In the scene where he tells her everything? Not that I can tell. I think the only thing you really lose is knowledge of the dialogue within the initial choice aka Jasper saying he’s always kept it with him but that it belongs to you anyway. Though I feel like the signet ring being the key to the box is too important for the choice not to have some effect.
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“If you care for her half as much as she cares for you, it will be enough.”
“I have put plans into motion in case Nylora is deceitful in addition to monstrous.”
“In all honesty, it belongs to her.”
“Don’t open it unless you’re certain Nylora is dead.”
Heart in a box, heart in a box, heart in a box- 
Though I think it could be something that represents her heart for a magical ritual, something we aren’t aware of just yet.
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~open cesami~
I forgot to cap Vera’s response but she says “As you wish” lol
Goddammit.
But I’m trying to save theories from other books til we get further along so I’m gonna keep working on this box thing 
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If the heart is in a box (literal or metaphorical) as the last line of defense i wonder what the other plans the king put into place were. My bbbbrrrrrraaaaaiiiiinnnnn
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Hum, it’s random but I’m rereading and when Vera snatches the Somniflex, she mentions that she had an operation when she was a child
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YYYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOO THAT WOULD BE THE PERFECT COVER FOR TAKING HER HEART and she’d never know because there’s no scar. So as long as the king could keep that fact from Nylora (I don’t think he would let Nylora exploit him either since he literally died for it lol) that’s the perfect opportunity
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Those were my thoughts when catching up with the posts on the thread 
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I just said I was going to focus on trying to figure out the box thing, but I lied. I’m going DEEP in my Hunter feels.
First - my major hangup about Hunter being a known Noble is when Vera insists that she knows all the Royals and Nobles in the Royaumes. Which I believe because at that point the only thing important to her was being able to take the throne and become a good queen to her people. Also, she has direct ties with the Eraywynian Court. So if Hunter were forced to get married to Astra, he must have been a known Noble. I can’t imagine an arranged marriage between a Princess and a Commoner. However, I was just reading special feature 2 and before I was so focused on the Little Red Riding Hood thing I forgot about the other tales involved: Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin. Both of which could allude to Hunter’s associations with Royalty, whether or not he’s the actual Noble. Both of those two have associations with gold (golden slipper / spinning straw into gold) and Hunter is…kind of golden? I remember you talking about how the Characters reflect the Fairy Tales / environments they will represent. It almost makes sense for the Cinderella part to play a bigger role than we may have been anticipating since book 5 is Ashes to Ashes. But it could also be titled that way because of his relationship to royalty.
He indeed very well could be a Cinderella figure - or the child that the Queen was supposed to bargain to Rumpelstiltskin after he did the final day of turning straw into gold for her, since the King had agreed to marry her if she did it again (or execute her if not). Perhaps that ties into a potential illegitimacy of being the heir? OR he may actually be the girl locked away and told to spin the straw lol and supposed to marry the king (but perhaps someone else of Royalty in this case). That could explain his unwillingness to participate in political marriages, and may actually have been enough for Eraywynians to consider him a traitor. It’s suuuuuper unclear how many characters he represents and who the new character for that book will represent. But I think at this point we can say he definitely has ties to the Court. Or like, he’s royalty but it’s hush-hush in Eraywyn, which could explain why Vera didn’t know about him - potentially filling the place of Cinderella and being like forced to be the maid. Would explain why he’s good at baking and cooking and maybe even carpentry. That in itself would make more sense if he were an illegitimate child of some royal or Noble. I dunno. there’s a lot of possibilities. But I’m pretty convinced that he has strong ties to the Court. It would also make sense for him to be of Royal / Noble Blood because he tells Vera that growing up he wanted to be “something simple” like a baker or carpenter, which isn’t generally an option for those fancy type peoples. It’s also very possible that much of his journey and goals for book five focuses on the Little Red Riding Hood tales and Cinderella and / or Rumpelstiltskin hearken back to his origins, since iirc Spiegel said the books happen in chronological order.
