21. Evangeline
Evangeline
The night was quiet, save for the unusually loud twinkle of stars, as Evangeline and Jacks walked back to the Hollow.
She didn’t know exactly what time it was, only that it was so late no one else appeared to be out. Cottages were dark, and little dragons were gently snoring atop tree branches. It was just Evangeline and Jacks, and the small glass box with the broken heart cookies.
Jacks kept eyeing the box and parting his lips to explain, but then he would stay silent, as if he couldn’t quite find the right words.
Or he was afraid to say them. He’d looked distinctly uncomfortable ever since the fairy had appeared.
And now that Evangeline was feeling more like herself, she wanted to take away that discomfort.
Whatever Jacks had done, she had a feeling it was for the two of them.
“Would you like me to guess?” asked Evangeline.
Jacks smiled down at her, some of the tension leaving his face. “What do you think it is?”
Evangeline tapped her chin. “I would say it’s a cure to your fatal kiss, but we’ve already taken care of that.”
“We have,” Jacks agreed, eyes sparkling under the starlight.
“Well then, I suppose…” Evangeline trailed off as she tried to figure out what she actually supposed.
The last gift like this that Jacks had given her was a protection cuff, which had unfortunately been a little overzealous, going so far as to hurt little dragons who spewed too many sparks near Evangeline.
She had stopped wearing it, to Jacks’s dismay.
“I would guess it’s something to keep me safe.
” Though she couldn’t imagine what a pair of cookies would protect her from.
“In a manner of speaking,” Jacks replied, his voice so low it nearly blended with the soft sounds of night. “I’ve been looking for a way to keep you alive.”
Under different circumstances, Evangeline might have jokingly asked if she was dying. But she knew, from the soft, careful sound of his voice, that Jacks was talking about the same thing that she had been worrying about in the back of her mind.
“I made a deal with a fairy to stop you from aging,” he confessed.
And then he told her what had really happened earlier that day—everything from the letter from Poison that he had set on fire, to why she’d been holding a fistful of berries in the center of the tavern.
“I know, I should have known better, and I should have told you before I wrote to Poison. I did all of this without asking you, and because of it, I almost lost you. I am so sorry, Little Fox.”
Evangeline squeezed his fingers. “If I learned one thing from the mirror, it’s that no matter what, we will always find a way back to each other.
There’s no world that will keep you from me.
And I understand why you didn’t want to say anything.
” Although she wished that he had opened up.
Maybe the outcome would have been the same—but if one of them had just been brave enough to talk about what they’d both been scared of, then perhaps neither of them would have been afraid at all.
“I’ve been worried about the same thing, but I was too scared to mention it. ”
“Why were you scared?” Jacks asked tenderly.
“Probably for the same reasons you were.”
“You didn’t have to be scared,” Jacks said confidently. “Just as there’s no world that can keep you from me, there is no world where I would ever lose you to something like age or time. You are mine, Little Fox, until my heart stops beating.”
“I don’t want your heart to ever stop beating.”
“It won’t, as long as yours doesn’t.” His eyes dropped back to the glass box in Evangeline’s hand, where the broken heart cookies sat innocently.
Evangeline looked down at it, too. “It doesn’t look very magical.”
“Fairies are like that. They are not humans and they have never been humans, so when they attempt to do human things, it turns out odd.”
“So, if I eat this cookie, it will make me immortal?” she asked.
“Close enough,” Jacks replied. “You won’t lose your humanity, but you will stop aging, like me.”
“Oh my,” Evangeline said, which really didn’t capture at all how she was feeling.
Her feelings were more along the lines of Oh my goodness gracious!
I knew Jacks wouldn’t let me die. The warnings about the fairies in the book now make a lot more sense.
I can’t believe I’m holding an immortal cookie!
“Nothing else about you will change,” Jacks assured her. “You’ll still be human, you’ll still have all of your feelings, you’ll just live a very long time.”
And suddenly Evangeline had exactly the right word. “Yes!”
“You can think about it,” Jacks said, but he was grinning, and his eyes were shining like the stars.
Evangeline lifted the glass box—
Jacks placed a hand on top of it, preventing her from opening it.
“Have you changed your mind already?” she joked, but she felt confused.
“No,” Jacks said decisively. “I want this so much I’m using all my restraint right now to say this, but I think that we should wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I’ve never done this. I’m not sure if there will be any temporary side effects. So I would hate to do this tonight and ruin tomorrow.”
Tomorrow …
Tomorrow!
Evangeline had completely forgotten about tomorrow.
“It’s all right, Little Fox, we’ll get it all done.”
But she was starting to panic. “I can’t believe I forgot. There is still so much to do. I haven’t even finished hanging up all the bunting.”
Jacks smiled wider.
“Why are you doing that?” she asked.
“I just love how much you care about this.” Jacks leaned down to kiss her.
It was one of those kisses that felt as if it was only supposed to be a quick, gentle brush of the lips.
But one brush didn’t feel like enough. Neither did two or three, and soon they were kissing in the middle of the road while stars sparkled and dragons slept and people all over the world dreamed of finding a love like this.
Evangeline didn’t forget about the Hollow or all the things that she still needed to do; she just suddenly thought that need wasn’t the right word.
She wanted to do all of these things, and she still wanted tomorrow to be as perfect as possible.
She wanted to do everything the best she possibly could, because that was the only way she knew how to do things.
She had been chasing her happily ever after with the same tenacity with which she had chased after love.
But she realized in that moment that a happily ever after wasn’t something you chased.
It was more like a kiss, something to lean into, something to savor, something to share with the person you loved.