EVANGELINE

Dawn arrived not with the typical cheer and clamour of an impending hunt, but with eerie quiet. Evangeline and Marisol emerged from their tents to find that a fog had rolled in during the scant hours since their late-night rendezvous and had blanketed the camp and forest. Out of this fog emerged figures that looked human, but their heads were all wrong: here the striped face of a badger, there a red-throated robin.

"They're masks," Marisol breathed.

Indeed, they were all the same people as the day before, but wearing animal masks so lifelike that even knowing they weren't real, they were unnerving to look at.

"There you are," a deer-headed Apollo strode out of the mist shadowed by a bear man that must have been Havelock. He wore his crown of antlers around the antlers of his mask, making him look strange and deformed. "This is for you." He handed her a furry bundle that Evangeline realised was another mask.

"A fox for my Fox," he said, and Evangeline tried to smile.

"I didn't realise this was part of the hunt."

"Oh yes." Apollo nodded, making his deer head wobble. "It's all part of the fun."

Havelock handed Marisol a grey squirrel head, and both women donned their masks with some trepidation. They were surprisingly comfortable, lined with soft material and designed to fit close to the face. Evangeline looked at Marisol. She looked adorable as a squirrel, though Evangeline was sure she'd only receive a sarcastic response if she told her that.

"You look lovely," Apollo said, taking Evangeline by the elbow and helping her onto his stallion. Marisol was clearly trying to hide her limp as she was escorted to Havelock's gelding. "We'll ride together to the starting point, where I'll leave you until it's over."

"I'm not joining the hunt?" Despite her mixed feelings about the thought of hunting a dressed stag or even a willing human, she hadn't expected to be left behind.

"No, the hunt is just for the men. But you'll have plenty of fun with the other women." They were heading down the path leading to the smaller clearing where Luc had carried her only a few hours earlier. She had assumed she was heading to her death at the time, when in fact she had ended up meeting all the friends she didn't remember having. That thought was enough to keep her hope alive.

They arrived to find a cluster of animal-headed hunters on horseback, with animal-headed attendants and more animal-headed women assembled to see them off.

It seemed that despite being the crown prince, it was the Vales' hunt and therefore their duty to address the crowd. The wolf-headed Wolfric guided his enormous grey destrier using only his legs, pacing up and down the line of hunters like a general addressing his troops.

"Men, I thank you for joining us at this historic event, one that will not only represent greater friendship between houses, but which facilitated the raising of funds to restore the historic site of the nearby Merrywood Manor."

"Look, there's Aurora," Apollo murmured, pointing out a woman in a mask made of white ermine. They wore a flower crown of snapdragons and stood beside a wolf-headed woman who must have been Honora Valor. He allowed Evangeline to dismount before quietly joining the ranks of hunters.

"As you know, the traditional quarry of these woods is the fabled unicorn." Wolfric continued his speech, voice booming around the misty clearing. "Today's quarry is no unicorn, but should prove just as difficult, and rewarding, to catch."

Evangeline wondered if the quarry would be released from the clearing and given a head start, or if it was already loose deeper in the forest. Aside from the horses and hunting hounds, there were no actual animals in the clearing, and nobody seemed to be wearing a unicorn mask.

"Today's quarry is the wanted criminal Lord Jacks."

The atmosphere became simultaneously airless and electrified. It was difficult to tell without seeing his actual eyes, but she suspected Apollo was watching her body language closely for any reaction, and Evangeline tried to wipe the horror from her expression before realising her face, at least, was hidden from sight. She glanced at Aurora the ermine, but if she was reacting to the news that her lost love was the unicorn, she was hiding it well.

"Not only has he committed crimes innumerable against the crown," Wolfric nodded respectfully in Apollo's direction, "but it has recently come to light that he is none other than the cursed Fate, The Prince of Hearts."

The charged silence exploded into murmurs, shouts and mutterings of distaste. One crow-headed man even lifted his mask to spit on the ground.

"When the stand-in unicorn is a man, we encourage the hunters to refrain from excessive violence; but the criminal Jacks is no man. You may shoot to kill."

Evangeline could feel Marisol's small hand bump hers. It might have been an accident, but she chose to believe this was the girl's awkward way of expressing sympathy for the turn of events. "How did they even catch him in the first place?" she whispered without turning her squirrel head. "Fates are supposed to be powerful. Your friends notwithstanding..."

"I don't know," Evangeline murmured back. She didn't really know much about the Fates, or what they were capable of. Jacks seemed powerful, certainly; but according to the Knightlingers' notes, the Fates had all been more or less defeated by the new empress and her sister, and those who survived were nothing like the immortal monsters from the tales.