ALSO: Going back to some impressions of him and about him being smarter than people think he is. (This potentially ties into the other fairytales involved in his book, since they all involve some kind of sneakiness / strategy). I said before that he wanted people to keep underestimating him and I really do believe that. Jasper chose his men very, very carefully indeed and while Hunter’s sunny disposition is a big part of his nature, I think his perceptiveness and wit are not to be taken lightly. Otherwise, why would Jasper take him on? Indeed, he would have rescued Hunter from the cliff anyway, but he wouldn’t necessarily need to “hire” him.
I’m thinking specifically back to that scene where Hunter tells Jasper he knew Vera added the somniflex to the soup. He says she looked happy and that he also knew Blade would “supervise” her if he told them Vera helped him cook. I think that’s the truth on the surface level. But I’m almost wondering if he was kind of…rooting for her to escape. I mean, as long as she doesn’t trust them and is held against her will, she will always be looking for a way to escape and will never hear them out. BUT if she gets out - and of her own volition - and sees the truth for herself, she is more apt to take them seriously, regardless of whether or not she trusts their intentions. Not that she really took them seriously afterwards. She definitely put up a fight about it. But as she was remembering when Nylora asked if Vera would give her her heart, it started to sink in because she’d been cut and healed immediately and, you know, stabbed a couple times. It’s harder to ignore the “Fable” aspect when she’s already seen the truth of it. And indeed, she does come to accept it.
I think on some level Hunter might be aware of that. He does say that “If she wanted to get stabbed again, that’s her choice. I didn’t want to interfere.” So the options would be get stabbed by Blade (potentially also could help her believe the Fair Maiden bit or demonstrate that maybe she’s not as sneaky as she seems) OR - more likely - she can escape and try returning to the castle and see the truth for herself. Vera has been very much a “I’ll believe it when I see it” type of person. And I think they all know if she escaped where she would return to. She wasn’t subtle about wanting to return to the castle. Even Jasper says later on, after Vera leaves of her free will:
And this I think is sort of the point of Hunter letting most of them get drugged. The more she leaves and faces the truth herself, the more she will realize that she does need to work with them and she will need to trust that they can help her. Especially since, after Hunter’s initial explanation of Blade “supervising” her while they were drugged, Jasper says “I will never understand you.” And Hunter says, “Good.” So I do think it’s feasible that he wants people to underestimate his intelligence and not always understand his motivations. He’s good-natured but it suits him well for people to not really understand his intentions and actions. I honestly have no idea if Spiegel intended this lol, but it’s what I’m taking away from all this because I’m a huge dweeb 
and I got a lot of Feelins 
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Ok, here are my running theories on the heart box. I’ve been obsessing over it since
@Yarha mentioned it. It is possible that the box contains a more metaphorical or magical item that would retrieve Vera’s heart after Nylora is dead, like @writingspirit said. But I really think it may be her actual heart, especially given @Nessya’s observation about Vera saying she had an operation when she was a kid. That would be the perfect opportunity for the King to have removed her heart, especially since there isn’t much she would have needed an operation for. Nylora says when Vera meets her in the tent that all of her cuts always healed immediately. However, if Nylora didn’t know that Cerasos knew about her being a Fair Maiden (or if it was a secret, since I don’t think Nylora paid too much attention to what Vera was doing anyway) that would be the perfect opportunity to remove her heart. It’s also possible that he replaced her heart, maybe with that of an animal, since there are versions of Snow White where the Queen is tricked into eating an animal heart instead of the princess’s. And because the King was the only other person besides Jasper to know about the heart, he decided he needed to die to protect that information. That’s much more important to protect than just knowing Nylora is a Fair Maiden, since if he were to die no one, including Nylora, could ever get the information about Vera’s heart from him. Jasper is the only one capable of keeping the box safe both because of his skills and his desire to protect Vera at all costs. For the king, not having to kill himself was just a bonus. He always intended for Jasper to be the only other person to know about it.
