The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber Book Summary
Check out the popular romantasy The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber, the second book in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series. This is a summary to help you remember and understand the main points of the book before you read my full book review. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you read the whole book.
This book takes place immediately after the first book, Once Upon a Broken Heart, so be sure to read that one first. I also have a summary and review of that one.
Part 1
Chapters 1-2
A few days after finding her husband Apollo is his suspended sleep, Evangeline Fox goes to the library where Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, finds her and admits he’s the one who put Prince Apollo in the sleep. He doesn’t seem apologetic at all, and Evangeline tells him that she’ll never help him with the Valory Arch or anything again. After Jacks leaves her, she uses her blood to open an always locked door in the library to find another arch.
Evangeline uses her blood to try to get through this arch, a common occurrence in the Magnificent North, but the arch only starts to glow. Then, a librarian Evangeline recognizes shows up to tell her it’s the Valory Arch, but she has to find the four missing pieces of the arch to fully open it. As he tries to tell her more of the story, he starts fading away.
Chapters 3-4
Evangeline goes to visit her friend LaLa in hopes she can cure Apollo before the new heir to the throne, Lucien Acadian, shows up. LaLa says Jacks is the only one who can, and that Evangeline should open the arch for him. LaLa also tells Evangeline that she’s leaving to get married to Lord Robin Slaughterwood.
When Evangeline goes back to the palace to visit Apollo, Jacks is there and says she has to the end of the day to agree to open the arch. Suddenly, Apollos eyes turn red and his hand grabs Evangeline’s wrist and won’t let go even though he’s still asleep. Jacks cuts Apollo’s arm to release it, and Evangeline gets the cut on her arm also causing Jacks to conclude someone else has put a new terrifying curse on them.
Chapters 5-7
Suddenly, Evangeline is summoned to meet Prince Lucien, who the paper reports is a saint, but it turns out Prince Lucien is actually Luc who’s now a vampire. Evangeline can’t figure out why he’s trying to take the throne, but he suddenly tries to bite her. Jacks is somehow there to pull her away while subduing Luc, but as they’re leaving the hall, Evangeline sees Marisol trying to go in to see Prince Lucien.
While Evangeline still doesn’t like Marisol, she convinces Jacks to stop Marisol from going into the room with his powers. Overwhelmed, Evangeline goes out to the garden where Jacks follows her. Evangeline feels frazzled around Jacks when suddenly a figure appears at the other end of the garden.
Chapters 8-9
The figure is Apollo on his horse, but when Evangeline tries to get closer, he says to stay back because he doesn’t wanna hurt her. He also says he heard Evangeline talking to him when he was in the sleep, but when she takes a step closer, his eyes turn red. Jacks tells her to run away, and as she’s running back into the palace, Apollo shoots her in the leg and shoulder with an arrow, and she passes out.
When Evangeline wakes up, chaos is there, and she realizes she’s in his underground palace. Jacks comes in to tell her the only way to heal her wounds is with vampire venom, and a cage comes down over her bed. Before she can protest, a vampire bites her arm.
Chapters 10-11
As the vampire venom takes effect, Evangeline realizes she wants to bite Jacks, but he leaves the room. She bends the bars of the cage, so Chaos has to hold her down. He admits he wants her to open the arch because it will remove the curse that keeps the helm over half his face.
After Chaos holds her down all night so she can’t bite anybody, Evangeline leaves the underground palace into the forest alone the next night. She hears a horse coming so she hides when she sees it’s Apollo again. He calls out that he feels a pull to her and can’t stop hunting her even though he wants to.
Chapters 12-13
Hiding in the trees, Jacks appears behind her, covering her mouth and carrying her away, so Apollo doesn’t hear. Jacks helps her get away as he tells her that he wasn’t the one who put the second curse on Apollo because he doesn’t want to end Evangeline’s life. Someone also put the curse of the hunter on him which makes him hunt her without rest.
Jacks also admits that the only way to break the Archer’s curse is to open the arch. He tells Evangeline that the Protectorate have killed all the other girls who were keys to opening the arch before her. The last human key did find the first of the four missing stones to open the arch before she was killed.
Chapters 14-15
Jacks and Evangeline make it back to Chaos’ palace where Evangeline agrees to help with the arch only to save Apollo. In Chaos’ study, Evangeline finds a gem that she desperately wants until Jacks holds her back while Chaos locks it in an iron box. The gem is the missing luck stone from the arch and seems to affect Evangeline the most.
