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Chapter Text

“Dear Miss Evangeline Fox,

We realize that it has been some time since we have heard from you in the Magnificent North, since we proposed that you attend the Nocte Neverending Ball in honor of Prince Apollo Acadian. 

We would like to extend our sorrows and grief to you, since news of your husband’s death has reached the other islands. To show our sadness for you, we would like you to come back down to Valenda and attend my wedding. It is not much, I know, but I would very much appreciate your attendance. I regret that we did not become better friends in the time that we met, so let this occasion be a chance for us to make up for that. 

I will be getting married on the twenty-third of this month. If you could show up a week before that we would appreciate it. I will accommodate you with whatever you require in the palace. I dearly hope that you can make it. 

Sincerely, Scarlett Marie Dragna

Empress of the Meridian Empire

Evangeline has read through this singular letter over and over again, completely ignoring the substantial pile of other mail sitting in front of her. She was unsure of how exactly this letter made its way to the Hollow, where she and Jacks have been living, but she supposed that the magic of the North could have had something to do with that. 

In all honesty, she wasn’t sure if attending the Empress’s wedding was the best decision, considering the rocky history between Donatella Dragna, the Empress’s younger sister, who Evangeline had rather liked when she met her the one time, and Jacks, the love of her life. She couldn’t possibly imagine going by herself, and then having to lie to them about her supposed grief over losing Apollo. 

She couldn’t even remember the last time she had given a single thought to him and his well being, considering that he was now imprisoned in a magical tree, and that she was quite possibly the happiest she had ever been in her entire life. 

It would surely be a disaster when they found out that she was entangled with Jacks the way she was. 

At the same time though…

This could be the chance to show Donatella that Jacks was different now, that she and her sister didn’t have to worry about him coming back for her. Jacks was happy now, she could show them that. 

“What are you smiling about?” she hears her love say from over her shoulder. She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she didn’t even hear him come up behind her, or feel the way the heart shaped scar on the inside of her wrist was now burning. 

Jacks gently grabs her chin to twist her face towards his, dropping a sweet kiss to her lips. “Good morning”, he whispers to her. 

“Good morning”, she responds, smiling so hard her cheeks begin to ache.

“So, what is it that you're smiling at currently? Hopefully not a love letter from someone. If it is, you know I’d have to hunt them down and kill them.”

She giggles ridiculously. She never in a million years would have dreamt that she would be laughing at the possibility of her love murdering someone because they wrote her a love note, although, she never would have thought that she would be madly in love with The Prince of Hearts. No matter how soft and gentle he is with her, every now and then she is reminded that he is still a ruthless, murderous Fate, regardless of whether or not he is cursed anymore, and to her shock the thought always gives her a little thrill. 

“It is not a love letter, but even if it was I would have forbidden you from trying to murder whoever sent it.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Must you be so good and moral all the time? I find it excruciatingly boring, Little Fox.

She laughed again at him, because she knew he was teasing her. Jacks loved her humanity, and had told her as such many times before. Her softness, her kindness to others, her morals, he found them all truly captivating. He had once told her that he had never met anyone like her in all the centuries that he’d been alive. He said that Fates and humans were closer than people wanted to believe, because humans couldn’t help but be selfish, that it was just part of their nature, but not Evangeline. 

She’d blushed then, even if she didn’t really believe him. She chose to believe that people were born good and kind, and that evil was a trait that people acquired through trauma, though she knew that Jacks had a different opinion on humanity as a whole. 

“How many times have you been lied to and manipulated? How many times were you on the cusp of being murdered? I don’t see you running around seeking revenge for those things. Not everyone is born evil, but some people find it much too easy to give into.”

She knew he had a point, but she just accepted that perhaps she was different than other people. Too forgiving, too idealistic, too naive.

“I was just reading this letter I received, I think you should read it as well.”

She hands the letter to him tentatively, worrying the corner of her lip while she watches his eyes read the neat handwriting. When he is finished, his eyes flick upward from the letter, looking at her where she is seated, concern etched on his marble-like features. 

“You wish to go to the Empress’s wedding?”

She nods once, biting her lower lip. “I think it would be good to let them know that I’m okay. I’m sure that they’ve heard all of the gossip about how I was wanted for murder and then was kidnapped.”

“Yes, by me, Little Fox. They’ll think I kidnapped you.”

“That’s the other thing”, she takes a breath to steel her nerves before standing up from her chair so that she can take his hands in hers. “I want you to come with me.”

Jacks’s eyes widen, shock streaking plainly across his face. “Little Fox, that may be the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Jacks, just listen-”

“You do realize that they hate me, right? If they see me there at all they will kill me with no hesitation.”

“I know that Jacks, and I understand that you don’t want to see Donatella and her family again, but I really think that this could be a good thing for us.”

“How so?”

“If we just explain to them that you and I are together, then maybe they’ll stop believing that you have some plan to take revenge on Donatella.”

“You’re wrong, if we tell them that we are together, they’ll just believe that I made you love me the way I did to Donatella.”

She chewed on her lip, contemplating all the things he was saying. He was right, she knew, but she still wanted to believe that they would understand their love for each other, that they wouldn’t try to kill Jacks and they wouldn’t resent her for being in love with him. 

“Please, Jacks” she pleaded with him. “Even if you don’t come with me, I’m going to have to explain to them why I’m so unbothered by Apollo’s death. They’re going to have questions, questions that I can’t answer without telling them about us. Please, Jacks,” she gently cups his jaw in her palm, stroking his cheek with her thumb, “come with me so that we can show them that you’re different now.”

He stiffens under her touch, a grimace slowly forming on his perfect lips. “I’m not different, Little Fox. I’m still a murderer and a Fate.”

Evangeline smiles gently, almost indulgently. “Maybe, but you are still different from the Jacks that tried to make Donatella fall in love with him.”

“How so?”

She pulls his face down to her so that she can kiss him softly, slowly. She tells him all the things she wants him to hear from her with her lips on his. She releases him for only a second to speak against his mouth. “Now, you’re in love with me.”

He smiles and brings his mouth back to hers, kissing her with more intensity than she did. He wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him. Suddenly, and without any warning, Jacks picks Evangeline up and drops her squarely on the edge of the table, making her squeak in surprise. 

They both laugh at each other, foreheads pressed together. Jacks pushes loose strands of her hair behind her, his fingers lingering at the shell of her ear for a moment. Evangeline brings a hand up to cup the back of his neck, spearing her fingers in his thick golden hair. “So, will you come with me?”

Jacks inhales deeply, and purses his lips once. Worry streaks through Evangeline in the continued silence. He’ll say no, she knows he will. He has to, he’s being rational when he tells her that they’ll kill him on sight. Her eyes cast downward, waiting for him to say-

“Yes.”

She looks up at him, shock written on her face. He smiles at her expression. “Don’t be so surprised, Little Fox. You know I can’t say no to you.”

She kisses him again, capturing his lips in her so swiftly it catches him by surprise. “Oh, thank you, thank you.” She hops off of the table, and pushes past him to grab a piece of paper and a pen, writing her response to the Empress’s wedding invitation.

Dear Empress Scarlett Dragna,

Thank you for your missive, I very much appreciate the invitation to your wedding. I will be in attendance at your wedding. I hope it is okay if I bring a friend with me. I look forward to seeing you and your family again!

Sincerely, Evangeline Fox

Jacks reads over her shoulder as she writes her reply. “I can’t believe I’m being demoted to a friend”, he said in disbelief and annoyance. She turns and pats his cheek as she folds up the letter and places it in an envelope. “You aren’t, I just think it would be better to let them know I’m bringing you without letting them know that it’s you just yet.” She turns her attention back to the letter, where she is now pouring melted sealing wax over the letter flap and stamping it with the seal. 

She doesn’t bother taking it to a post office, she simply leaves it sitting on the table. The Hollow’s magic would take care of the rest. 

Evangeline turns around and wraps her arms around Jacks’s neck, hugging him tightly to her. 

“Thank you for coming with me. I promise to make sure it will be worth it.”

“Little Fox, getting to go anywhere with you is always worth it.”

She giggles giddily, soaking up his words to her. She truly could not imagine a scenario in which she could be happier than she was right now.

“Evangeline, when is the Empress getting married again?”

“The twenty-third of this month? Why?”

“Well, it takes two weeks to travel to the Meridian Empire alone, and she wanted us to show up a week early…”

“Yes?”

“It’s already the second, Little Fox.”

Evangeline gasps, eyes flying wide open as she realizes that they would have to leave right now if they ever wanted a chance at showing up on time. And that wasn’t to mention all the packing she would have to do. She would have to pack two weeks worth of clothes for the trip there, and then she would have to pack a weeks worth of clothes for the time they spent at the wedding, and then there was the trip home, which would subsequently take another two weeks, though she supposed that she could have her clothes washed while she was there.

“Evangeline”, Jacks says, snapping her out of her planning. 

“Oh, yes?”

“You better pack quickly, there is a boat leaving for the Meridian Empire at noon today, if we miss that then we-”

Evangeline doesn’t even allow him to finish his sentence before she is bolting up the stairs of the Hollow, running straight for her closet and grabbing every single dress she owns and throwing it on their bed. She wrestles two of her largest trunks out from one of the closets in the hallway, yelling at Jacks, who has not made a single move to start packing. 

“Jacks, what are you doing? Stop standing around and start grabbing your clothes. We don’t have time for you to sit there and look pretty, let’s go!”

Jacks chuckles to himself as he walks up the steps to their room. “My God, I’ve created a monster.”

“Jacks! Hurry up!”

He laughs louder this time. “Coming, love.”

Chapter Text

After two pleasant weeks of travel on the boat, Jacks and Evangeline had finally arrived in Valenda. They managed to make it exactly on time, one week before the wedding. Jacks calls a carriage to carry their multiple trunks, four out of five of them being Evangeline’s alone. 

“Take these to the Palace”, he tells the driver. The driver simply nods and drives away with their belongings. Jacks comes back to stand at Evangeline’s side, taking her hand in his. “Ready?”

“We don’t have a carriage?” she asks him. 

“I thought we could walk there, that way you can see some of your home better. Is that okay?”

She smiles at him. “It’s perfect”, and then they set off. 

She examines every part of the city, pointing to places and buildings that she used to frequent, including an ice cream shop that she and Luc used to go to, which makes him scowl deeply. Evangeline laughs at him, and then kisses his cheek to soothe his hurt pride. “Don’t worry, he used to make me pay for my own everytime we went.”

“I would never do that to you”, Jacks says.

Evangeline nuzzles his cheek, smiling brightly. “I know that.”

They continue on their path, holding each other's hand tightly. Out of nowhere, Jacks suddenly asks her, “Do you miss this being your home?”

Evangeline cranes her neck to get a better look at his expression. He seems worried as if he thinks she’ll want to move them here, and she knows that he would if she asked it of him, but she also knows that he isn’t welcome in the Meridian Empire anymore, ever since the disaster with Donatella. 

“Not really”, she answers him honestly. “The only things that made this place my home were my parents and my father’s curiosity shop, and those are all gone now. Home is with you, at the Hollow.” She kisses him to ease any other worries he may have. 

“Are your parents buried here?” he asks her once she releases him. She nods, brow furrowed.

“If you would like it I can take you to see them. I would like to pay my respects to the people who raised my one true love.”

Before this, she didn’t think she could love Jacks anymore than she already did, but now she was sure that her heart would burst open with love. 

“I would like that very much, Jacks.” And then she kisses him again. She would never get tired of being able to kiss him whenever she pleased, however often she wanted to. 

After a very long walk, they finally make it to the front steps of the Palace. The both of them stand there for a very long time, staring up at the enormous building. After a few minutes, a footman appears. 

“Greetings!” he says cheerily. “You are Evangeline Fox, correct?”

“Uh, yes sir.”

“Wonderful, can both of you please follow me.” The footman turns and starts walking inside the Palace, not sparing another glance toward either of them. Evangeline assumed that the Palace staff would be informed on what Jacks looked like, but it seemed that they weren’t. 

They follow the footman inside, trying to match his breakneck speed, Jacks seeming to have an easier time than Evangeline. 

There is something off about Jacks, though. His shoulders are rigid and set, as well as his jaw, as if ready for a fight. She rises on her toes to whisper in his ear, “I don’t think the footman has any nefarious plans for us. Try to relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

He is definitely not. He looks like an animal ready to pounce. 

At the end of the hallway, there are two large double doors, which Evangeline knows that lead to the sitting room where she first met the Dragna sisters. The footman turns sharply on his heel and addresses them. “I have other business to attend to, but whenever you are ready, the Empress and the Princess are inside waiting for you”, and with that he leaves. 

Evangeline inhales and exhales shakily, clenching and unclenching her fist. 

“Nervous?” Jacks asks her. 

“A little.”

“Good, you should be.”

Evangeline scoffs and swats his chest with her hand. “It’s going to be fine. It is going to be fine.”

“Whatever you say, my love.”

“I think I should go first, and I’ll have you wait back here, that way I can maybe ease them into this.”

He nods, taking in every word she’s saying. She knows that he has little faith in this going well, but he doesn’t say anything about her plan, he just listens to her and nods gently, instilling some confidence in her. She wrings her hands one final time before pushing one of the doors open, careful to make sure that she doesn't accidentally reveal Jacks too early.

“Oh, Evangeline! You’ve arrived.” Both of the sisters stand up from where they were seated at the little tea table, where she sees another man seated there, who rises slower. 

Both of the sisters rush at her, hugging her tightly. “It’s so wonderful to see you again, I hope that your trip was okay” the Empress says. 

“Oh, yes, Your Majesty. It was very pleasant.”

“None of that ‘Your Majesty’. You can call me Scarlett”, she says warmly.

“And you can call me Tella, everyone does.”

She thinks back on every time she’s ever spoken to Jacks about Donatella, Tella, she mentally corrects herself, and she can’t recall a single time where Jacks referred to her by her nickname. It gives her a small bit of satisfaction to know that even when Jacks believed the pretty blonde was his one true love, he still only gave Evangeline a pet name. 

“Well, thank you Scarlett, for thinking of me when you invited me to your wedding.”

“Of course! It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, so much has happened.”

“You must tell us everything!” Tella says. “We’ve never been to the North, is it truly as magical as everyone says?”

“It is indeed. I think it is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

“Are all the myths true? Are there really story curses?” Scarlett asks.

“Of course there are,” Tella tells her. “Remember The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox? Nobody knows how that story ends, and you can only get a copy of the book in the North.” Tella looks toward Evangeline with wide eyes. “Oh, please tell me that you read the ending, I desperately need to know if the Archer kills the Fox or if he breaks the curse.”

Evangeline stiffens, her hands turning clammy. She knows exactly how that story ends, but she can hardly tell them the truth. Jacks would never want that. 

“I did read it, but unfortunately I can’t remember how it ends, such is the story curse.”

“Ugh”, Tella groans, “I suppose if I ever want to know the ending I must go to the North myself.”

“Which you can’t”, Scarlett tells her sternly.

Because of Jacks. Evangeline bites her lip so hard she tastes copper in her mouth. 

“I am very aware of that, Scarlett”, she answers, with what Evangeline thinks is bitterness. Tella sighs loudly. “I just wish that I could have been alive to meet the Archer, it's a real blessing that you don’t forget him from the story. He’s just so romantic.”

Evangeline nearly snorts at the irony of that statement, but manages to stifle her laugh. She does have to concede to the Princess though: He is very romantic.

“Ahem”, says the man who is still standing at the tea table. Scarlett perks up at his voice. “Evangeline, I’d like you to meet my fiance, Julien.” The handsome man strides over to them, holding out his hand for Evangeline. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Fox.”

She smiles warmly at him, taking his hand and noting the crimson red compass tattoo on his forearm. She remembers the rumors that went around for a while about the Empress being engaged to a pirate, which she now thinks makes a little sense. He doesn’t seem very courtly, but then again, neither did she. She was a pink haired peasant girl from across the sea when she married Apollo and became a princess.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Julien.”

“I give you my condolences about your husband. It must be a very hard time for you right now.”

For a second, Evangeline just stares stupidly at him, completely forgetting that they believe she is grieving the loss of her beloved husband. 

“Oh! Yes, um, my husband. Yes, Apollo, it’s uh- ” She’s rambling already. She never would have made it without telling them that she couldn’t care less about Apollo, and was happily in love and living with Jacks; she’s never been a very good liar. “I’ve been okay, I suppose.”

Scarlett’s brow furrows in confusion. “Are you not still grieving the loss?”

“Well… no?” I never was, she thinks.

“Oh, I suppose I just assumed that you’d be very upset about the loss. Was your marriage not a happy one?”

“Uh, well it certainly was not a love match between the two of us.”

“But I thought he was madly in love with you”, Tella says.

“Ah-” she laughs nervously, “Well, you see…”

“God, you are so bad at this, Little Fox. Just tell them already.” She nearly jumps out of her skin when she hear Jacks’s irritated voice grumbling through her head, earning her a few worried glances. 

Evangeline clears her throat, preparing to come clean. “I suppose I should tell you the truth about what’s been happening to me in the North.”

“The truth?” Tella asks. 

Evangeline nods. “So, you see, when I married Apollo, it was because he thought he was in love with me because of a bit of magic that had been placed on him, but the love turned to obsession over time. After our wedding—the night he was deemed dead and I was blamed for his murder—I had to run away to protect myself.” She looks around to check if everyone is still following the story. They all seem to remember hearing about how Evangeline was wanted for murder for a little while, so she continues. “Later he was found to be under a spell that placed him in a suspended state of unconsciousness. While he was in this suspended state of sleep, there had been… someone helping me clear my name. And then even after Apollo woke up, he was infected with The Archer’s Curse and also a mirror curse, which affected me. He was compelled to hunt me, but if he harmed me in any way, he would feel my pain as well, and it went the same for me: if he was harmed, I would feel it too.”

She takes a moment to breathe, realizing that she hasn’t stopped speaking to come up for air in quite a bit. She looks around at the confused faces of the people in front of her. She needs to wrap this story up quickly. 

“While all of this was happening, I was being helped and taken care of by… someone, and we got rather close. After a while I realized that I was in love with him, and not Apollo, but I was too late to tell him, because he cured Apollo of The Archer’s Curse and the mirror curse, and Apollo didn’t want me to ever come into contact this person ever again, but he knew that I was in love with him, so he used magic to steal my memories, from the moment I met him to that very moment where he was holding me against my will and stealing my memories.” Scarlett and Tella gasp, covering their mouths with their hands. 

“Eventually I regained my memories and saved my love, but Apollo wasn’t happy with that so he tried to sacrifice me to gain immortality. It didn’t work, obviously, but to answer your question: No, I am not grieving him at all. I have been happily living with my love in the North, not even thinking about Apollo most of the time. In truth, I am the happiest I have ever been.” 

Evangeline stops rambling, and it seems that no one has any clue what to say to that story. Each of them is just wide eyed and in shock, a rational reaction to be sure. 

Tella is the first to snap out of the trance. “Oh, you poor girl. I’m so sorry about all of that. If we never sent you to the North none of that ever would have happened.”

Evangeline smiles happily. “Don’t be sorry. If you didn’t send me to the North I would have never met my true love.”

“Is that the friend you were talking about in your letter then?” Scarlett asks.

“It is”, Evangeline swallows the dread forming in her throat. “He’s just right outside, I wanted to explain the story to you first before he came in.”

“Can we meet him now?” Tella asks excitedly. “I want to meet the savior himself!”

Oh, this was such a bad idea.

Evangeline walks over to the doors, grasping one of the handles. She turns around to face them before she swings the door open. 

“Please don’t hate me”, she says. 

Confusion mars the girls faces, but Julien seems to grasp what she means. His eyes widen and his face turns blood red. 

She swings the door open wide and lets Jacks stride into the tea room, immediately bringing complete and utter chaos in his wake. 

Chapter Text

Suddenly, the room gets ten times louder and ten times as full. Evangeline fights the urge to bury her face in Jacks’s chest and groan. He was absolutely correct; they’re going to try to kill him right here in front of her. 

“Guards!”

“Guards! Now!”

“What the hell are you thinking, you stupid girl!” this comes from Julian, and the words sting as if he slapped her. 

“Don’t speak to her that way”, Jacks grounds out, immediately putting his arm in front of Evangeline and pushing her behind him, shielding her from the guards that come rushing into the room. 

“Kill him”, Scarlett shouts.

“No! Don’t kill him! Please!” Evangeline pushes Jack’s arm out of the way so she can stand in front of him. She’s breathing heavily, and tears threaten to spill out of her eyes. “Just listen to us, please.”

“You think we're stupid enough to trust either of you now? We’ve been through this before with him, and he is no longer-”

“Wait” Tella says quietly. 

“What”, Scarlett looks at her sister sideways, as if she's lost her mind.

“Just listen to them for a second.” She looks just as distressed and upset as Evangeline, no doubt from seeing Jacks again.

“You of all people should be the last person to ever trust Jacks”, Julian says. 

“I don’t trust Jacks”, she says, looking him dead in the eye. “I trust Evangeline.”

The guards are dismissed, shuffling out one by one in a single file line, until the last of them has shut the door behind them. Silence ensues for an excruciating moment, neither Evangeline nor Jacks knowing exactly what to do in this position. They’ve been granted mercy, for now, but Evangeline doesn’t know how long it will last. She feels as if she should be on her hands and knees thanking the Princess for not killing her true love the second she saw him, instead she settles for stepping forward in front of Jacks, taking his hand in hers for a modicum of strength. He squeezes her hand in reassurance.

“I know what this seems like”, she begins.

“What are you thinking?” Exclaims Scarlett. Evangeline feels a twinge of frustration at the Empress’s anger towards Jacks. She can understand her being upset by his presence, he did in fact do a multitude of horrific things to her sister, but for her to insinuate that she doesn’t know what she’s thinking by being in love with Jacks makes her jaw clench. 

“Let me finish, please”, she says, articulate and confident, emboldened by the insults being thrown her way. “Jacks and I met before you ever sent me to the North. He is partially the reason I was turned to stone, and then turned back into a human.”

“But I thought Poison was the one who suggested she be freed from the stone to attend Nocte Neverending”, Tella says. 

Jacks speaks from behind Evangeline. “You think Poison is so noble that he wouldn’t carry out a favor for me? You may want to do some surveillance on the man; he’s still a Fate after all.”

Scarlett visibly pales, tuning a shade of gray.

Evangeline turns her face toward him to glare. She turns back around and continues speaking. “I made a bargain with Jacks before any of this happened, that’s how he was able to find me in the North at Nocte Neverending.”

“I don’t understand why you think you’re in love with him though”, Julian says, confused and highly exasperated. “He turned you to stone.”

“Well, technically I did that to myself.”

“He kidnapped you”, Scarlett exclaims.

Ah, so they have seen the scandal sheets.

“Allegedly”, Jacks says breezily. 

“He was wanted for murder throughout the entirety of the North.” This comes from Tella.

“That wasn’t me”, he answers. “Well, most of that wasn’t me”, he amends. “And so was Evangeline. I hardly see how that is a valid argument.”

Evangeline covers her face in her hands. Why would he choose now of all times to act terrible?

“Because I am terrible, Little Fox. At least that's what they think”, she hears his voice in her mind. 

“Well stop letting them think that. That is literally the only reason you came!”

“Please, all I’m asking for is a little bit of understanding. We didn’t come here for revenge or anything like that. I only wanted Jacks to come with me because I wanted you all to see that you don’t have to worry about him anymore. He has no interest in trying to get you back, Tella. Trust me, you aren’t his true love like you thought.”

“And how would you know that”, she asks bitterly. “It's not as if you’ve kissed him yourself, because if you have you would be dead.”

“That’s not exa-”, Evangeline is cut off when Jacks grips her jaw in his hand and pulls her face toward his, to drop a deep kiss on her lips. She melts into the kiss after the surprise wears off, forgetting completely about their little audience in front of them. She moans when she feels his tongue stroke against hers.

“Enough”, Tella yells, drawing them out of their shared moment. She glares at Jacks with deep hatred in her eyes, then she turns back to Evangeline and her gaze softens again into something akin to pity, which makes burning flames of anger flare up in Evangeline’s soul. She doesn’t need their pity, she needs them to listen.

Evangeline gives Jacks a glare of her own, but based on the wolfish glint in his eyes, she presumes that the expression may be coming off as lust.

Which isn’t totally wrong, I suppose, she thinks.

“I suppose that you’ve proved yourselves,” Tella says, shocking both of them. “You can both stay here for the wedding.”

“What!” Scarlett nearly screams.

“Tella, you can’t-”

“You don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Julian. They’re clearly in love and devoted to each other, and they’ve already traveled all this way. They deserve to at least stay for the wedding.”

Evangeline smiles so wide it can barely be contained on her face. She turns to face Jacks who looks less than pleased with what Tella said, but she doesn’t understand why. They proved that Jacks is in love and happy and not a threat to Tella anymore. Jacks’s expression is one of distrust and skepticism.

“We’ll have someone take you and your things to your room so you can get settled in”, Tella says with a warm smile on her face. 

“Oh, thank you so much. I promise you, you won’t regret this.” She rushes forward to hug the girl tightly, feeling so grateful for her understanding. 

“Come on, Evangeline. We need to go find our room.”

“Coming, love.” She turns back to Tella and Scarlett, mouthing the words thank you before taking off to meet Jacks at the doors, taking his hand in hers, and starting for the door.

But before Evangeline can even get her hand on the handle, Jacks spins around and starts talking to the royal family.

“Oh and by the way,” he starts, with all the ease of someone about to ask where the bathroom is, “if any of you disrespect my wife again by insinuating that she doesn’t know what she feels, i’ll kill you.” He chuckles lightly, as if he didn’t just threaten the Empress and her fiance. “I’m sorry, that sounded like a joke; I will actually kill you.”

Evangeline buried her face in her hands to avoid looking at Scarlett and Tella. Before Jacks and Evangeline arrived in Valenda, they had agreed that it would be for the best if they didn’t spill that they were married immediately to Scarlett and Tella, just to see they would react to them being in love first. She’d wanted to tell them so badly, and she supposed that she was grateful that it was out there now, like ripping off a bandage, but this was not how she expected the reveal to go.

When she does eventually peak out from beneath her fingers, their slack jawed expressions are almost comical enough to make her laugh. Almost.

She elbows Jacks in the ribs and pushes him out the door before he can do anymore damage. When she looks up at his face, she expects him to look all too pleased with himself, but instead she finds that he appears to be deeply disturbed.

