Chapter Five

 

Genevieve

Evie regained full consciousness with a start, though her brain had been trying to claw its way back for a while before that.

“Where am I?” she demanded, swinging into an upright position in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. Two lanterns were lit, casting a warm glow across sparse furniture and off-white walls. Curtains were drawn over the window, so Evie could not tell what time it was.

And then her stomach growled painfully, bending her over double.

“Fix that,” a gruff voice muttered, followed by a small loaf of bread hitting Evie on her temple. “There’s soup on the table.”

She spied Julian sitting on a chair in the darkest corner of the room, glowering at her. To her left there really was a bowl of soup sitting on a small bedside table, so Evie picked it up with both hands and revelled in its warmth.

“Thank you,” she tried to say, though it came out as more of a croak. Noticing a pitcher also sitting on the table along with a cup, Evie put down her bowl in order to pour herself some water. She drank the lot down so quickly that it took her a beat too long to realise the liquid wasn’t, in fact, what she had assumed it was. Coughing and spluttering, Evie held a hand to her throat and tried to rub away the burning the liquid had caused.

In the corner Julian was cackling with laughter. “Serves you right for not looking at what you were drinking, little girl.”

“I am not a little girl,” Evie protested around another cough. “I’m twenty years old today. What is this vile stuff?”

Julian frowned slightly. “It’s wine. Have you never had wine before?”

She shook her head. “I’ve been locked up for twelve years, remember? The last time I had soup was before that.”

“What have you been living on, then?”

“Bread, mostly,” Evie replied, picking up the loaf Julian had thrown at her. “Cheese. Apples. Sometimes dried meat. Water to drink. That’s about it.”

“No wonder you’re so skinny,” he said, casting his invisible gaze across Evie. Julian’s eyes were once more covered by his dark, overlong hair. It annoyed her, but she didn’t say anything. The wizard had saved her life twice today, after all. It would not harm her to show him some manners, though he seemed disinclined to extend the same respect to her.

Evie ate in silence for a while, during which time Julian got up and left the room. When he returned he was carrying a pitcher that actually contained water, left it by Evie’s bedside, then took the half-full pitcher of wine over with him to the chair.

Julian took a long draught of the stuff. “Let me know when you begin to feel light-headed. I’ll put you to sleep when you do; I don’t imagine your tolerance for alcohol is particularly high.”

“I don’t want you to put me to sleep again!” Evie exclaimed.

“Ah, I didn’t mean to, before. I got carried away.”

The side-eye she gave Julian implied she definitely didn’t believe him. The man finished off his cup of wine, poured another and then moved over to sit on the end of Evie’s bed. She put down her finished bowl of soup on the table and inched away from him.

He grimaced. “I just wanted to check that you’re okay.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Julian arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You were covered in cuts and bruises when I found you. Your feet at the very least can’t be in the best of states.”

Evie felt a twinge of pain lancing down her leg even as he spoke. The dull ache of her feet crept up her nerves in earnest, telling her that Julian was correct. She looked down at her hands. “I guess I’m not feeling great.”

A pause. Julian gulped down more wine before saying, “I told you to stay to the outskirts of the woods. It was the one thing I told you to do. Why did you ignore me?”

“I thought you told me that just to inconvenience me!” she replied, bristling. “You weren’t exactly very nice to me, Julian.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Why in the world would I have done such a thing? I saved your life when you were hanging out of the tower, or don’t you remember? Just because I wanted you gone didn’t mean I wanted you to take one step outside and immediately walk into trouble.”

Evie said nothing. She knew she had acted brashly, and immaturely. If she had been not so naïve about the world around her then perhaps she’d have been more inclined to take Julian’s directions to the town more seriously.

“Did those men – did they do anything to you?”

“No,” Evie replied quietly. She looked away from Julian. She didn’t want to think about the strangers on the road; it was too frightening to dwell on what they would have done had Julian not come to her rescue. “They pulled on my hair and bruised me when I fell, but that’s all.”

She ran her fingers through her hair as she spoke, wincing when she met tugs and tangles along the way. It was a mess. It would take her many painful hours to clean and untangle it all.