Chapters 16-17
To help with the search of the other magical stones, Chaos shows her to his secret library where he’s compiled books on the Valors and history of the North. But because the books change a little bit every time they’re read, Chaos doesn’t allow anyone else to read them. Evangeline reads a lot about the family of the Valors who were magical and great until something horrible happened to all of them that’s not specifically written in any book. With the Valors gone, the age of the Great Houses began, so Evangeline starts reading up on each of the great houses.
While she’s reading a book on the Merrywood House, Chaos startles her, but after talking and leaving, Evangeline notices the Merrywood book she just dropped is gone. She does find a paper with each stone written on it with a corresponding symbol, but they can’t work out what the symbols mean. She spends a week in the library with little progress while Jacks is mysteriously gone.
Chapters 18-19
Evangeline decides to sneak into the Tower prison to visit Prince Tiberius because she thinks the Protectorate is hiding the stones. Even after explaining the curses on Apollo, Tiberius refuses to help because he thinks whatever’s in the arch is more dangerous. On the way back, Evangeline runs into Luc in the forest who seems to want to win Evangeline back, but she thinks it’s only to get back part of his old life.
Eventually, Luc asks her to go to LaLa’s engagement costume party. Evangeline decides she needs to go to the party, just not with Luc, because LaLa is getting married to Lord Slaughterwood, from one of the Great Houses. Evangeline thinks that the Great Houses hold the stones, and she may feel the pull of one at the party.
Chapters 20-21
The next day, Evangeline finally finds Jacks and convinces him to go to LaLa’s party with her. But Jacks says they can’t tell Chaos because the Slaughterwood family is the reason they’re all in this mess, but won’t elaborate. As Evangeline is packing, a magical book in her room keeps changing covers.
When she opens it, she see different portraits of the Great Houses including one of the Merrywood Three, one of which is rumored to the original archer from the Archer’s curse. One of the Merrywood Three looks exactly like Jacks but human. Just then Jacks enters her room, but when she asks about the portrait that has now disappeared, Jacks angrily denies it.
Part 2
Chapters 22-23
As the pass the ruins of Merrywood Manor in their carriage, Jacks tells Evangeline the story of how Lyric Merrywood fell in love with Aurora Valor, even though she had been betrothed to Vengeance Slaughterwood since birth. Aurora ran away to be with Lyric, one of the Merrywood Three, and Vengeance destroyed the Great House of Merrywood along with Lyric and Castor Valor, another of the Merrywood Three. Evangeline thinks Jacks looks very angry, but can’t tell how honest he’s being.
When they arrive at Slaughterwood Mansion, LaLa and Evangeline are so excited to see each other, but Jacks doesn’t seem happy to be here. When she’s unpacking, Evangeline hears Jacks and LaLa whispering in the next room that Jacks was here last week with LaLa looking for a cure to the Archer’s curse.
Chapters 24-25
Jacks and Evangeline go down to the large dinner to look for someone wearing one of the stones, and Evangeline feels annoyed at all the attention Jacks gets from females. Then, Jacks stops any men from talking to Evangeline. They finally get to meet LaLa’s fiancé, Robin Slaughterwood, who seems nice but suspicious of Jacks.
At dinner, Evangeline notices that Jacks left with a girl, and she goes to stop him from kissing her because his kiss is still fatal. She finds and interrupts them right before a kiss, and, after the girl leaves, reminds Jacks he wasn’t supposed to kill anyone here. He pins Evangeline to the wall, and, even though she knows it feels good to be touched by Jacks, she reminds him that she’s still married to Apollo.
Chapters 26-27
That night, Evangeline reads her magical book she brought when she can’t sleep which is now a history of House Slaughterwood. First, she reads a newspaper article saying some kind of monster, rumored to be created by the Valors, has been attacking House Slaughterwood after they killed Castor Valor. Then, she notices in the history of Glendora Slaughterwood, Vengeance’s second bride, that she’s always described with the word mirth and appears to be wearing a large stone. Evangeline thinks this is the mirth stone, another one to open the arch, and goes looking for Glendora’s grave in case she was buried with it.
