The Ballad of Never After

The curse of the Archer establishes Evangeline’s main narrative arc: finding the stones to open the arch and cure Apollo before he kills her. Apollo waking up as a result of the archer curse offers context for how magic and curses work, something that Garber uses to build this fantasy story world. The enchanted sleep curse left Apollo in a suspended state, unable to move or act. Later, he says that he was at least partially aware of his surroundings, suggesting that the curse is meant to trap someone in their own body. It’s never specified how curses layer atop one another, adding to the sense of mystery with which Garber imbues the text.

The incident with Luc and Marisol in Chapters 8 and 9 creates an intertextual climax based on the tension from the end of Once Upon a Broken Heart. During the prequel, Marisol cast a love spell on Luc because she wanted him to love her, not Evangeline. This led to Marisol framing Evangeline for Apollo’s murder, which prompted Evangeline to realize that Marisol never cared about her. Marisol’s function in Chapters 8 and 9 is to provide a foil for Evangeline that definitively establishes Evangeline as a benevolent heroine. Though part of Evangeline wants to let Luc bite Marisol, she can’t bring herself to let Marisol get hurt. This scene also shows Evangeline’s vulnerability in relation to Luc, her first love, which forms part of the novel’s exploration of the theme of The Power of Love.

Garber uses intertextual references again in Chapter 10, which mirrors a scene from Book One and develops the romantic tension between Evangeline and Jacks. In the prequel, a vampire bit Jacks, and Evangeline stayed with him until sunrise so that he wouldn’t bite someone and turn into a vampire. When a vampire bites Evangeline in this text, she wants Jacks to stay with her to offer the same comfort, but he doesn’t, leaving Evangeline feeling uncertain. Garber uses this asymmetric reflection of each scene in the books to highlight the opposing characterizations of Jacks and Evangeline.

With her heightened senses and strength, Evangeline becomes a different version of herself. Normally, her views of love are sweet and tender, but with the venom in her veins, she is suddenly lustful and hopeful that Jacks will “pin her to the bed” (79). This wish, which follows Chaos trying to suck her blood, uses linguistic reference to sexual assault that makes apparent the gendered power dynamics between Evangeline and Jacks and highlights the harmful elements of the theme of Manipulation. Jacks’s jealousy when he witnesses Chaos attempting to suck Evangeline’s blood by pinning her to the bed further underscores these harms and serves the plot development purpose of foreshadowing Jacks revealing his feelings for Evangeline.

Chapters 11 and 12 establish an internal conflict for Evangeline through her choice to go outside because she likes the power of opening doors. Her choice reveals her poor decision-making skills prompted by an internal conflict between a sense of safety and power. In Chapter 12, Apollo finds Evangeline because the curses link them and he can sense her. However, Jacks also finds her, and so Garber adds to the fantastical sense of mystery with the implied suggestion that Jacks may have a supernatural way of keeping track of her. When Jacks grabs Evangeline and jumps off the cliff at the end of Chapter 12, Garber presents a literary image of the metaphor of “falling in love”; indeed, Evangeline later thinks that this was the moment she truly started to fall for Jacks.