A Curse for True Love Summary by Chapter | Stephanie Garber

Chapter 12: Evangeline

Jacks leads Evangeline to a rickety suspension bridge over a rushing river in the Water Garden.

He suddenly attacks her, pinning her arms and threatening to toss her off to test her reflexes. He teaches her leverage techniques to flip an assailant.

They fall together on the bridge, and Evangeline feels breathless heat despite the rain. Jacks holds a knife to her throat, warning her never to feel safe.

When he tosses her his jeweled dagger, she triggers a memory of the same blade on a dark floor.

Chapter 13: Apollo

Apollo reads the magical scroll from Lord Slaughterwood, which catches fire whenever opened. Havelock reports that Madame Voss denies sending the well letter.

Apollo reveals he orchestrated the entire attack—he ordered Hansel and Victor to push Evangeline into the well to “prove” she was in danger.

He tells Havelock to continue torturing the tutor and execute Hansel and Victor as an “example,” feeling guilt but believing he’s protecting his marriage.

Chapter 14: Evangeline

Exhilarated by Jacks-triggered memories, Evangeline is determined to find him again. Apollo invites her to dinner in the “Court of Columns,” promising “special guests.”

Martine explains this means a massive banquet with all courtiers and guards present. Evangeline hopes Jacks will attend so she can sneak away for a private conversation.

Chapter 15: Apollo

Apollo hosts dinner in the Court of Columns, feeling a “buzzing” pull toward Evangeline from the Archer’s curse. Jealousy flares when he sees her laughing with Lord Byron Belleflower.

Belleflower mentions that the guards who “endangered” the princess have been “put down like dogs.” Evangeline is horrified to learn Hansel and Victor are dead.

Apollo tries distracting her with a toast to “coming back from the dead and the magic of true love.”

Chapter 16: Evangeline

Disturbed by the “curses” toast and the guards’ deaths, Evangeline meets Aurora Vale, a violet-haired girl who warns that belief alone can create curses.

Aurora introduces her parents, Lord and Lady Vale (the Valors), who move with warrior grace.

Lady Vale hugs Evangeline with “ferocious” warmth. Aurora tells the tragic story of Merrywood Manor, razed by Vengeance Slaughterwood.

Apollo becomes suspicious seeing Jacks’s jeweled dagger at Evangeline’s belt, but an urgent message pulls him away.

Chapter 17: Evangeline

With Apollo gone, Evangeline uses Lord Vale’s toast as distraction to sneak from the banquet.

Aurora follows, accusing her of having a “secret lover” and blocking her from finding Jacks. Returning alone to her suite, Evangeline is attacked by a masked assassin attempting torture.

Jacks appears suddenly, holding the assassin aloft by his neck. The assassin claims anonymous hiring for a “slow and painful” death. Jacks stabs the man through the heart.

Chapter 18: Evangeline

Jacks fumes at Evangeline’s “no sense of self-preservation” and warns her away from dangerous things. When she touches his hand, she plunges into a vivid memory of him saving her from a crushing ocean—realizing Jacks was her savior, not Apollo.

Jacks tries leaving, telling her to claim she killed the assassin. Evangeline chases him, desperate for answers about their shared past.

Chapter 19: Apollo

Apollo visits a grisly massacre scene where House Fortuna has been slaughtered. He finds a fourteen-year-old survivor, Edgar, hiding in a closet.

The boy describes a “feral,” non-human killer. Apollo recognizes vampire work but decides to frame Jacks. He forces the boy to sketch Jacks, then stabs Edgar in the heart to eliminate the witness.

New wanted posters feature the boy’s Jacks sketch.

Chapter 20: Evangeline

Evangeline chases Jacks through narrow hallways past slashed Apollo portraits. Jacks admits he’s “better at doing damage than protecting.”

He tucks hair behind her ear with agonizing care, looking like he wished he could hold her. Returning to her room, Evangeline finds it perfectly cleaned of assassin evidence.

Apollo arrives with blood on his boots, refusing to explain. They kiss, but Evangeline accidentally says “Archer,” filling Apollo with dark jealousy.

Chapter 21: Jacks

Jacks leaps from Evangeline’s balcony after watching her kiss Apollo, feeling “hateful” resolve.

Hearing guards discuss a “demon” massacre, he realizes his vampire friend Castor is feeding again. Jacks rides to Merrywood Forest and finds Castor on a rooftop, warning him to control his hunger before the Valors kill him.

Castor counters that Aurora has revealed what Jacks will “exchange” to save Evangeline. Jacks stoically replies, “At least she’ll be alive to hate me.”

Chapter 22: Evangeline

A new scandal sheet features Jacks’s sketch as the “heartless murderer” of House Fortuna. Evangeline feels sick and foolish for her feelings toward him.

