Once Upon a Broken Heart, #1
Once Upon a Broken Heart
by Stephanie Garber
Contents
Chapter 47
Overview
While Jacks sleeps, Evangeline searches his office and confirms that he runs a network of favors and debts from the hidden library. Her discovery of a disguised copy of Marisol’s forbidden spellbook gives her the clearest evidence yet that Marisol used malefic-oil love magic, possibly causing both Apollo’s death and Luc’s wedding-day attack.
The chapter shifts Evangeline’s suspicions: Jacks may not have caused every disaster she blamed on him, while Marisol becomes a stronger threat. The spellbook also gives Evangeline a possible solution, Serum for Truths, though it carries its own magical costs.
Summary
While Jacks sleeps on the sofa, Evangeline searches through his mail and desk despite knowing he would object. The letters do not reveal what Jacks wants from the Valory Arch, but they confirm the room is his place of business and show that many people seek favors from him. Evangeline recognizes Jacks as a calculated collector of debts rather than merely reckless, especially after seeing him claim favors from Chaos and Poison.
Evangeline briefly searches Jacks’s desk, finding coins, a blue ribbon, scandal sheets about her wedding, and apples, before returning to the shelves to look for a book that might contain a cure for a love spell. She is distracted by seven carefully placed copies of The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox, her favorite storybook, and wonders why Jacks owns so many. Hoping to discover the story’s ending, she checks the books, but the last pages are missing, blank, or otherwise impossible to read.
The seventh volume opens easily, but it is not truly The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox. Its title page reveals Recipes of the Ancient North: Translated for the First Time in Five Hundred Years, the same forbidden spellbook Marisol had. Evangeline searches through dangerous spells until she reaches the section on love magic.
The love spell for turning someone into a true love requires malefic oil and personal elements from both caster and target. Its warnings explain that malefic oil is toxic, that blood creates the strongest and most dangerous results, and that dark purple candles produce obsession. The spell’s listed cost can include a ruined wedding day, and it can be undone with a recipe called Serum for Truths.
Evangeline realizes the recipe strengthens the case against Marisol: the malefic oil matches Apollo’s death, and Luc’s wolf attack at Marisol’s second wedding may have been the cost of Marisol’s spell rather than Jacks’s doing. This makes Evangeline reconsider whether she has misjudged Jacks in other ways. She then turns to the Serum for Truths recipe, which requires bones or dragon skin, earth, water, and magical blood, and warns that the serum may reveal more truths than intended while temporarily impairing the drinker.
Who Appears
- Evangeline FoxSearches Jacks’s office, finds the hidden spellbook, and links Marisol to malefic-oil love magic.
- JacksSleeps while Evangeline investigates; his office reveals his network of favors and careful secrets.
- MarisolAbsent but increasingly implicated by the spellbook’s love potion, malefic oil, and wedding-day costs.
- LucHis wolf attack is reinterpreted as a possible cost of Marisol’s love spell.
- ApolloHis death is further connected to malefic oil and Marisol’s suspected magical scheme.