Once Upon a Broken Heart recap

Evangeline Fox, an orphaned shop girl in Valenda raised on her mother's stories about the far Magnificent North, is losing the man she loves: Luc Navarro is about to marry her stepsister, Marisol. Desperate, she prays at the temple statue of Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, one of the Fates, and he appears and offers a deal - he will stop the wedding in exchange for three kisses, given to three people of his choosing, whenever he asks. She agrees. Jacks stops the wedding by turning the couple to stone at the altar, the city blames Evangeline, and she leaves for the North in his company. There the stories are literal: cursed houses, vampires, and a sealed arch called the Valory that the North's founders locked. Jacks calls in his first kiss and makes her give it to Prince Apollo, the North's young ruler, who is left obsessed with her. By the book's end Evangeline understands that the kisses were never about her wedding problem - they were about placing her at the arch - and Apollo has paid for it.

Evangeline Fox grew up in Valenda over her family's curiosity shop, raised on her mother's stories about the Magnificent North, a distant kingdom where magic is supposed to be an ordinary fact. Both her parents are now dead. She is in love with Luc Navarro, and Luc has abruptly become engaged to her stepsister Marisol - a change Evangeline is certain was not his own decision. With days left before the wedding and no ordinary way to stop it, she goes to the temple where the old Fates are honored and prays at the statue of Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, who is said to answer occasionally and never kindly. He appears. He will stop the wedding, he tells her, in exchange for three kisses: not kisses for himself, but kisses she must give to three people of his choosing, at times of his choosing. Evangeline agrees.

Jacks keeps his side of the bargain in the worst way available to him. At the ceremony, Luc and Marisol are turned to stone at the altar. Evangeline wanted a wedding stopped, not a couple destroyed, and Valenda holds her responsible for what happened. Her home and her place in the city are closed to her, and she still owes three kisses to a Fate who can collect them whenever he likes. Jacks takes her out of Valenda and north, to the Magnificent North her mother's stories came from, and does not explain what he wants there.

In the North, Evangeline finds the stories were literal. Great houses carry curses that are still working, vampires are discussed as neighbors rather than legends, and everyone knows the tale of the Valory Arch, a sealed arch that the North's founding family locked long ago over something they did not want found. Into this, Jacks calls in the first of his three kisses, and the person Evangeline must kiss is Prince Apollo, the North's young ruler. The kiss does not merely charm him: it fixes him on her completely. A shop girl with no name in the North is suddenly the declared object of the most eligible man in the kingdom, which makes her the most resented woman in it.

Apollo's devotion reshapes Evangeline's position entirely. She is courted in public, disliked by the North's houses, and unable to tell anyone that his feelings are not his own. She makes a friend in LaLa, who is generous with her company and careful with her history, and she keeps pulling at the story of the Valory Arch and the family that sealed it. Jacks stays close, unhelpful and unreadable, and Evangeline begins to understand that the bargain was never really about the wedding in Valenda: he wanted her in the North, and specifically where she now finds herself.

Evangeline is drawn deeper into the North's politics as Apollo's intended, while the arch and whatever is behind it becomes the thing everyone in the kingdom is quietly circling. She also learns that her mother's connection to the North was not the harmless story-collecting she grew up believing, and that her own presence there is less accidental than it looked. Jacks continues to call in what she owes him, and no kiss he asks for costs only her.

The last of the debt comes due. Evangeline is now dealing not only with Apollo and the houses but with the North's older residents, including the vampire Chaos, who will help for a price of his own. Jacks' purpose comes into focus: what he has been arranging around Evangeline serves his interest in the Valory Arch, and she has been the instrument for it since the day she knelt at his statue. Evangeline has to weigh a marriage she did not choose against a bargain she did, with the arch at the center of both.

The book closes with Evangeline's three kisses spent and their consequences settled on other people. Prince Apollo, whose obsession she caused with the first of them, does not come through it as the man who courted her; what happens to him at the end changes him, and Evangeline cannot pretend the cause was anything but her own kiss. Luc and Marisol are still stone in Valenda, so the wedding she paid a Fate to stop has cost far more than letting it proceed would have. Evangeline finishes the book in the North, bound to Apollo's house and to Jacks at once, with the sealed Valory Arch now the thing her life is organized around and Jacks still refusing to say what he wants from it.

Evangeline reaches the end of her bargain having worked out what the three kisses were actually for. Jacks did not care about a wedding in Valenda; he needed Evangeline in the Magnificent North and positioned beside the sealed Valory Arch, and every kiss he called in moved her closer to it. The first of them fell on Prince Apollo and fixed him on her past all reason, and the consequences of that land on him hardest: by the close he is no longer the prince who courted her, and Evangeline knows whose kiss started it. Luc and Marisol are still stone in Valenda, so the wedding she tried to stop has cost far more than the marriage would have. She ends the book in the North rather than at home, tied at once to Apollo's house and to the Fate who brought her there, with the arch and its history now the thing her life turns on. Jacks has what he wanted from her and has still not said what he intends to do with it.