The Whisper Gazette
WHERE WILL THE BROKENHEARTED PRAY NOW?
By Kutlass Knightlinger

The door to the Prince of Hearts' church has disappeared. Painted the deep bloodred of broken hearts, the iconic entry simply vanished from one of the Temple District's most visited churches sometime during the night, leaving behind an impenetrable marble wall. It's now impossible for anyone to enter the church—

Evangeline shoved the two-week-old newsprint into the pocket of her flowered skirt. The door at the end of this decrepit alley was barely taller than she was, and hidden behind a rusted metal grate instead of covered in beautiful bloodred paint, but she would have bet her father's curiosity shop that this was the missing door.

Nothing in the Temple District was this unattractive. Every entry here was carved panels, decorative architraves, glass awnings, and gilded keyholes. Her father had been a man of faith, but he used to say that the churches here were like vampires—they weren't meant for worship, they were designed to entice and entrap. But this door was different. This door was just a rough block of wood with a missing handle and chipped white paint.

This door did not want to be found.

Yet it couldn't hide what it truly was from Evangeline.
The jagged shape of it was unmistakable. One side was a sloping curve, the other a serrated slash, forming one half of a broken heart—a symbol of the Fated Prince of Hearts.
Finally.
If hope were a pair of wings, Evangeline's were stretching out behind her, eager to take flight again. After two weeks of searching the city of Valenda, she'd found it.

When the gossip sheet in her pocket had first announced that the door from the Prince of Hearts' church had gone missing, few imagined it was magic. It was the scandal sheet's first article, and people said it was part of a hoax to sell subscriptions. Doors didn't simply disappear.

But Evangeline believed that they could. The story hadn't felt like a gimmick to her; it had felt like a sign, telling her where to search if she was going to save her heart and the boy that it belonged to.

She might not have seen much evidence of magic outside of the oddities in her father's curiosity shop, but she had faith it existed. Her father, Maximilian, had always spoken of magic as if it were real. And her mother had been from the Magnificent North, where there was no difference between fairytales and history. All stories are made of both truths and lies, she used to say. What matters is the way that we believe in them.

And Evangeline had a gift when it came to believing in things that others considered myths—like the immortal Fates.

She opened the metal grate. The door itself didn't have a handle, forcing her to wedge her fingers into the tiny space between its jagged edge and the dirty stone wall.

The door pinched her fingers, drawing a drop of blood, and she swore she heard its splintered voice say, Do you know what you're about to step into?
Nothing but heartbreak will come from this.

But Evangeline's heart was already broken. And she understood the risks she was taking. She knew the rules for visiting Fated churches:
Always promise less than you can give, for Fates always take more.
Do not make bargains with more than one Fate.
And, above all, never fall in love with a Fate.

Mubina

Public Shelves

Submissions