The second the door closes, Jacks picks up his pace, practically running for the nearest exit.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“We are leaving this place right now and going back home.”

“What? No, we can’t.”

“We have to, Little Fox.”

“She just said-”

“She’s lying, Evangeline. She thinks I’ve enchanted you somehow.”

“No she doesn’t, Jacks. If you think that their faces just now meant that they think I'm under some sort of love spell, you're probably just misreading their shock at being told you were going to kill them if they spoke rudely to me again!”

He laughs acerbically. “Trust me, Little Fox. They were less surprised that I threatened to kill them than they were at the fact that you actually married me.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but she stops herself. It was true, she did marry Jacks, and she had never for a second regretted it. He made her happy, happier than she ever thought she could be, and she loved him more than anything in the world, but she could how certain parties would doubt that. 

Evangeline studied Jacks’s face again, noticing the troubled, anxious lines that had creased his marble skin. He’s scared, she realizes.

“Of course I’m scared, Evangeline. Every day I wake up, terrified that you’ve come to your senses and realized that I’m no good. What if this trip is the one where you finally understand who I was before you met me, who I was for centuries of my life before you came into it?”

“Jacks, stop it.” She snaps at him, not wanting to hear any more of his self deprecating speech. She takes off the chain around her neck, the one that she hooked her wedding ring on before they arrived in Valenda. She slips the beautiful ring, a pink diamond surrounded with smaller emeralds and opal gems with a rose gold band, off the chain and places it on her finger. She takes his hands in hers.

“I made a vow to you that day, Jacks of the Hollow, and I meant it with every fiber of my being, and I still mean it. I love you. You are the only person for me in this world, you are my one true love, and one day I need you to realize that I’m not going anywhere, ever. It’s you, Jacks. It’s always been you and it will always be you.”

She rises on her toes to kiss him, and he responds in kind, pressing his mouth against hers, reminding him of the vow he made to her that day.

“I promise that I will be there for you, wherever that is. I will not let a day go by that I let you think I don’t love you, that I don’t cherish you, worship the very ground that you walk on. I love you, Evangeline, and I will for the rest of my days. You are the only person for me, and I promise that I will do my best to deserve you every single day.”

He speaks the word reverently against her lips, making her body go hot and boneless in his hands.

She opens her eyes to look him in his. 

“You made that vow to me, and l want you to keep it. I want you, Jacks. I don’t know how to make it any simpler to understand.”

He smiles gently. “You don’t have to, Little Fox. I know. I just have a hard time feeling like I deserve you some days.”

“Well don’t. You already have me, we have each other.”

He smiles fully this time, and leans down to kiss her again.

“Come on,” she whispers against his lips, “let’s go find our room.” 

Chapter Text

“Married! How could she ever have married him?”, Tella exclaims the second the doors are shut behind Evangeline and Jacks. 

She couldn't seem to wrap her head around the idea that Jacks had manipulated this poor, vulnerable, sweet girl into marrying him. Everytime she thought about how nauseatingly in love Evangeline seemed when she looked at Jacks, she wanted to vomit right there on the floor. Then when she thought about how Jacks looked at her, how happy and in love he looked, she wanted to throw up a second time. How could anyone lie like that, so effortlessly? So incredibly easily. It just didn’t make sense to Tella. Even when Jacks was obsessed with Tella, he never looked at her like she was his last breath of air, like she was his last heartbeat. He never looked at Tella with such raw emotion in his eyes. And he never kissed Tella the way he kissed Evangeline; like he was going to pass away at that very moment if he didn’t have a taste of her. 

“Tella, calm down”, Scarlett quells, trying her hardest to stay calm, but Tella can see her stress and worry in the wringing of her hands, the chewing on her bottom lip, the furrow between her brows. At this point in there lives, Tella had seen Scarlett worry enough for the both of them, it was just what she did: Scarlett worried too much, and Tella not enough. “I’m sure there is a logical explanation for this. I don’t believe that Evangeline bears any ill will towards us, but just because she thinks Jacks doesn’t either doesn’t mean that it is true. He is a threat to you, Tella. To everyone here. He can’t stay.”

“Why did you even tell them that they could stay?” Julian asks, visibly frustrated. He would do anything to keep his beloved fiance away from anything that had potential to hurt Scarlett, and Jacks had just walked in and destroyed the blissful joy of the days before they were to be married. He had a right to be upset with Tella for not murdering him on sight.

“Because, I had an idea while Evangeline was talking to me. What if we help her while she’s here?”

“What? Help her with what?” Scarlett asks.

“Help her get rid of whatever love spell Jacks has on her”, because it was a love spell, there was no doubt in Tella’s mind about it, “and help her get rid of Jacks for good.”

“I- I don’t know about that, Tella.”

“What? Why not? It’s the perfect plan. Is this not what we wanted her to do anyway? Go to the North and lure Jacks out so that we could kill him?”

That was the only reason they sent Evangeline to the North anyway. They had believed that they held all the cards, that they had created the perfect plot to find Jacks and be rid of him at last, but it seemed as always that Jacks was ten steps ahead. He had planted the seed in their minds to take her to the North to go to Nocte Neverending, for whatever devious reasons he had. 

“It’s just that- well… she seems to actually be in love with him, Tella.”

“Of course she is! Because he’s making her feel that way! Don’t you remember how I was when he had enchanted me to be in love with him? I was pathetic, couldn’t even go a second without needing him near me. It was like he had made me become dependent on his presence. She isn’t safe with him, Scarlett, and she won’t be safe until he is gone for good.”

Scarlett chews on her lip as she considers what Tella is so clearly explaining to her. Tella feels slightly betrayed that her sister would ever even consider taking Jacks’s side over hers, and she almost voices the feeling out loud when Scarlett finally relents. 

“I suppose that we could at least test them first. I could read their emotions the next time we see them, and maybe we can have Dante come up with something for the ball tonight.”

“That, I can do '', a voice calls from the shadows. Out steps Tella’s real True Love, the one she had chosen over the one that had simply been assigned to her by something as frivolous as Fate. Dante smiles crookedly at Tella, making her heart skip a beat at the roguish expression. He turns to face Scarlett. “There is a particular melody that comes from the Magnificent North. It’s called a True Love’s Waltz. Only couples that are truly in love with each other can know the steps, even if they've never heard or seen the dance before. It’s instinctual, a bit of Northern Magic that I learned how to cast. If I cast the spell tonight during the ball and they try to dance to it, we can know for sure if they are each other’s One True Love’s. If they aren’t, they’ll trip over each other’s feet and be unable to keep up with the pace. It's a flawless spell.”

Tella smiles wickedly. Finally, she would have an excuse to rid herself of the constant shadow that loomed over her shoulders. She was tired of waiting for the fist to drop, for Jacks to come back and try to take her away again. Clearly, Evangeline had no idea who Jacks really was and all the terrible things he had done, otherwise she would have run away from him kicking and screaming a long, long time ago. 

“It’s brilliant. Let’s do it!”, she says.

“I’m in too”, Julian says. “I’m ready to be rid of this bastard once and for all. If he’s not really her True Love, then we kill him right then and there.”

Tella was excited to be reminded of how many people were truly on her side, these people willing to take a bet on her without questioning it for even a second, though her happiness dimmed a touch when she saw Scarlett.

She looked worried. 

But Scarlett was always worried, it was just part of what she did, who she was. But this was a different worry. Her eyes kept straying to the door, staring at the space where Jacks and Evangeline stood only moments ago. She didn’t seem nearly as worried for Tella as she seemed for Evangeline. The sight made Tella’s feelings prickle enough to the point where she demanded an answer from her out loud.

“Well? What are you worried about now? Do you think the precious Prince of Heart had a change of heart in the North and fell for some peasant girl that was foolish and desperate enough to make a deal with him?”

Tella knew that she should not say such things about Evangeline, she didn’t truly believe Evangeline was stupid, or foolish, or desperate for love… but she did think the girl may be a touch too naive for her own good, but of course, Jacks’s enthrallment on her could be the reason for her behavior. She wasn’t in love with him, she couldn’t be. 

She could stare into his eyes and hold his hand and swat him on the arm when he was rude to other people and kiss him like she couldn’t help but turn into putty in his hands all she wanted, but it meant nothing as long as she was under his spell, because it wasn’t real. Nothing about Jacks was real.

“I just”, Scarlett sighed deeply and closed her eyes, as if she were currently in the midst of a great internal war with herself, “I just don’t know how we can simply assume that he doesn’t love her just because he was horrible to you, Tella. Horrible people fall in love all the time, and perhaps Evangeline just has terrible taste in suitors. And what if they aren’t each other’s True Love? That doesn’t exactly mean that they don’t love each other, or that Jacks has her under a spell; all it means is that they are not meant for forever, maybe just right now. And if they are not destined for forever, and they truly love each other… then I won’t take that away from Evangeline. She’s already suffered too much. Did you see the scar on her back, when she turned to leave? It was kind of hard to notice, but it was there, I saw it. It was just barely peeking out from the back of her dress. It looked like a lashing, Tella. A lashing! She’s barely eighteen years old and she’s been tortured already. If I can help it at all, I won’t take away this happiness from her. Unless there is true, one hundred percent proof that Jacks is manipulating her and has her under a spell, then I will not partake in this plan of yours. I’m sorry, Tella.”

Tella wanted to erupt at her sister. How could she be so unfeeling? 

Or no. That wasn’t right. 

Scarlett was too feeling, far too feeling. Feeling for someone who would have ruined both of their lives long ago if Tella hadn’t done the sensible thing and stabbed him in the heart. Feeling sorry for someone who didn’t have feelings himself. Tella couldn’t make sense of it, no matter how she twisted it. She wanted to yell, to scream and cry and grab her sister and shake her and make her see reasonably, but she wouldn’t do any of those things. 

She had Dante, and she had Julian on her side, and she didn’t need Scarlett’s help to kill Jacks.

“Fine then. Be that way, Scarlett.” She turns back to her love and her sister's love. “But you two? You’re in?”

“Absolutely”, Julian says with zero hesitation.

Dante smiles, and it is cold and calculating. He looks positively sinister. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“So we are agreed then? Tonight at the ball, we play the True Love’s Waltz. If they dance to it then we let them go, if they can’t do it we kill him.” Tella smiles wickedly, feeling extremely impressed with herself and her excellent planning skills. “I suppose I should start getting ready for tonight then.”

Chapter Text

“Jacks! Please hurry. I don’t wish to be late to the first ball of this week.”

“Ah, yes. Because they will not be holding another ball, or celebration of the same caliber, every night this week”, Jacks states sarcastically. 

They had made it to their room shortly after their conversation with Tella and Scarlett, and Evangeline had been slightly underwhelmed by the room. It was nice, nicer than she was expecting truly, but she supposed it felt a little… empty. In the center of the room, pushed up against the wall, was a large four poster bed with an embroidered quilt adorned with different florals overtop. In the corner of the room was a vanity, with gold filigree and gilding around the mirror, with several cosmetics sitting on top. The wardrobe and dresser were placed next to each other, and were so large that it made Evangeline feel like she might have underpacked, despite the four massive trunks that she packed. The bathroom was extremely spacious, complete with a large mirror over the sink and a tub large enough for two people. The room was very generous and very expensive looking, but for some reason, she felt slightly homesick. She missed the warm comfort of the Hollow, the magical elements of the house, the thick quilts that were embroidered with little woodland creatures that she and Jacks slept under. She missed the tiny dragons that slept atop the flowers on the roof. She yearned for the Hollow, she yearned for home. But she would not let a little homesickness stop her from enjoying her time here, in her birthplace. When she commented on how kind it was for Scarlett to have this room prepared for them, Jacks had a comment of his own. 

“I’m sure if they knew you were bringing me, and not some other man, they would not have hesitated to throw us in a dungeon and call it a suite.”

Evangeline had rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, dragging him over to the bed. He followed with no complaints, and he certainly didn’t have any complaints when she pushed him down on the bed and kissed him deeply. 

Two hours later, Evangeline had woken up in Jacks’s arms, and her heart plummeted to her feet. 

“Oh God, wake up Jacks! We're going to be late!”

Jacks had rolled over and gazed at Evangeline with still sleepy eyes, his face lined with creases from the sheets. “Evangeline, the ball doesn’t begin until after sunset. It’s barely past mid-day now.”

“I know! How long do you think it takes to get prepared for a ball? Get up, now. I refuse to be late on the very first night.”

While Evangeline had frantically flown through their enormous suite, running in between the wardrobe, the bathroom, the vanity, and back to the wardrobe, trying to pick which dress would be the most appropriate for tonight, Jacks had taken the entire time to run a hand through his hair, and choose a slightly different doublet for tonight, and only because Evangeline had requested it of him. And he was still going to make them late, because in the three hours that Evangeline took to get ready, he never once had a problem with the boots he was wearing, but he did now. 

“Jacks, it doesn’t matter which boots you wear to the ball. I can guarantee you that no one will pay a single thought to them.”

“Well, of course they wouldn’t. Not with you standing next to me, all eyes will be on my beautiful wife, Little Fox”, he said, giving her a sideways glance and smirking at the flattered blush that has crept across her cheeks. 

“Well, then why are you taking so long to choose a pair?”

“Because, it would be in my best interest to pick a pair that are practical enough to allow me to run away, carry a weapon inside, and be fashionable to be worn in a royal court. This pair has a pocket inside for a knife, but I fear they are terribly uncomfortable. This pair is certainly fit to be worn for a royal event, but they don’t allow me to move as freely as I'd like. I think this pair would work, but they aren’t quite as nice as the other two.” His brow furrows as if in deep contemplation. 

“Jacks, why are you choosing a pair of shoes to hold a weapon and to run away in? We're going to a ball, not a hunt.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Little Fox. This is a hunt, because the second they see you and me together, and then make up whatever biased excuse they can think of to kill me and save you from the terrible love spell I have placed upon you, they will try to put an arrow through my chest. 

Evangeline throws her head back and groans loudly, rolling her eyes at the same time. She was sure that Jacks would call his unhurried snail’s pace “anticipating my impending doom”, but she thought it should be called “stalling.”

She picks up a pair of boots that he had left in his trunk, and throws them at him. He caught them deftly midair, opening his mouth to complain to her, but quickly stops when he takes a better look at them. “These are actually perfect. Thank you, Little Fox.”

“Your welcome, now will you please stop wasting our time?”

“I am hardly wasting our time, I am simply ensuring our safety for tonight”, he says as he slides his dagger in a pocket on the side of his boot, and then standing up and walking over to where Evangeline was standing against their bed. He bends his neck to accommodate for the height difference, and kisses her sweetly.

“You look absolutely radiant, Evangeline.”

She feels radiant tonight, in a gown inspired by the beginning of her and Jacks’s love story. It was Lala’s idea to create a set of gowns for her that represented their love. This dress was inspired by their very first meeting, a long sleeved gown the same color of stone, wrapped in green vines and wisteria branches. The dress was supposed to represent what it would have looked like if she had been left as stone for all of eternity. Evangeline loved the idea, but she worried Jacks would hate it. To her surprise, he quite liked the gown. He told her that the months she spent as stone were some of the most confusing months of his life, because he wanted nothing more than to save her from the stone prison, but doing so would mean he had to take her to the North to fulfill the prophecy. He also confessed that he didn’t regret taking her to the North at all, only that he was so blind to his own feelings for so long that he let her get hurt in the crossfire of his own idiocy. After he’d told her that, Evangeline had dragged him to their room and let him take off her new dress, freeing her from the stone himself. 

Evangeline hums against his lips, smiling and feeling warmth rush into her cheeks and down her neck. “You look very handsome, as well, Jacks.” She kisses him again, and he leans forward, pushing her further against the bed.

Evangeline laughs and ducks out of his embrace, swatting him on the arm with the back of her hand. “Don’t think you can distract me, you scoundrel. Come on, we're heading down to the ballroom right now, I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

Jacks pouted, his lower lip jutting out adorably, and stalked over to the door. He took Evangeline’s hand in his, and some of the light in his eyes came back, just from being able to touch her, hold her. She took his face in her hands gently, forcing him to look her in the eye. 

“I know that this is going to be hard for you, and I know you would rather not do it, but I really need you by my side. I’m not asking you to have a great time, I’m not asking you to make inane small talk with everyone we speak to, I’m not even asking you to be on your best behavior. All I’m asking of you is that you be there with me.”

Jacks turned his head to kiss Evangeline's palm, and he took her hand from his face and placed it in his cool grasp, lifting it to graze his lips over her knuckles. His thumb scraped over the wedding ring on her ring finger, and she smiled at him. 

“Of course, Little Fox. I’ll be right there with you, all night. I swear it.”

“Good, now let’s make our grand entrance.”

She took his hand and dragged him out of their room, letting the door shut with a click behind them. She felt lightweight, untouchable, as if nothing could bring her down from this moment in time. Little did she know, that her darling husband was right to be suspicious, and that she as well should have chosen shoes that she could run away in.

Chapter Text

Tella has everything in place, and she’d be damned if all her planning and scheming didn’t pay off now. Dante had the spell at the ready, and Julien had a crossbow nearby, as well as a set of daggers, ready to be used on Jacks. 

Tella couldn’t help but feel somewhat of a lightness in her, like she was about to do something kind, something charitable. Surely she would be thanked once this was all said and done, once Evangeline had been freed from Jacks. She wasn’t too proud to say that she had a flair for dramatics. She liked boisterous parties, moments of recklessness, scandalous moments in the dark, only where the light of the moon was there to judge. Tella enjoyed chaos, and sometimes that scared her the most, because chaos was the first thing she thought of when she thought of Jacks.

She stayed up late some nights, wondering how truly alike her and him could be. It was no secret that Jacks was a fan of drama as well; no one who posed as a prince and tried to take over an entire kingdom could be accused of wanting a life of insignificance. 

And that was what she assumed life with Evangeline was. She hated the thought as soon as it ran through her mind, but it lingered. Evangeline was no longer a princess, and it was true that her brief stint as one had been dramatic enough to last a lifetime, but that stint had long ended. She wasn’t Princess Evangeline Fox, Valenda’s Sweetheart Savior, wife of Prince Apollo Acadian, and alleged murderess anymore. She was Evangeline Fox, and that was all. She was a peasant girl that made a bad deal with a bad Fate, and that was the end of that story. Tella didn’t believe Evangeline to be boring… but perhaps a bit domestic. She didn’t understand how someone like Jacks could possibly love her. Perhaps that was why she disbelieved their love so intensely. Girls fall in love with terrible men all the time. Evangeline could really believe that she loved him, she supposed. 

It wasn’t Evangeline’s love for him that she didn’t believe, it was Jacks’s love for her. People like Jacks just didn’t fall in love with people like Evangeline. People like Jacks used people like Evangeline. 

Tella’s thoughts only further increase her will to save Evangeline. Once she is rid of Jacks forever, she can love whoever she wants. She could go back to the North, or she could stay here, surely there was someone out there for her, someone who could love her the way she deserved. 

Tella pulls herself back into the present, drawing herself out of her deep thoughts. She now notices the people filtering into the huge ballroom, most of which she had no idea who they are. She smiles, these are her favorite kinds of parties.She keeps a close eye on the door way, making sure to scan every face for Evangeline’s. She’s so focussed on her mission she barely notices Scarlett at her side. Tella startles when she feels her light graze against her arm. 

“You’re really going through with this, aren’t you”, she says mildly. 

Tella glares at her sister. “I can’t believe you aren’t going through with this. How could you just forgive everything he’s done to me, to us?”

“I’m not, I just don’t want to see Evangeline get hurt.”

“Why are you so blind Scarlett? Can’t you see that she’s hurting already?”

“You cannot possibly know that for sure, Tella”, Scarlett says angrily, turning to face her sister. “You can’t keep making up excuses to kill him just because he hurt you once upon a time.”

Tella’s jaw hung open. “How could you possibly say that to me? That is hardly fair of you. Why, wasn’t it you, Scarlett, who banned me from ever traveling to the North, so that I wouldn’t run into Jacks? And wasn’t it you who tried to send Evangeline to the North so that she would lure Jacks out?”

“Shh, please, Tella”, Scarlett says, with a light crease marking her brows, concern etched across her face. Her eyes flit back and forth, as if looking for someone who might have heard her say that. Scarlett sighs and her shoulders droop, she covers her face with a weary hand. 

“You’re right, Tella. That wasn’t fair of me at all.”

“So, will you help then?”

“I- can’t bring myself to do it to Evangeline. What if we’re wrong?”

“We aren’t.”

“But what if we are, Tella? What then? We’ve murdered an innocent girl’s husband just because we didn’t trust him. What kind of rulers does that make us?”

“In this case, it makes us smart leaders. We are simply eliminating a potential threat and also helping an innocent girl. Scarlett, please.” Tella is not above begging her sister to join her side. Even though she said she didn’t need her, she lied. She does need Scarlett, she needs to know that her sister has her back, her support in this. “You don’t have to kill him yourself, you don’t have to spy on them, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I just want you here with me, please, I need you right now.”

“I-”, Scarlett exhales heavily through her nose, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose, turning back to face the doorway. “Okay, Tella, I'll help you. I suppose I can just read his emotions when he walks in with her, would that help you?”

A wide grin breaks across Tella’s face, and she jumps forward to hug her sister tightly. “Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, Scarlett. I won’t forget this.”

Scarlett laughs delicately, hugging Tella back. “You’d better not, you’re really twisting my arm, you know that?”

“What’s going on over here”, Julian says, sauntering over to them. 

“Scarlett agreed to read Jacks’s emotions to help us with our plan.”

“Well, you might want to get on with it then, Crimson. Your couple of the hour just walked in.”

Sure enough, Tella looks up to see Jacks and Evangeline walking through the doors, Evangeline wide eyed and grinning broadly, and Jacks smirking slightly at her. They look all the happy couple he has her believing they are, and the sight sickens Tella. “Well,” she nudges Scarlett, “go ahead.”

Scarlett locks her eyes on the couple, clenching her fingers into a tight fit a few times before she takes a deep breath in and exhales. Tella watches in silence, looking for any sort of reaction from her sister. Nothing seems to happen for a long moment, and then suddenly, Scarlett gasps loudly and backs up until she hits the table at their backs, bracing her hands against it as if to catch herself. She takes several gasping breaths, her eyes locked directly on Jacks and Evangeline.

“Scarlett? Scarlett, what’s wrong? What did you see?”, Tella grabs Scarlett’s arm, shaking her slightly, begging her to answer her. 

Scarlett just stands there against the table, staring wide eyed at Jacks and Evangeline. 

… 

When Scarlett agreed to read into Jack's emotions, she didn’t quite expect what she saw. She read Evangeline’s first, knowing what she would see; a girl deeply in love with a boy. When she got to Jacks, she couldn’t help but gasp in shock. 

Pink.

Pink was everywhere on him. It consumed him entirely. And it wasn’t just any shade of pink, it was Evangeline.  

The exact shade of pink that her lips were, the exact shade of pink that colored her cheeks when she blushed, the exact shade of pink that was her hair. A collage of colors, every single one of them being Evangeline. He was consumed by her, covered in her. Everywhere she looked on him, she saw Evangeline. Scarlett almost considered it unnatural, the way he felt about her. She had never seen anyone love someone the way it looked like he loved her, it was so bizarre to her that she briefly considered the idea that Evangeline was the one who had put a love spell on him.

That was a ridiculous idea of course, Evangeline could never be so cruel to put a love spell on someone. Thinking back on their previous conversations, about Apollo and how he had been enchanted to love her, Evangeline most likely loathed the very concept of forcing someone to fall in love. 

Distantly, Scarlett could hear Tella calling to her, and she finally looked back at her sister to give her an answer. 

“He loves her, I’m sure of it.”

She had expected Tella to be relieved, but instead she seemed angry. “Why are you trying so hard to protect him?”

It felt as if she had thrown cold water on Scarlett. “What? I’m not protecting him, I’m telling you the truth.”

“If you were telling the truth then you wouldn’t have acted so scared a second ago.”

Scarlett hadn’t been meaning to come across as scared. Truly, she was amazed. She knew that Julian loved her more than anything in the world, and that Dante loved Tella more than anything, but she had to wonder if Fates just had a different capacity for love than regular people did. Maybe being unable to love for so long had an effect on Jacks. Or perhaps it was because he was the Prince of Hearts, and falling in love was just what he was exceptionally good at. Or perhaps it was just Jacks. Perhaps he simply loved her that much just because he did, and it wasn’t because he was a Fate, or because he was magical, or because he had been immortal for so long. Jacks more than loved Evangeline. He wasn’t obsessed with her, not the way he was with Tella. He was infatuated with her. With everything about her. Scarlett didn’t think that there was a single thing about Evangeline that Jacks didn’t love. 

“I can’t believe you, Scarlett”, Tella said, visibly angry with her. “You’re lying just to protect him. And for what? The possibility that he isn’t evil anymore? The possibility that he just fell in love and became a great person?”

“No, Tella I-” Scarlett tried to tell her sister that she was telling the truth, that she wasn’t lying to protect Jacks, but Tella was already walking away. “Tella! Tella wait, please.”

Tella wasn’t listening to her anymore though. She just kept walking, until she made it to a certain spot in the ballroom, where she looked up into the rafters and nodded once. 

Music began to play, filling the ballroom with a fast paced waltz. And somehow, even though Scarlett had never heard it before, she knew that this was the True Love’s Waltz.

Chapter Text

Jacks and Evangeline had walked in less than a minute ago and he could already feel Scarlett and Tella’s glares from across the ballroom. He tried not to let their gazes tear away at the shreds of his pride, but he couldn’t help from feeling some sense of indignation when he felt Scarlett’s piercing gaze starting to analyze his emotions. 

He feels himself stiffen slightly at the thought of someone looking so closely at his own heart, but he lets her do it anyway. He wouldn’t make a fuss if it would make things easier for them, and he wanted Evangeline to have a good time tonight. He would not tell her that he was being tested at every turn, watched closely, both of the sisters waiting for him to falter. 

But he wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure if there was a moment in his life since Evangeline had walked into it where he hadn’t been pathetically in love with her. Whatever Scarlett would find in him, he knew it would be Evangeline. 

He continued to walk further into the ballroom, trying his very best for Evangeline not to grimace as if in pain. He had grown to hate parties like this one. Impersonal, loud, rambunctious gatherings where no one truly knows anyone in the entire ballroom. It reminded him all too much of the kinds of parties the Valors used to attend, the ones where he wasn’t welcome, where he was only invited because of Castor and Lyric. 