Following a secret passage behind a portrait of Glendora that Jacks had shown her, Evangeline finds the tomb of Glendora when Luc shows up. He admits that he was following Evangeline, and she convinces him to open the marble tomb where she finds a bright yellow stone on a chain inside. Leaving Luc, Evangeline goes to find Jacks, but sees a beautiful girl, Petra Youngblood, leaving near his door.
Chapters 28-29
When Evangeline eventually finds Jacks, he denies knowing who Petra is or that she was in his room. That night after getting ready for the ball, Evangeline overhears LaLa say to Jacks that the newspaper reported that Evangeline was here so Apollo will know, and Tiberius also escaped from the prison. When Jacks says it’s LaLa’s fault Evangeline’s in danger, LaLa admits that she did what she had to do so Evangeline would open the arch.
Evangeline takes this to mean that LaLa is the one who put the Archer’s curse on Apollo, and then hears Jacks say he’s only doing what he needs to do for the arch too. Feeling betrayed by both of them, Evangeline goes down to the ball and drinks a bunch of wine while looking for a way to get out.
Chapters 30-31
Drunk from the wine, Evangeline lets Petra take her into a hidden passageway, and when Petra attacks, her wig falls off to reveal pink hair like Evangeline’s. Petra reveals she was the last key who faked her death after Chaos locked away the luck stone, but Petra also found the youth stone which was keeping her young. Petra’s confession makes Evangeline realize the stone she found is the truth stone not the mirth stone. When she keeps attacking Evangeline, Evangeline stabs her with her dagger and kills her.
Jacks find her in the passageway and holds her while she sobs. After they find the youth stone on Petra’s wrist, Jacks sends Evangeline back to her room to pack while he takes care of Petra’s body. In her room, Luc shows up as Evangeline feels cutting on her back, and then Jacks enters. Jacks tells Luc to get Chaos to find Apollo because someone’s torturing him to torture Evangeline.
Chapters 32-34
Evangeline feels Jacks carry her onto a sled and holds her her as they travel through the forest, past the Merrywood Manor ruins, and into a magical-feeling inn. As Evangeline is clutching Jacks the injuries stop, and Jacks helps her bandage the wounds. To distract herself, Evangeline asks why Jacks name is carved next to the names Aurora, Lyric, Castor, and the Archer, and Jacks said they used to all be friends. Then, Evangeline has a dream where she meets the Handsome Stranger at the inn who implies that Jacks is the Archer.
After sleeping, Evangeline goes to explore the inn, the Hollow, where she finds food laid out and fires going but no people. Then, Jacks finds her and explains the Hollow was enchanted by the Valors to protect travels and be safe from all enchantments and curses. Unknowibgly close to the truth stone Evangeline is still wearing, Jacks also admits he grew up here and that he doesn’t want to open the arch at all.
Chapters 35-36
As Jacks takes the truth stone and runs off, Evangeline thinks that he’s only interested in the four stones which are rumored to have great power when put together. When she finds Jacks again, he doesn’t deny he only wants the stone, but won’t say for what. Evangeline wants to be mad at him but still feels a pull to him.
The next morning, Jacks is gone, so Evangeline goes looking around the Hollow and finds Aurora Valors diary. She finds a passage that suggests LaLa was Lyric Merrywood’s sister, and betrothed to one of Aurora’s brothers. After two more days, a tiny dragons shows up in the inn followed later by an injured Jacks.
Chapters 37-39
Seeing that Jacks has been stabbed in the side, Evangeline helps him into one of the beds, but relaxes when she sees the wound starting to heal because of some enchantment on the Hollow. In a sleepy state, Jacks pulls Evangeline down into bed with him and asks her to pretend to be his for just one night. She knows it’s foolish, but she falls asleep next to him into another dream with the Handsome Stranger.
First, the Handsome Stranger tells Evangeline that Jacks is dangerous when LaLa appears saying the same thing. LaLa apologizes for putting the archer’s curse on her along with the mirror curse which LaLa thought would deter Apollo. Then, LaLa tells Evangeline that she’s been missing for weeks because time is different at the Hollow, and Jacks is using the mirth stone to make Evangeline feel good there so she needs to escape.
LaLa also tells Evangeline that her one true love was a dragon shape shifter who’s stuck in the Valory Arch, and that’s why she wants the arch open so bad. It’s also why she’s the UnWed Bride because she can’t ever get over her one love. Lastly, LaLa admits she was the one who stabbed Jacks when he returned and was nasty about her new engagement.
