Her Monster
“I deserve this,” he said. “I probably deserve a lot worse. But this is not
the day to kill me. I’m trying very hard to keep you alive.”
Jacks grabbed her arms again and flipped her over, trapping her beneath
his body. He tried to be gentle, he tried not to hurt her. But he needed her to
understand before he let her go. “Yes, I am a murderer. I enjoy hurting
people. I like blood. I like pain. I am a monster, but whether you remember
it or not, I’m your monster, Evangeline.”
Her breath caught.
For a second, Jacks could have sworn it wasn’t anger or fear he saw in
her eyes. Her neck turned pink and her cheeks flushed . . . differently from
before. He couldn’t tell if she was finally remembering.
But he was selfish enough to hope that she was.
He debated keeping her trapped under him until she did. He knew it was
a bad idea, but he wanted her to remember him. He wanted her to look at
him, just once, and know him the way she had before.
It was cruel of him to want her to want him again. If she remembered, it
would only hurt her more.
He was still haunted by the last time he’d seen her with her memories. It
had been right outside the Valory. Hours before, he’d felt her die in his
arms.
Evangeline had no idea what had happened, no clue that Jacks had
already used the stones to turn back time for her.
She was trying to talk him out of using them to go back to Donatella.
She’d asked him to come with her instead.
After everything, she’d still wanted him.
Could it be him?
Evangeline wondered why he would have two brides-to-be. What
could have happened to the first?
She flipped the page again, hoping for more information about
Vengeance or the rest of the Slaughterwoods, but there was just another,
unrelated portrait: The dutiful daughters of House Darling.
The page after that showed a group of young noblemen.
It seemed this book wasn’t just about the Slaughterwoods after all. It
was just some sort of portrait book.
Disappointed, Evangeline considered returning to her packing. But on
the next page, she came across a picture of three young men standing near a
tree that had a bullseye board tacked onto it. One young man looked
friendly, one looked highborn, and one looked exactly like Jacks.
The hairs on her arms rose up. Jacks’s clothes were different, an older
style that made her think of days when roads weren’t mapped and much of
the world was still unexplored, but his handsome face was unmistakable.
Her eyes shot to the bottom of the page.
She found herself holding her breath as she searched for Jacks’s name,
but the caption just said: The Merrywood Three.
The word Merrywood flickered to Bitterwood, and suddenly,
Evangeline remembered that she’d seen another reference to this trio. It had
been in the book that had disappeared after she’d dropped it.
The book had described the members of the Merrywood Three as
scoundrels. They were Prince Castor Valor, Lyric Merrywood—son of Lord
Merrywood—and a nameless archer who she suspected could have been the
same Archer from The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.
0-30p: Kontrollü okuyucu 📖
40-70p: Hafif bağımlı 👀
80p+: Geçmiş olsun, kitaplar seni ele geçirmiş 😅
A marrige bond
Donatella spends a week pretending she’s a mermaid
Donatella steals a goat and names him Cuddles
Donatella steals all her sister’s underclothes
Donatella writes her first letter to Legend
Donatella marries the Prince of Hearts
Tella’s blood ran cold. She looked back over the table of contents, to see
if there was anything else that wasn’t true. But none of the other claims
were false.
Maybe the book had a sense of humor like the Map of All? Or maybe
Jacks had given her a fake map that led to a fake library where she’d gotten
this fake book.
She hadn’t married Jacks. Tella wasn’t married. She wasn’t even sure she
ever wanted to get married.
According to the table of contents, the event happened right after her
mother had died. Tella violently flipped through the book until she found
the dreaded chapter in question. She read each word carefully, but there
were sections that stood out more than others.
If her heart had not been so heavy with grief and pain, Donatella
would have known better than to trust the Prince of Hearts.
If she’d not been burning with despair, she would have realized the
danger in repeating magical words as her blood mingled with his.
If she’d not just watched her mother die, she would have known that
the Prince of Hearts was not taking her grief away because he cared.
The Prince of Hearts did not know how to care. He only knew how to
take what he wanted, and he wanted Donatella Dragna.
ILYA ROZANOV THE MAN THAT YOU ARE
''Not to ask a stupid question, but it's serious?''
''Very.'' Ilya said. Shane's heart flipped the way it always did when Ilya made it clear how much Shane meant to him.
The fortune of the future
“Choose four. One at a time.”
“I know how this works.” Ignoring the obvious ones directly in front of
her, Tella reached for a buried card on the far left, scratching the table once
again as she slid it out and turned it over, revealing an all-too-familiar
bloody smile.
The Prince of Hearts.
The air in Tella’s lungs went arctic. He was truly inescapable.
Armando chuckled, dry and mocking. “Unrequited love. It seems things
with you and Dante won’t work out after all.”
It might have hurt if Tella harbored any delusions of the contrary. But
she knew better than anyone else what the bloody prince represented. No
matter what Tella claimed about love, the Prince of Hearts was the real
reason she never let herself grow attached to any of the young men who
showed interest. Tella knew how to capture a boy’s attention, but it was
doomed never to last. Fate had already decided no one she loved would
ever love her back.
This time Tella flipped over the closest card, the one so obvious it
probably expected her to look it over.
Or not.
The Maiden Death.
Again.
“I’ve always liked this card.” Armando traced the pearls around the
maiden’s face with cold precision. “Death stole her from her family to make
her his immortal consort. Yet she refused him, so he encased her head in a
cage of pearls to keep anyone else from having her. Even then she still
The Start of Everything
Abandoning her play mission, Tella quickly grabbed the silky cord and
lifted the deck from the box. Instantly they stopped shifting.
The cards were so very, very pretty. Such a dark hue of nightshade they
were almost black, with tiny hints of gold flecks that sparkled in the light,
and swirly strands of deep red-violet embossing that made Tella think of
damp flowers, witches’ blood, and magic.
These were nothing like the flimsy black-and-white cards her father’s
guards had taught her to play betting games with. Tella sat down on the
carpet. Her nimble fingers tingled as she untied the ribbon and flipped over
the first card.
The young woman pictured reminded Tella of a captive princess. Her
lovely white dress was shredded, and her tear-shaped eyes were as pretty as
polished sea glass, but so sad they hurt to look at. Most likely because her
head was caged in a rounded globe of pearls.
The words The Maiden Death were written at the bottom of the card.
Tella shuddered. She did not like the name, and she was not fond of
cages, even pearly ones. Suddenly she had the feeling that her mother
would not want her seeing these cards, but that didn’t stop Tella from
turning over another.
The name at the bottom of this one was The Prince of Hearts.
It showed a young man with a face made of angles, and lips as sharp as
two knife blades. One hand near his pointed chin clasped the hilt of a
dagger, and red tears fell from his eyes, matching the blood staining the
corner of his narrow mouth.
Tella flinched as the prince’s image flickered, there and gone, the same