Despite whatever Tella thought of him, Jacks was a poor orphan kid who lived in the woods for much of his life, until a couple of stuffy noble kids had come and entered his life. He loved Castor, but he resented Prince Castor Valor. They weren’t the same people to Jacks. Castor was his friend, Prince Castor Valor was a stranger to him. 

Jacks didn’t quite know where Chaos stood. 

Lyric was mostly the same, whether he was shooting arrows at random trees and running amuck through the Hollow, or if he was standing around a group of noblemen talking about his future as if he wasn’t right there next to him. But Lyric was gone now, and as much as Jacks wished it weren’t true, there was a small part of him that was comforted by the thought that Lyric had died thinking of Jacks as his friend. He hadn’t lived long enough to see Jacks become the worst version of himself, not like his sister did. 

But Jacks loathed Aurora. Whether she was Princess Aurora Valor or not. 

“Jacks”, he hears Evangeline say his name, drawing him out of his own mind, “thank you for being here with me. I know there are about a million other places you would rather be right now.”

“That’s not true. There's really only one place I’d rather be, and that’s laying in bed with you.”

Evangeline blushes all the way from her cheeks to the top of the neckline of her dress, and Jacks had to fight the urge to kiss every bit of her bare skin. 

Suddenly, music began to play, very loudly, making Evangeline flinch. Jacks had a similar reaction to the song playing, but not because of the volume. He knew this song. He had never been able to dance to it, though, no matter how badly he wished to. 

The True Love’s Waltz. 

“Jacks, will you dance with me?”, Evangeline asks him, clutching his hand tightly, ready to drag him out to the dance floor.

Jacks looks up for one terrified second, worried that he still won’t know the steps, but he sees Tella staring at him with a devious grin, and that resolves him entirely.

Jacks gives Tella a smile of his own, and takes Evangeline to the center of the dance floor.

…

Tella watches Jacks drag Evangeline to the very center of the dance floor, moving through the throng of people that are leaving because they don’t know this dance. They take their spot at the very middle of the room, surrounded by the watching eyes of everyone else. 

The dance starts out fairly simple, the two of them performing an easy waltz, but then the pace picks up, into something sounding akin to a folk melody. Jacks and Evangeline break away from each other, Evangeline lifting her skirt to jump and spin all around in a circle while Jacks mirrors her movements. 

A few people start clapping along with the melody, and Jacks and Evangeline join back together in the center of the dance floor, holding each other’s hands and smiling brightly. They move around each other, Jacks lifting Evangeline off the ground for just a second before placing her back on her feet and spinning her once. He pulls her back into his arms and they dance in time with the music, moving in what resembles a fast paced waltz. The song begins to crescendo, and Evangeline pulls away from Jacks to spin, over and over again, pirouetting in the very end of her toes so many times and so quickly she becomes a blur of pink. She finally stops, and they join together again on the very last note of the song. They're both looking deeply into each other's eyes, breathing quickly, the rise and fall of their chests making them touch, and smiling at each other as if they’re the last good thing in the world. 

Raucous applause fills the entire ballroom, making it hard for Tella to hear her own thoughts. 

They performed the dance, even when no one else could. They danced to True Love’s Waltz as if they had done it a million times before. 

Tella can’t find it in herself to care. She doesn’t believe Jacks.

She looks back up to the rafters, looking for Dante where he is hiding, holding a second crossbow that Julian and Scarlett don’t know about. She nods once, and she smiles darkly when she sees him nock a bolt.

Chapter Text

Saying that Evangeline is exhilarated would be an understatement. She felt like she was soaring above the crowd, and from the look on Jacks’s face, she assumed that he felt much the same. She didn’t know what that dance was, or how she knew it, but she had the time of her life spinning and jumping and clapping along to the music with Jacks. The loud applause from everyone in the room makes her feel like a stage performer after her best performance. The experience was downright magical, and reminded her exactly of what it felt like to be home in the North, tucked away in the warmth of the Hollow.

“What was that song, Jacks”, she asked him with a bright smile. To her surprise, his smile faltered for just a second, but he schooled his expression back into one of bliss and pure joy when he answers her. “It’s an ancient song from the Magnificent North. I used to watch people dance to it all the time at revels and festivals when I was a child. I don’t know how they managed to dig up the melody. Usually all the music from the North is sacred among the people born there. The music doesn’t have a story curse, not like our legends do, but it does have something similar. Whoever wanted it to be played tonight needed magic to do so.” Jacks’s eyes narrow suspiciously, which concerns Evangeline.

“Jacks? Is everything alright, love?” She wraps her fingers delicately around his wrist, and he twists his hand until he’s holding hers. She feels him stroke the broken heart scar on her wrist, and her heart skips a beat. 

“Everything’s perfectly fine”, he tells her. 

Jacks is a good liar, Evangeline has known this from the moment she met him, but after everything they had been through, and nearly a year of marriage, Evangeline had learned to recognize the tight set of his shoulders, the grim line of his lips,the nervous tick he had developed: stroking her scar with his ring finger, as a sign that he was lying. 

“Jacks, if something is wrong you need to tell me. I deserve to know.”

He sighs in defeat, although Evangeline didn’t think he put up much of a fight. “You’re right, Little Fox, I’m sorry. I should have told you when I heard the song.”

Evangeline’s eyes widen, and her heart beats faster and harder. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with the song we danced to?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the song. It’s the True Love’s Waltz. It’s a special melody from the North that only people who were True Loves could dance to. If you weren’t dancing with your True Love, you couldn’t dance to the song. Your feet would trip over each other, and you would fall flat on your face if you so much as tried. I used to see couples dance to it all the time when I was younger, but I never thought I would be able to dance to it.”

Evangeline thought her heart would burst with love and adoration, but she was still confused. “Why is that a bad thing then?”

“It isn’t, not at all. It’s just that…”

“What is it?”

“I really didn’t want to tell you, Little Fox. Not because I wanted to keep secrets from you, but because I didn’t want to make you worry.”

Evangeline thought her heart would simply jump out of her chest if he didn’t just spit it out. “Worry about what?”

“They’re testing us, Evangeline. Testing me. I saw Tella right before I took you to the dance floor, and she was smiling at me like she had finally outsmarted me, because she thought that surely we wouldn’t be able to dance to True Love’s Waltz, because she doesn’t believe that I love you.”

Evangeline’s heart plummeted to her toes, but more than anything she was so, so angry. What right did Tella have to test their relationship? Evangeline pushed past Jacks, ready to go and confront both of the sisters. 

“Evangeline, no”, Jacks tried to stop her, but she kept pushing through the throng of people. Tella was standing at an oddly specific spot in the ballroom, there was nothing and no one around her, but she was looking up at the ceiling. Evangeline sees her nod once, and she smiles in an almost cat-like way. She pauses in confusion, and then startles when she hears screams ring out all around her. 

She spins around and sees Jacks thrown down on the floor, with a bolt stuck in his ribs, gold flecked blood beginning to pool around him. 

Evangeline screams and jumps into action, lifting her skirts and running as fast as she can, shoving people out of the way to get to him. She screams his name over and over again, hoping that he’ll get up and answer her. 

She finally reaches him, and she drops to her knees, her hands frantically searching his chest to make sure that he’ll live. 

“I’m okay, Little Fox. I’ve been stabbed by far worse.” She watches Jacks grit his teeth and sit upright. She offers her arm to him and he takes it, pulling himself off of the ground. He looks far too pale, and much weaker than he should. She helps him to his feet and does her very best to carry him out of the ballroom, only glancing back once to try to find Tella. She doesn’t see her through the crowd, but her eyes do find Scarlett. 

She looks absolutely mortified, skin pale and hand covering her mouth underneath eyes as wide as dinner plates, as if she didn’t know that would happen, which makes Evangeline worry even more.

If Scarlett looks this surprised, then perhaps this attack on Jacks wasn’t planned by them. Evangeline has to worry that there may be some other secret assassin lurking among this wedding party that the Empress isn’t aware of.

She turns her attention back to Jacks, ready to walk him up to their room and take care of his wound. She carefully assists him on taking up each of the stairs to their room, which thankfully isn’t very far from where they are now. She finally gets him to their room with minimal grumbling from him, which is truly a miracle, and when she opens the door and sets him on the bed, Jacks immediately lays back onto the downy pillows and exhales shakily. 

“Don't move, I’m going to get medical supplies.”

Of course Jacks had the foresight to pack all the essential items that Evangeline had forgotten to grab in her haste to shove her prettiest dresses in her trunks. She grabs a roll of gauze, a roll of bandages, and a pair of scissors. She smiles gently to herself as she holds all of the supplies in her arms. Taking care of Jacks’s injuries always reminds her of that fated night in the Hollow, when he had come back from Lala’s place after she’d ruthlessly stabbed him in between the ribs with a butter knife. 

She’d taken care of him the best she could, even though he kept telling her that he didn’t need it, and that was the first night that she finally admitted to herself that she was hopelessly in love with him. 

“I’m yours”, she told him, and she meant it. Even if she didn’t know that yet. 

She spins around when she hears Jacks grunt and exhale sharply through his teeth, and then she screams when she sees him lying on their bed with a gash in his perfect rib cage, holding the bolt in his hand. 

“What are you doing?”, she screeches. “You’re going to bleed out!”

She begins to rapidly unravel the roll of gauze, bunching it up in a ball and shoving it into the gash. Jacks shouts and curses loudly.

“What are you doing?”, he shouts.

“I’m trying to keep you from dying. Again.”

He scoffs. “As if I was the one that was constantly on the verge of dying.”

She presses the gauze deeper into the wound and he curses again. 

“Evangeline, you don’t have to do that. I’m fine.”

“You clearly are not fine. You have a hole in your ribs.”

“The bleeding has stopped and the wound is already knitting itself back together.” He takes her wrist in his hand and carefully pulls the gauze she’s holding away from his skin. Surely enough, the bleeding has stopped and the skin is carefully stitching itself closed. She runs her fingertips carefully against the fresh pink skin covering the wound. It looks highly inflamed and irritated, but hopefully the wound stays shut. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” he says, “you can cover it and wrap it.”

She nods. “That would make me feel better. Can you take off your doublet and shirt?”

He does so obligingly, and Evangeline tracks the way the muscles on his marble chest and abdomen contract and move under his skin. He catches her staring, and he smirks and winks at her, making her cheeks flush with warmth. She tosses the balled up gauze in a waste bin next to the bed and cuts a new strip that she carefully places on the already healing wound. She starts to wrap the bandage around his torso, the same way she did not so long ago in the Hollow. When she finishes she ties off the cloth tucking it into the layers that she wrapped around him, and lays her head on his chest. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her fully up onto the bed, letting her lay on top of him. He hugs her tightly to his chest, and starts to smooth her hair back when he feels her shoulders shaking with sobs.

“Little Fox, why are you crying?”

She sniffs and wipes her nose with her sleeve. “That really scared me tonight. I don’t like seeing you hurt like that.” She buries her face back into his chest, and continues to stroke her hair away from her forehead, soothing her until her sobbing ceases. 

She sits upright in his lap, with puffy eyes and reddened cheeks, and kisses him softly. He returns her kiss in kind, and knots a hand at the base of her scalp, tangling his fingers in her soft hair. 

She finally pulls away, and asks him the question that's been bothering her the past hour. “Do you think that they planned that attack on you, or do you think it could have been someone else?”

Jacks grimaces, as if he’d rather not answer her question. “I don’t know who else it could be, Little Fox. They hate me enough to want me dead, and I know that they believe I have you under a love spell. Tella would do anything to save someone from suffering through what I regrettably put her through, Little Fox, so it doesn’t surprise me that she thinks it's her job to free you from me.”

“But I don’t want to be free from you. Why don’t they understand that?”

Jacks looked away in shame. “I think you don’t understand the full extent of what I did to her, Little Fox. She has every right to be angry with me, she had every right to stab me in the heart.”

Evangeline didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe Jacks was right: maybe she didn't understand how truly horrible he was back before she met him. Jacks had told her the full truth a long time ago, and she had already processed that information. Jacks was most definitely not a good person. He wasn’t even a good person when she met him. But she didn’t love Jacks because he was a “good person”, she loved Jacks because he fought for her. He fought her life, even when he didn’t think he could fight for their happily ever after. And when he did find out he could have her, he fought tooth and nail to keep her. She loved Jacks because he was real. Evangeline had always dreamed of love strong enough to break curses, love strong enough to fight against fate itself. What she had with Jacks was a love so strong it rewrote history, and that was what she wanted. She didn’t need Jacks to be a hero, she needed him, and that was enough for her. 

“Scarlett seemed surprised that you had been shot at. Do you think that she didn’t know about that plan?”, she asked him.

“That’s definitely a possibility. Tella kept things from Scarlett all the time. That was partially the entire reason we ever met in the first place. She was trying to find her mother without letting Scarlett know.”

“So would it be reasonable to assume that maybe one person here doesn’t want you dead?”

Jacks chuckled lightly, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Maybe. Hopefully we can go through the rest of this trip without being shot at again.”

Evangeline sighs with exhaustion, the events of the day making her yearn for sleep. “Hopefully”, she agreed, and shifted so that she was lying next to him on the mattress. She yawns loudly, and Jacks takes that as his sign to pull the sheets up and over her shoulders, letting her settle into the bed’s warmth. Her eyes were already beginning to close, but she holds on to her consciousness for just one more minute so that she can tell Jacks this. 

“Jacks?”

“Yes, Little Fox?”

“I’m really happy that I got to dance to True Love’s Waltz with you tonight.”

Jacks smiles at her lazily, his blue eyes twinkling in the darkness of their room. He leans to to press a kiss to her lips. “I’m happy I got to dance with you too, Little Fox.

And with that last statement, Evangeline closed her eyes and fell asleep, still dressed in her gown, dreaming peacefully knowing that Jacks was wrapped around her in their bed.

… 

It’s very late into the night when Jacks here a knock on the door. Evangeline fell asleep hours ago, but he has been up all night, letting his thoughts run rampant in the silence of the room, the only sounds reverberating in the quiet dark being Evangeline’s steady breathing, and her beating heart.

Jacks tries to let the sounds lull him to sleep, as they do almost every night, but no matter how hard he tries he cannot force himself to relax. He supposes it could be the attack on his life that makes him so paranoid, but the idea that anyone here wants Evangeline dead instead of him is so ridiculous he almost laughs into the darkness. 

The only person anyone would ever want dead here is him. 

When he hears the knock on the door his first instinct is to grab the nearest weapon and defend Evangeline, but the heartbeat behind the door gives him pause.

The heartbeat is fast and fluttery, like a hummingbird’s wings. And he suddenly recognizes the familiar thrum of this particular heart, and he is suddenly even more confused.

He throws a shirt on and paces to the door soundlessly, letting the door make the only indicating sound that he’s there. 

Scarlett spins around quickly, holding a dim lantern in her hand, looking slightly nauseous. 

“Before you say anything”, she whispers, sparing a glance into their bedroom, clearly searching for Evangeline, “I need you to know that I believe you.”

That surprises Jacks. He didn’t expect this conversation from anyone here, but especially not the sister of the girl he traumatized. 

“I didn’t know that Tella was going to do that tonight, I told her I wouldn’t be part of any plan that involved killing you.”

Well, there was confirmation that it was indeed Tella behind the attack.

“For Evangeline’s sake, I presume.”

Her eyes go wide, and she opens her mouth as if to protest, but he stops her his hand. “It’s alright. I understand.”

She cleared her throat quietly. “I read your emotions tonight. I know that you love Evangeline. I know that you more than love her.” 

Jacks swallows his shame. He loathes the idea of someone outside of Evangeline knowing his true heart. He’s been hiding his motions for so long that having someone see them makes him feel like he’s being examined under a magnifying glass.

“And did you tell Tella that?”

Scarlett looks down at her feet in shame. “I tried to, but she didn’t believe me. She accused me of protecting you.”

Jacks closes his eyes and sighs in irritation. “Of course she would think that.”

“You have to understand, she’s terrified right now. I don’t mean to be rude but you have to know how you being back here makes her feel, makes all of us feel.”

“Believe me, I know. I didn’t even want to come here, for this exact reason, but Evangeline begged me. She wanted to show everyone that I could be different, and I keep telling her I’m not, but she doesn’t believe me.”

“You are different”, Scarlett reassures him, “I can see it in you. Tella just needs some time to deal with this. She doesn’t understand how you could fall in love with anyone, it's not just Evangeline. She’s scared and she doesn’t understand any of this, and the only way she knows how to deal with it is to try to make you go away. I think deep down she knows that what she's doing is wrong, otherwise she wouldn’t have to keep telling herself that she’s doing Evangeline a favor.”

“Well, I hope she realizes it soon. I can’t stand to see Evangeline so hopeless.”

Scarlett frowns at him. “I do too”, she says quietly. Scarlett backs away from the door, clearly getting ready to leave. “Goodnight, Jacks. I believe in you.”

Jacks turns to close the door, but he whispers over his shoulder at her.

“Well, at least one of you does.” And then he closes the door behind him, letting it shut with a soft click, so as not to wake Evangeline.

Chapter Text

“Dante”, Tella says sweetly, shrouded in the darkness of their room. She looks out the window, peering over the edge, wondering how hard she would have to push him to make Jacks fall out of it. “You know I love you.” She states it as a fact rather than a question. 

“Of course I do, Tella. I love you as well.”

“I know that, and I also know that you wouldn’t possibly betray me the way Scarlett did tonight?” This time it was a question. 

Dante sneers slightly, as if disgusted at the very thought of anyone trying to protect Jacks from a Fate that he certainly deserved. “Of course not, Tella.”

“Just ease my mind, Dante. Tell me that you didn’t miss Jacks on purpose.”

“I didn’t miss Jacks on purpose”, he says. And it’s true, he didn’t miss Jacks at all. 

Tella sighs deeply, her head aching from the stress of the day. Tella didn’t delight in bloodshed, not like some people she knew, and she didn’t particularly like murder, but she had to make an exception with Jacks. Killing Jacks didn’t make her a murderer, she considered. When she’d stabbed the Fallen Star everyone had coined her a savior, the Princess who had the nerve to slay the Fates and put an end to their tyranny. But the tyranny wasn’t over, there was still one more Fate on her list that needed to go. 

Tella didn’t want to take risks with Jacks anymore, she didn’t want to hear him out. She wanted him gone, and she would do it by any means necessary. She couldn’t bear the thought of Evangeline being under his thrall for another second. The concept disgusted her so much that she yearned to march right upstairs and stab him in his sleep. She always thought that killing someone in their sleep was a dishonorable way to murder someone, but Jacks didn’t have any honor. 

“I know what you’re thinking, and you need to stop, Tella”, Dante says from his shadowy corner of the room. “I won’t agree to killing him in their bed, not while Evangeline is still in it. Just think of what that would do to the poor girl.”

“She’d thank me for ending her torture with him.”

“You’d be subjecting her to a life of nightmares. She won’t thank you for that. Imagine waking up one day only to realize that you’re lying in a pool of someone else’s cold blood, and their eyes are empty and they aren’t breathing or moving at all. She’s already traumatized, we don’t need to add to it.”

“Since when are you so soft for a girl that you’ve never met?”

Dante fidgets slightly. “I don’t like seeing her like that. It reminds me too much of you.”

Tella was quiet for a long time after that, thinking and thinking and thinking of ways to free Evangeline without scaring her too much. Obviously watching someone die right in front of you is never a good sight, but Evangeline wasn’t delicate. She’d been roughened up a little since she left for the North. Considering that she was with Jacks, Tella didn’t think that she was unacquainted with death.

“Tomorrow”, she says, “when we leave for the boat. We can hire someone. Just to mislead them somewhere else and then we take Jacks out of the equation.” The boat was another ball, one that would end with fireworks and a loud party with too much alcohol. It was meant to be a slightly more casual celebration in honor of her sister's upcoming nuptials. 

Dante chews on the idea for a second, then nods his head. “I like it. I’ll be there to oversee the situation, you and Scarlett can take off on the boat and leave the rest to me.”

“Do you think you could convince Julian to go with you?”

He nods.

“Then I want him there with you. He can take Evangeline away, and then you can go in for the kill.”

Dante turns to leave. “I’ll get him now and tell him the plan.”

The door shuts behind him, leaving Tella to her own thoughts. Eventually her eyes droop, and her body yearns to sleep. She gives into the temptation, stepping away from the window and flopping onto her bed, letting sleep find her immediately. 

She dreams of revenge.

…

Dante hadn’t been lying when he told Tella that he didn’t miss Jacks on purpose. While he spent the entire night up in the rafters of the ballroom, he had gotten a pretty decent view of everything that had happened. 

His job was easy: wait for the signal. Tella had always planned to shoot Jacks, whether he passed their test or not. Dante had only ever suggested the idea because he assumed that Jacks couldn’t possibly love the girl. 

But the evidence was there, it was plausible and real and undeniable. He had danced to True Love’s Waltz. He had smiled and gazed upon Evangeline the entire time, and when the song was over he had looked at her like she was the only reason he had to still be living. 

The boy loved her, whether he was the worst person any of them had ever met or not. Dante disagreed with killing him based purely on blind hatred, that wasn’t his style. He hated Jacks, make no mistake, and he loved Tella infinitely, and in the end he would do whatever it took to make sure she could sleep peacefully at night. But he wouldn’t kill without cause. When he found a good reason to kill him, he would, but Jacks wouldn’t die without evidence that he deserved to. At least not at Dante's hands. 

So no, Dante hadn’t missed Jacks on purpose, because he didn’t miss.

He just didn’t aim to kill.

Chapter Text

Evangeline was not going to give up, she’d decided so at about three a.m. this morning when she felt Jacks roll out of their bed, pad over to the door, and have a whispered conversation

with Scarlett.

“I need you to know that I believe you.”

Those nine words alone had given Evangeline the courage to hope for the best for Jacks. The Empress believed him, believed in their love for each other, and Evangeline had to believe that that meant something. If Scarlett could believe them, then surely Tella wouldn’t be far behind. 

Last night had only marked the first night of the wedding celebrations, there were six days left until the wedding, which meant that Evangeline had six days to convince Tella that Jacks was different from who he had been when she knew him. 

Evangeline didn’t give up, not when things got hard, not when it seemed Fate was fighting her, and definitely not when someone got in the way. If she had been raised to give up too quickly by her mother and father, then she never would have had her life with Jacks, and she carried that reminder with her everyday when she woke up and found her husband curled around her in their bed, a ring on her finger, and living in a fairytale home. 

“Remember, Evangeline: Hope is everywhere. You don’t even need to look for it, you just have to know it’s there, and you will have it.”

The memory of her mother’s voice brought warmth to her chest. Liana Fox had a way with words that Evangeline didn’t think came naturally for most people. When she told Evangeline stories of her home, of the Magnificent North, the way she spoke had been enough to convince Evangeline that magic was real and palpable and attainable, if only you wanted it bad enough to fight for it.

She never knew of anyone else who reminded her of her parents until she had seen what Jacks was like when he was in love. He was magic personified, Evangeline was sure of it. Otherwise, how could he look so adorable when his hair was rumpled from sleep, his pillowy lips parted, and his cheeks and forehead covered in little lines from the sheets? The sun was shining through the window, turning his hair into spun gold. His arm was slung over her waist, and was holding her tight as if someone was going to take her in her sleep. 

Part of her wondered if he was worried about that being true. 

She kisses the tip of his nose, and his eyes flutter open slowly, waking from his apparently very nice sleep, because he pouts when he realizes that it is morning already. Evangeline giggles at his sleepy frown, and he squeezes his eyes shut like he wanted nothing more than to make the sun go away. Evangeline ran her fingers through his hair. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” She kissed his cheek, and he pushed his face further into the pillow. “It’s time to get up.”

“No.”

“Unfortunately, it is. C’mon silly.”

He cracks one eye open and scowls, probably at being called silly. He usually did that when she called him that, but she did it anyway because his precious face made her smile every time. “Get up, Lazy. We have a big day ahead of us.” Evangeline rolls out of the bed and walks over to the bathroom, grabbing her silky dressing gown from the hanger on the door, throwing it over her shoulders. At some point last night she must have either undressed herself or Jacks did it for her, because the last thing she remembers before falling asleep is feeling the scratch of the embroidery on the sleeves of her ballgown. While tying the sash around her waist, she feels Jacks’s hands come around her body, wrapping around her shoulders and then trailing down to hug her around her waist. He presses a kiss to the space where her shoulder meets the base of her neck, and she throws her head backward to give him better access. 

She realizes her mistake as soon as she feels his deft fingers reach for the knot at her waist, carefully undoing it with feather light touches. 

“Uh uh. No distracting me like that.” She swats his hands away from her sash and steps away from his touch, although her body is already screaming at her to just give in and skip the boat party tonight. 

He gives her a grin that is all mischief laced with a little bit of bashfulness, and the effect is catastrophic on her heartstrings. “Don’t look at me like that. Go get dressed and ready so that we can leave and actually be on time today. Now go. Shoo.”

  He laughs at her while she makes a flapping motion with her hands to usher him into the bathroom. A few minutes later, he pokes his head out the doorway to talk to Evangeline while she uses hot tongs to curl her hair into ringlets. “Do you think today would be a good day to see your parents? We can leave early so that we can get flowers and sit with them for a moment, if you’d like. If not we can do it some other day, we have all week after all.”

Evangeline delicately removes the tongs from her hair, careful not to burn the soft skin of her neck, and then she places them down on the vanity and walks over to Jacks, where she rises on the tips of her toes to drop a kiss on his soft lips. She smiles against them.

“I’d like that very much, Jacks. Thank you.”

He wraps his arms around her waist to hold her there against him, not kissing her, not trailing his hands anywhere except the small of her back, just holding her, as if having her touch him was a more valuable endeavor than breathing. 

Eventually, she gently untangles herself from his hold, and gently places a kiss on his jaw while she whispers in his ear. “Let’s go, I want the day to be just you and me this time.”

In less than 30 minutes, Evangeline and Jacks have managed to get ready and are exiting the palace grounds, hand in hand. She’s dressed in one of her favorite casual dresses, a creamy white and pink gown that reaches to her ankle, with a pink sash that ties into a bow in the back. 

