The Ballad of Never After

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-12

Part 1, Chapters 13-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-27

Part 2, Chapters 28-34

Part 2, Chapters 35-40

Part 3, Chapters 41-46

Part 3, Chapter 47-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 3, Chapters 41-46Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “A Murder of Monsters”

Part 3, Chapter 41 Summary

As soon as Evangeline removes the stone, the clock stops ticking, and the inn becomes gray and cold. Jacks becomes his mean self again, and Evangeline wonders why her own feelings don’t fade as quickly. With the three stones, they return to Chaos’s palace, where Jacks tells Evangeline to stay until sunset. Though he doesn’t want the arch opened, he promised Chaos that he’d let him open it to get his helmet removed, and Jacks doesn’t want anything to happen to Evangeline before Chaos wakes for the night. Angry at the situation, Evangeline stalks away, saying, “Don’t worry, Jacks, I would never inconvenience you by dying” (302). She goes to her room, where the pain of the last few hours weighs her down. Unable to handle it, she opens the jar containing the mirth stone.

Part 3, Chapter 42 Summary

Though the immediate relief is bliss, Evangeline knows that it isn’t real and closes the jar, letting the pain back in. The day passes slowly, and she dozes, waking to find Apollo in her room. He’s contrite and gentle, and he kisses her, making Evangeline feel wanted and dulling the pain of Jacks’s dismissal. Apollo removes her cloak and starts to lower her dress off her shoulders, resting one hand on her chest and the other on her throat. He apologizes hoarsely, and Evangeline’s terror grows “as his eyes turn[] from brown to red and his hands beg[i]n to squeeze” (306).

Part 3, Chapter 43 Summary

The mirror curse makes Apollo choke, too, and Evangeline uses the opening to grab the mirth stone and get away from him, yanking the lever that makes a cage fall around the bed to trap him. Jacks arrives and guides Evangeline from the room. In the hall, he crushes her against him, but unlike the pain of Apollo’s hands, she doesn’t mind this, thinking that she’d “let him break her, just as long as he never let her go” (308). Suddenly, Jacks puts distance between them, the same way he did when Evangeline put the mirth stone in the jar, making her wonder if he was pretending to close off his emotions at the inn. Evangeline asks what he’s afraid of, and Jacks tells her what he wants from the stones. When all four are together, they allow a person to travel back to any point in their past, and Jacks wants to go to the moment he met Princess Donatella, the only girl he’s ever kissed without killing, for a chance at true love.

Evangeline doesn’t understand, and Jacks tells her not to try because she won’t remember the conversation anyway. Evangeline realizes that Jacks changing his past will mean that she’ll forget their time together, and while the idea makes her feel ill, Jacks doesn’t seem to care. She presses him, asking why he’s willing to change everything for a girl who doesn’t love him, and he finally snaps that he wants to forget Evangeline “because if [he doesn’t], [he’ll] kill [her], just like [he] killed the Fox” (314). Jacks is the archer from “The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox.” He killed his first true love a long time ago and wants a second chance. Donatella is the only way.

Part 3, Chapter 44 Summary

Chaos comes to collect Evangeline, who is feeling lost and desperate at the idea of losing Jacks. She asks Chaos if Jacks is making a mistake, and after a hesitation, Chaos explains that time travel is always a mistake because changing the past has unforeseen consequences for the future. Jacks thinks it will work because he only wants to change one recent event, but Chaos believes that “[t]ime will no doubt make sure he loses something else in order to pay for it” (319). After that, time seems to pass in an instant, and before she knows it, Evangeline is standing before the arch.

Part 3, Chapter 45 Summary

Evangeline places the four stones in the arch and uses her blood to open it, making the arch glow brilliantly. When the light fades, Chaos thanks her and chops off a lock of her hair, telling her to wait while he goes inside to break the curses on her. Determined to find another way to break Jacks’s deadly kiss curse, she enters the arch, following Chaos to a room where the Valors lie, asleep. She realizes that the arch was created to hold the Valors, and as she watches, they wake and greet Chaos, calling him Castor—the Valor son thought to be dead. Evangeline concludes that Chaos wanted to open the arch because he misses and loves his family, and she believes that, if she just tells Jacks that she loves him, he’ll change his mind about the stones and “want to stay and try for more than what he [is] settling for” (329).

