Once Upon a Broken Heart

The gossip sheet claims Marisol is there to ruin Nocte Neverending and turn Evangeline back to stone. Marisol doesn’t want to attend Nocte Neverending now, but Evangeline convinces her to go and prove the gossip sheets wrong. Marisol agrees to go and reaches out to touch the flowers on Evangeline’s dress. One rips off, and Evangeline’s old doubts about Marisol resurface.

Evangeline intentionally forgets her gloves and races back to get them and check Marisol’s room for spell books. She doesn’t find any, but Marisol comes back to find Evangeline searching her room. Evangeline gathers her gloves as they leave, feeling terrible for suspecting Marisol. Unlike her stepsister, Evangeline has secrets that would “hurt her far more than any of Evangeline’s fleeting doubts” (134).

Nocte Neverending has an unmatchable energy. Guests pass through an archway to where the dance will take place, and a sense of wondrous excitement sweeps over Evangeline. For the first time, the magic of Nocte Neverending seems to suggest that “a person’s destiny could change in one single, wondrous night” (137).

Nocte Neverending is full of doors called “mystery” or “love” and a giant chessboard where people play as pieces who kiss. Jacks is there, and Evangeline feels badly when he asks Marisol to dance. Before she can intervene, Apollo arrives and proposes to her. Feeling wanted, she says yes.

As soon as she accepts, Evangeline wonders why Apollo wants her when he doesn’t even know her and if the proposal is somehow Jacks’s doing. Apollo showers her with kisses that push away Evangeline’s lingering doubts and promise that “everything she could ever want was about to be hers” (150).