Jacks is dressed handsome as ever, and even more roguish. He forwent a doublet today, opting for a simple cream colored button up shirt, that he chose to only button about halfway. His breeches are well tailored to his long legs, but it's his boots that catch Evangeline’s attention. They’re his most expensive pair, and they’re shined to perfection, contradicting his usual scuffed and worn footwear. She must have been projecting her thoughts a little too loudly, because Jacks looks over and says bitterly, “I very much dislike dressing like a proper gentleman if I can avoid it, but I detest the idea of your parents thinking I can’t afford a decent pair of shoes.”

His words make Evangeline giggle, even though she feels a wave of crushing sadness when she responds to him. “I don’t think they can think much of you or anyone at all these days, considering that they're both in a box in the ground.” She gazes at her feet, not trusting herself to look up and face the world again without crying.

Jacks squeezes her hand tightly, and lifts her chin with a careful finger. “In the North, we don’t believe that putting someone’s body to rest means that they’ve put their soul to rest as well. It's a common belief that the souls of your loved ones follow you for as long as they wish after they’ve died.”

The thought takes some of the unbearable weight of her sadness off of her chest. “And what do you think? Do you really believe that my parents have been following me around since they died?”

“I think that any parent worth a damn would be lucky to consider you their daughter, so yes, I think they are here with you.”

Evangeline feels her heart beat louder and faster at his words. The idea that her parents have been on every adventure with her makes her feel light with contentment. She had always wanted to go to the North with her mother, but she had died before they could have that journey with each other. Believing that she had been there the whole time, watching her fight and fall in love, makes pride rush through her blood. 

She glances over at him, smiling teasingly. “Is that a scuff on the toe of your boot?”

“What? Where?”, he says, alarmed. He looks down at both of his feet and starts carefully inspecting them, mumbling under his breath too low for Evangeline to hear, but she did catch him saying something about “making that cobbler pay”.

She laughs gleefully and grabs him by his shoulder to bring him back to the present. He frowns when he realizes that she played him.

“You’re positively evil, Little Fox”, he says, pouting.

“Maybe, but you love me anyway.”

He smiles and throws his arm over her shoulders, pulling her into his side. “That I do, Little Fox.”

And for that single minute, both Jacks and Evangeline forgot that they were in danger, and everything was perfect. 

…

Tella watched Jacks lead Evangeline out of the palace, and she tightened her grip on the windowsill until her knuckles turned white. Surely he couldn’t be up to anything good, she thought.

“Dante”, she says mildly, as if there wasn’t a girl in imminent danger, “perhaps we don’t have to wait until tonight at the boat party to make our move.”

Chapter Text

The Church bell in front of the cemetery rang loudly, and though it was only ten in the morning, Evangeline would have sworn that she heard the bell toll eleven times. 

She wondered if this could be another warning, like the bell in the shop when Luc walked in. Or maybe it was just trying to be helpful, like the bell that led her to Jacks’s apartment after that fated night in the crypt.  

Either way, she could barely find it in herself to care about a bell ringing when she was standing in front of her parent’s graves, holding a bouquet of flowers and trying her very best to not cry. 

“Hello, Mother. Hello, Father. I missed you guys while I was gone. Sorry it took me so long to visit you, but there's someone I’d like you to meet.”

Without any prompting, Jacks stepped forward and knelt down, gently taking the bouquet of flowers, a beautiful mix of lily of the valleys and morning glories. He took the bouquet and placed it in front of their headstones, and then he sat down on the Earth and began to talk to them as if this was as normal as sitting down at the dinner table to meet her parents. 

“Hello Mr. and Mrs. Fox. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the people who raised my wife.”

Evangeline sniffled and wiped away the tears that were already running down her cheeks, and she joined Jacks on the ground, sitting down on her dress, knowing it would likely leave stains but now caring in the least. The only thing she wanted now was to be as close to them as she could possibly be, and it killed her at the thought that this was it. Jacks reached over and tucked her into his side, letting her head drop in the crook of his shoulder. He stroked the side of her body, spanning from the top of her ribcage down to her hip, trying to ease her full body shuddering from her sobs. 

She missed her parents, more than she liked to admit on most days. Thinking about missing them made her feel like they were gone, and they weren’t gone, they would be by her side for the rest of her life, but just saying it out loud that she missed them felt to her like admitting that they were dead, and they weren’t coming back for her anytime soon. She would never hear her mother tell her the story of how she and her husband had fallen in love. She would never wake up early to read fairytales with her mother. She would never wake up before the sun to help her father open up the Curiosity Shop. She would never eat sweet desserts with her parents ever again, she would never cry in their arms over the mean kids who bullied her for her hair. She would never get to see them in person, hear her father's gentle voice, her mother’s soft hands while they stroked her pink hair away from her face. 

They were gone, and it had been too long since Evangeline had faced that reality. She sobbed for a long time, sitting on the mossy ground in front of her parents graves, leaning heavily on Jacks as if he was the only thing keeping her from hitting the ground and staying there until moss and dandelions grew over her; until she became part of the Earth, just like her parents. It felt like it was hours before she could finally look up from the crook of Jack’s shoulder and face her parent’s graves. Jacks kissed the tears away from her cheeks gently, soothing her with each graze of his cool lips. Eventually, the tears ceased and that shaking stopped, and she could finally talk to her parents.

And she told them everything. 

Every beautiful second that she had lived with Jacks, every terrible hour that she endured without him. Her pain, her joy, her happiness, her despair, they would know all of it by the time she was done speaking with them. She never stopped for a breath between her sentences, she didn’t need to. She knew her story like a poem engraved over her heart, it was a part of her that couldn’t be taken away, no matter how hard someone tried to. And they had tried. She told them that too.

The dead are especially great listeners, as they never interrupt, they never look away from you while you pour your heart and soul out for them, their only responses coming in the form of the sound of birds chirping and wind chimes tinkling and the wind whistling over the rustling grass. 

Jacks interjected every now and then, making sure that her parents knew of their daughter’s bravery, her courage, her tenacity. It made Evangeline warm to know that even in their eternal rest, there was someone there to remind them that she was still doing okay. 

Eventually, the tolling of the bell signaled the end of their time together, and Evangeline begrudgingly rose from the grass, taking Jacks’s hand and squeezing tightly. He squeezed hers back in reassurance. 

Evangeline had always hated goodbyes, and this one was no exception, though it was different. 

She would never see them again, not in the flesh, but it wasn’t like the last time she’d ever seen them like that. That day had been treacherous, and traumatic, and completely unbearable, like someone was cutting her soul away from her body, paper cut by paper cut, and that day had long passed. This was a gentler goodbye, not quite a forever farewell, but not a see you later either. Jacks looked over knowingly.

“In the North, we call it the Aftervale.”

She quite liked that name, it sounded peaceful and sorrowful and full of love. It was the kind of name that Liana Fox would have appreciated.

Evangeline was content, and she supposed that was the most she could hope for at this moment. She had Jacks, and that wasn’t a replacement for her parent’s, but he was the closest thing she had to a real family anymore, and she knew it was the same for him. That thought was enough for her to push past the brick wall that was her despair over losing her parents.

“Goodbye, Mother. Goodbye, Father. I love you, and I hope you are at peace.”

As if answering her, the wind chose that moment to pick up into a gentle breeze, picking up Evangeline’s hair off of her shoulders, rustling the now dirty fabric of her gown. She smiled sadly, feeling one last tear fall over her cheek before she wiped it away from her cheek. She looked up to Jacks, trying to look brave in the face of her own pain, and she saw in his face that she was doing a half decent job, because he only ever looked at her the way he was now when he was completely and utterly amazed by her. 

“You amaze me, Little Fox”, he said, proving her right. The idea made her giggle just a little bit, and she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her head to his chest, feeling comfort in the steady thump of his heart beat. He stroked the length of her spine, and she melted under his hands. 

“I think I’m ready to go now”, she whispered into his sternum.

“Are you sure? I’ll stay here with you as long as you wish, or if you want to be here alone I can leave you here and come back if you’d like some privacy.”

She smiled at how generous and understanding he was being. She knew that if she voiced that sentiment though, she would receive a disgusted sneer from Jacks, because she knew that he believed he was merely doing the bare minimum, and she supposed he was right, but it still felt good to be noticed and respected.

“I cannot believe that you’ve been with such horrible suitors before, Little Fox. You clearly have abhorrent taste”, he’s told her before. 

“Yes, I’m sure, Jacks. I’ve said all I need to say to both of them, and right now the only thing I want is to leave here and make even more memories with you, so that I can come back here and share those with them.” She rose on her toes and kissed him, and he kissed her back, but only for a second before tearing his lips from hers. 

“As much as I want to kiss you right now, I think it may be a bit disrespectful to do it in front of your parents. I’ve only just met them, you know.”

Evangeline laughed brightly, feeling the comfort and warmth of his joking words chase away the sour thoughts of death and farewells.

“Come on. We have to get back to the palace. There’s still a party tonight that our attendance had been requested for.”

Jacks groaned miserably and loudly, not trying to hide his extreme distaste for these parties. To be fair, Evangeline didn’t love the idea of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of people she had never met before after an assassination attempt, but sacrifices had to be made, and it was in her positive disposition to believe that the night before had been a fluke, and nothing more.

They walked hand in hand together, leaving the cemetery behind. Evangeline could already feel her sadness slowly leaving itself behind as they walked further and further away. Jacks lead her down pathway after pathway, speaking gently to each other, whispering into each other’s ears as if they were little children, entrusting the other with their most precious secrets. In reality, Jacks was merely complaining about the sheer amount of people wandering the streets at this time, though Evangeline thought it was quite ridiculous for him to be irritable at the fact that people were outside on a warm, sunny, midday. She giggled quietly under her breath, but if the fleeting scowl etched on his face told her anything, it was that he most definitely heard her laughing at him. 

Suddenly, it started to seem that Jack’s wish would be granted, for people began to disperse, the crowds becoming thinner with each step they took, until eventually it was just the two of them. 

It hardly made any sense to Evangeline. Shops were still open, the sun was still out, not a cloud in sight, so why were people leaving already? She felt Jacks stiffen.

“We need to leave, now.”

“What? What’s happening? Jacks?”

“I’m not sure, but something is at play here, and whatever it is I don’t trust it.”

“Jacks, you’re scaring me.”

“Good”, she heard an unfamiliar voice say, “you should be scared.”

Evangeline and Jacks whipped around so quickly, she thought she might fall over from sheer panic and fear. Standing at the end of an alley, a man was standing in the shadows, looking entirely too threatening for her own comfort. He blood ran cold when she saw the large knife in his hand. 

Jacks gripped Evangeline’s wrist, the one with the magical cuff on it, and tried to run away, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he realized that there were at least five more men surrounding them. 

“Evangeline, listen to me and listen to me carefully”, Jacks said, low and close to her ear. “When I say go, you run. Get away from here, I can handle this.”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

“Evangeline, I don’t care what you think is best right now. I don’t want you here. When I say so, you run as fast as you can until you make it back to the palace. Understand?”

The men were slowly closing in on them, and Evangeline’s heart felt like it was going to beat its way out of her chest. Still, she was unwavering.

“I am not leaving you here, Jacks.”

“Evangeline, just list-”

Jacks was cut off when one of the men finally pounced, running full speed at Jacks, holding an absolutely wicked looking dagger. Luckily, Jacks was ready for an attack, and his Fated nature assisted in delivering an easy death blow to the man. Jacks seemed to have drawn his dagger from thin air, but Evangeline knew it was really years and years of training and fighting coming to aid him. Viscous red blood dripped from the dead man’s wound, and Evangeline willed herself to not cry. She had seen death before, had delivered it herself once, but it never got easier for her to watch it happen in front of her.

“Evangeline, run!”

She would do no such thing, she decided. He’d put this damn cuff on her for a reason, and she was determined to make use of it now. She pulled her own dagger from her skirts, and held it as if she planned to attack, but Evangeline was nowhere near skilled enough to wound an assailant with her small blade, so she relied on the magic to protect her. Immediately, three of the men hit the ground, writhing and screaming in pain. There were two left, but quickly became one as Jacks twisted the neck of one that was running at Evangeline from behind. The final attacker seemed smart enough to look scared for his life, but clearly he was as much of a fool as the others because he still charged Jacks. With an easy flick of his knife he embedded the blade in the man’s neck, and Evangeline couldn’t help but look away at the gruesome sight. Jacks pulled her into his chest, and whispered into the top of her hair. “We can’t linger here, there could be more around.”

Evangeline didn’t try to fight him, the only thing she wanted now was to get back into bed with Jacks and never leave it again. They started to leave the horrible crime scene, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure standing, shrouded in shadows. 

A man wearing a top hat and holding a playing card, was standing at the end of the street, but when Evangeline blinked he was gone. 

She didn’t look back again as Jacks hurried her back to the palace.

Chapter Text

As much as Scarlett wanted to forget the terrible thing that Tella had done yesterday, she couldn’t ease her mind or assuage her guilt. She was the ruler of this land, and she couldn’t even keep her sister in line. She tried to push the thought away, but the doubt was already creeping in, and she feared it had been creeping in for a while. At least a year, if she could remember the first self destructive thought. It had been after she’d sent Evangeline to the North.

“I can’t believe I just sent an innocent girl to a different continent to be bait. How can I call myself a fair ruler when I'm already dooming a girl to a potential lifetime of misery?”

Scarlett did her best to push past those thoughts, and she now realized that she had been misguided in her attempt to save Tella by sending Evangeline away to attract Jacks back to the South, but Scarlett had resigned herself to knowing that it was morally wrong and reprehensible.

You couldn’t tie revenge up in a pretty bow and call it justice. At least Scarlett didn’t think so, but clearly Tella had a different viewpoint. She supposed that it was easier to make the mistake of confusing the two when you were so sure that your actions were justified. 

But Tella could justify her crimes - because what she was doing was definitely illegal, and Scarlett knew that because she had to study the laws like they were her wedding vows - all she wanted, but it didn’t make it right and it definitely didn’t make her the hero. That was the difference between Jacks and Tella, Scarlett thought: Jacks could do horrible things and he could admit out loud that he wasn’t under any impression that what he did was honorable or noble or good. Jacks was the villain, and he had the decency to make sure that everyone knew it. With Tella… the lines felt like that may have bent a little past the boundary. Scarlett wondered if Tella ever thought about anyone outside of herself, and that was a terrible thing to think about one’s own sister, Scarlett thought, but she couldn’t banish the thought from her mind. And as she thought about it more and more, it became less and less of a blurry concept, a faded photograph in her mind, and a more clear picture as memories and instances came to mind. Historically, Scarlett had always had to be the sensible one, and Scarlett was fine with that because she didn’t want Tella to grow up already being an adult at age twelve like Scarlett had. But it crossed her mind that maybe her upbringing was the reason that Tella was the way she was. 

Impulsive, reckless, boisterous, and… immature. 

Perhaps Scarlett wouldn’t have become so much of a worrier if it weren’t for Tella, but she didn’t think that idea had ever graced Tella’s mind. Everyone in her life, theirs had always revolved almost entirely around her. 

Scarlett’s entire life had been about protecting Tella.

Dante’s life revolved around the simple fact of whether or not Tella was breathing.

Even Jacks, in his own twisted way, had centered his entire life around Tella.

Tella never had to think about anyone’s pain besides her own, and it was showing now more than ever, especially now, when Scarlett watched Jacks and Evangeline run to the front of the palace hand in hand, their clothes covered in grass stains and smudges of dirt. And was that… blood spattered on her dress?

Scarlett didn’t think twice before she ran to them, clutching her skirt in her hand, hitching it up and over her knees so that she could sprint to the couple. She met them at the door, and Jacks unceremoniously pushed Scarlett aside to get Evangeline inside, though when she saw the tears streaming down Evangeline’s reddened cheeks she could hardly care about that.

“What happened? Are you both okay?” Scarlett asked, feeling breathless and scared for them.

“We- we were attacked while we were on the way back to the palace”, Evangeline said between gasps of air. 

“Where were you? Perhaps we can send guards out to patrol the area.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary”, Jacks said grimly, and Scarlett caught his meaning when she saw the faint spray of blood on his otherwise crisp white shirt.

“We were coming back from the cemetery. We were visiting my parents” Evangeline said miserably, before bursting into wet gasping sobs. The sound broke Scarlett’s heart.

“Well, did you see anyone else there? Maybe I can track them down and question them, and find out who the attackers were.”

“I didn’t see anyone else there”, Jacks said, but Evangeline cut him off.

“I did. There was another man there, he was tall and he looked like he was wearing a top hat and holding what looked like a playing card in his hand, but I didn’t see anything else about him. 

That description had been enough for both Scarlett and Jacks. 

Dante. 

Or as Jacks knew him, Legend. The man who took Tella from him. 

He looked absolutely murderous at Scarlett, and the only thing she could do was desperately mouth to him that she didn’t know anything about this while Evangeline's face was pressed firmly in Jacks’s chest, shoulders shaking with sobs that Scarlett didn’t know how to comfort.

She didn’t want the girl to have more evidence of her own sister’s cruelty, but it was becoming harder and harder for her to defend her actions to Jacks.

This one was absolutely inexcusable.

“I think we’ll stay in the palace tonight, and skip the boat party”, Jacks said curtly.

Scarlett nodded rapidly. “Of course. Whatever you need I’ll make sure it is supplied for you. As for the man Evangeline saw, I will definitely ensure that there are consequences in place for him.”

This time, Scarlett was the one who looked absolutely lethal.

Jacks and Evangeline walked away, leaving to go to their room. Scarlett felt her hands curl into fist so tight she thought her fingernails would break the skin of her palm. She didn’t relax them even a little bit, not until she was beating on the door to Tella’s room.

“What? What? You scared me, Scar. I thought it was Jacks finally coming for me.” She laughed, as though she’d made yet another witty joke. Scarlett wanted to scream.

She settled for shoving her sister out of the way and stomping angrily into the room. She whirled on her sister just as she was shutting the door. She waited for it to click closed before she started laying into her. 

“Scarlett, what is this? I don’t-”

“You have gone too far this time, Tella. I won’t tell you again to leave Jacks and Evangeline alone. I’m not going to sit back and let you torture them to your heart's content until you feel that Jacks has received the punishment that you think he deserves.”

“He doesn’t deserve punishment. He deserves death.”

“You’re a bigger fool than I ever took you for if you really think that you get to make that decision. You’re a selfish girl.”

“I am not selfish, Scarlett!” Tella stamped her foot in a way that made her look childish, and Scarlett had to fight the urge to roll her eyes at her sister. “How can you call me selfish when you know that I’m just trying to save Evangeline from him. I saw him leading her away from the palace today, what if he was leading her into danger?”

“He was taking her to visit her dead parents, Tella! You want to know so badly what he was doing to her? He was taking her out so that she could speak to her parents at their resting places. And you made the executive decision to send out a group of men, as well as your lover , so that they could kill Jacks.”

Tella’s eyes widened slightly, but it only made Scarlett angrier when she couldn’t figure out for the life of her if she was surprised because she knew she was wrong, or because Scarlett was so furious with her. 

Tella scoffed, and crossed her arms over her chest, looking to the side in a flippant manner. “Well, it’s not as if I put Dante or Julian in any real danger. I just told them to take Evangeline away from the situation, and then they could kill Jacks without her being there.”

Suddenly Scarlett couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears, and a faint ringing noise in the back of her mind. “Did you just say that you sent my fiance there as well?” she whispered.

Tella must have realized her mistake as soon as she heard the lethal tone in her sister’s voice. “I- well he’s okay isn’t he. Nothing happened to either of them, so it turned out fine. It’s not like anyone died.”

“Are you that dense, Tella? You cornered Jacks with dangerous looking men in an alley with the only thing he truly loves, and you really think that he didn’t murder every last one of them to keep Evangeline safe?”

Tella straightened, and for the first time in this entire interaction, she looked genuinely remorseful. “I didn’t think- I didn’t know that he would kill anyone for her.”

“Are you kidding me? Stop lying to yourself, Tella. You can’t bend the truth on this one, it is what it is. He loves Evangeline, more than he loves life itself. It’s time to put this petty revenge mission to rest.”

Scarlett wanted to believe that she was doing this entirely for Evangeline, and she was doing almost all of it for her, but she suspected that a small part of it was also for her. She didn’t want to say it outloud, but Tella was ruining her wedding party. She hadn’t gotten to properly speak to Julian since they arrived, and all day long, the only thing she did was worry about Evangeline and Jacks, and if they were safe or not, and if it was her own sister’s fault.

“You have to stop this. I won’t allow you to do anymore of this- this vengeful thinking. This isn’t heroism, it’s blind hatred.”

Tella’s face turned the same color as Scarlett’s namesake. Her fists clenched until her knuckles turned a ghostly shade of bone white. “Fine. I won’t try to help Evangeline anymore.”

It wasn’t quite the acquiescence that Scarlett was hoping for, but she supposed it would do.

“I mean it, Tella. Go against your word, and I won't forgive you. Not like I have all our lives.” She swept past Tella, opening the door and slamming it shut behind her. She wanted to scream and cry and run to her fiance and lay down with him and fall asleep until she wasn’t feeling like this anymore, but she could scarcely find him anywhere these days, and she was too tired and worn down to go looking for him. She settled for walking to Evangeline’s bedroom, wanting to check on the couple, but she stopped short at the door when she heard sobbing coming from the other side. 

The door was cracked ever so slightly, with just enough space between the wall and the edge of the door to where Scarlett could see their large bed.

Jacks was sitting down, comforting a crying Evangeline. She shook like a leaf in his arms, sobbing and gasping like she was going to die. 

“I’m so sorry”, she wailed into his chest. “If we never left the palace, none of this would have happened.”

“Shh, it’s not your fault. Whoever attacked us had it coming, they should have known better than to come for you.”

Evangeline sniffled, and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “I’m so tired, Jacks. And its only been two days.”

“I know, Little Fox. I know. It’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t really believe that”, she accused.

“Maybe I didn’t before, but I can believe it for you if you can’t.”

He kissed the top of her head, and Scarlett felt that this was an extreme intrusion of their privacy. She was sure that Jacks heard her beating heart from the other side of the door, and she felt that it meant something if he was letting her stay, maybe a measure of trust could be bridged between them. 

She carefully tiptoed away from the door, and she began to make her way back to her room. She could hardly feel surprised when she saw that Julian wasn’t there. 

She hoped that eventually he would come to his senses and finally stop with this bitter war with Jacks. It was one-sided anyway, since it seemed that Jacks only had an interest in making sure that Evangeline had a decent time here. 

She had hope that her sister would listen to her, Tella wasn’t obtuse after all. Scarlett had enough sense to know that this behavior from her sister was a response to extreme stress and trauma, but Scarlett was tired of making excuses for her abhorrent behavior. 

Scarlett just wanted to feel like a girl who was going to be married in less than a week, but it was becoming hard to feel anything except dread for the upcoming days ahead of them.

She wanted her fiance by her side, and it seemed that she would not have that unless Tella decided to leave Jacks and Evangeline alone until they left. 

She prayed, but at the end of the day, Scarlett knew her sister better than anyone else, and Tella was nothing if not a stubborn ass. 

…

Tella wasn’t done. Not even close. 

She hadn’t lied when she told Scarlett that she wouldn’t try to help Evangeline anymore.

This time around, she would do everything for herself.

Chapter Text

After the events of the day before, it was no surprise to Jacks that Evangeline had become ill. The stress of the days earlier would have been enough to take even the strongest of people out of commission, and Evangeline was the strongest person Jacks knew.

It filled him to the brim with fury that his beautiful wife, this brave, strong, and talented girl who he loved more than himself had truly made herself beside with worry over the vicious actions of someone else. It didn’t surprise, nor bother Jacks that Tella had been doing her very best to murder Jacks, but it did surprise him that she was so willing to let Evangeline get caught in the crossfire of her schemes. 

Yesterday had crossed a line. Tella made a mistake by sending her lover to kill Jacks, and an even worse mistake to think that she could send an entire group of armed men to potentially hurt or subdue Evangeline without him murdering every last one of them. Jacks didn’t quite delight in the act of murder or bloodshed, not since he’d healed from his past with Evangeline’s help, but he did enjoy the swift delivery of justice. To see the blood of men who had tried to harm Evangeline run cold and pool in the cobblestones of the alleyway had been a brief moment of euphoria for him, though saying that out loud made him feel guilty. He didn’t think Evangeline would blame him for his feelings, she never had before, but he definitely didn’t think she would approve. 

Evangeline didn’t like bloodshed of any kind, even Apollo’s death had made her squeamish and uncomfortable. So he had never been so grateful as he was yesterday when he remembered why he had placed the cuff on her in the first place. The magic had defended her when he knew she wouldn’t have been able to. Magic could be both a blessing and a curse, especially ancient Northern magic, but for now, Jacks would call it a blessing. 

It had seemed though, that the easy magic of the Hollow had made both of them unused to having to live through even the easiest of illnesses and symptoms. Her fever that she had currently was making her absolutely miserable, and without the magic of the Hollow to assist in a speedy recovery, it seemed that it was Jacks’s responsibility to do so. 

Not that he minded. He always felt that the opportunity to help Evangeline and take care of her presented itself too little these days, which was a good thing, he knew, but he couldn’t deny that he missed getting to feel like her hero when he did the simplest of tasks, such as bringing up breakfast for her just before she rose from bed, far earlier than any sane person should, so that could eat breakfast in bed. She told him once in passing conversation that her parents used to do it for her, and it always made her feel like the most special and most loved girl in the universe, and Jacks never forgot that. 

“Jacks”, Evangeline moaned miserably. She was shaking like a leaf, but burning alive to the touch, sweating through her nightgown and soaking the sheets beneath her. “What time is it? I feel like I’ve been sleeping all day.”

She hadn’t been, or at least Jacks wouldn’t have called it that, but he was sure that she would disagree. “It’s barely past eight in the morning, Little Fox.”

She moaned again and pulled the covers over her head, shielding her face from the morning light that was seeping through the window beside their bed. 

“Would you like me to bring you something to eat? It may make you feel a little better.”

Evangeline sniffled and coughed, making Jacks’s worry for her increase. She hadn’t been this ill in quite a while. Common colds and minor illnesses became a rare occurrence at the Hollow, and this one seemed to be making up for lost time.

“Yes please, if you don’t mind. I think I’d like something light.”