A tattered blue piece of fabric that might once have been a doublet was passed around and offered to the hounds. It must have had Jacks' scent on it, because before Evangeline could think of some way to stop this barbaric hunt, the hounds were loosed and the riders all disappeared after them until only the women and their entourages remained.

"I have to go after them," Evangeline said, and would have simply walked off into the trees herself, if a pair of jackal-headed men in royal guard uniforms hadn't materialised before her.

"Can I be of assistance, Your Highness?" one asked, and she was forced to shake her head.

"No; I just wanted to see if I could still spot my husband among the hunters."

"He'll be at the front of the pack, no doubt," the other guard said. "Nobody wants to see Lord Jacks brought to justice more than the prince."

"What exactly is this Lord Jacks' crime?"

"You heard Lord Vale: he's a Fate."

"I also heard Lord Vale say that he was a wanted criminal before they discovered he was a Fate."

The jackal heads turned toward one another as if communicating silently. Finally, the first one said, "in any case, his crimes won't be a cause for concern much longer."

"Come, stepsister," Marisol tugged at Evangeline's elbow before she could argue further. "Let's join the other ladies."

"It's some sort of setup," Evangeline whispered as they crossed the clearing. "Apollo must know about me and him."

"You and him…?" squirrel Marisol said, and Evangeline blushed.

"I know I don't know the exact nature of our…relationship. But I don't think he deserves to be shot."

"He is a Fate," Marisol reminded her. "And he ruined my wedding."

"That's still not a capital offence, surely. And I was involved in that, and possibly everything that Jacks did since then, so why aren't I being hunted for sport?"

"Are you volunteering? Because we've come too far with 'plan: act normal' for you to muck it up with a crisis of conscience."

They joined the women, who were either milling about aimlessly or else supervising the assembly of some sort of game involving long-handled mallets and arches staked into the ground. Some breakfast might also have been nice - despite her anxiety, Evangeline's stomach was rumbling - but it must have been too impractical to arrange under the circumstances.

The ermine was still sitting with the she-wolf. "Shall we go see Aurora? She probably wants to stop the hunt, too." Evangeline had repeated the details of their conversation to Marisol, who had refused to believe a word that 'Princess Perfect' had said about being Jacks' long lost love. Evangeline had tried not to feel too happy about that.

"Do we have to?" Marisol grumbled. "Though I guess I could finally get away with calling her a weasel to her face."

"Don't bother," a voice behind them said, and Evangeline turned to find glittering red scales. "That isn't Aurora."

The newcomer raised their dragon mask, revealing a dark and beautiful face. "Lala!"

Lala smiled. "Hello, Evangeline." She lowered her mask and unslung a large empty-looking bag from her shoulder.

"What do you mean, that isn't Aurora?" Marisol nodded in the direction of the ermine.

Lala didn't pause. "I mean, Aurora isn't here. That over there is her sister, Vesper. She's just trying to look like Aurora for some reason."

Evangeline looked at the ermine again. It had been hard to determine the height while they were sitting, but she realised they were indeed half a foot too short to be Aurora Valor. "But Apollo pointed her out specifically."

"Well, he was mistaken. Or he's a part of whatever plan Aurora has cooking."

"Has she snuck off to stop the hunt? She said that Jacks and her used to be together, before he was cursed."

"She did?" Lala snorted derisively. "She only wishes that were true. Trust me, we all grew up together, and Jacks would have ignored her completely if she weren't Castor's twin sister."

The relief was instant, and intense. For all that Evangeline still knew nothing for certain about her past relationships, trusting Lala felt right , as did the hope that Jacks didn't actually belong to another after all. She couldn't remember which, if any, man she had fallen in love with; but she wanted it to be him.

"Here, Marisol: put this on." Lala produced a second fox mask, and Marisol quickly replaced it with her squirrel. "Evangeline, you put on my dragon mask but put your fox in this bag just in case Apollo comes back. I'll be the squirrel." She took the mask from Marisol, who frowned.

"We're decoys, aren't we?"

"That's right. Now, take Evangeline's cloak."

They finished swapping masks and cloaks until, at glance, Evangeline looked like Lala, Lala looked like Marisol, and Marisol looked like Evangeline.

"What happens now?" Evangeline tried to keep the trepidation from her voice. "I can't sneak off in such a noticeable mask."

"You're not going to sneak off." Lala hooked her arm around Marisol's. "A handsome drake is going to lead you off to a private rendezvous."

"Dane?" Evangeline guessed, and squirrel Lala nodded.

"His feelings for me are still…complicated," Lala said. "He and the others were stuck in a sort of eternal sleep until they were freed by - well, you - and it affected their memories some."

" I freed the Valors?"

"Another time," Lala promised, reminding Evangeline what was at stake in that moment. "Suffice to say, I took the liberty of calling in the favour he owes you. Now head over to the corner of the clearing where we all met last night, and when a red drake approaches you, act casual."