So scenario one: Vera, not knowing that her heart is not actually in her own chest, bargains her heart for the safety of her people. For example, she tells makes Nylora do a Heartcross that idk if she relinquishes the Crown and leaves Caddelinn (or maybe even the Royaumes), Vera will give her her heart willingly. This is the ultimate self-sacrifice, really, but her people come first. And since Nylora cares more about herself and her vanity than about Caddelinn in particular, I think it’s likely she would accept this option since she could theoretically go anywhere else afterwards. However, she eats Vera’s (false) heart and dies - since she didn’t consume (unsure how literal the consumption part is) Vera’s real heart. In which case, Vera would wake up from her death again and someone, maybe Jasper, could put two and two together about what’s in the box from the King. Vera can then get her heart back literally. Kind of gruesome, but I don’t think totally unreasonable.
Scenario 2: Vera’s heart is in the box and there ISN’T a replacement heart in her chest, so whether Vera tries to bargain her heart or not, Nylora will realize it’s missing. Nylora, upon realizing her time is running out decides to…I dunno…take Vera down with her, I reckon. If it was too late and she knew she had no other option but to die, I am positive she would kill Vera as well. Actually, I think this scenario could be an option even if there is a replacement heart in Vera’s chest. I think if Vera doesn’t bargain her heart, Nylora will attempt to destroy her (and her ~fake~ heart). Then, the King’s line about Jasper being the “last line of defense” would make sense, since Nylora would die anyway after not consuming Vera’s real heart, in which case Jasper would open the box and, depending on the state of Vera’s body, maybe have to “regrow” her like @Superhuello said. I don’t know how long that would take but 
I think either way, the point is that Vera’s heart is in there so that Nylora cannot access it and Vera will suffer another death, since Jasper says he will need to “steal the ring back” (to open the box) as the last line of defense. Hmmm, actually it could make sense for a more magical item to revive Vera / retrieve her heart since…if Nylora died and Vera also died but her heart was in the box (or somewhere else), she could technically wake up without needing it because it wouldn’t be destroyed. In that case, the heart is a defense insofar as Nylora cannot get access to it but otherwise is just returning something to Vera that’s already hers. Or the ring could open the box and in the box is a key to where Vera’s heart actually is? But I don’t want to overthink the “last line of defense” that the King talks about. Either way, not having Vera’s heart is the only thing guaranteed to kill Nylora and it’s the only thing they need to make sure doesn’t see the light of day until Nylora is absolutely 100% permanently dead (since even if Vera didn’t give it to her willingly to consume, she could still destroy it and Caddelinn would be left without an heir - and one who would be a good Queen).
What do y’all think? Have any other scenarios? Can you think of anything else that could be in the box that should never be opened unless Nylora is dead? I’m dyin here. My brain 
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Ooo, this is interesting. Would she have been old enough for it to line up correctly? Six years have passed since the night her father died, so the question is how young she would need to have been to consider herself a child at the time of the operation and how old she is now. That night, her father acted so much like it was a fairly recent discovery, but maybe that was just my own inference. I think we’re missing the crucial piece of how he learned his wife was a fair maiden.
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I don’t know how this would play out exactly, but I really feel like that line from her father about how “if you care for Vera half as much as she cares for you, it’ll be enough” is about more than just the king feeling like he’s putting his trust in the right person.
I mean… the whole reason he goes to Jasper is because Vera trusts him and he’s her only friend i.e. he is the only person who the king thinks he might able to trust to do whatever it takes to protect her, yes - which is… quite the leap of faith considering he’d never even met Jasper before, but the king was out of options.
But - even more than that - I wonder if there is a kind of magic he used that needs some sort of bond of love (romantic, platonic, doesn’t matter) to work. If the king hadn’t died, I think he could’ve done it himself out of love for his daughter. The only problem is that it wasn’t an option for him, and so perhaps he turned to what he felt was the next best thing.