She learns Apollo left for “The Hunt” in the Cursed Forest—an old Valor tradition searching for a wish-granting “unicorn.” Evangeline insists on joining the Hunt to warn Apollo that Jacks sneaks into the castle.

Chapter 23: Evangeline

Evangeline and her guards trek along a magically spelled road to the Cursed Forest. Inside the “in-between,” they find colorful tents.

Aurora Vale and Lord Byron Belleflower give conflicting directions to Apollo’s camp. Evangeline follows Byron, but he lures her into fog and murders her guard Hale.

Byron reveals he wants revenge “for what she did to Petra.” Evangeline slices his wrist with Jacks’s dagger and flees into the Cursed Forest.

Chapter 24: Apollo

In his royal tent, Apollo rages that his guards lost Evangeline. Joff explains she split them up and sent a message asking Apollo not to join the Hunt until she found him.

A child bursts in reporting the princess attacked and fled into the Cursed Forest. Apollo prepares to go after her.

Chapter 25: Evangeline

Running through fog, Evangeline finds herself in a perfect recreation of her father’s Valenda curiosity shop—”the best day of her life,” the day before her twelfth birthday.

She hears her parents’ voices but cannot reach them through endless balloons and crates. Chaos appears, explaining the forest gives people enough to chase but never lets them catch what they want.

Jacks arrives and stabs the vampire through the chest before Chaos can warn Evangeline about a “horrible decision.”

Chapter 26: Jacks

Evangeline attacks Jacks for stabbing Chaos, but Jacks explains the vampire will revive. He pins her down, declaring, “I am a monster, but I’m your monster.”

He reflects on using stones to turn back time after watching her die in his arms. To keep her from forest illusions, Jacks ties his wrist to hers with magical rope.

Chapter 27: Evangeline

Flower vines grow on the rope binding Evangeline and Jacks together. They enter “The Hollow,” an inn representing Jacks’s “best day.”

Jacks presses his forehead to hers, pleading with her to “remember.”

Evangeline’s heart breaks because she cannot recall the memories he wants. They leave the forest and find “Ye Olde Brick Inn,” which has only one bed available.

Chapter 28: Apollo

Apollo meets Wolfric and Honora Valor in his tent. He shows them Slaughterwood’s flaming scroll and asks about the “Tree of Souls,” which supposedly grants immortality.

Wolfric warns the tree is evil—immortality costs the sacrifice of the one you love most. Apollo believes he must become immortal to save Evangeline from Jacks.

Chapter 29: Evangeline

Jacks carries Evangeline into their flower-petal-decorated inn room. He attempts to use shimmering gold dust to put her to sleep and say goodbye. Evangeline knocks the vial away, coating them both in “buzzy” dust.

She refuses to let him leave and begins undressing him from wet clothes. Finding a worn letter in his doublet—a letter she wrote to herself—she reads her own warnings and her memories suddenly return in a rushing flood.

Chapter 30: Evangeline

Evangeline remembers everything: her love for Jacks, his time-turn attempt for Donatella, and the night Apollo stole her memories.

She wakes to find Jacks gone, a permanent glass “protection cuff” welded onto her wrist. Blood stains the doorknob, and downstairs lie slaughtered innkeeper and patrons—vampire work.

Garrick captures her, but Apollo arrives taking “charge.” Evangeline slaps Apollo hard, then pretends she still hasn’t regained memories to protect herself.

Chapter 31: Evangeline

Apollo takes Evangeline toward Merrywood Village for a “rebuilding festival.” The village teems with life and bunting. Evangeline notices Apollo seems to fear Aurora Vale. She watches Aurora slip Apollo a secret note during farewells.

Chapter 32: Apollo

Apollo recalls the night Honora Valor cured his curses and Aurora offered memory-erasing elixir—realizing he made a deal with a “devil.”

In the tent, Apollo tries touching Evangeline, but her glass cuff causes agonizing pain—”Vengeance Slaughterwood’s cuff of protection.”

He meets Aurora at a crossroads, where she demands he clear Jacks’s name in exchange for leading him to the Tree of Souls.

Chapter 33: Evangeline

LaLa breaks into Evangeline’s tent dressed as a guard. They reunite, and Evangeline explains Apollo stole her memories and she remembers everything.

LaLa warns Jacks is “unnecessarily cruel” with dangerous feelings. Evangeline declares she won’t give up on Jacks—she believes she is his true love.

Chapter 34: Evangeline

Evangeline and LaLa switch clothes for escape. Heading into the forest, Evangeline finds Jacks acting strange, calling her “pet.”

