“I do not like the idea—”
“So, your Luc is a hideous kisser?”
“Luc is an excellent kisser!”
“How do you know if you have nothing to compare it with? If you end up with Luc, you might even wish that I’d asked you to kiss more than three people.”
“I don’t want to kiss any strangers—the only person I want is Luc.”
“Then this should be a small price to pay,” Jacks said flatly.
He was right, but Evangeline couldn’t simply agree. Her father had taught her that Fates didn’t determine one’s future as their name suggested. Instead they opened doors into new futures. But doors opened by Fates didn’t always lead where people expected; instead they often led people to new desperate deals to fix their first bad bargains. It happened in countless stories, and Evangeline didn’t want it to happen in hers.
“I don’t want anyone to die,” she said. “You can’t stop the wedding by kissing anyone there.”
Jacks looked disappointed. “Not even your stepsister?”
“No!”
He brought his fingers to his mouth and toyed with his lower lip, covering half of an expression that could have either been irritation or amusement. “You’re not really in a position to bargain.”
“I thought Fates liked bargains,” she challenged.
“Only when we make the rules. Still, I’m in a good mood, so I’ll grant you this request. I just want to know one more thing. How did you get the door to let you in?”
“I asked it politely.”
Jacks rubbed the corner of his jaw. “That’s all? You didn’t find a key?”
“I didn’t even see a keyhole,” she answered honestly.
Something like victory glimmered in Jacks’s eyes, then he captured her wrist and brought it up to his cold mouth.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“Don’t worry, I’m still not going to kiss you.” His lips brushed over the delicate underside of her wrist. Once. Twice. Three times. It was barely a touch, and yet there was something incredibly intimate about it. It made her think of the other stories that said his kisses might have been fatal, but they were worth dying for. Jacks’s cool mouth dragged intentionally back and forth over her racing pulse, velvety and gentle and—his sharp teeth dug into her skin.
She cried out, “You bit me!”
“Relax, pet, I didn’t draw any blood.” His eyes shone brighter as he dropped her arm.
She ran a finger over the tender skin he’d just sunk his teeth into. Three thin white scars, shaped like tiny broken hearts, lined the underside of her wrist. One for each kiss.
“When do—” Evangeline looked up.
But the Prince of Hearts was already gone. She didn’t even see him leave; she just heard the door to the church slam shut.
She’d gotten what she wanted.
So then why didn’t she feel better?
She’d done the right thing. Luc loved her. She couldn’t believe he was marrying Marisol of his own free will. It wasn’t that Evangeline disliked Marisol. Truthfully, she barely knew her stepsister. About a year after her mother had died, Evangeline’s father had gotten it into his head that he must marry again, that he needed a wife to look after Evangeline in case anything ever happened to him. She could still remember the worry that had replaced the light in his eyes, as if he had known he didn’t have much time left.
Her father had only been married to Agnes six months before he died. During that time, Marisol never stepped inside the curiosity shop where Evangeline spent most of her time. Marisol said she was allergic to the dust, but she was so skittish around anything slightly strange, Evangeline always suspected her stepsister was really afraid of curses and the uncanny. Whereas Evangeline and Luc used to joke that if they were ever cursed, it would just prove that magic existed.
It was laughably sad that Evangeline now had that proof, but she didn’t have him.
Even if Jacks returned and allowed Evangeline to change her mind, she wouldn’t have. Jacks had said he’d stop the wedding, and he’d promised not to kill anyone.
Yet … Evangeline couldn’t shake the sense she’d made a mistake. She didn’t think she’d agreed too quickly, but all she could see was the gleam dancing in Jacks’s eyes as he’d taken her wrist.
Evangeline started running.
She didn’t know what she was going to do or why she felt suddenly sick inside. She just knew she needed to talk to Jacks again before he stopped the wedding.
If she’d been in an ordinary church, she might have caught up with him quickly. But this was a Fated church, protected by a magicked door that seemed to possess a mind of its own. When she opened it, the door did not return her to the Temple District. It spat her out in a musty old apothecary full of floating dust, empty bottles, and ticking clocks.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Seconds had never passed so fast. Between one tick and one tock, the magicked door she’d just stepped through disappeared and was replaced by a barred window that looked down on a row of streets as crooked as teeth. She was in the Spice Quarter—across the city from where Luc and Marisol were supposed to be wed.
Evangeline cursed as she fled.
By the time she crossed the city and reached her house, she feared that she was already too late.
Marisol and Luc were going to say their vows in her mother’s garden, inside the gazebo that her father had built. Crickets filled it with music at night, and birds chirped during the day. Evangeline could hear all their little songs as she entered the garden now, but there weren’t any voices. There were just the delicate birds, flapping merrily through the gazebo before landing on a group of granite statues.
Evangeline’s knees went weak.
There had never been statues in this garden before. But there were nine of them now, all holding goblets as if they’d just finished a toast. Each face was disturbingly lifelike and terrifyingly familiar.
Evangeline watched in revulsion as a buzzing fly landed on the face of a statue that looked just like Agnes before flitting off and alighting on one of Marisol’s granite eyes.
Jacks had stopped the wedding by turning everyone to stone.
3
Horror raced through Evangeline’s veins.
The fly buzzed off, and a gray bird, the same dull color as the statues, found the wreath of flowers in Marisol’s hair and began peck-peck-pecking.
Evangeline and Marisol might not have been close—and maybe Evangeline was more jealous of her stepsister than she’d wanted to admit—but Evangeline had only wanted to stop her wedding. She hadn’t wanted to turn her to stone.
It hurt to breathe when Evangeline faced Luc’s statue. Usually, he appeared so carefree, but as stone, his face was frozen in alarm, his smooth jaw was rigid, his eyes were tight, and—a crease formed between his granite brows.
He was moving.
His stone lips parted next as if he were fighting to speak, to tell her something—
“In another minute, he’ll stop twitching.”
Evangeline’s gaze shot toward the back of the gazebo.
Jacks leaned casually against a trellis covered in cloudburst-blue flowers and bit into another brilliant white apple. He looked half–bored young noble, half–wicked demigod.