Chapter 13

Evangeline and Jacks hit the ocean after their cliffside leap. Jacks hauls Evangeline through the crushing waves to shore, refusing to let her die. Evangeline resists his hold and intentions, but Jacks keeps her off the rocks, warning that returning to the vampires is safer than bleeding on the beach.

Jacks explains Apollo is bound by the Archer’s curse, which compels him to kill Evangeline and can’t be stopped by Jacks’s powers. He says every curse has a back door: opening the Valory Arch would undo Apollo’s spell. Evangeline doubts the convenience and questions who cast it.

They consider suspects. Jacks claims the guards reported no visitors besides them, and he doubts memory erasure. He suggests the curse might have been set before Apollo was poisoned, given the many jealous rivals after the ball. Evangeline weighs the Protectorate’s motives but finds their involvement uncertain.

Pressed on Chaos’s role, Jacks insists Chaos would never endanger a key. He reveals there was another key before Evangeline who survived the longest, retrieving one of the arch’s four missing stones, until the Protectorate beheaded her. The revelation chills Evangeline and underscores the lethal stakes of opening the arch.