Jack flinched at that. Her entire body seized up, and in that moment, Belle knew that she really did love Raven. Completely. Desperately. But desperation led to ugly things when little girls were raised on fairy tales, and Jack was not the hero in this scenario.

She was the villain.

“Then you heard Raven was coming home, and you realized you had a choice to make.” Belle paused for a beat, then two. “You could let Evelyn torture him again, and you could let me try to steal him back, or… you could get rid of both of us in one fell swoop.”

Jack’s face was pale as marble, her breathing so quiet, it didn’t make a sound. She sat still as a statue, as if waiting to be shattered by a hammer.

Belle smiled at the thought. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Sneaking into my garden would’ve been easy, and getting Evelyn to drink poisonous tea was probably a piece of cake. Catching that man creeping up to your attic, though… how did you do it? How did you make it back to your bedroom by the time he’d fallen down those stairs?”

“I didn’t—”

“You’re lying. You’ve always been the liar, Jack. But I want to understand why you did what you did. Was he messing with your brothers? It’s the only explanation, isn’t it? You couldn’t have been defending yourself. We’ve already established that we don’t do that. We only rescue boys.”

“Stop.” Jack’s head was bowed, her body trembling. Tears had gathered in her lashes. But she didn’t lift her hands from the blankets, where they were digging into the fabric so tightly, her knuckles had gone completely white. “Please don’t tell anyone about this. They wouldn’t understand. You don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand! Help me see how all of this ties together. The death of Lily’s mother. The police dragging me away from my house in the middle of the night. It all starts with you and the night that man went crashing down your attic stairs. You broke his bones.”

Jack’s head snapped up, and she wasn’t crying anymore. Her grip on the blankets had loosened. When she opened her mouth to speak, there was a curious light in her eyes. “I wanted to break his neck.”

16 Jack and the Giant

The first time Jack encountered a giant, she was seven years old. The man towered over her at six foot four. Jack saw his big, meaty fists and thought of glass breaking and bones cracking. She knew what would happen, even before he threw a punch.