Jacks tenderly brushed the sweaty tendrils of hair sticking to her forehead back and kissed her forehead, she made a soft noise in the back of her throat at the cool feeling of his soft lips against her burning skin. “Of course I don’t mind, Little Fox.”

He walked over to the open window, drawing the small curtain closed so that the sun's rays could no longer bother her in her sleep. He left the quiet of their room and prepared himself for a difficult conversation with the royal family downstairs. 

He already knew what he wanted to say to them, to maybe help Evangeline feel better being here. He didn’t want his past to be the thing that hurt Evangeline while they were here. He’d done terrible things, and she knew that and accepted it, but he wasn’t sure if she could forgive it completely, and it haunted him at night to think of her one day deciding that she couldn’t forget the things he’d done.

He stopped in front of the doors to the sitting room where he knew Scarlett and Tella dined.

He knocked once, just as a warning so that Tella didn’t immediately start throwing knives at him, though he suspected that it would take much more than a warning of his presence to keep Tella from trying to kill him.

He could hardly blame her.

He didn’t think he could admit out loud to her that he regretted the things he’d done, but he regretted that they were affecting Evangeline now. So stepped past the threshold, readying his very best manners and manipulative skills to aid him in this conversation. If there was anything he was good at, it was making the conversation go the way he needed it to. 

“Good Morning”, he said primly when he opened the door.

Scarlett looked like she was in mild shock at his use of manners, but Tella surprised him.

She was a picture of calm, unbothered by his presence, but her heartbeat betrayed her. It was pounding like a drum, beating itself against her ribcage. Either from fury or fear he couldn’t say.

“Where is Evangeline?” she asked.

“I’m afraid she’s not feeling very well this morning. We’ll have to sit out of any festivities planned, I’m sorry. I know she is as well.

“Oh don’t be sorry” Scarlett said sympathetically. “I hope she begins to feel better. Would you like me to send up some tea for her? If you feel that she would fare better back in the North I understand completely.”

She was offering an out for them, Jacks realized. She was handing him permission to pack their bags and leave with no hard feelings left behind. Jacks knew that Evangeline would feel guilty if they left so soon, but this was the perfect opportunity for him to escape Tella’s madness and have Evangeline not feel bad about leaving. He still didn’t want to tell her that Tella had planned the attack on them yesterday, mostly because he was a coward, and he didn’t want to see her lose her faith in her plan to make them see that he was a changed man. 

Jacks didn’t take the out, despite how much he wanted to.

He instead nodded. “That would be very kind of you, thank you. If you don’t mind, I’d also like to take some food for her, she hasn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

He didn’t mention that she couldn’t keep food down for more than five minutes after the attack that Tella had planned for them. He would have to forgive that slight for Evangeline.

“Of course, there are some honey and butter biscuits on the table if she wants them.” Scarlett outstretched her arms to hand him a porcelain plate full of the biscuits. They were buttery and flaky to perfection, but he knew that Evangeline would taste the difference from these ones and the Hollow’s biscuits. The magic of the North had a way of tainting even the smallest of ordinary experiences.

Jacks took the plate from her graciously, bending his head in thanks.

He turned to leave them, but just before he made it to the door, he turned back to face the sisters.

“I don’t ask that you forgive me, I can hardly forgive myself most days, but I ask that you take your anger out on me, and me alone. Evangeline has done nothing to deserve this except love me, and she does love me, as I love her. 

“She deserves more respect than I do, and I ask that you give it to her, because she has been more than kind to the both of you, and only one of you has returned that kindness in full.”

Tella scowled, but for the first time since he’d come here, she looked slightly remorseful.

“I can swear to you that I never would have come here if it weren’t for her begging me to come with her, and I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t think she would suffer if she left. I made a promise to her not so long ago, and I told her that I would stay wherever she was as long as she wanted me there, and intend to keep that promise. So as much as you may hate it, I will stay, and for that I am sorry. And I don’t mean this in an offensive manner, but Tella, I truly have not thought about you in any way other than mild annoyance since I saw Evangeline at Nocte Neverending. I don’t love you, and I never did. I wanted you because I thought you were my only chance at having a happily ever after, but I was wrong, and I couldn’t be more grateful that I was.”

Jacks turned once again to leave, pushing the door open and stepping over the threshold, making it out of what to him felt like a lion’s den, and letting the door click shut behind him.

…

Tella wordlessly and silently followed Jacks out the door, needing to see him with his wife . Scarlett said nothing as she followed after him, which she thought was odd but perhaps Scarlett knew what she was feeling on the inside better than Tella herself did. For the first time since he’d arrived with her, she felt a pang of guilt with every step she took.

She still hated him, there was no change in that department, but she didn’t have to hate that he loved Evangeline, or that she loved him.

Evangeline was her friend. Or she thought so. Did Evangeline think she was her friend? Tella didn’t want to hurt her. She just wanted to help her. But Evangeline was too far gone to want her help, or that was what she thought last night. Tella decided that if Evangeline didn’t want to be saved from Jacks, then she would save her own future from him. Ensure he couldn’t hurt her again. But maybe… 

She needed to see it for herself. She needed to see that he loved her. She tried to be silent, but she was aware that even with her efforts to be quiet, Jacks could probably still hear her heartbeat. But if he did, he pretended not to as he carried the plate of food up the stairs and to their room.

The tray of tea was already sitting at the doorstep, and he carefully bent down to pick up the steaming cup.

The door opened with a slight creak, and she barely heard a sound come from inside the bedroom that sounded like a miserable whimper. 

“Jacks?”, she heard Evangeline whisper.

“I’m here, Little Fox.”

Tella crept around the corner, just barely peeking into the bedroom, which was dark except for the few candles that had been lit, casting a warm yellow glow all throughout the room.

Evangeline looked positively pathetic, blankets piled on top of her and pulled all the way up to her chin. Her hair was sweaty and damp, as was her face, if the slight sheen on her skin said anything. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were big and watery. She was shaking so terribly it looked like she was moving the entire four poster bed with her tremors.

“Jacks,” she moaned.

“I’ve got you,” he said softly. He sat on the edge of the bed and cradled her face with his hands, brushing away the tears on her cheeks with his thumbs. He bent over her to kiss her gently on her forehead, and then on each of her reddened cheeks, and then finally on her lips.

When he pulled away Tella could see that she was sobbing.

“Jacks, I want to go home.”

Tella’s heart shattered.

“I know you do, Little Fox”, Jacks said, running his fingers through her hair. “But we can’t.”

“Why not? They hate us, Jacks. They don’t want us here.”

“They don’t hate us, Little Fox. They hate me. And for a good reason. They adore you.”

“None of that matters to me if I can’t even go outside or go to a party without there being a threat to your life.”

“I know. But we can’t leave.”

“Why?” she whined louder this time, distressed and frustrated. Tears ran down her cheeks more freely, her sobs becoming louder and louder by the second.

“Because, I know you, and I know that you don’t give up, ever. If you were to give up on this now, then there truly is no hope for the rest of us, because you are the most resilient, stubborn girl I have ever met. I can’t stand to see you feel so hopeless. You know that hope is everywhere, and if I were a betting man I’d wager that there is still some part of you that wants to stay, that wants to convince them that I’m better now.”

Evangeline didn’t say anything, but she didn’t deny his claim.

“Hope is everywhere, and it’s the strongest magic we have right now.”

Evangeline sniffled. “That’s not true. We have love.”

Jacks chuckled in response. “That’s right, we do. But right I can see that your hope is what’s slipping through your fingers, not your love. I need you to find it again, hold it in your hands and never let it go. I’ve never seen you lose your hope, not once, not when I told you I didn’t want you, not when you were flayed, not when you were cursed, and not when you almost died when you kissed me for the first time. Hope is what saved us, Little Fox. Don’t let this be the thing that lets it slip from your grasp.”

Evangeline was crying again. And Jacks was just holding her through it like he was the only good thing he had in this life, and Tella thought that maybe that could be true.

“Tell me, Little Fox. Say the word and I will take you away from this place immediately. We’ll hop on a boat back to the North, and we can languish in the Hollow and forget all about this. I know that Scarlett wouldn’t blame us if we did. So tell me the truth, and don’t even think  about lying to me when you know I can tell if you do, do you want to leave?”

“No”, Evangeline whispered

“Do you think you can hold onto it, just a little bit longer?” He asks her.

She nods, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “I can.”

“I know you can”, he whispers, and pulls her closer to rest her head on his shoulder. They sit like that for what feels like hours to Tella, and she wanted to trust him. She wanted to trust that he was better, that he was safe.

But she was so damn scared of him. More than she’d ever let herself admit to anyone.

She didn’t know how to cope with this alternate version of Jacks. The soft, loving, tender side of him that he clearly reserved for Evangeline. Nothing about him lined up with her perception of him anymore, and it was hurting her more than it was helping her. 

Her response to the unusual and the uncomfortable was admittedly not a good one: kill it with fire.

Tella hated being scared, and she hated being wrong more than anything. And right now she was both.

She had to force herself to step away from the door, taking care that every footstep was silent. When she made it past the corner she ran into her sister, and as if reading her thoughts, she said, “I tried to tell you, Tella. He loves her. Everything he sees, he sees her in it. When I read his feelings, I’m not even sure I can put it into words, but he is enraptured by her very existence. He was covered in pink, Tella. He was covered in Evangeline, every shade that makes her up, he was drowned in it.”

Tella’s knee-jerk reaction was to protest, to say that of course he was covered in her because he had an obsession with her, like he did with her, but Scarlett continued.

“He wasn’t like that with you, Tella. He isn’t lying; he didn’t love you. That in there”, she points around the corner, “that is love. The most pure, real, authentic love I've ever seen.”

Tella felt tears well up in her eyes. 

She was sorry that she had hurt Evangeline so much. And she really wanted to believe Jacks. She wanted to believe that he was better now. She wanted to believe that he was safe, she wanted to believe that he could be trusted. 

She wanted

She wanted

She wanted

But she just couldn’t.

Tella ran all the way back to her room. Running as if she could leave her guilt behind her. She didn’t want to be angry and scared she wanted to be free. She opened her door and slammed it behind her, panting and leaning against her door.

She wasn’t surprised to see Dante in her room already, and she wasn’t embarrassed either that he had seen her like this. She ran over to him, crushing her face in his chest and trying her damnedest to not cry. 

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, or do you want to wait and tell me later?”

She finally gulped enough air to speak a full sentence without stopping to catch her breath. “I think I’ve been wrong about Jacks and Evangeline this whole time.”

Dante stiffened against her. “What makes you say that?”

“Scarlett said that when she read his emotions, he looked infatuated with her. She said it was the most real, pure love she had ever seen.”

Dante was quiet for a moment before speaking. “But what is your gut telling you?”

She pulled away from him just a bit. She hadn’t expected him to say that, but perhaps she should have. Dante hated Jacks just as much as she did. “What?”

“Do you feel safe around him?”

“Well, no, but I-”

“Do you feel like you can trust him?”

“I, no-”

“Do you think he’s lying to us in any way?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you want to believe him?”

“I- I just don’t want to hurt Evangeline.”

“So it's not Jacks that you’re concerned about, it's Evangeline.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you believe that she is completely safe with him? Do you think that he can be trusted with her life? Do you truly believe that he would pick her over himself if it came down to it? Jacks is the best liar we know, he can twist the trust until it's completely unrecognizable and he could still have people believing him. He is beyond powerful. Making Scarlett see something that isn’t there wouldn’t be a challenge for him, Tella.” 

“What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying that, if you can’t trust Jacks, and we know that we can’t, then the only person that you can trust is yourself, Tella. So trust your instincts, don’t let yourself be swayed by pretty words.”

Tella hadn’t quite thought about it like that. He was right, she couldn’t trust Jacks, and He was also right that Jacks had the power to make people see and feel things that weren’t there. He could surely make Scarlett see love where there was hate, and he could surely make Tella feel like she was wrong to deny what her mind was screaming at her. When he arrived, Scarlett was the first person to call for the guards, and Tella knew that she fully intended to kill him where he was standing, but it seemed that in the next few hours she had already changed her tune. Why did she change her mind so quickly, and why did she already feel so strongly about the two of them. 

“Can you trust him, Tella?” Dante asked again, drawing her out of her own mind.

Yes, yes, yes, just say yes. It doesn’t have to be this hard. Just say yes and leave it at that. She could almost hear her sisters pleading voice in her mind.

“No, I can’t”, and it was the truth, she couldn’t trust Jacks, not after everything she’d seen him do to herself and people she cared about.

“So where do we go from here?”

Tella looked up with renewed resolve. “We eliminate the threat, and we kill him before the wedding. Evangeline stays out of it though. I don’t want her to see him die.”

Dante nodded, “And you’re sure? This is what you truly feel? I don’t want you to do this because you think I want you to, I want you to do this because you want to.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then it’s settled. He dies before the week is over.”

Chapter Text

Dante wasn't trying to sway Tella’s opinion one way or another, but he was scared for her. 

He knew exactly what Jacks was capable of, and he was fairly sure that he knew that Dante was here now after that mistake that was the alleyway attack. 

That moment when both of them had pulled a blade to save one another had been enough to convince Dante that Evangeline loved Jacks, and Jacks loved Evangeline, but that information hadn’t been new to him in the least. He knew that he loved her, but love didn’t make everyone better. It made some people worse. 

But Jacks was too much of a wildcard. He was too big a risk for Dante to take. He was unstable, and impulsive when it came to Evangeline. It was clear that if she was at risk, he would burn everything down to make sure she stayed safe, and Dante knew the feeling well. He didn’t trust Jacks to not act on it though. 

Dante wouldn’t allow him to take Tella from him again.

If ensuring Tella’s safety meant killing the bastard, then he would do it. 

Watching Jacks murder a group of six armed men with ease had awoken a renewed fear in Dante. Dante had once said that he wouldn’t kill Jacks without probable cause, he needed real evidence, but seeing him fight like that reminded him that human life meant next to nothing to Jacks, so he had a change of tune.

If Tella didn’t trust him, if she didn’t feel safe with him here, if she didn’t feel safe with him knowing that he was out there somewhere, then that was enough evidence to kill the motherfucker.

Dante knew he was acting out of fear, and that killing a man without evidence of his crimes made him inherently bad, but he’d done worse before, and a lifetime of peace with Tella was a good enough trade off for him to make a decision. 

Everything would be up to Tella, when she wanted to strike, they would. When she wanted him dead, he would hand her a blade and let her stab him in the heart for the second time.

And he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

Chapter Text

The next few days were blessedly calm, and Evangeline wanted to cry in relief and thank whatever deity was watching over her and Jacks. No more attacks happened, and Tella had seemed to become more tolerant of Jacks’s presence with her, so that was progress.

She was thankful that Jacks had talked her out of wanting to leave and go back to the North. She knew how appealing that must have sounded to him, and the fact that he didn’t admit to it just because he knew that Evangeline would feel defeated if she gave in now made her love him all the more.

Her mother used to tell her that being loved by someone was to be known, and Evangeline understood that more now than ever. Jacks knew everything about Evangeline, and there wasn’t a thing that she didn’t know about him. They knew the shapes of each other’s soul, and the exact material they were made of. Evangeline could feel Jacks’s presence in a crowded room, and he could feel hers. 

Evangeline was certain that there was no better feeling in the world than to have someone understand you so thoroughly. To come home to someone who knew when you were sad, and they knew how to make it feel better. To know the shape of their body and to know the exact pressure with which they hold your hand. To have someone know where your favorite place to be touched was, and to know where their favorite place to touch you was.

Jacks knew Evangeline like he’d dedicated his life to studying her, and he’d done a damn good job of it.

She started thinking about exactly how well Jacks knew her body, how he always ran his hand up the side of her thigh, hitching it over his hip and-

“Are you alright, Evangeline? You’re looking slightly flushed,” Scarlett asked her.

Evangeline pressed her palms to her cheeks, trying to cool the burning sensation on her face.

She was supposed to be spending a relaxing day with Scarlett and Tella. There were no parties planned for the day, and Scarlett was complaining about how it felt like she hadn’t had a chance to simply be since the day the festivities began. While she was grateful, she was also tired. They were currently walking through the streets in Valenda, going to various shops and boutiques.

“Yes, I’m fine. I was just feeling a little warm in that shop.”

“Really? I was practically freezing in there”, Tella says. 

“I have to agree with her on this, Little Fox. What were you thinking about that had you so flustered?” She hears Jacks’s teasing voice echoing through her mind, and she feels her face turn red all over again.

“Get out of my head and stop listening to my thoughts. That wasn’t meant for you.”

“How could I possibly ignore your pretty voice when you’re thinking so loud.”

Evangeline fought her blush away, though she could still feel the slight warmth creeping on her cheeks.

Evangeline? Are you sure you’re alright? You look as if you’re having a conversation in your head”, Scarlett says laughing breezily, as if she didn’t just hit the nail on the head with that statement.

Would it be so terrible if they knew the full extent of her and Jacks’s love for each other? Could she tell them about it all without it blowing up in her face? She wanted to, badly. She wanted to tell the sisters about her love story, but really and truly, she always wanted to tell their love story to anyone and anything that would listen to her. There was one day where Jacks had teased her because he found her in the garden telling the baby dragons that resided on the grounds of the Hollow about how she and him fell in love. But how could she not tell them when they were so cute and little? And they were, in fact, paying her a great deal of attention as she told her story.

“I- well, I was having a conversation.”

Scarlett looked confused, but Tella looked momentarily startled before she gained her composure, tentatively asking Evangeline, “I’m sorry? What was that?, with concern etched on her pretty features. The poor girl probably thought Evangeline was out of her mind. 

“It’s something that Jacks and I can do. We’re not really sure why, but we have a link between our minds that allows us to communicate with each other without saying a word. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to think very loudly, and he hears almost everything I think.”

“Oh”, Scarlett said, looking like she was struggling to make sense of everything Evangeline just said. “And how did you discover this link between each other?”

Evangeline looked away, smiling fondly at the memory, which was really quite an odd reaction considering everything that led up to this discovery. 

“Well, it’s a bit of a strange story, but you must realize that Jacks and I didn’t always love each other. When we met for the first time, I hated him.”

“Oh, I definitely understand that”, Tella mumbles under her breath, and Scarlett elbows her in the side.

“When you sent me to the North to attend Nocte Neverending, Jacks was there. I had made a deal with him previously, that was how I turned into stone. I’m afraid that I’m not the Sweetheart Savior that Valenda thought I was. The boy I was in love with at the time had suddenly fallen in love with my step-sister, and they were to be married that day.”

“Yes, I remember. The wedding party turned to stone.”

“Yes, well. I fear that that was my fault. I made a deal with Jacks because I wanted him to stop the wedding, but I knew that Fates were sinister, and upon meeting Jacks I knew that he was no exception, so I told him that he couldn’t kill anyone there. That’s how I got the scar on my wrist.”

She lifted her hand to show the sisters the faint broken heart scar that marked her wrist, the only remaining piece of her deal with Jacks.

“Jacks seems to think that the scar is why we can speak to each other through our minds, so he won’t let me fulfill my end of our bargain. It also allows him to sense where I am at all times, so that’s how he was able to locate me so easily on the very first night of Nocte Neverending. It also helped that I was in every newspaper gossip column imaginable. 

“But that night he found me, and he called in his first favor from me.”

“His first favor?” Tella asked.

“Yes, when I made the bargain, I owed him three kisses from someone else. That night, he used the first one to make me kiss Apollo.”

“But why, though?”, asked Scarlett. “What could he possibly have to gain by having you marry the prince?”

“I’m afraid that’s a much longer and more complicated story to tell, but the short version is that he needed me to become a princess. A very, very long time ago in the North, there was a prophecy foretold that a girl with rose-gold hair would go from peasant to princess, and princess to fugitive.

“So he made me become a princess by manipulating Apollo’s emotions and making him fall in love with me.”

Evangeline felt slightly guilty when she saw Tella visibly flinch at her words, but she continued.

“I married Apollo, became a princess just like the prophecy said, and then on my wedding night I became a fugitive. Someone had slipped the tears of the unwed bride, which is a potent poison that makes the victim cry themselves to death, into the wine in our wedding suite. It was meant for Apollo, but I drank it and kissed Apollo, and he dropped dead on the spot.

“I called for guards, and when they walked into our room, they had deemed that I poisoned my husband, and they tied me to a chair. After drinking the tears of the unwed bride I was crying myself into a stupor, and tears were puddled under my feet like I had just come from a bath, and then Jacks walked in.

“He looked entirely too concerned seeing the tears underneath me, and then I heard him speak into my mind. He told me to be calm, and that I should trust him and stop crying. But at the time, I would have jumped at the chance to throw him from a building, so I fought him. I spoke through my mind to him, and told him to get out of it and stop trying to control me. He told me that I should not have been able to respond to his voice in my head, but it’s been that way ever since that night.”

“But how did you resist his control”, Tella asked quietly, eyes wide with bewilderment.

“The poison stopped him from that, he told me that he tried one more time after that night to control me, and that it didn’t do anything at all. I’m entirely resistant to his magic, it seems. Neither of us understand it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Admittedly though, this story makes a terrible love story,” Evangeline laughs lightly and easily, “but it’s mine.”

Both of the girls seem aghast, mouths wide and eyes even wider. Yes, her love story with Jacks is a little… unorthodox, but she loved Jacks, and he loved her, and that was what mattered to Evangeline. After a long while of silence, Tella finally speaks up. 

“Can I ask you a question, Evangeline.”

“Yes.”

“I know that Apollo turned out to be completely worthless in the end, but what was stopping you from loving him in the first place?”

Evangeline thought about it for a long second, wanting to make her answer very clear and honest to her feelings. 

“Can you really fall in love with someone if it’s not real?” she said. She chose her words carefully, with Tella’s experience with Jacks in mind. “I know that Jacks was terrible to you, to both of you. I don’t ask that you forget those slights, and I know that he doesn’t either. But to answer your question, Tella: I would rather have someone who knows their faults, who can see themselves clearly enough to know that they are everyone else’s villain, than be with someone who is a true villain but postures as a hero. Jacks never took my freedom away from me, Jacks never locked me away in a palace and told me that I didn’t need my memories from the past. Jacks never did anything to me that he thought would hurt me, and if it did hurt me, he was the one there to tend to the wounds. I never got that from Apollo. The only thing Apollo ever gave me are the scars on my back, and the trauma that comes with being loved by him.”

Evangeline holds Tella’s steely gaze for what feels like forever, their own little standoff right in the middle of the crowded streets of the Valenden marketplace. 

Tella is the first to look away. 

They continue walking the path, making their way back to the palace, having mild conversation along the way. Scarlett keeps the tension away, which Evangeline is grateful for.

“So Evangeline, now that we know you were talking to Jacks in your head earlier, what had you blushing so hard?”, she asks coyly.

Evangeline blushes again, and stutters over her words to try and choke out an explanation. 

“I- we weren’t- it was nothing. He was just- I was- he.”

Scarlett and Tella laugh,  blessedly cutting her off. Evangeline is grateful for the diversion, especially considering that she doesn’t want to make Tella uncomfortable by talking too much about the explicit side of married life with Jacks. Part of Evangeline wants to ask Tella where the man that she left Jacks for is, since she hasn’t so much as heard anyone bring him up, but she knows that asking her such a personal question would be inappropriate. 

They finally make it back to the palace, shopping bags so full of dresses and cosmetics and hair accessories that they can barely hold them. 

Taking the first steps inside the palace, Julian meets them in the hallway. “Oh, Crimson! I didn’t know you were going to be back so soon.”

“Julian, we’ve been gone for nearly four hours”, Scarlett replies, laughing as she rises up on her toes to kiss him and wrap her arms around his shoulders.

“Really? It feels like I only saw you an hour ago. Never mind that, I’ve got to go now, I’ll see you tonight.”

“But I thought we were staying in together tonight, since we don’t have a ball planned.”

Tella seems to sense something that Evangeline doesn’t, because the girl whispers in her ear, “We ought to leave these two alone while they talk this one out. Scarlett hates being upset in front of others.”

Evangeline nods to her and they both leave just as their conversation seems to get just a bit louder. “With the stress of the wedding on both of them, they seem to be arguing a little more these days. They don’t ever last long, since Julian can’t stand to be upset with Scarlett for longer than a day, but I know that Scarlett hates it”, Tella says. 

“I understand,” Evangeline says walking up the steps to her room. “Thank you for inviting me to go with you and Scarlett today, I had a wonderful time.”

“Of course, Evangeline. Have a pleasant evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Evangeline waves bye to her, and takes the final steps up the stairs to open her door. Jacks is already there, waiting for her with open arms that wrap her in a hug the second she steps inside.

“I missed you.”

“It’s only been a few hours”, she says, giggling slightly.

“I know”, he kisses the top of her head, “but you know how much I hate being away from you.”  He kisses her lips, pausing to deepen it until she moans. He pulls away just as she’s about to grab him by the shirt and pull him closer. “So, as much as I’d love to hear about your day out, I’d also love to continue talking about what you were thinking about earlier when you were so flustered. You can choose which one you like better.”

She grabs him by the collar of his shirt and hauls his mouth to hers. “The second one. Definitely the second one.”

He laughs against her lips as he keeps kissing her while he lifts her into his arms and places her on the bed, carefully undoing the laces on the back of her dress with clever fingers. 

It isn’t long before she’s moaning and writhing beneath him, and he’s showing her just how good a job he’s done at studying her body.

Chapter Text

“I thought that we planned to spend the night together. We haven’t had time to just the two of us in so long”, Scarlett said. She missed her finance, which was a ridiculous thought because she had seen him all week long, at their various balls and parties hosted in their honor. They had spent every night in bed together, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen any of him at all, but she wished to spend her night like they used to. 

Staying up late, playing card games by candlelight in their bed, talking until their throats were sore and their voices faded into the darkness of the bedroom. Scarlett hadn’t been able to have a proper conversation with Julian since Jacks and Evangeline showed up, and she hated that she knew exactly why.

“I know, Crimson, and I’m really sorry. Dante came to me earlier today and he wanted me to meet him tonight to talk about something.”

“Something?” Scarlett asked archly. “Or someone?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I know you don’t take me for a fool, Julian. I know that you keep getting drawn into these devious, and not to mention criminal, plans to try and kill Jacks.”

“Crimson, you don’t -”

“If you think to tell me that I don’t understand then I’d reckon that you need to rethink that decision. I know exactly what is happening in the palace, you cannot hide it from me any longer. I have tried to give you time to tell me yourself, but clearly since you’d rather dance around the subject, it seems that I have to be the forthcoming one. I know that you and Dante tried to kill Jacks. I know that you and a group of men followed him and Evangeline into an alleyway and attacked them.”

