The Ballad of Never After

She held him as if he were hers and she were his, and there was nothing else between them. No curses. No lies. No past wounds or mistakes. She held him as if there was only now, as if nothing mattered but this moment. Then she let him go. S

She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d fallen out of love with Luc. In fact, she wasn’t entirely certain that she had. It felt more like she’d left behind her love for Luc with the version of herself that she’d been before.

Where were you?” she asked.
“I was killing innocent maidens and kicking puppies.”

The author went on to curse the names of all the original Great Houses: Fortuna, Slaughterwood, Merrywood, Redthorne, Hawkleaf, Casstel, Bloodgrave, Verita, Ravencross, Darling, Havok, Bellflower, and Acadian.

“One for luck. One for truth. One for mirth. One for youth.”

She remembered the feel of Jacks’s heartbeat, furious against hers, as he’d dragged her out of the ocean after they had escaped Apollo. For once, Jacks hadn’t felt in control. He’d felt like a feral fairytale warrior, determined to do whatever it took to save her. She knew his reasons for wanting to keep her alive were less than noble. But sometimes reason was no match for feeling. She reasoned that it would be far better to hate him, but she could no longer muster the feeling.

“The stone affects everyone,” he said.

“It didn’t do anything to me,” chimed Jacks.

“Only because the luck stone makes people reckless, and you’re always reckless,”

“But I thought you could die?” Evangeline asked.

“Why? Planning on murdering me?” Jacks’s eyes glittered.

Chaos speared him with a glare. “Don’t tempt her.”

“Relax.” Jacks toyed with one of the shackles dangling from the arm of a chair. “I gave her the chance to stab me once, but even then she wouldn’t do it.”

“And I’ll forever regret that,”

Slowly, he uncurled his fingers from her, but not before she felt his knuckles softly brush against the underside of her breast.

Her stomach dipped. But Jacks’s face was so impassive, she imagined the touch must have been a slip.

Immediately, Evangeline felt like she’d been plunged in cold water. As soon as the lid closed over the stone, her boldness, her extreme confidence, her desire to claw out Chaos’s eyes with her fingernails vanished in a flash.