The Ballad of Never After

As Jacks hauls Evangeline through the water, he gazes at her with an intensity that takes her breath away, and she has to remind herself that he’s a Fate and doesn’t care about her. Evangeline asks if Jacks can control Apollo to stop him from hunting her. Jacks explains that the curse will only break when the archer kills the fox but that “[i]f [she] open[s] the Valory Arch, the spell on Apollo can be undone” (94). Evangeline wants to find this suspicious, but Jacks’s pounding heart and the fact that the arch holds untold magic make her think that Jacks may be telling the truth.

Evangeline questions whether Chaos could have cast the curse. Jacks says that Chaos wouldn’t jeopardize another key after the last one was murdered. Suddenly, Evangeline realizes how much danger she’s in, which makes her feel “as if she’[s] been transmuted from iron into a thin sheet of glass” (97).

That night, Evangeline has nightmares about Luc and Apollo killing her before they transform into a dream where she feels safe in Jacks’s arms. She wakes to find Jacks watching her, and they argue again about opening the Valory Arch.