“We never meant for-”

“For what, Julian? You never meant for what? You never meant for people to die? You should have known that when cornered, Jacks will strike. You put him and the only person he loves in danger, how would you react if someone had cornered us in an alleyway? I doubt that you would just let them take me away and let them murder you. You’d fight, Julian. You’d fight like hell, and you should have realized that Jacks would do the same.”

Julian was silent, and he seemed remorseful, which Scarlett was mildly pleased with. Good, let him feel bad for completely ignoring me this week and instead trying to murder a friend’s husband.

He sighed heavily, like there was something weighing him down. Scarlett hoped it was a mountain of apologies and not irritation.

“I’m sorry, Crimson. I never wanted to hurt you in all of this.”

“No. You just wanted to hurt other people.”

“Can you blame me, Crimson? Can you blame any of us? You know what happened last time someone here tried to trust Jacks. He lied and lied and lied, and he hurt people. He hurt and killed so many people here, but you don’t even seem to care about any of that. All you care about is that Evangeline married him and now you want to defend him. Why, Crimson? What did Jacks ever do to earn your trust?”

“ I spoke to him after that first night. I spoke to him after the ball, where you and Dante and Tella planned to kill him. He was so scared, Julian. You forget that I can see what people are feeling. I could see how scared he was. And not even for himself, he was terrified for Evangeline.

“I’ve seen that he loves her, Julian. If it’s enough for me, then you can let it be enough as well.”

“I don’t want him to hurt you, Crimson.”

“He won’t.”

“You don’t know that!”

“No, I don’t. I don’t know for certain that he won’t try to hurt me, or Tella, or you, and God forbid he finds out that Dante has been here the whole time, although I’m almost positive that your little stunt a few days ago ruined that. I don’t have to fully trust him to believe that he doesn’t care about any of us anymore. I don’t have to believe that he became a pure of heart person once he married Evangeline to believe that he doesn’t mean harm to any of us. Yes, his hands are stained in blood, more than anyone we know, but I won’t let you or anyone else take him from Evangeline. She has suffered more than you know, and if he is her happiness then I will not take that from her, and neither will you. Do you understand me?”

Julian was silent for what felt like years to Scarlett. She wanted him to say something, anything really, considering that this was the first real conversation they were having in days. He looked… sad? Desperate? Angry? Scarlett didn’t know what to call the expression on his face.

“I just want you to be safe. Him being here so close to our wedding scares me, Crimson. You have to realize that.”

It was Scarlett’s turn to look sad and desperate and angry, because he was right. She did realize that, and she understood it more than he knew. She didn’t love the fact that Jacks was here, and if she had it her way, he never would have come at all, but he already explained to her that he also didn’t want to come, and was only doing it for Evangeline. 

“I know, Julian. And if something went wrong I would be beside myself with guilt and worry, but this is our wedding, and I haven’t even gotten to spend any real time with you since this week began. Don’t let your fear keep you from enjoying this moment for us, it won’t last forever.”

“Alright, Crimson. I can do that for you.”

“Don’t only do it for me, do it for yourself.” She rose on her toes to kiss him, and all at once it felt like everything was right again. Her feet were back on the ground beneath her, her head stopped spinning, her temples stopped aching. The hardest part seemed to be over, her wedding party could finally relax and simply enjoy the finite time they were given with each other. 

She pulled away from his lips, and closed the space between their bodies completely, letting his arms envelope her body while she buried her face in his chest. 

Distantly, a small part of her was aware that Julian had suddenly tensed up, and was no longer looking at her anymore, but something behind her. She looked up at his face, but any sign of worry was gone, and his features were smooth and at peace. She supposed she must have just imagined it. 

…

The only thing Dante could see from the shadows of the palace was the grimace on Julian’s face, and the silent “I can’t” that he mouthed to him while embracing Scarlett after their fight.

That was fine, Dante didn’t need an extra body to make this plan work.

Chapter Text

Scarlett was to be married in a day, and Evangeline was sad to say that she could not wait for her to be married, if only so that she could go home. The time that she and Jacks had spent in Valenda had been lovely, save for the two incidents the first two days, but she was ready to be back in the comfort of her life living in the Hollow with Jacks. She missed her little dragon friends, and the sheer deliciousness of the food there, god what she wouldn’t do for one of the Hollow’s dumplings, but more than anything she missed the feeling that the Hollow gave her. It felt safe, and warm, and peaceful in a way that she hadn’t felt since the short time she was blessedly given with her parents. The Hollow was the only place that matched that feeling, but she had a feeling that it was less to do with the Hollow than with Jacks himself. Being with him made her feel light and floaty, like she was perpetually on her own cloud of bliss. He made her happy.

She just wanted Tella to see that.

She hoped that by this time, things could be better between Jacks and Tella. They didn’t need to be friends, Evangeline knew all to well that some wounds left nasty scars that couldn’t be forgotten or brushed under the rug, so she didn’t fault Tella for being particularly chilly to Jacks whenever she had to interact with him, considering that Jacks acted in a similar manner. She could at least celebrate the small victory that was the fact that Tella no longer seemed hellbent on killing Jacks. 

Today was the last day of peace before the wedding madness truly began, or so she heard. Evangeline knew that weddings were a stressful and crowded affair for most, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine how intense Scarlett’s wedding would be, considering that she was the Empress of Valenda, but Evangeline didn’t understand the exact degree of insanity to which weddings could be.

Evangeline’s own wedding had been quiet, peaceful, and private, with just her and Jacks, and Lala and Castor as their witnesses. It had been perfect, Evangeline couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted that she didn’t have at her wedding. After all, she had Jacks. How could she want for anything more? 

She sympathized very deeply though with Scarlett; there was nothing quite so miserable about being stressed and worried in front of an audience. Though Evangeline thought Scarlett did a much better job at being a royal than Evangeline ever did, and there was a part of her, the part that dreamed of being a fairytale princess, mourned the fact that her time spent as a fairytale princess was so tremendously miserable, but that was only a very small part of her. The rest of her rejoiced in the simplicity of her life with Jacks. Everything was so kind, and she didn’t know if that would make sense to anyone besides maybe Jacks, but Life had truly blessed her this time, and she would count it every day. She loved her domestic life with Jacks in the Hollow. She loved knowing that breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be on the table in the inn part of the Hollow at the same time everyday like clockwork. She loved that the bathwater was always the right temperature, and that the fire wood in the hearth always crackled and popped at the right moments. The Hollow knew her, and she missed the feeling of being seen by something that had to show her rather than tell her. 

God, she missed home.

Soon, she told herself. Soon I can be back in front of the hearth, sinking into the chair like a boat with a hole, reading either a fairytale or a bodice ripper or possibly both, pretending that I’m completely unaware that Jacks is trying to get my attention until he finally throws me over his shoulder and carries me upstairs.  

“Evangeline? Did you hear me?”

She shakes herself out of her fantasy, brought back to the present by Tella. She and Evangeline had decided that they would help prepare for the wedding the day prior, to help take some of the stress off of her shoulders. Mostly they were just setting out tables and chairs, throwing up different banners and tablecloths. Prepping flower bouquets and centerpieces. Evangeline was entirely too easy to entice when Tella asked her if she wanted to help out. Truthfully, she wanted a distraction from the unease she’d been feeling for the last day or so, this feeling of preemptive grief, almost as if she was simply waiting for something terrible to happen. It was a disgusting feeling, she thought, to feel like every joyous moment, every peaceful day, would be followed by one of terror and tragedy. 

She hated thinking about how well Tella knew that feeling. 

But for now she was fine, better than fine in fact. The wedding would happen, and it would be wonderful and happy, and Evangeline would probably cry when they read their vows to each other, and then it would be over and they could go home. 

Everything was fine. 

She had to believe that. 

Everything had to be fine, because if it wasn’t, the guilt was going to ruin her completely.

If everything wasn’t fine, then that meant that she had recklessly and fruitlessly endangered Jacks, and for what? If they didn’t believe her, them, then what was this all for? 

Why did she need to prove that Jacks loved her? Did it make all that much of a difference in the end? She was still married to him, would be forever. Last time she checked, the Dragna sisters had no intentions of traveling to the North to murder him in his sleep. So why was she here? What headstrong decision had she made that brought them here, fighting for Jacks’ life simply because she wanted to prove a point?

So everything was fine for Evangeline at the moment.

She set the table, and decorated the ballroom with a smile on her face, and she was fine.

Everything was fine. 

It had to be, because the second it wasn’t, she would slip and everything would fall apart with her. 

“I think the hydrangea bouquets should go in the large floor vases. They fit better there, I think. What do you think, Evangeline?”

She was quiet for a moment, trying to siphon through her internal breakdown to find the appropriate answer to Tella’s question. Something along the lines of “oh yes, that would be perfect”, or , “actually I think they would look better at the front entrance by the doors”, and not, “you’re going to kill him tonight, aren’t you?”

Because that was neither productive nor true. Evangeline knew better to think that Tella would make an attempt on Jacks’ life the night before her sister's wedding. Tella wasn’t so single minded to do that to her sister.

“I think that would look nice”, she said quietly.

“Perfect, then that’s where they’ll go. I think that’s all we can do for today.” Tella clapped her hands together in an “alright, we’re all done here”gesture . Evangeline was sad to have lost the distraction.

She politely excused herself and began making her way back to her room. Silence didn’t sound appealing to her at all at the moment, and she was grateful when she found Jacks in their room, laid gracefully on the bed, reading one of the novels he had packed. Sensing her discomfort, but not commenting on it, he set the book down when she walked in, and he stood from the bed and took her in his arms. She relaxed a great deal under his touch, and she wrapped her arms around his tightly, wishing he’d never let go. He kissed the top of her head, and then pressed his nose into her hair, inhaling deeply. 

“You know”, he started, “it's a rather nice day today. We could go out and see the shops again, or we could go to the cafe that's down there. Or we could stay inside by the fire and play silly games and talk until the sun sets. Whatever sounds better to you.”

Evangeline smiled in his chest. He always knew the way to help her. It was somewhat strange, she thought, to be so attuned to someone’s wants and needs to always know how to help them. She only felt like that sometimes with Jacks, but it always seemed like he knew everything about everything. He wondered if he felt like that. 

“I think a day out sounds nice, there's a bookshop that i’d like to go look around in. But let's be back before sunset please. I’d like to sit by the fire and relax with you. I packed a deck of cards with me, we could play Queen’s Men.

Jacks looked at her in mock offense. “I cannot believe that you would dare to pack a deck of cards on this trip with you, especially when you know about my rocky history with playing cards.” She laughed, and he continued. “And besides, you really want to play Queen’s Men, even though I beat you every time?”

“Because you cheat every time.”

“And how would you prove that? You’ve never caught me, and you always count all the cards before we play anyway. And you even searched me that one time, to see if I had an extra King in my sleeve.”

“I’ll catch you one day, because you are cheating , no matter how many times you deny it. And I only searched you that one time because I wanted to take your clothes off.”

He chuckled at her joke, reminding him of the time that he told her that everyone deserved to have their clothes ripped off at some point, although the context and the situation they were in when he said that had been much different. He leaned down to speak to her in a low tone. “And perhaps later tonight we could put that on the agenda as well?”

She shivered against him, and she knew it had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, considering the roaring fire in the hearth. “I think I could make that work”, she said.

“Perfect, then let’s leave right this very instant. I’d like to come back here as swiftly as possible”, he said as he began to walk out the door and down the hallway. Evangeline laughed and chased after him, worries completely forgotten.

Chapter Text

Jacks knew exactly what it felt like to be followed by someone. He knew how to identify the racing heartbeat of someone who was nervous about stalking him, the clumsy steps of someone who was terrible at stalking people, and the suspicious silence of someone who was incredible at following people. 

Jacks fell into the third category. 

Evangeline fell into the second. The first if she was doing something she knew she shouldn’t be. 

But currently, Legend fell into a mysterious fourth category, one that Jacks reserved specifically for people who would stop at nothing to bleed him dry. He could feel that Legend was somewhere around them, hiding amongst the shadows, or perhaps in plain sight, mingling through the crowd of people in the marketplace, but he couldn’t see him. He couldn’t hear him either, which meant that Evangeline, with all the survival instincts of a baby deer, had no clue that they were being tailed. 

Jacks wasn’t sure how he knew that it was Legend, but it wasn’t a hard assumption to make. He could feel the magic in the air, magic that didn’t live in Valenda usually. Something was a play here, a spell, or an artifact. It could be a fated object, thought Jacks, but he couldn’t think of one that made a person untraceable. 

Whatever the case was, Jacks knew the basic facts: Legend was following them. Jacks knew it. Evangeline did not. And Jacks was not going to tell her.

The plan was to simply get her the hell out of this market before she noticed that they were being stalked.

Honestly, Jacks should have just taken up Scarlett’s offer to leave when she gave it to him days ago, hope be damned, but something stopped him. Perhaps it was sympathy for Evangeline, or maybe it was guilt. Mostly he thought it was his own stubborn ass getting in the way.

He was just glad that Evangeline was content now, but he knew her well enough to know that this was not a happy Evangeline. 

A happy Evangeline loved lying indoors for hours at a time, resting and reading and being too damn good for this world, and then going outside and picking apples from the apple tree and flowers from the garden, talking to the little dragons that slept on the roof and then coming back inside the Hollow and letting the magic do the hard part of baking cakes and pies and every wonderful food that Evangeline loved.

But there were no magical pies and cakes, and there were no tiny dragons sitting atop the roof, and there were certainly no restful moments where they could just sit in the bed and let themselves fall into a cavern of warmth and bliss. 

Every moment that Jacks spent in the castle felt like another moment spent fighting for his life, and Evangeline’s autonomy. And he was positively sick to death of it. 

He couldn’t wait for this damn wedding to be over so then he could go home and forget all about this horrendous event. He didn’t give two shits about weddings, the only wedding he cared about was his own. 

Both of them tired, both of them unhappy, and both of them ready to go home. 

But both of them were staying until the wedding was over. 

“Why do I torture myself?”, thought Jacks. 

“Oh! I used to love this dress shop”, Evangeline said, running up towards the window to look at a dress that held an almost woodland-like quality to it. Shade of green and woven together covered in delicate ivy vine embroidery. A skirt that was long and flowy with a large slit running up the right leg. Loose sleeves that gathered at the wrist and had a large slit starting at the shoulder and ending at the wrist, revealing the entirety of the mannequin’s arm.  Evangeline didn’t have much in her wardrobe that looked like this dress, and Jacks had the sudden urge to rectify that issue. 

“Do you like that dress?”, he asked her. 

“Very much. I used to want one of this shop’s dresses so badly, they reminded me of something that would be made in the North.”

She was certainly right about that: this dress in particular had a certain magic-like quality to it that Jacks couldn’t explain, although his main theory was that he just thought Evangeline would look positively beautiful in it and he needed her to have it. 

Jacks stepped around Evangeline, reaching for the door handle and pulling it open, letting the tinkling of the bell fill the air around him. 

He tried to ignore the fact that it rang for a second too long.

“Well? Do you want the dress or not?”, he asked. 

Evangeline’s eyes brightened and her smile grew wider. “Really?”

“Of course. It’s not as if I have better things to spend my money on other than spoiling you.” Evangeline giggled and walked past him into the dress shop, running straight for an attendant to ask about the dress in the window. Jacks followed behind her, looking over his shoulder every now and then to make sure they weren’t followed in the shop. So far the only people in here were excited young girls who watched him a little too closely, and tired looking men who Jacks assumed were the girls’ lovers.

Soon enough Evangeline was jumping up and down excitedly, grasping at Jacks’ arm and squeezing as the shop attendant walked over to the mannequin and started removing the dress. 

“I can’t believe I’m finally going to get one of these dresses. Thank you, thank you, thank you”, she said, rising up on her toes to kiss his cheek.

Jacks smiling, turning his head to face Evangeline so he could kiss her properly. “Of course, Little Fox. And besides, I’m really doing myself a favor by getting you this dress.”

Evangeline laughed and shoved his shoulder a little, a little smirk lingering on her face. 

“Alright, here you go miss. You can try it on if you’d like. There are fitting rooms in the back.”

“Oh yes, thank you. I’ll do that now. Will you wait in here for me, Jacks?”

“I can’t go into the fitting room with you?”, he teased, already knowing he would be staying out here. He wanted everyone in this shop to see him fall to his knees when Evangeline stepped out in this dress.

“I want it to be a surprise. Now don’t move.” Evangeline let the attendant lead her into the back, pink hair bouncing with every step she took. He couldn't wait to see her come out. 

“Excuse me, sir”, he heard a boy, appearing younger than Jacks’ forever frozen nineteen years old, but not by much. “A man outside wanted me to give you this note.”

Jacks immediately looked up and narrowed his eyes at the window, looking for Legend amongst the crowd of people that were walking around outside. He didn’t see anyone looking remotely like him, so Jacks assumed that he was lurking somewhere in the shadows in the way he liked to do. Jacks never understood Legend’s love for hiding in something as cliche as the shadows. Jacks preferred to make his presence known when he was stalking somebody, walking in direct daylight, making eye contact with the person, and then disappearing before they could blink. 

He took the carefully folded note from the boy, nodding his head in thanks, as well as a dismissal. The paper was thick, and gilded around the edges, clearly from the palace, but it had creases and smudges of dirt and ink on it, as if this note had been given and then taken back, only to be reused. Jacks unfolded it, grinding his jaw at the words on the page.

“Come outside.”

Two simple words. Not even a full sentence. And it still had Jacks discreetly reaching for the knife hidden in his doublet, fingering the hidden pocket to make sure it was within grasp. He stormed out of the shop door, once again ignoring the bell’s too long tinkling noise. He searched the area, looking around left and right before deciding that Legend wasn’t so much a fool to attack someone in broad daylight on a busy street. He turned on his heel and made his way to the alley that was just around the corner, dark and hidden from the view of anyone passing by on the street.

Jacks could feel something around him. He had no idea where, but he could feel the gentle murmur of a heartbeat like a soft drum in his hand. Suddenly, a weight against his back had the air rushing out of his lungs, and sending him crashing into the wall. He grunted and ground his jaw at the impact.

“Well you are certainly a hard one to get a hold of, aren’t you?” he heard Legend say into his ear. 

He spun Jacks around, pushing his back against the wall and pressing a dagger to his throat. “You’re not supposed to be here”, he mocked with a sly smile.

“And you’re supposed to be dead”, Jacks replied, voice steady and calm, although his body was screaming at him to throw a punch at Legend that would send him careening to the ground.

Legend simply smiled, all poison in the curve of his lips. “I’d like to get this over with quickly, if that suits you. I’ll go ahead and cut to the chase: with you around, no one I care about can ever live without wondering when you’ll come back, and it finally happened. You dared to show your face in this city once again, but this time, you came with a sweet girl on your arm, one that everyone knows is too good for you. Except for her, she doesn’t seem to think so. Which leads to the real root of our little problem, Jacks. You cannot be trusted with anything, you have not changed. It is not in your nature. You are a Fate, you have not grown since you were barely a man. And a temperamental little boy like you doesn’t get to have kind young ladies wearing their rings. So here's what’s going to happen: you’re going to die, but just before you do, you’re going to watch the spell you have on Evangeline be lifted as your life slips out of your body. She’s going to watch you die, and she’s going to feel so relieved when you do. Everyone will. Really, you're doing everyone a favor by going along with this.”

“What makes you think Evangeline won’t try to stop you from killing me?”, Jacks rasped out, discreetly moving the knife around in his hand, trying to find a comfortable position to hold the hilt. 

Legend smirked. “To be fair, your little wife is rather useless in the end, so if she really wants to save your life” Legend paused, shrugging his shoulders and casting his eyes downwards as if she were a minor variable in a much grander scheme, “then I guess she can just go with you.”

White hot rage filled Jacks’ veins, fueling his next maneuver. He slipped his hand out from where it was pressed up behind his back, and used all the leverage he had to force Legend into the position he was just in. 

“Since you think it’s okay to bring Evangeline into this childish little rivalry you and Tella have with me, perhaps I should cut your tongue out right here to punish you for your filthy mouth. If it were just me, I'd do myself a favor and slip across your throat and let you bleed out right here. But you know, Evangeline wouldn’t like that very much, and her opinion is really the only one that matters to me. So you get to make it out of this whole situation alive. Be sure to thank her the next time you see her. But also, I can hardly let you go unpunished for the things you’ve said.”

He slipped his blade between Legend’s ribs, a wound Jacks knew would hurt like hell, but wouldn’t be fatal. Legend groaned and fell to the ground, knees buckling beneath him. He clutched his side, wincing and moaning at the weeping injury. Jacks knelt down and fisted Legend’s hair in one hand. “If you ever speak about Evangeline like that again, I will make sure that you stay dead this time”, he snarled in his ear.

“This is the kindness I will offer to you. And make sure to tell Tella that this little gift is from me. Consider it a favor that I’m giving you a chance to help yourself before you bleed out instead of carving your heart out of your chest and hanging it outside for the birds to pick at.” He shoved Legend back down and walked away, dropping the note on the ground behind him. 

When he turned around again, Legend and his note were gone. A pool of already cooling blood was left in his place. 

There was a spatter of blood on his knuckles that he wiped off with a handkerchief, and a tiny scratch on the underside of his jaw from when Legend was holding the dagger to his throat. He prayed that Evangeline wouldn’t see it. If she did, he would need a believable lie. It was truly a challenge because Evangeline had truly come to know him inside and out, and she could tell when he lied. Even when she didn’t outwardly call him out on it, he knew that she could sense his falsehood floating in the air, biding its time before eventually coming back to bite him in the ass. 

Right now, he could think of nothing that sounded true enough for Evangeline to actually believe it. He would feign ignorance, he decided. 

“What? A cut on my throat? Oh, I had no idea that was there, must've happened sometime earlier.”

She wouldn’t believe that either, but it was the best he had so he decided it was good enough. 

He walked back into the dress shop, the bell tinkling once again for a second too long, and Jacks, once again, pretended not to hear it. He thanked whatever deity that was watching over him that Evangeline was not out of her dressing room yet, in fact, he had made it back in just enough time to watch her come out from the shadowy hallway.

She looked ethereal in green, the color complimented her hair and her skin tone, making her look like some type of forest nymph or fairy. She was so beautiful. Her gray eyes sparkling in the warm yellow lights of the shop, he knew she felt beautiful. Evangeline always smiled like that when she felt pretty, but Jacks always thought she was the prettiest thing the world had to offer, so he didn’t understand why she didn’t smile like that all the time. 

She strode up to him, and the sight of her pale thigh slipping into view from the slit nearly brought him to his knees right there in the shop. 

Gods, she was perfect. 

Jack was having one of his moments again where he couldn’t possibly think of a single reason for why Evangeline decided to take a chance on him. But he was hardly going to argue with her at this point because the only thing worse to him than her being too good and deserving better than him was the idea of her actually realizing that fact and leaving him. So he kept his mouth shut about it. 

“Well, what do you think?”, she asked him. 

“I think it's time for us to get back to the palace actually.” He strode up to the counter and hastily paid for the dress, offering far too much for the dress but he shook his head when the women at the counter tried to give it back with wide eyes. 

Not only did Jacks want to get Evangeline back to their room for… other reasons, he needed her out of the public eye. He didn’t want to risk another attempt on either of their lives, so he was eager to finally get out of that shop. 

They walked back to the palace, Evangeline completely happy and at ease the whole time, Jacks less so. He carefully listened for a weaker heartbeat among the crowd. A hint of magic in the air. He felt nothing, but that didn’t mean that Legend wasn’t waiting around for them. 

Jacks rushed them back, hoping that Evangeline mistook his hurried pace as impatience to get her out of her new dress instead of his extreme stress and dread for the impending attempt on his or her life. 

It was probably about 50/50 for each. 

Maybe 60/40.

They finally made it back to the palace. Unscathed and unharmed. Evangeline hadn’t noticed the cut on his throat, or the fleck of blood that was on his doublet that he didn’t catch earlier. She was happy right now, something she hadn’t been as much this past week, so he didn’t tamper with it. 

Ignorance is bliss, they say. And right now, Evangeline was both. 

He wanted to tell her. The words were on the tip of his tongue, and there was no doubt in his mind that she would pack up and leave with nothing more than a farewell to Scarlett if he told her that Legend had attacked him and threatened both of their lives. 

Fuck, maybe he should just take her home.

But he stopped himself again, something he knew he would kick himself for for the rest of their lives. They needed to stay. Evangeline needed to stay. He thought about leaving her here alone days ago, but not only would she have been upset with him, he didn’t think that Tella’s hatred for him ended once he crossed the ocean and stepped foot into a different country. She would just hunt him down, he wasn’t certain that she hadn’t done it already anyway. 

They walked into the palace, Evangeline looking around and marveling at all the decorations that were in place for tomorrow. 

“It's so exciting that Scarlett is getting married. I have a sense that she and her fiance will make a very fine married couple”, Evangeline said, remaining perfectly romantic and hopeful for everlasting love between Scarlett and Julien. 

“As good a married couple as we do?”, Jacks questioned, one brow quirked in her direction.

Evangeline gave him a smirk of her own. “I’d like to see them try.”

She grabbed him with both hands by the wrist and began dragging him upstairs to their room, laughing the whole way. 

She opened the door and pulled him inside, fisting the collar of his shirt between her delicate hands. He stumbled into the room, falling straight into her, his hands landing on her waist, and his lips landing on her hers. 

He kicked the door shut behind him with a resounding thud.

His fingers started carefully tugging at the dainty laces that tied the dress to her body, making sure to punctuate every loosening lace with a stroke of his tongue into her mouth. Her hands drifted to the front of his shirt, and down until she reached the buttons of his doublet. She undid them easily with a practiced flick of her fingers, carefully peeling the cloth away, and then moving onto the buttons of his shirt. 

Her dress was slowly but surely coming away from her skin, gaping at the chest enough for one of the straps to slide down off of her shoulder of its own volition. Clearly it had her best interest in mind. 

Jacks slid the other strap off of her shoulder, and let the beautiful garment fall away to reveal the even more beautiful girl underneath. 

Jacks didn’t wait any longer to walk her backwards until she fell onto the bed. 

They did not leave their room for the rest of the night. 