When Jacks tries kissing her, the glass cuff glows and he doubles over in pain. Chaos (Castor) appears, insisting they must leave because Jacks “is not safe right now.”

Chapter 35: Apollo

Aurora takes Apollo through a hidden marble arch to the Tree of Souls—a granite cavern with a pulsing blood-red tree bearing human faces carved into its trunk.

Wolfric Valor arrives, revealing the true price: eternal life requires losing the person you love most. Wolfric warns Apollo never to touch the tree.

Chapter 36: Evangeline

Chaos (Castor) takes Evangeline to a glowing spring, revealing Aurora and Jacks were once friends. Jacks traded his “second heart”—the heart that loves—to Aurora for Evangeline’s protection cuff.

Aurora plans to change Jacks’s heart permanently so he’ll belong to her. Castor tells Evangeline the heart hides in Aurora’s secret Hollow lair.

Chapter 37: Apollo

Apollo returns to find his tent trashed and Evangeline gone. Realizing she regained her memories, he orders guards to bring her back “by whatever means necessary.”

Chapter 38: Evangeline

LaLa and Evangeline reach Aurora’s Hollow lair, using Evangeline’s blood to open a hidden tree door. Inside, jars and spellbooks fill the room.

Evangeline discovers Aurora’s spellbook and learns Aurora herself placed the Archer’s curse on Jacks, making his kiss fatal to prevent him from loving a “Fox.”

Chapter 39: Evangeline

At the Merrywood festival, Evangeline and LaLa search for Aurora. An apple vendor under Jacks’s influence gives Evangeline a note saying “Do not look for me.”

Jacks forces the vendor to burn his own cart. They find a dead fox with another Jacks note: “won’t warn her again.” Aurora appears bruised, claiming Jacks took his heart back by force.

Chapter 40: Evangeline

Aurora claims Jacks took his heart not to keep it, but to destroy it so he’d feel nothing. LaLa explains a second heart can only be destroyed by royal phoenix tree fire.

Aurora warns that even if Evangeline saves his heart, his kiss will still kill her because “only a girl who will never love Jacks can survive.” Evangeline leaves to find Jacks at the phoenix tree.

Chapter 41: Evangeline

Evangeline finds the phoenix tree as its leaves turn from green to gold. Jacks arrives, tossing his heart in a jar like an apple.

He tells her they “just end”—he cannot watch her die again. Evangeline tells him she loves him and kisses him anyway. She feels dizzy and loses consciousness—but she survives.

Chapter 42

“Once upon a time, there was nothing but kissing, and everything was perfect. And then there was even more kissing.”

Chapter 43: Evangeline

Jacks and Evangeline share a fleeting happy moment. Jacks tells her “I love you.” Apollo arrives, plucks a golden leaf, and the phoenix tree bursts into blinding white flames.

Apollo abducts Evangeline, carrying her away while she screams for Jacks.

Chapter 44: Apollo

Apollo carries screaming Evangeline through a marble arch. Blinding pain from her protection cuff hits him, but he shackles her wrists and ankles in a tunnel. He still claims love but says they must be together for her “final minutes.”

Chapter 45: Jacks

Jacks searches through burning tree smoke but finds Aurora instead. She taunts him, asking why he chose Evangeline over her. Finally, she reveals Apollo took Evangeline to the Tree of Souls.

Chapter 46: Evangeline

Apollo brings Evangeline to the Tree of Souls cavern.

He tells her he wanted to make her queen, but since she chose Jacks, he must “be more” than human to keep her. He prepares to sacrifice her to the tree.

Chapter 47: Jacks

Jacks arrives and brutally beats Apollo. Castor’s brothers, Dane and Lysander, restrain Jacks while Wolfric Valor watches. Wolfric refuses intervention: “She’s his wife.”

Jacks screams as Apollo holds his sword high.

Chapter 48: Evangeline

Apollo doesn’t stab Evangeline—instead, he slices a tree branch and drinks its blood to become immortal.

The tree pulses and drags Apollo toward its trunk.

Wolfric explains the price: the tree takes the life of the person the drinker “loves most”—and Apollo loved only himself. Apollo is consumed by the trunk, his horrified face becoming a permanent part of the tree.

Chapter 49: Evangeline

The Valors release Jacks. They briefly fight violently before Evangeline stops them. Wolfric admits he planted the tree but feels no remorse about Apollo’s fate.

The Valors leave to find Aurora. Evangeline and Jacks, bruised but alive, walk out of the cavern together to find their own “happily ever after.”

Epilogue

The Story Curse of the Magnificent North watches the couple leave.

It notes star-crossed lovers are “boring” but admits Jacks doesn’t need his magical apples anymore now that he has Evangeline.

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