Chapter 40
Evangeline wakes up remembering the dream and goes looking for the mirth stone in Jacks clothes. But she notices the stone in a clock in the Hollow, and when Jacks wakes up wanting to grab her again she tries to tell him it’s because of the stone. Before he can stop her, Evangeline puts the stone in an iron jar to stop its power.
Part 3
Chapters 41-42
When the good feeling disappear, Jacks seems upset that Evangeline said none of this was real, but he also doesn’t say how he’s feeling now. He packs up their stuff, and they travel in silence back to Chaos’ underground palace. Evangeline notices that her feelings for Jacks still feel the same even without the mirth stone, so she goes back to her room to get some space.
Evangeline awakens to Apollo next to her bed who apologizes for everything, appearing not to be under the curse. He kisses Evangeline, who kisses him back. But as they’re kissing, she feels him change and start to choke her as the curse starts taking over.
Chapters 43-44
Because of the mirror curse, Apollo also starts choking, so Evangeline is able to roll off the bed to pull down the cage around the bed that Chaos first used on her. Having just come in, Jacks carries her to his room where he seems like he’s going to kiss Evangeline, but stops himself. Evangeline gets Jacks to admit that the four stones together allow one person to go back to one moment in their past to change it, and he plans to go back to the moment he met Princess Donatella to change it.
He says he wants a new chance at his one true love, but this means that Evangeline won’t cross paths with him or remember him at all. When Evangeline tries to convince him it’s a bad idea, Jacks admits he’s the real Archer from the story, and he did kill his first love, the Fix, after he kissed her, and his kiss has killed everyone since. He’s scared he’ll kill Evangeline too because he already found his supposed one true love, and then he leaves.
Chaos comes to get Evangeline to open the arch with the stones, and agreed to give the stones to Jacks after even though Chaos thinks it’s a bad plan for Jacks too. On the ride over, Evangeline puts together that Chaos is the “monster” the Valors created, and he confirms the Valors created him.
Chapters 45-46
When they make it to the arch, Evangeline puts the stones into place, and the arch turns into a wooden door. Chaos enters alone, but Evangeline follows curiously later to find the door goes to an entryway of what looks like a castle. She follows noise down a hall to find Chaos waking a woman she recognizes from pictures as Honora Valor, the first queen and mother of the Valors, and laying behind her in some kind of sleep is the rest of the Valor family.
Honora wakes up and calls Chaose her son Castor before removing the helm around his head. Once the helm is off, Evangeline recognizes him as the Handsome Stranger from her dreams. But when they make eye contact, Castor bites her neck, and kills her by drinking all her blood before anyone can stop him.
The End
Jacks cries as he holds Evangeline’s body and begs Honora to bring Evangeline back to life like she did to Castor. Honora refuses to do that to anyone else after Castor turned into a monster because of it. Jacks takes the four stones to go back in time to when they left Castor’s palace earlier.
Chapters 44-45(Again)
Castor and Evangeline are getting ready to leave for the arch when Jacks appears ready to go with them. He brought a girl to come for when Castor gets his helm off, but both Castor and Evangeline refuse to bring the girl. Even though Jacks seems upset, they make it to the arch and Castor goes in leaving Jacks and Evangeline behind.
Jacks starts saying mean things to Evangeline to get her to leave like that she’s just a tool to open the arch and not needed anymore. Evangeline is so hurt she runs off without ever entering the arch.
Chapters 46-Epilogue
As she’s running away, Evangeline comes to realize that she needs to tell Jacks how she actually feels and goes back to the arch. Coming out of the door that now has gold blood around it is Apollo who says a lady healed the curses on him and brought him here. While she’s happy Apollo is better, Evangeline just wants to find Jacks. Before she can move, Apollo grabs her and somehow starts erasing all her memories from the time she met Jacks.
Now left alone by the arch, Evangeline is crying because she feels so empty, but she can’t remember why. Suddenly, a handsome man she doesn’t recognize lifts her up and says he’s her husband.
Read My Full Review
Now that you’re reminded of everything that happened in the book, check out my full book review. I also have recommendations of other books to read if you liked this one. Continue on to the third book and next book in the series, A Curse for True Love, with my review and summary.