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I think at some point Vera or Nylora mentions something about “for the next 26 years” in reference to Vera’s 45th birthday. Which would make Vera around 19 / 20 and 6 years before would be 13 / 14 which is definitely still young enough to have been a child. Though she doesn’t mention how soon before her fathers death she had the operation. It would make sense for it to be not long before the day he died, though since I can’t imagine him hanging on to it for a long time lol. So if Vera thought it was a minor procedure, it could explain why there’s no scar. But I do agree with you about the timeline. We don’t know how or for how long Cerasos knew. And we still have all of part 3 yet so there’s tons of stuff we still don’t know yet lol. But look at us trying to figure out everything in all 7 books just from the first 20 chapters of book 1 
Edit: it was Blade
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I think they mention that the night before the king’s death is when the scene between them in the snow takes place. Which hurts btw!
Procrastination at its finest.
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Also, I slapped Jasper after the kiss this playthrough and that shit hurt. Vera verbally took him to town and idk if I’m just forgetting what she did in the other option and it only seems like she was more brutal in this branch, but I’m never doing it again. 
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But I think that goes back to her getting her heart back metaphorically too. Back to Jasper being the heart, since only with him can Vera tap back into the more compassionate parts of herself. She does all along want to do right for the people of Caddelinn, but I do agree Jasper brings out those softer bits of her personality to the surface. And indeed she will need that to be in a position to face Nylora. But I guess my question is if there were some kind of magic that required a bond of love, why wouldn’t he use that in the first place? Or do you mean in addition to a possible physical heart? Because otherwise why wouldn’t he try to stay alive and perform the magic himself? I do think there is a likelihood that other magic is involved since it’s a fantasy story and the Mirror has talked about how the magic of the Cesam deserts is “too strong” so that totally may influence what Jasper is capable of in some way too
But as for the line in the book, I don’t think you’re reading too much into it. It seems like a clue that’s been there all along and I noticed it earlier today when I was going through my notes / caps about all the heart stuff. I mean, it seems more than possible there are many elements involved and there’s more than meets the eye haha. We’re still missing plenty of info
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I mean I’m thinking the magic needs a bond somehow in order to function as the king’s last line of defense. I wonder if it could be a replacement for a physical heart in the event it were destroyed, maybe also a way to lengthen the short period of fair maiden life spans by tying them to a human life and letting them age like a normal person would (otherwise, she will most definitely die when she reaches Nylora’s age), so many things it could be.
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I think I slapped him the first time around, but this time I froze. But I still think he shouldn’t have done it. I don’t regret not slapping him though.
But also - Woke Blade or a reference to Sleeping Beauty tale or both?
There’s also this:
I’m also wondering if either Ashton or Book 2 in general has any relation to or mentions of the wizard king since Blade seems really peeved about the wizard king lol
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Ooooo that makes sense. Would explain the last line of defense thing a bit more than only her heart. The ability to turn human again would be interesting and again could play into the more metaphorical side. And it could also play into Jasper having a bigger plan after locking Vera in his treasure room. I’m still convinced he has some tricks up his sleeves. I do kind of like the idea though of Vera retaining her humanity through her actions / feelings despite being a Fair Maiden. And being willing to die at 45 since dying is one of the most human things you can do. But I feel like I’m taking it personally that I haven’t figured everything out yet when in reality there’s really no reason to have figured out every twist and turn. I also so won’t mind being wrong / surprised and seeing everything make sense in retrospect !
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Oh, he absolutely should not have done it. I think the thing that makes Jasper acceptable and even quickly forgivable is that I really believe he did it in an impulsive, misguided attempt to prove he was (a) genuine in wanting to help her and (b) he could be trusted. Which backfired - clearly - because it just made Vera lose even more trust in him. She interprets it as him playing another trick when it’s anything but.
The fact that he apologizes right afterward helps keep him from falling into “kiss angry girl so she stops being mad at me” trope as well imo.
Probably both lol. Also, this is the smartest thing Blade’s ever said.
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