"Good luck," she murmured to Lala and Marisol. Watching them was eerie; at a glance, they really would fool anyone.

"Same to you," Lala said. "It's difficult to think of Jacks as a friend the way he is now, but you always seemed to bring out the part of him that was human. And that man is a friend."

With that, they parted ways; Lala and Marisol weaving back through the throngs of other ladies and their escorts, and Evangeline to meet her dragon.

She didn't need to wait long. Seconds after arriving at the designated meeting point, a little ways from the main activity, a hand grabbed hers and raised it to the toothy jaw of a red dragon.

"Hello," the man beneath the mask said as he mimed kissing her hand. "Remember that you're supposed to want to go into the woods with me right now."

Evangeline forced her body to relax, as though the drake was indeed her awaited lover. "Thank you for doing this."

Dane held onto her hand and began to lead her into the deeper woods. Unlike before, nobody stopped her from leaving. Trysts like this were probably a normal part of the hunt proceedings.

"I only did it because Ariel asked," Dane said quietly, weaving between trees until the sounds of the crowd became dimmer and dimmer.

"Who?"

"Ariel Lagrimas - she introduced herself to you as Lala, so I assume you must have been friends."

"I assumed you were also her friend." Evangeline frowned beneath her mask. "In fact, I assumed you were somewhat more."

Dane didn't speak for several seconds, and she wondered if they would simply part ways with awkwardness between them. Then he stopped, removing his dragon mask. "Silly thing," he muttered, turning it over in his hands. It was every bit as exquisite as the one Evangeline was wearing; a perfect match in every way. "She made these. They're…exceptionally accurate." Dane's mouth turned down slightly. "She must have known me very well."

"But she doesn't anymore?" Evangeline asked.

"No, I'm sure she does. It's me that doesn't know her ." Dane raked a hand through his ear-length hair. "The story curse has a nasty habit of washing away the truth of anything unfortunate enough to become a Northern Tale. I have vague memories of a girl that looked like Ariel Lagrimas, but I can't recall how we met, or why she looks at me the way she does."

"Like you cause her physical pain?" Evangeline guessed, thinking of how Jacks looked whenever his gaze lingered a little too long.

"She said she became a Fate after my family was imprisoned, just so that she'd be sure to live long enough to see me again."

"She loves you."

"I wish I could remember why." Dane shook his head sadly. "But that's our story." He put his mask back on and then gently removed Evangeline's. "But it doesn't have to be yours. Happy hunting, Miss Fox."

There was more Evangeline might have said, but Dane was right; his and Lala's story was up to them to finish. Her job was to find Jacks and make sure their own Northern Tale didn't end in tragedy.

She ran.

"Jacks!"

Evangeline could run no more, so instead she screamed. She had been travelling in no particular direction, and now, deep in the dim, misty forest it was too easy to believe that the rest of the world had disappeared, leaving her completely alone and without hope of ever seeing her perhaps-love ever again.

The answering bay of a far, but not too far, hound brought Evangeline back to herself. She was not alone, and neither was Jacks; the forest might have seemed eerily still, but in reality it was teeming with enemies that needed to be carefully avoided.

Instead of her previous sprint, she trotted as fast as she could while still catching her breath. The bag Lala gave her banged painfully against her hip, so she pulled the mask free and slipped it over her head.

Her one remaining coin was also in danger of bouncing out of her pocket. It might have belonged to a stranger with nefarious intentions, or it might have been one of her last lifelines to her Prince of Hearts, so she grabbed it firmly in her hand, attempting to fill it with as much of her intent as possible.

"Take me to Jacks."

JACKS

The forest pressed in around him, but he walked with the surefooted confidence of an expert hunter. Before the Cursed Forest became cursed, it was just another part of his hunting grounds. In fact, he had first met the fox…somewhere near here. Between the story curse and his years spent trapped inside a magical deck of fates, the past was permanently hazy. He remembered the big things: that he was Jacks of the Hollow, the archer who became cursed to kill his love. And he remembered that he did.

But that was the past; it was the present that demanded his full attention now. For he was not simply strolling through the woods on a whim, but searching, desperately, for Evangeline Fox.

He had promised himself to no longer interfere with her life, so long as he could believe she was alive and more or less happy. He had felt her coin travelling from Valorfell to the Cursed Forest, and for several hours he had shown remarkable restraint by not dropping everything to follow it. But it seemed his attendance at the Valors' unicorn hunt was required, for a slip of gilded paper was pushed under the front door of his apartment and, presumably to ensure he actually noticed it, followed up with a sharp knock on the door.

Jacks, who had at the time been busy plucking at the threads of his shirtsleeves until his forearms were covered in little more than a tangle of silk thread, eyed the paper cautiously. It was clearly a fancy invitation of the sort that he had regularly received when he was Lord Jacks, but these days the only thing Prince Apollo would have invited him to was his own execution.

