aurora’s hair on fire, pulling out her fingernails, and other things Evangeline couldn’t even bring herself to repeat.

“I just want to kiss him,” Evangeline said softly. “And… I don’t want to die.”

Before last night, she had never truly believed Jacks would kill her. The night they’d spent together at the crypt—she’d been afraid he would bite her and turn into a vampire, but she’d never been afraid she would die by his lips.

Until now.

LaLa turned to her then, with a particularly gentle smile. “I hope that someday you do get to kiss Jacks in front of Aurora. That would be the best sort of torture.”

“But I thought you believed Jacks’s kiss would kill me?”

LaLa shrugged. “What can I say? Revenge makes me hopeful.”

A few feet later they reached the sign that read:Welcome to the Hollow!

A little dragon dozed atop it, snoring tiny adorable sparks.

With a pang, Evangeline thought about the night that she and Jacks had spent here together.

Then she thought about how the Cursed Forest had brought Jacks back to the Hollow.

Could it be that the best day of Jacks’s life had been the one he’d spent with Evangeline there? It felt like an awful lot to hope for, yet just the idea reignited some of the light in Evangeline. Maybe Jacks didn’t want a happily ever after, but she still refused to believe he didn’t want her. Although who knew what he would want once Aurora changed his heart?

“We should be close,” LaLa said. “If I remember correctly, Aurora had an evil lair hidden at the base of a tree. Her family always vacationed at the Hollow. I remember trying to play with her the first few years, but she always wanted to chase the boys.”

LaLa directed Evangeline off the path through a forest full of trees and velvet-capped mushrooms that went all the way up to their knees and thighs. There were more sleeping dragons atop them, filling the air with sparks of golden light. Then the mushrooms stopped and for several feet the ground was bare—no mushrooms, no grasses, not even a broken twig. There was just a large circle of untouched dirt, surrounding a tree with a carving in the center of a wolf wearing a flower crown.

“I should have brought an ax,” LaLa said as she stopped in front of the tree.

“I can probably just use my blood to open it.”

“Yes, but it would be much more fun to take an ax to that sigil of hers.”

“We can come back after we find Jacks’s heart.”

Evangeline pulled out the dagger Jacks had given her, and for a second she felt a pang of something like regret. She knew it wasn’t her fault she had lost her memories. But she wished she had been able to get them back sooner. She wished that when Jacks had tossed her this knife she had remembered him.

Looking back now, it clearly hurt him that she had forgotten. If she had remembered sooner, maybe then she could have stopped all of this.

She cut her finger with the dagger and then pressed severaldrops of blood to the tree, willing it to open. After several long moments a door appeared in the wood. There were stairs on the other side. White, and covered in carved flowers. They must have been magical, for when Evangeline set foot on them, they started to glow.

“Where did Aurora get the magic to do all of this?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” LaLa said. “It’s believed that all the Valor children had magic, but no one ever knew what Aurora’s magic actually was.”

Evangeline counted twenty steps before she and LaLa reached the bottom. Like the stairs, the floors in this room glowed, lighting up walls entirely covered in shelves. On one side, there appeared to be mostly books—pretty books in pastel colors like violet, pink, gold, and cream, all tied with neat little bows.

Evangeline hardly spared them a glance before turning to the other side, which was filled with jars and bottles. Some were bulbous and others were slim, sealed with melted wax or sparkling glass stoppers. And they had all manner of things inside them. Evangeline spied dried flowers, dead spiders, fingers—blech—gem-bright potions, a bottle that glittered like starlight. But there was nothing that looked like a heart, beating or otherwise.

Her eyes scanned the array of jars until they landed on a bottle full of a wine-red liquid that shimmered when she looked at it. She picked it up. Attached to the glass stopper was a ribbon with a small handwritten label that read:Dragon blood.

Evangeline cringed. She didn’t like the idea of bottled blood at all, but it seemed particularly cruel to drain it from little dragons.

Evangeline set the blood down and picked up a pretty jar full of sliver sparkles. The sparkles flinched as soon as she touched the glass. Then they all fell to the bottom of the jar in an ashen heap. This container didn’t have a label, but Evangeline didn’t think it contained Jacks’s second heart.

She would recognize Jacks’s heart—sheknewJacks’s heart. His heart was wounded like hers, but it was strong, it wouldn’t flinch or shy away from her. It would beat faster, harder, in concert with hers.

Evangeline closed her eyes and reached out a hand toward the shelves, letting her fingers graze the smooth glass bottles.

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