And Evangeline never said a word about the cut on Jacks’s throat.

Chapter Text

In all fairness, Dante was bluffing when he told Jacks that Evangeline could die with him if she tried to save him, and even as he was saying it he knew it was a stupid thing to lie about.

Because Jacks wouldn’t try to rise above the bait; he would bite with razor sharp teeth. 

And for some reason Dante still tried to needle him into submission. Jacks didn’t ever play nice for long enough to work, so Dante cursed himself for being so smug that he forgot that Jacks was more powerful than him, especially since he was no longer dealing with a weakened Fate, instead fighting with a Fate who had languished in the Magnificent North, where magic ran as rampant as an infection through the busy streets. 

He cursed at the sharp bite of pain as he staggered through the palace, making his way back to his and Tella’s shared room.

He opened the door, the hinges somehow groaning louder than him, though with the amount of pain he was in he didn’t think that was possible. He was sure that without his magic to cover his tracks he would have been heard by every person in the palace. 

Tella was sitting in the window, reading a book while the sunlight filtered in through the glass, casting shadows and little shapes across her face. 

She looked like a spring day, like a breath of fresh air, like a-

“Arggg”, he cried, body doubling over in pain as a fresh wave of agony hit him, causing him to fold his arms over the wound and fall to the ground. 

He cursed himself again for thinking that putting poison on the blade was an absolutely brilliant move on his part. 

He doubted that Jacks would even be affected by the minor amount of poison, given his Fated blood. 

Tella looked over from her spot on the window, eyes widening with terror as she took him in: crumbled on the floor, clutching his stomach with arms covered in blood. 

“What happened?”, she cried. 

“Jacks happened”, he wheezed out. “It’s my fault really. I thought it would be a good idea to follow him while he and Evangeline were out, and it ended poorly for me.”

“What did you do?” She was now sidestepping his body to shut the door behind him, ensuring that any curious eyes would be blocked from having to see this pathetic display of foolishness. Tella leaned down and slung his arm around her shoulders, helping him up off of the ground, not minding that she was currently smearing blood from his coat sleeves onto the frilly lace of her dress. She helped him hobble his way over to the bed, whereupon he threw himself rather ungracefully onto the downy covers. 

“He took her to a modiste, and while she was trying on a dress that she had picked out I paid a boy to deliver a note to him. Then I waited for him to take the bait and I pinned him against the wall of a hidden alleyway with my dagger to his throat. 

“I may have said some foolish things, gloated a little too much, and he retaliated and stab me in the gut with my own knife. He told me to tell you that he was doing you a favor by severely wounding me to a point where I could potentially bleed out in the street, instead of cutting out my tongue and slitting my throat.”

Tella was shocked to say the least, but she could hardly be surprised at neither Jacks’ nor Dante’s actions. 

“What exactly did you say to make him so angry with you that he overpowered you and threatened to cut your tongue out?”

Dante winced, not only at the pain in his gut but at the memory of how cocky he had been. How sure he was that he had Jacks, and this was his final moment. Dante had always been proud, a little too proud he could admit, and he had let his pride get the better of him this time. A mistake he usually only ever made once. 

“I may or may not have insinuated that I would kill him in front of Evangeline, and that if she tried to stop me or save him that I would kill her as well.”

Tella’s hand came flying at him faster than he could dodge, especially in his wounded state. She sharply smacked him on his arm, specifically the one that was keeping pressure on his gaping wound. 

“Ow, goddammit! That hurt Tella.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” she exclaimed, cheeks flushed with anger. “Not only were you stupid enough to say that to Jacks, I can’t believe you would dain to say something so incredibly despicable. Evangeline has done absolutely nothing to me or you.”

“Well, obviously I didn’t mean a word of that. I would never hurt Evangeline that way. I was only trying to rile him up, which I am very aware of how idiotic a decision it was, Tella”, he said just as Tella opened her mouth, looking ready to give him another proper tongue lashing.

He sighed heavily, feeling burdened by the stress and the pain he was feeling. Stress because Jacks was becoming a bigger and bigger problem each day that they allowed him to live. Pain because… well, the bastard stabbed him somewhat justifiably. 

“What do we do now?”, he asked.

Tella looked up from where she was gazing at the ground, arms crossed over her chest and chewing on the thumbnail of her left hand. She only ever did that when she was truly worried. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Tella.” And she did. 

The silence between them held the question in the air: Are we going to kill him or not?

It was a more complex question than Dante ever thought it would be, for the multitude of variables present, but the main ones being the wedding tomorrow, and Evangeline.

Everyone in the palace knew that Evangeline would never stand for his execution, whether she was under his thrall or whether she was with him completely willingly. And with the wedding, Scarlett would never forgive them if they ruined her wedding by murdering a guest.

But there were other conditions to remember, the first one being that if Jacks had proven anything to them while he stayed here with Evangeline, it was that he was still an insane, unhinged motherfucker.

Some things never changed.

They way he, supposedly, felt about Evangeline was dangerous. Scarlett described him as being consumed by her, and if it were anyone else Tella would have swooned at how romantic it was, how it was a love like The Archer and The Fox, but this was Jacks. 

Jacks being consumed with anything at all was a bomb waiting to explode, and Jacks was of unsound mind over his wife. 

Tella would never be safe as long as he was alive, it didn’t matter how far away Jacks was. Across the continent wasn’t enough; he needed to be six feet below her.

“Tonight”, she whispered, “we go in, we don’t make a sound. We make it fast and quiet and then we get Evangeline out of there. We can explain everything to her in the morning.”

“Do you think that this is the best thing for her, truly”, Dante asked. He wasn’t sure if the answer that Tella gave him would change anything for him at all, but he still thought he should ask.

Tella chewed on her lip for what felt like forever, letting the taste of copper bleed onto her tongue from where she had bitten it too hard, going over every possible scenario she could conjure up in her mind. Some of them ended happily, with no one dead and no one hurt. Some, most of them, ended worse: blood and tears and screaming and holding each other back from fighting. It was ugly, it was horrifying, and it left Tella rent with tears in her eyes and shaking hands. Tella wasn’t pure of heart by any means, she preferred it that way. A little deviousness kept her exciting, it kept her on her toes. It made it easier for her to see the people who were worse than her. Scarlett was too trusting, Evangeline too. They wanted to assume the best of everyone, but assuming was not the same as knowing.

Tella could assume that Jacks didn’t want to hurt anyone. She could even assume that he truly wanted peace between everyone, so that the blood and tears could stop. 

But Tella knew, like she knew the sky was blue and the grass was green, that Jacks was powerful beyond measure. The ability to control somebody with nothing more than a single thought was a dangerous one, one that someone like Jacks shouldn’t hold. He abused his power, used it like it was merely another limb. It was natural to him, making people do and feel whatever he wanted them to. 

But still, she hesitated. 

“I don’t know”, she whispered. “I’d like to think so, but I’m so damn terrified of him that I worry it has clouded my judgement.”

It was the kind of thing that she would only ever admit to Dante, and he knew that. 

He nodded solemnly. “It’s alright, I understand.”

He sat upright, gritting his teeth against the pain threatening to knock him flat on his back.

“In and out, Tella. We go in without a sound and we leave the same way, nobody needs to hear a thing.”

Tella tried to feel confident with her decision, and a large part of her did. She was ultimately doing something that would make the world a little bit better, ridding it of one more manipulating, abusive Fate.

So why was the sky starting to look green, and the grass was looking more red than she had originally believed?

Chapter Text

It was well past nightfall when Tella anxiously twisted her fingers in her hand, stood in the center of her room, looking down at the ground and chewing her lip until it bled copper on her tongue. 

It was more stressful than she thought it would be, taking the life of someone who she hated, someone who had hurt her and traumatised her so thoroughly that she was even considering this option in the first place. 

Tella didn’t like blood all that much, it was sticky, stained everything it touched, and hard to clean up. She didn’t care for the image of gold-flecked blood stuck on her hands permanently, despite her frantic hand washing and scrubbing until her own blood mixed with Jacks’ that had wormed its way into her mind. She thought it would be easy, especially considering she had spilled his blood before, stabbing him in the heart with the intent to kill him. Maybe it was easy then because she knew he would come back, even though she loathed the thought, that he would waltz into the room and smirk and breezily remark that she could try all she might, but she would never kill him, because immortals don’t die by the hand of silly little girls. Immortals don’t die by anyone's hand. 

But he wasn’t immortal anymore, they had made sure of it. Ageless: yes. Immortal and infallible? No longer.  

So he could die. Should die , Tella corrected mentally, though the thought was quite weak, a faint, frail voice in the back of her head that was trying its damnedest to put some common sense in her mind. 

He was her abuser, her manipulator, the nightmare that reared its ugly head every couple months that would leave her awake in her bed, shaking and sweating and absolutely seething. He took her peace from her, the comfort of a routine, the safety of a warm bed. Safety had never concerned Tella all that much, especially her own, she loved the thrill, the adrenaline rush, the feeling of falling and the brief thought of I might not make it out of this okay, right before the parachute caught her. But Jacks had cut the parachute, and she was still falling, falling, falling, plummeting closer and closer to the ground, watching the grass come closer and closer to her face. 

Was that what it felt like to fall in love with him? Was that what Evangeline had stayed for? What happened when she hit the ground that was so good that she had stayed around for more? Tella didn’t have a clue. When he spelled her into loving him, she hadn’t fallen as much as she had tripped into a new timeline, a timeline where she was enamored with him. It was quick and painless. A brief second of startle and then nothing at all. Like nothing had ever even happened.

He would always scare her, there was nothing that would fix that. Cuts bled and then they healed, but the scars would only fade. Slowly slipping further into the skin until you could hardly even see them, maybe you would even forget about them, about how you had gotten them in the first place, until someone came along and reminded you, oh yes, that's how I got that, and suddenly everything hurt all over again, and you weren’t bleeding, there was no new cut, there was nothing to do for the invisible wound. No salve, bandage, or time could heal what wasn’t there, what had already scabbed over and disappeared. 

“Tella?”

She snapped her head upright, looking away from the floor for the first time in she wasn’t sure how long. She noticed her lip throbbing from her chewing on it, and the skin around her nails was red and raw, like she had been unconsciously picking at it this whole time.

“Are you alright, Tella? You look worried.” Dante was coming closer, wrapping her warm calloused hands around her arms, running up and down to soothe whatever invisible pain she was feeling. 

“I’m fine, just- I guess I’m just worried about what happens after this, you know? Like what does Evangeline do? As far as she knows, she has a husband and a home in the North, friends that love her, a life. What is she supposed to do when she doesn’t have any of that anymore?”

Dante furrowed his brows like he didn’t understand her concern. “Well, once we kill Jacks the spell he has on her will be broken, and she can live wherever she wants to. She could choose to move back to Valenda, I’m sure Scarlett would be more than happy to give her a place to live. And then after tonight, Jacks will be dead, and you will never have to worry about him ever again. You never have to wake up in a cold seat because you had a nightmare about him again. You can travel to the magnificent North if you want to, Tella. We’re about to relieve you of the only obstacle left in your life, be happy about it Tella. I know it's not easy, but we’re doing the right thing. Trust me, and if you don’t trust me, trust yourself. I know how long you’ve wanted this, and it’s right here for the taking, so take it. Don’t let him get in the way of your life again, Tella.”

Tella nervously chewed her lip again, thinking, thinking, thinking about everything and anything that could go wrong. It was useless, she decided, to try and think of Jacks as just another human boy, who was maybe after all, just a little misunderstood. 

“Alright, then. Thank you, I needed that. But, can I ask one more thing of you?”

“Aways, Tella.”

“I want you to do it this time. I don’t want to stab him again.”

Dante smiled wickedly. “It would be my pleasure to stab that bastard.”

Tella smiled back, giving him her own wicked grin. “Alright, let's go.”

They slipped out of the bedroom creeping up the stairs like criminals escaping from a prison. Tella’s heart was pounding out of her chest, like maybe she was a criminal making her escape. She swore it was so loud in her ears, echoing all around her in that tiny, cramped stone hallway. It was so dark, and so narrow, and suddenly it was harder for her to breathe. The walls felt like they were coming closer, but that couldn’t be right, walls don’t move. The end of the hallway looked like it would never come, like it was a million miles away from her. She placed a sweat slicked hand on the wall, or tried to at least. Her hand felt like it phased through, like the stone wall was nothing more water. She lost her balance, tripping on the staircase that led to Evangeline and Jack’ room. They were almost there. But how was that possible? Only a second ago she still had so much longer to go, miles and miles of hallway to get through before she even got close to their bedroom. She blinked again and she was in front of the door, Dante turning the knob silently and slowly. She suddenly found herself wishing that the door would creak when he opened it. She hoped that something would happen, something loud enough to wake both of them up and alert them of their presence.

Dante opened the door without a sound,and slipped inside as silently as a ghost. Since she wasn’t the one doing the murder anymore, she knew her role was to take Evangeline out of the room and away from Jacks as soon as possible. But she was watching Dante get closer and closer to the bed, and she was struck with how peaceful they both looked in bed. 

The quilt was tucked all the way up to their chins, Evangeline’s pink hair was thrown wildly over her pillow, some of it making its way onto Jack’s face. They were facing each other, and Jacks had his arms around her like she was a life buoy and he was drowning. Their breathing was slow, and deep, and steady. They were practically dead to the world with how deep they were asleep. Soon, Jacks would be dead. 

Dante creeped up behind them, twisting the dagger in his hand so that the point was raised above Jacks’ back. He would have to stab him through the downy quilt, hard. He might miss, he might not stab deeply enough, what if he hurt Evangeline too? Tella didn’t want that. Tella didn’t want any of it. 

And with a razor sharp clarity that cut through her thoughts as if she were the one being stabbed, she knew that she didn’t want to kill Jacks at all. 

“Stop!”, she yelled. And immediately regretted it. 

Dante looked up with widened eyes and a slack jaw, and suddenly, Jacks was awake and alert, flipping around in the bed and snatching the dagger from Dante, and promptly stabbing him in the shoulder with it. “I should have done myself a favor and killed you the first time”, he spits.

Evangeline screamed, and Tella’s eyes widened when she saw the girl clutching the quilt to her chest, her bare shoulders and collarbone on display in the darkness of the room. 

Oh, dear. They had caught them at a very bad time indeed.

At the very least, Jacks was wearing a partially unbuttoned shirt with boxers. Evangeline unfortunately seemed to be completely naked save for the blanket she was holding like a shield.

Jacks was throwing back the covers like he intended to get out of the bed and finish what he had started on Dante, who was currently pressing a blood soaked hand to the new wound. The dagger was still embedded in her shoulder, but he pulled another from a hidden pocket inside his coat. 

It felt like time had stopped, and then started going faster than ever, and then slowed down. Everything was too fast and too slow and too much. Far too much. This was not how she had planned this at all. 

While Tella wasn’t looking, Evangeline had gotten out of the bed and thrown a pink silk robe on, running over to the other side of the bed and stopping Jacks from getting out and killing Dante. 

Her teary eyes met Tella’s, and for a moment, Tella was struck with something she had never before felt with Evangeline. 

The girl was fuming mad, and Tella for one, was terrified of what she would do next. 

Of course Jacks was still yelling and cursing, Dante was doing the same, and all Tella wanted to do was make everything stop.

“EVERYONE NEEDS TO SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW!”Evangeline screamed, chest heaving as if she had just run a marathon. She gently placed her palms on her husband's shoulders, and guided him back down to the bed, forcing him to calm down. He was still snarling, and Dante spit out a curse from behind her back. Evangeline turned sharply, looking at him over her dainty shoulder. 

“I should let him kill you, you know.” She looked back at Tella, with a renewed hatred burning in her gaze. “This is a new low, even for you Tella. I knew you didn’t trust Jacks, but I didn’t think you were foolish enough to try and murder him while we were asleep.

“I- I didn’t-”

“You didn’t what , Tella? You didn’t mean to do it, you didn’t mean for it to go this far, huh?” Evangeline was more angry than Tella thought she was capable. “Just a little bit of torture, thats all, right? Just watch when we leave and where we go so that you can send people to follow us and make an attempt on our lives, that’s all you meant to do, right Tella? That’s all you wanted? Well I have news for you; you might think I’m stupid, or delusional, or insane because I’m married to Jacks, but don’t think for a second that I’m stupid enough to not know when I’m being threatened. And I have had quite enough of feeling like a criminal these past few days. I hope you’ve learned something from this, Tella, because if you or your family ever tries to pull this shit again with me, there won’t be a corner of this Earth that you can hide in that I won’t find you. And you,” she turns to face Dante, “I guess you’re also the imbecile who thought it was smart to try and murder Jacks on the way back from visiting my dead parents' graves.you should be grateful that I’m even letting you live right now. I should take that dagger out of your shoulder and put it through your heart for the things you have done to me and my husband.”

Dante has the nerve to scoff at her, and I fight the urge to go over there and slap my hand over his mouth. “You wouldn’t do it, you’re too soft. Even when you were stone, you were soft. I bet you had never even held a blade until you met this one,’ he looks over Evangeline’s shoulder, looking at Jacks, who now looks like a mix between murderous and in awe of his wife. 

Evangeline takes a step away from the bed, coming closer to Dante, who doesn’t move an inch. “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge me, since you don’t know the first damn thing about me. And you’re right, I hadn’t held a dagger until I met Jacks. But when it mattered, when my life was in danger, I had it, and then I murdered someone with it. I could do the same to you if I really wanted, and right now, I really, really want to.” She deftly moves her hand up to his shoulder and jerks the knife out, red blood oozing out of the wound and flowing down the front of his coat, soaking the already dark fabric. Tella hears a loud gasp from behind her, and she turns around to see her sister, hand covering her mouth, eyes so wide they look like dinner plates. “What is happening here?” Julian steps in beside her, eyes equally wide when he sees the blood coated knife in Evangeline’s hand. Dante opens his mouth as if to explain the situation, but Evangeline beats him to it. Tella never even opened her mouth, she had no explanation for her horrid behavior. 

“Your sister and her beloved have taken it upon themselves to try to kill Jacks. I’m sorry Scarlett but we cannot stay here any longer. We will be leaving as soon as possible, when is the next boat for the Magnificent North scheduled to leave?”

“Evangeline-”, Jacks says softly, like he wants to ask her if this is the best choice. 

“No, Jacks, we’re leaving, and that’s final.” She looks to him, and her expression changes from molten fury to utter devastation. She looks half ready to crumble to the ground. He nods, lips pressed tightly together. Evangeline faces Scarlett again, fury and resignation in her eyes. “The next boat, please.”

Scarlett speaks so quietly Tella has to strain to hear her. Numb with shock, she looks at Evangeline with large glassy eyes and says, “There is a boat leaving in approximately an hour if you want to leave right now. If not there is a boat that leaves at 7:30 tomorrow morning, I can have you sent to an inn or someth-”

No, thank you, we will take the boat in an hour. Now if you’d all get out so that we can up, I would much appreciate that. Considering that you’ve made this trip as miserable as possible for Jacks and I, I would dare say that you owe it to us.” She pauses for a moment, turning her attention back to Tella. “Do not ever try to contact us ever again, any letter I receive from you will be burned the second I find it. I never want to hear from you ever again.” Tella feels another hot tear run over her cheek, searing her skin. She didn’t know that Evangeline possessed any cruelty. The way Jacks is looking at her tells Tella that perhaps he didn’t know it either. Scarlett’s voice shakes Tella from her thoughts, bringing her shockingly back to reality. 

“Of course, Evangeline. Both of you” Scarlett hisses at Tella and Dante, “out, now. And I want you waiting in the sitting room when we’re done here. Got it? Or do I need to make it an official royal order since neither of you can follow simple requests? You too, Julian.”

Both of them walk out the door silently, Julian following after them. Dante flashing a murderous glare at Jacks. Evangeline gives him one right back. Tella walks with her head down, tears falling down her cheeks and onto the floor, leaving a trail behind her as she sullenly walks up the stairs and the hallway to the sitting room, only one thought running through her brain the whole time. 

What have I done?”

…

Scarlett waits until Tella and her beloved are gone before she tries to speak, but Evangeline cuts her off. “I am sorry that we will miss your wedding, I was very much looking forward to it. I hope your marriage is as happy as mine.”

Jacks wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she is grateful for the comfort of him around her. She feels one second away from falling on the ground and bursting into tears. 

“I am so sorry”, Scarlett says, a tear running away her rosy cheek. 

“It’s not your fault,” Jacks says compassionately, “you cannot control your sister.”

Scarlett looks away, “I never have been able to”, she whispers. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, before turning back to Jacks and Evangeline. “I’ll leave you now to pack, I hope your voyage home is safe.”

“Thank you”, Jacks says, knowing that another word out of Evangeline will leave her in pieces at his feet.

The door closes behind Scarlett, and Evangeline lets a breath loose, shaking and heavy. They pack in silence, jamming clothes and toiletries into trunks without any organization at all, just trying to get themselves out of this palace as soon as possible. 

They make it out of the palace in just enough time to catch the boat. They board without a word, Jacks nodding a wordless thanks to the boy carrying their luggage on board. It is not until they make it to their room that Evangeline sits down on the edge of the small rickety bed, and sobs. Arms curling around her shaking body, crying like she plans to fill the ocean with her tears, Jacks sits down beside her, wrapping both arms around her and drawing them both further onto the bed so that they can lay down, her face pressed into his shoulder, soaking his thin shirt with her tears. They stay like that until dawn, when she finally falls asleep with her face red and irritated. One thought in her mind tortures her over and over.

What have I done?

Chapter Text

They had been back in the North for a couple of days, and Jacks could tell that something was bothering Evangeline. And things that bothered Evangeline bothered him. He was especially bothered this time because he suspected that she was feeling guilty about taking him to Valenda to show him off like a prize pony in front of the sisters, which Jacks thought was the biggest crock of bullshit he’d ever heard of. 

First of all, Evangeline should know at this point that he was always happy to be shown off like he’s worth something to her, like something special.

“Hello there, it's lovely to see you again! This is my husband Jacks, have you two met before?”, was a recurring conversation that she had with multiple different street vendors and business owners. And he loved it. At this point it was becoming ridiculous how many people knew him as “Evangeline’s husband Jacks.” Though most people had heard of him before and knew he was married to Evangeline, they mostly minded their own business around him and left him alone, which he preferred, really. Jacks liked to be admired from a distance he’d learned, though he did get the occasional, “Hello! Where’s Evangeline at?”, whenever he passed through a particular shop that she frequented. 

And Jacks was obsessed with it. With being known as hers.

So Jacks didn’t mind it when Evangeline proposed that they both show up to the wedding as a married couple, if he did mind he wouldn’t have agreed, he would’ve sat there unmoving and argued with her about all the reasons it was a horrible idea. And it was a horrible idea, he knew that from the beginning. He almost never disagreed or fought with Evangeline over anything, but some things he had to stand his ground on because despite being a hair's breadth away from death more times than he could count, Evangeline’s survival instincts could still use some workshopping. 

“Little Fox, you only learned to swim last year, I don’t think we should try river rafting just yet, maybe we save that one for a later date?”

“I know he looks cute right now, Little Fox, but the baby snake will turn into a big snake and you won’t be pleased when he eats all the tiny dragons.”

“Evangeline! That is not how you cut down a tree or hold a sword. Those two things shouldn’t even be in the same sentence. I can do it for you or I can teach you to do it correctly if you want me to, just back away from the tree and put the sword down please.”

Evangeline was well acquainted with bad ideas, she was married to one after all,  and at this point so was Jacks, but this one was possibly the worst one yet. But he still agreed. 

He wasn’t sure if he did it to make her happy, or if somewhere inside him, he really wanted Tella to see that he was different now, that she didn’t mean a thing to him anymore, that she didn’t hurt him as much as she thought. 

The only person he was truly okay with seeing him hurting was Evangeline, and it always felt like sharing a dark, dirty secret with her, one that he knew she would hold like it was glass and take care of. 

Tella had a tendency to throw fragile things against a wall just to watch them break. He didn’t trust her to see him hurt and not use it. 

She was like him in that way, maybe the only way.

So he let his pretty wife drag him all the way to the Southern Continent so that she could prove to people she had only ever met one that he was worth something this time around, and of course it hadn’t worked and it inevitably ended with blood and tears and fighting, which Jacks could have told her would happen from the very beginning. But he didn’t. He let her take him to the South, convinced her to stay when things looked bad, tried to convince her to stay when things got worse, and let her drag him back to the North when she had had enough.

Bottom line being: He wanted to go. As far as Jacks was concerned, no one was at blame for this. 

He caught little clips of Evangeline’s thoughts every now and then when she was accidentally thinking too loud, and they weren’t particularly good. 

“ -my fault… I never-”

“How could I- so stupid…”

No one got to call his wife stupid, not even her. 

The very idea of her being so upset and guilty over this absolute clusterfuck filled him with a rage and sadness that he couldn’t even begin to curb until he talked to her about it and got rid of this idea that it was her duty to bear the guilt on her shoulders. 

Right now he knew that she was in the garden, feeding the dragons even though he told her countless times that he hated the little beasts because they liked to set the grass on fire during the dry season. He knew he needed to go out and talk to her about this, and he felt a little bad because he knew it was long past due. 

He silently walked out there, letting his feet brush over the grass silently, a smile gracing his lips when he feels her pulse start to race. She doesn’t realize that he’s there yet, just that something is watching. She glances down to the scar on her wrist, the last remaining evidence of their bargain, the one that he will never let her fulfill. She knows he’s there, and she turns and greets him with a smile that would have fooled someone else, but not him. He sees the well of sadness in her gray eyes, the tinge of guilt that is lining her mouth. The slight furrow in her brows is what really gives her away, she’s never been especially good at hiding her emotions.

“Hello”, she says quietly over the breeze. 

“Might I join you” he says in return. 

She nods one time and goes back to feeding the dragons, letting the wind pick the loose tendrils of rose gold hair off of her forehead. She looks beautiful right now, bathing in the golden glow of the setting sun, looking as peaceful and as docile as she could be. He thinks back to the moment in the room where she was cursing and threatening people, holding bloody knives and telling people that she should let them bleed out. He knew that she was likely capable of being that angry, of being that ruthless, he just didn’t expect to see it when she was almost completely bare save for a tiny pink silk robe that had an E monogrammed onto the breast. It was somewhat an absolutely ridiculous sight; this small girl with her dainty, feminine features, pink hair tangled all around her face and shoulders, clutching a dagger that she had just pulled out of someone’s body, and telling someone that if they hurt her husband she would track them down and kill them, while wearing a tiny slip of a robe.