The Valors remove Chaos’s helmet, and Evangeline recognizes him as the handsome stranger from her dreams in the Hollow. Chaos sees her and invites her into the room with a smile that turns feral as he bites her.

Part 3, Chapter 46 Summary

Chaos hungrily drinks Evangeline’s blood until Jacks yanks him off her, pulling her against him with “the type of intensity that only happens when a person wants something that isn’t quite theirs” (333). Evangeline tries to tell Jacks that she loves him, but she’s too weak and dies.

Part 3, Chapters 41-46 Analysis

Evangeline’s experience with the mirth stone in these chapters offers context for the story’s magic that creates reference points with the rest of the series. Garber uses these stones not just as plot points but as atmospheric indicators that externalize the emotional shifts in the narrative. For example, in Chaos’s palace, Evangeline uses the mirth stone to help her feel better, which doesn’t last. The truth she believes doesn’t match what the mirth stone makes her feel, which makes it impossible for her to fall under the stone’s spell like she did at the Hollow. This difference also emphasizes the significance of setting in the narrative, which signals the fact that the narrative respite has ended. Garber alludes to practices of substance abuse when Evangeline uses the mirth stone. It allows people to feel how they want to feel. If Evangeline wants to dull the pain, she has to continue using the mirth stone, yet she recognizes its limitations and consequences.

Apollo’s presence at Chaos’s palace is not explained to the reader. The narrative creates a space for the reader to presume that Luc and Chaos were successful in rescuing Apollo from whomever was torturing him. Garber’s use of narrative gaps underscores the book’s fantasy series genre since it prompts reader speculation, emphasizes the magic of the story world, and leaves space for intertextual resolutions in future. No explanation is given for where Apollo was or what happened to him, and Evangeline doesn’t ask. When Apollo is affectionate, Evangeline chooses to let him get closer, which interrupts the main romantic subplot of the novel. This continues to develop after Evangeline traps Apollo. When Jacks pulls her against him with crushing force, Evangeline welcomes the pain and would gladly take more as long as she gets to be near Jacks. This reaction relates to the theme of Manipulation since the asymmetric power dynamic of Jacks and Evangeline’s relationship explicitly results in pain for Evangeline in this scene. Evangeline is willing to be hurt by Jacks because it means that Jacks is paying attention to her.

The latter half of Chapter 43 connects The Ballad of Never After to the events of the Caraval series. Princess Donatella was a main character in Caraval, and Jacks made an appearance in the third book, Finale, when he kissed Donatella without killing her. The fact that Donatella fell in love with someone else generates the catalyst for Jacks’s character arc in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series. After losing his first love to the archer curse long ago, he wants a chance at love. Garber uses these intertextual references that carry character arcs across multiple books to enrich the sense of development for each character.

Chapters 44-46 begin the apotheosis of the novel since the narrative arc of the book has been leading to this moment: They are the first of two sets of chapters that show the events of the opening of the Valory Arch. In this first version of events, Chaos’s prediction that time will take something from Jacks foreshadows Evangeline losing her memories at the end of the book. Chaos taking a lock of Evangeline’s hair mirrors her killing of Petra in Chapter 30 when she grabbed her hair only to pull off a wig to reveal matching rose-gold hair; while this has a function in the plot as a reference to the fact that Evangeline is a key, this reference to Petra also signals to the reader that the narrative is reaching its apotheosis since it reminds the reader of the trials that have led to this moment. As Jacks predicted, Chaos can’t control his vampire hunger, and the chopping of the hair is also a prelude to his sucking of her blood as he gradually depletes Evangeline’s body. The Valory Arch was built to hold the Valors themselves. As is the case with several other plot elements of the book, no explanation is given for this, leaving readers in suspense at the end of the book.