Still…he snatched up the paper, and indeed it was a formal invitation to the unicorn hunt taking place the next morning. The entire country knew about the hunt, so that wasn't the part that made his heart sink. Hand-drawn on the back of the card was a picture of a fox, lying prone with a golden arrow sticking out of it. The fox itself was limned in gold and painted in with something that might have been watercolours, or might have been diluted blood. In any case, the message was clear: the true quarry of the hunt would not be a unicorn, but a rose gold fox. His Fox.

This was how he came to be tracking Evangeline Fox through the woods, following his luckless coin and trying to stop imagining her bleeding to death on the ground around every corner.

He was close now. The coin was practically singing in his mind, as if she herself were using it to call out for him. He broke into a run, all stealth forgotten in the need to find her before the animal-headed monsters that called themselves men reached her first. He knew these hunts well, and when the part of 'unicorn' was played by a human they rarely emerged unscathed. And someone had made it very clear that Evangeline was in their sights.

He rounded a wide oak and stopped in his tracks before he could startle the woman on the other side. She wore a mask that covered her entire head, clearly made from the skin of an actual vixen. Her dress was emerald green with embroidered violets so lifelike Jacks half expected them to wilt. She held a luckless coin in her hands and was bent over it as if praying. Jacks' heart leapt; did this mean that she remembered him?

"Little Fox," he said, stepping closer. The fox mask turned to him, and its wearer dropped the coin and reached out.

She did remember. For just a moment, he allowed himself to pretend the story ended there; her memories were back, and now there were no more curses standing between their love. It was a lie, obviously, but with her face covered he was hardly at risk of kissing her by accident. If he allowed himself one embrace, he could always take it back later. That was their dynamic: fiercely denying their feelings for one another despite all evidence to the contrary. As long as he could take it back, he could give her just a little of his love now.

The gap between them closed. Her hands pressed against his face in a loving gesture, the tender precursor to a kiss that could never come. But still Jacks reached up to remove her mask; it may have been the only barrier left between their lips, but he was confident he could control himself. He could do anything, if it was for her.

The fox mask slid away, and violet hair tumbled free.

"You!" Jacks tried to jerk free from her hold, but his temples burned with pain where her hands pressed against them. Still, his fear was entirely reserved for Evangeline. He eyed the coin, her coin, where it lay on the ground. "What did you do?"

"To who?" Aurora Valor glanced at the coin with disinterest. "Your Little Fox?" Nails raked across his scalp. "I honestly don't know why you care. What is she to you, Jacks?"

He grit his teeth against the pain. "She's nobody, Aurora. Leave her alone."

Aurora's beautiful smile became a petulant scowl that Jacks knew well. It was the same face she made when they were younger, and the others refused to play her games. "I know she's nobody. You're the one who keeps acting like she's something special. Apollo told me all about it."

"Apollo's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"Maybe so," Aurora acknowledged, "but at least he understands how Northern Tales are supposed to end."

Her fingers became daggers, seeming to stab through his skull and pierce his brain. "What are you doing?" He grit out through the pain.

"I never wanted to do this to you, Jacks." The beautiful smile was back. "Not again."

"Please stop," he whispered. Whatever she was doing was killing him. He could feel his consciousness slipping, but whatever magic Aurora was working on him kept him upright and unable to move.

"It'll be over soon," she soothed. "Taking away memories is easy, but adding new ones always hurts."

Memories? Panic kicked in, and he screamed. Still Aurora held him in place, and soon he could feel entire parts of himself falling away like dead leaves in Autumn: shooting a bow and arrow for the first time. Hearing Lyric's last words. Fighting the urge to kill the fox. Participating in the ritual that made Castor a vampire, and realising too late how badly he had failed his friend. Letting the Fallen Star turn him into a Fate. Kissing Donatella Dragna. Watching Castor become Chaos. Watching his teeth rip out Evangeline's throat.

"Stop," he begged, bloody tears running down his face. "Stop, stop, stop."

Evangeline praying for his help. Evangeline, half-drowned and clinging to him like he was the only thing in the world she could trust to keep her afloat. Evangeline curling against him at The Hollow and whispering the words, "I'm yours."

"It will be over soon," Aurora whispered, "and then it won't hurt anymore."

But he wanted it to hurt. He wanted his memories, even the terrible ones that made him something monstrous. They were his choices, and good or bad they had led him to Evangeline Fox. And now Aurora was sifting through them, destroying the ones that didn't fit with her idea of him. He could already feel gaps where something must have been. Something important. A girl? A fox?

"There's only me, remember?" Aurora pressed her forehead against his, and suddenly all the roses in his garden were dead, and only violets remained.