He’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t extremely attracted to her in that moment.

“You’ve been quiet lately”, he says after a few long moments of silence.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“I don’t want you to apologize for being quiet. What I want is to talk to you about Valenda.”

She closes her eyes and tilts her face toward the sun, casting a warm yellow glow all over her. She looks tired, Jacks notes. The slight bruises under her eyes seem more noticeable now, and he kicks himself for not seeing them sooner.

“I don’t want to talk about it Jacks”, she whispers. 

“I know”, he says, “but I think we have to. I know it's bothering you, what happened and all, and I don’t want you to feel like it’s your fault or that it's your responsibility to shoulder the blame.”

“Then whose fault is it Jacks?” She turns to him with unshed tears glazing her eyes, her bottom lip quivering and her cheeks flushing from anger. “I never should have taken you to them, I put you in the direct line of danger, and for what? Just to show you off like a prize that I won? It was horrible of me to do that, Jacks. By all rights you should be furious with me. You told me that this wouldn’t work and I didn’t want to hear you, and now because of me you almost died about six times in one week and I will probably never be able to go back to Valenda to see my parents! And it’s all my fault!”

“Little Fox, it's not your fault. It couldn’t possibly be your fault because I wanted to go with you. You didn't force me into doing anything that I wouldn’t have readily agreed to. You didn’t try to hurt me. Donatella and Dante’s actions are on them, not you. You don’t deserve to feel bad for something that you didn’t do. And besides, how many times have I put you in danger without meaning to?”

“Well, that’s not fair. I forgave you for all that. I know you didn’t want to hurt me.”

“Right. So I think you can give yourself a little more grace when it comes to this, Little Fox. The only thing that matters to me is your happiness, I could care less about what the Princess of the Meridian Empire thought of me. As long a you’re safe”, he pauses to drop a kiss on the bare skin of her shoulder, “as long as you’re happy”, another on her cheek, “and as long as you’re mine, I don't give a single damn about what anyone else has to say about us.” 

Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks now, and Jacks reached up to swipe them away with his thumb, cradling her warm cheek in his hand. She leaned into his touch, leaning closer to him to press her lips to his. A warmth runs through him, her warmth, her soft lips touching his, he wouldn’t trade any of this for anything in the world. She pulls away finally, eyes still touched with a bit of grief. 

“But what about my parents? What if I want to go back and see them again, I don’t want to go alone.”

“Then I’ll go with you when that time comes.”

“Jacks-”

“Evangeline, I am fine. We are both fine. We got out of Valenda without a scratch on either of us. If you want to go back to your home then you will go, Scarlett would never stop you from that. Tella is not the Empress of the Meridian Empire, she has no say in if you can come home or not. And besides, they hate me, not you, and I know how to hide better than they know how to find me. It’s not a problem, Little Fox.”

She reaches for him, wrapping her arms around him, nestling her face in his chest, and he holds on to her tightly, kissing the top of her hair and breathing in her sweet scent. She is perfect, he thinks, the life they have built is perfect, and he will not let his past mistakes ruin it. 

…

Things get better after that day. Evangeline is less upset, more herself, and returns to her daily routine. She goes back to chirping excitedly over anything and everything. She feeds the dragons in the morning, goes into the dining area to eat breakfast with Jacks, and then she rests, doing whatever she pleases for the rest of the day. She regularly writes to Lala, telling her all of the events of their trip to the South. She receives letters from the Meridian Empire, they make their way to the fireplace before she ever opens them. She is content once again, and Jacks has never felt more relieved. 

Though this morning, he lays gloomily in the bed, Evangeline beside him trying to convince him that a little time spent with Castor is good for him, and she will spend the day with Lala.

“You haven’t seen him in over a month, Jacks. You know how bored and restless he gets, he needs something to do.”

“But I don’t like him as much as I like you, Little Fox”, he says, burying his face into the pillow as Evangeline strokes his hair. He closes his eyes, letting her fingernail scrape lightly over his scalp, and he fights the sleepy feeling that has suddenly come over him. 

“That’s not very nice. He’s your oldest friend, Jacks.”

“And you’re my wife. I’d rather be here with you than running around in the woods with him.”

“You don’t have to run around in the woods. You can do whatever you like.”

“Like staying here with you?”

“Not that.”

He groans into his pillow, already knowing that he won’t win this argument, not even with a well placed finger on the pulse in her throat, stroking delicately. She shivers and bats his hand away, rising from the bed and leaving him alone. 

“Up now. Lala will be here in a minute and we have some catching up to do. Besides, I doubt you’ll even want to be around to listen to us talk about absolutely nothing.”

“I always want to listen to you talk, Little Fox.”

Her cheeks flush a shade of baby pink in the mirror of the vanity she’s sitting at, but she recovers quickly. “Thank you, now keep that attitude for when you go see Castor later.”

“Ugh”, he groans, feeling childish. He looks over to see Evangeline smirking at him. “I can’t believe you’re mistreating me this way. What have I ever done to deserve this banishment?”

Evangeline giggles and stands from the vanity stool, sauntering back over to the bed to sit down beside Jacks. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her down so that her chest is flush with his. “I am not banishing you, you pathetic wet cat. It’s only for a few hours, you know. And then Lala will leave and we’ll have The Hollow to ourselves again, and we can do whatever you want after that.”

“Hmm”, he hums, pretending to contemplate, “I think I could work with that arrangement.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head, pressing his nose into her soft pink curls.

“Perfect! Now get ready to leave. I don’t want to keep Lala waiting and she specifically requested that you weren’t here when she shows up.”

“Ugh, she’s so bitter all the time. I never even did anything to her but she treats me like a disease.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jacks. She’s like a little sister to you, that's all.”

“Little sisters don’t stab their brothers with butter knives”, he muttered.

Evangeline giggled, remembering that night. “I thought you were happy that she did that, considering what happened afterward.”

“I am happy that happened, Little Fox. It doesn’t mean that getting stabbed with a butter knife between the ribs doesn’t hurt like hell.”

“Well, in either case, she’s coming over in a while, and you’re supposed to spend time with Castor, so up.” She clapped her hands together with a finality, meaning “get up now or else”, and Jacks rolled out of the bed with minimal groaning. 

After several minutes of comfortable, domestic quiet, each of them were ready for guests, Evangeline wearing a pretty pink dress with daisies and lilies. Jacks was wearing his usual untucked, partially unbuttoned shirt and doublet combination. A pair of study leather boots and a quiver strapped around his hip. His hunter’s bow grasped in his hand. 

It had been months of quiet conversations and subtle urgings from Evangeline before Jacks was comfortable enough to shoot again without thinking of The Fox. He’d told her that it used to make him feel alive to run amuck through the woods, bow and arrow in hand, chasing something that he knew he wouldn’t catch, firing arrow after arrow, missing narrowly everytime. Shooting an apple that had been tossed in the air from over twenty yards away. Shooting a button off of Castor’s fancy doublet whenever he pissed him off. 

“I was only a child when I had all of that. I was barely nineteen whenever I became a Fate.”

Evangeline had looked at him gently and lovingly, seeing something inside of him that he still couldn’t fully find even after all this time with her. “You were a child even then, Jacks. Nineteen is too young to have lost all that you did. You’ve been nineteen for years now, a teenager stuck in an immortal body. You deserve to have some of your childhood back, you shouldn’t have had to give it up so soon.”

And so he started trying. Trying to connect to his youth, his humanity. It was hard at first, the bow felt wrong in his hand. Comfortable, in the way that only a bow that he used for years could be, but sinful, like he was doing something wrong by having it still. 

It was the same bow that he used when he tried to subdue Castor after turning him into a vampire. 

The same bow he used to try and kill his first love.

The same bow that his mother had given him before she died in a tragic house fire, leaving Jacks to grow up feral and alone in the woods.

It was his, it could only ever be his, and that, he thought, may have been the worst part about it. 

But he learned to resent it less. Over time, Evangeline helped him feel better about it, less guilty. He didn’t hunt anymore, not really anyway; it made Evangeline too sad to see him bring home the dead carcass of an animal that he shot. These days he was shooting at targets hung from the tree branches at The Hollow. Shooting through flower crowns that Evangeline that Evangeline had tossed into the air while basking in the sunlight, watching him with a certain gleam in her eye as he pulled back the string of the bow and released, letting the arrow fly though the circle perfectly before embedding itself in the bark of the tree bark.

Perhaps all the encouragement she gave him had been for her own benefit. 

He liked the feeling of the bow on his back, the mild rustling sound of the arrows shifting in their quiver. It brought him peace. It made him feel like The Archer again, but this time, The Archer saved his Fox. And she saved him. 

It had been even longer until he felt okay with bringing it around Castor, reminding each other of the lives they used to have. But there was a day for everything, he supposed. 

And today would have to be it. 

Evangeline is setting out the plates for the various sweet treats that they planned on eating when Lala comes over when she feels Jacks’ arm wind its way around her waist. The thick leather of the bracer on his wrist, the soft linen and silk blend of his shirt. She feels his lips press to the top of her head, kissing her hair, and then he ducks his head to bury his face in the crook of her shoulder. She turns in his arms, twining her own around his neck, bringing her closer to him. 

“It will be nightfall in only a few hours," he whispers. “I should probably leave now, I suspect Lala will be here in a minute to bash my head in if she sees me here.” Evangeline laughs delicately, turning her head to kiss him on his cheek. 

“I wouldn’t let her, you know that. But you’re right, I don’t want Castor to get antsy waiting for you.” She leans back, running her hands over his chest, smoothing the carefully embroidered fabric of his doublet. She nearly drowns in the bottomless wells of heartbreak blue that are his eyes, its moments like these that she wonders how she spent all that time with him before she confessed her love for him without absolutely mauling him.

Jacks smirks, hearing her thoughts as if they were his own. “It was difficult to say the least.” He leans down again, his lips brushing over hers in a way that makes her want to jump into his arms and not let go. “So. Many. Apples”, he murmurs, making her release a breathless laugh before he captures the sound with his own lips. 

A knock at the door has both of them jumping, Evangeline releasing a startled yelp as she turns her attention toward the door. Jacks has already pulled a dagger from his belt and is holding it like he’s prepared to fight with the devil himself right here in The Hollow’s dining room. Evangeline rolls her eyes and gently presses his chest so that she can get around him and to the door. “Put that away, it’s just Lala.”

“I think i’ll keep it out just to be sure.”

Evangeline lets out a playful huff, as if Jacks and Lala are no more than bickering children. She swings the front door to the inn open and surely enough, Lala is there, tattooed arms full of various bottles and baskets full of bread and cheese and fruit. “I got all of the necessities for tonight”, she says, hoisting them up higher in her arms. She smiles warmly at Evangeline before looking over her shoulder and spotting Jacks. “What are you still doing here?”, she asks in the most disgusted tone, as if he's a bit of horse manure on her plate. 

“I live here, Lala.”

“I know that you flaming idiot, what I meant is, why are you still here? I thought you were supposed to be spending time with Castor tonight.”

“I am, in fact I’m leaving right now.”

“Oh perfect, I was worried for a second that you actually thought you were going to stay here with us”, she laughs as if to say “how ridiculous is that?”

“Right, well. I think I'll take off now”, Jacks says, scowling at Lala. He turns his attention to Evangeline, his gaze softening and melting her like warm butter. “I’ll see you tonight, okay”, he murmurs. “Okay”, she whispers back. He tilts his head down to kiss her, his hand traveling up the side of her throat, pausing on her pulse there before sliding further up to thread his fingers into her hair.

“Alright, enough of that now”, Lala says, batting her hands at Jacks like he’s a pest, pushing him closer and closer to the entryway. “And you can forget about seeing Evangeline tonight, I’ve decided I’m keeping her from now on.”

Jacks’ expression goes from mildly irritated to furious at Lala. “Don’t you dare even-”

Lala slams the door in his face, turning around and wiping her hands on each other. “Good riddance to that.”

“You know”, Evangeline starts, “I wish you wouldn’t purposely antagonize him so much.”

“I know, Evangeline, but I can’t help it” , she says miserably. “It’s so much fun to see him get all pouty and mad over you, and it’s just so easy.”

Evangeline giggles at her fiery friend, beckoning her into The Hollow, where it has no magically stocked the dining room full of sweets. Lala places her basket on the table, brushing her hair out of her face before turning back to Evangeline. “Alright, now to get to it. Tell me all about what happened in Valenda. I want to hear every last detail.”

Evangeline arches a brow at Lala, smirking faintly. “ Every last detail?”

Lala blanches a little, looking mildly disgusted at the insinuation. “You can leave out those parts, thank you. I would prefer it in fact.”

Evangeline laughs, and Lala joins her. She missed this, the friendship and comradery she held with Lala. She didn’t have many friends growing up, so having someone like Lala felt like a precious gift. They sat down onto the downy cushions of the couch, the fire in the hearth crackling conspiratorially, as if waiting patiently to hear some of the drama. Evangeline pulled a blanket over her feet, and Lala did the same, clutching a plate full of cheese and bread, and holding two goblets for the wine she brought. 

They drank and laughed and teared up at some of the more emotional parts of the story. Lala was absolutely aghast to learn just how mischievous the Southern Princess could be. Evangeline told her of the Empress, her rugged fiance, the mysterious man that Donatella had stabbed Jacks in the heart for. Lala found it all very exciting, sitting on the edge of the couch the whole time, eyes wide with shock at every new detail revealed. 

It had gotten very late at this point, the sun had set hours ago, Jacks would likely be back soon, but the scar on Evangeline’s wrist hadn’t started to burn yet, so she figured she had a little while longer. “Excuse me for a second, I need to use the lavatory for a moment.” The wine was running right through her. 

“Of course, I’ll start cleaning up down here so that Jacks doesn’t accuse me of trashing his home when he gets back.”

With that Evangeline went upstairs, passing by the ornately carved doors in the hallway. She heard Lala downstairs, bustling about the dining room and the sitting area, gathering dishes and uneaten sweets. She finished her business and was on her way back down the stairs when she heard the door open, the quiet conversation from the other side carried through The Hollow faintly, letting Evangeline catch only faint murmurs of speech.

“Who needs to know? I don’t feel comfortable letting two perfect strangers know who lives here.”

“No! No,” an anxious and familiar voice said. “I swear it's nothing like that at all. We just need to talk to her, and her husband as well if he’s here.”

“You still haven’t answered my question, and I’m getting the impression that you shouldn’t be here. You’ll have to find somewhere else to stay tonight.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing”, Evangeline heard the other girl's voice and immediately began running down the stairs in alarm and anger. “We definitely shouldn’t be here.”

Lala stiffened imperceptibly, her shock evident in her rigid stance. “Oh! You definitely shouldn't be here then”, she said, a defensive note creeping into her voice. 

“You’re right”, Evangeline snapped, finally reaching the end of the stairs and coming face to face with the Empress and the Princess of the Meridian Empire.

“You should not have come here, Tella.”

Chapter Text

Despite it being her own idea, Tella had the good sense to know that it was a terrible one. Travel directly to the residence of the girl and boy who had sworn that they never wanted to see them again; what am I doing? 

But it needed to be done, she rationalized. Bad blood between a Fate and the Princess of the Meridian Empire could be fine, expected even, so long as nothing transpired from it. Bad blood between  the Princess of the Meridian Empire and that Fate’s wife who may be the only creature on this world keeping him from waging war on humanity? Bad , decidedly bad. 

It was simply a matter of diplomacy, which was really more of Scarlett’s thing but it would have to work this time around. Though she was now having second thoughts about how showing up unannounced would seem to Evangeline. 

“What are you doing here”, Evangeline seethed. The girl was angrier than she’d ever seen her, save for that time she caught them trying to kill her husband, but there was also a certain radiance about her that Tella had never observed before. Her hair seemed more pink in the soft firelight of the Hollow, threaded with fine strands of what looked like pure gold, her skin was smooth as porcelain, and tired bags that she had under her eyes during her stay in the palace had disappeared, making her previously pain filled doe eyes look bright and filled with wonder for this magnificent place she called home.

It made sense to her why Jacks was in love with her; she seemed like someone who was easy to fall in love with. Tella was all hard edges while Evangeline was smooth sloping curves. While Tella was all the sharp pieces of a broken heart, Evangeline was the soft roundness of a whole one. Though it seemed a good thing that Jacks was nowhere to be seen at this moment; his girl looked impossibly angry at Tella right now. 

Scarlett stepped forward while Tella pondered, speaking to Evangeline in a mild, soft spoken manner tinged with a bit of embarrassment and shame. “I know it is untoward of us to come here without your express permission to see you at your home, but we both felt that an apology was absolutely necessary to you and Jacks. 

“But mostly you”, Tella mumbled, and Scarlett dug her elbow deep into her ribs, making the air whoosh out of her lungs in a very undignified manner. Evangeline’s brow drew together and her eyes darkened.

“You would come here unannounced and show your face in my own home without a shred of regret or shame?”

“No- no! I swear, we are sorry beyond belief about what transpired. It was an embarrassment of the crown, but more importantly an embarrassment to our characters.” Tella’s cheeks warmed slightly at the indirect callout. Her sister had given her quite the earful about how her actions would make her fit for a criminal, not a princess of an empire. “If you wish to embarrass the crown so badly and make a mockery of our name by acting like a feral street fighter, I'll treat you like one.” She nearly flinched at the memory. 

“I fully believe that you are truly apologetic, Scarlett. In fact, there is nothing to be angry at you for. It’s the Princess I'm convinced about.”

“Evangeline, you have to understand-”

“I do not have to understand anything from you, Tella. You attempted to kill my husband unprovoked the entire time I was under your roof. He never threatened you, he never said anything untoward to you. There was no reason to try to hurt him beyond your own fear and your selfish gain.”

“Your husband was obsessed with me to the point he tricked me into marrying him. So forgive me if I don’t immediately trust his word”, Tella hissed at Evangeline. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be married already, would you Princess?”, Evangeline’s pretty friend with the fire tattoos winding up her arm said, smiling prettily, but Tella could see the daggers behind her eyes. 

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” Tella said, turning to the girl.

“Oh, how rude of me, I’m Ariel, but everyone calls me Lala”, she extended an inked hand outward. Tella took it and was immediately yanked forward by the small girl. “But you can call me The Unwed Bride”, she said icily. 

Tella’s eyes widened and she yanked her hand away. She heard Scarlett’s gasp from her side. “That’s enough, Lala.” Evangeline said, calmly. “There's no need for threats. That won’t get us anywhere.” 

“Alright then, I think I’ll wait upstairs. Call me if you need anything, Evangeline.” She stalked up the stairs, sparing an ice cold glare at Tella. She nearly shivered from the intensity of it. “Hell, Evangeline, how many Fates are you friends with?”

Evangeline’s gray eyes hardened to stone once again. “Why, so you can track them down and kill them, too?”

Tella sighed. Evangeline was holding a bigger grudge than she originally thought, and then she berated herself mentally for her stupidity. She’d imagined that someone as soft and kind as Evangeline wasn’t capable of rage, and she was dead wrong because the look she was receiving from her was making her heart race. 

“Evangeline, I wish I could explain to you the complexity of the feelings I have surrounding Jacks in a way that makes sense. In the simplest of terms, I am terrified of him. He is the thing I fear most, he represents all that I am scared of. It would be unfair of you to assume that I could get over all that just because he wasn’t actively trying to hurt me. But you are right, it was wrong of me to act the way I did. It was an embarrassment to us all, and it made me a villain in my own right.

“I am not asking you to forget everything I orchestrated, that would be selfish of me, and I am no master of words, and I don’t say sorry as much as I should, but I hope you know how truly ashamed of my actions I am. I never should have projected my own fears onto you, it was entirely wrong of me, and I hope you can understand and forgive me.”

As far as apologies went, Tella didn’t think it was all that bad. Evangeline’s eyes had softened, the groove between her brows went away. She looked soft again, it was curious how stony she could become when provoked, almost as if she reverted to her stone state that Scarlett and Tella found her in. 

“I am grateful that you apologized to me, but you do understand that it is hard for me to move past everything you did?”

“Of course I do, I know that forgiveness takes time. Just promise me that you’ll think about it, that you won’t resent me forever.”

Evangeline dipped her head, “I will.”

Scarlett audibly let out a breath, relief clear on her face. “So everything is mostly okay. No more seething rage between anyone.”

Evangeline laughed delicately, the tinkling sound ringing through the air in The Hollow. Tella hadn’t noticed until then, but it seemed The Hollow had gotten colder when Evangeline was angry, and now it was back to warm and comforting. “Yes, things are better now, not fixed completely maybe, but on their way there.”

“Of course, if you ever want to return to Valenda that will not be an issue. You and Jacks are both welcome anytime you wish, we would not bar you from entering your home country, I hope you know that.”

“Thank you, Scarlett.”

“It’s we who should be thanking you, Evangeline. I believe you’ve taught us a very deserved lesson”, Tella said fondly. 

Just as things started to feel better between everyone, the fire in the hearth suddenly extinguished. The candles set about the room flickered one by one until they all went out. The temperature dropped down enough to be bone-chilling. Everyone looked confused, but Evangeline's eyes were wide, her bottom lip caught between her teeth anxiously. 

“Oh no”, she murmured.

“What’s wrong?”, Scarlett asked.

She sighed heavily, as if irritated by something. “Just come stand behind me please, it might make him less angry.”

“What are you-”, Tella cut herself off right before the door slammed open, hitting the wall with a loud bang. Even the walls seemed to tremble at Jacks’s anger. 

“Why are you in my home, with my wife?”

“Hello, Dear.”

“Not now, Evangeline, I'm angry at them, and you as well. You should have told me the second you knew they were here.”

“Well obviously you found out anyway”, Evangeline crossed her arms and pouted. 

“That's because you’re always thinking so damn loud, Little Fox!”

Evangeline gasped, clearly affronted. “You said you like it that I think loudly.”

“Of course I like it, Little Fox. But I like it even better when you purposefully let me know that someone who was trying to kill me barely two weeks ago is in our house.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I didn’t let you know. I had it quite handled without you though. And I didn’t want you to leave Castor.”

“I didn’t.”

Evangeline seemed truly alarmed now. “You what?” 

“He’s waiting outside. I was going to leave him but the bastard wouldn’t let me, so he followed me here.”

“You know I’m never too far behind you, Jacks”, said a new, seductive voice. Tella looked around Jacks to see a tall figure standing just outside the doorway. He was almost magnetic the way Tella felt the urge to get closer to him. Her gaze focused on his lips, pulled into a smirk. “So this is the pretty thing that tried to kill you, Jacks. I’d shake your hand but I'll burst into flames if I step inside The Hollow. Also, don’t look at my eyes, I’m still working on the whole self control thing.”

Tella frowned, from confusion as well as she didn’t like the way he talked about her. She was not a “pretty thing” . Why would he burst into flames? And why shouldn’t she look at his eyes?

“And who exactly are you?”

He cocked his head. “I guess I’m not so easily recognized without the mask.” He smiled fully, and Tella’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m an old friend of Jacks, though he hates to admit it.” She watched Jacks roll his eyes. “Castor. But you can call me Chaos.” Sparkling fangs glimmered in the moonlight, making her feel dizzy with fear. The Lord of Spies and Assassins. The Fate. A vampire.

"Hello, Cas", Evangeline said sweetly.

"Hello, Evangeline."

Good God, just how many Fates was Evangeline personal friends with?

Chaos turned his attention back toward Tella, his top lip curling in a sinister grin, showing off his deadly fang and the way his tongue ran over the tip.

Tella did her best to quell the scream rising in her throat. “I see you have the same flair for dramatics as the other one.”

He cocked his head in confusion at the same time as “the other one” came running down the stairs, feet pounding against the steps. “Evangeline! What’s happening? Are you alright? Did something- oh. It's just you”, Lala deadpanned. 

The vampire, Chaos, she reminded herself, grinned fully this time, lighting up his whole face. He really was beautiful, despite the fact that he was also terrifying. “Lovely to see you too, Lala.”

“Cas, take her home”, Jacks spit.

Lala scoffed, “You’re really going to kick me out of your house?”

“Yes, I am. Now get out.” 

She flounced down the stairs in a way that seemed very childish to Tella, almost like she were an aggrieved little sister mad at her older brother. She continued pouting all the way to the door, where Chaos offered her his arm. She swatted it like a cat. “Don’t touch me”, she hissed. 

“I’m only trying to be a gentleman”, he quipped. 

“Well stop, it's unbecoming of you. You look ridiculous.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder, but Tella saw the very faint stain of red across her cheeks. Interesting.

The two walked away, bickering with each other. “Goodbye, Lala! Bye Cas! Sorry our night got cut short”, Evangeline yelled out the door. Jacks slammed the door shut, turning a murderous glare toward Tella. “Now, why are you here? I think we have both expressed our deep desire to never see you again, so what makes you think you should travel all the way to the North and to our home?”

Tella scoffed and crossed her arms. “As if you’re so good at respecting boundaries.”

Jacks growled and Scarlett gripped Tella’s arm, squeezing hard, the message clear. Stand down now. At the same, Evangeline walked over to Jacks, running her palm over her arm. 

“I think this would go a lot smoother if we all took a seat”, Evangeline said.

I agree”, said Scarlett, ever the diplomat.

Everyone took a seat at the table. Jacks on the opposite side of Tella, glaring furiously at her. 

She sighed. This was going to be a very long, tedious night.

Chapter Text

I'm so sorry to catfish you guys with a new chapter when in fact im just putting out some feelers and seeing if theres any interest in a new project. This probably isnt even the right demographic but... what's the stance on an original work, one thats less fanfic style and more full length romance novel???

How do we feel about hockey players???

And most likely a closed door/very low spice level??

With a golden retriever mmc and black cat sport psychologist fmc?

And they live in the same apartment complex??

And she's had a crush on him since she was 17??

And he asked her out before he knew she was going to be his team's new psychologist?? 

Friends to lovers??

Yearning?? 

Tension??

He buys a cat so that her cat will have a playmate??

Anyway, ill be deleting this chapter in maybe a week or so (if I remember to), but im just trying to gauge interest in a new work. Also I am still writing for this fic lol, I am working on the next chapter which I have decided will detour into a quick LalaXCastor bonus chapter so hopefully you guys like it!!!!!! but please let me know what you guys think about the new idea<33333333