“Right, that’s it,” Julian announced, before putting down his wine and closing the gap between them. “I’m cutting your hair.”

“Don’t you – don’t you dare!” Evie cried, squirming out of the way when Julian attempted to grab hold of it. He slung an arm around her waist instead, hauling her back to his side.

“What’s so important about bloody hair that you would let it become so cumbersome?!” he yelled.

“There was nothing to cut it with in the tower!”

“So let me cut it for you now!”

“No!”

“You brat, stop squirming and –”

“Stop yelling in my ear! Let me go!”

As soon as Julian realised he had pinned Evie to the bed he let her go and recoiled away. Evie’s face was flushed. She was beginning to feel light-headed, which she put down to the wine. And her dress was in disarray, barely covering her at all. If she didn’t have so childish a figure she’d probably have been embarrassed.

Julian ran a hand through his own hair and clenched his teeth in frustration. Now that Evie could see his face clearly she realised he was younger than she’d originally thought; he was perhaps only ten or so years older than her. By the way he spoke to her Evie would have assumed he was closer to fifty.

He glared at her. “What is honestly so important about your damn hair, little girl?”

“Stop calling me that,” Evie replied, deliberately ignoring Julian’s actual question. She didn’t want to tell him about her memories of her mother brushing her hair and sending her off to sleep – those were hers and hers alone. In a world where Evie had so little, her memories were more precious to her than anything.

It seemed to Evie as if Julian knew she was deflecting. “Calling you what?” he asked, as if he didn’t know exactly what he’d just called her.

Evie rolled her eyes. “Little girl. Brat. I told you; I’m not a child.”

“So, what, should I call you Princess?” he asked scathingly.

“Just call me Evie.”

“I thought your name was Genevieve?”

“It’s too long. Call me Evie.”

“Fine…Evie.” Her stomach flipped upon hearing Julian call her by the nickname she’d given herself. She didn’t like that at all. When he glanced at her Evie realised his eyes were blue. “If you won’t let me cut your hair then at least allow me to do something about the state it’s in,” he insisted. “It will only get worse on our way to Willow.”

Evie’s spirits lifted, all previous unpleasant feelings forgotten immediately. She drew herself up onto her knees. “You’re coming with me?! You’re actually going to show me the way?”

“Don’t make me regret this before we’ve even begun,” Julian said, sliding a hand over his face in obvious exasperation. “Something tells me you would still refuse me magicking you to the city despite what happened in the forest, so I have no choice but to accompany you.”

She nodded at the wizard’s observation. “What would you want to do if you’d been locked up for twelve years, Julian? Would you not want to explore the world before returning home and maybe getting answers to your questions that…you might not like?”

Julian stared at her, baffled. “You’re more astute than I thought.”

Evie laughed bitterly, though she hated the sound. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a child? I know that my return to the palace may not be what I hope it will be. But still I have to hope, otherwise what’s the point?”

He sighed, then motioned for Evie to turn around. Obediently she did so, though she flinched when she felt Julian’s hands pulling her hair away from her; it had tucked itself beneath her legs in their fight on the bed.

“I’m not going to cut it, I swear,” he muttered. He brought his fingers to her scalp, massaging them into the roots of her hair with surprising gentleness. “I’m just going to work some magic.”

Evie’s heart lit up at the prospect. “You’re giving me magic hair?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m simply working magic upon it. Now be silent, and be still.”

Evie’s skin tingled as Julian worked on his spell. She was faintly aware of the fact her hair was lit around its edges in a fiery way akin to Julian’s previously glowing eyes. It sent a shiver down her spine, to think of him full of furious magic and ready to kill someone at a moment’s notice.

“I told you not to move,” he complained.

“I can’t help it!” Evie protested. “Your magic tickles!”

Julian made a noise of disgust at the comment, but then he put his hands on Evie’s shoulders and roughly pushed her off the bed towards a mirror hanging on the wall. Evie hadn’t seen her reflection in anything larger than a cup of water for twelve years; she was nervous to see what she looked like.

But she didn’t even notice her body, nor her face – not at first, anyway. She only had eyes for her hair.

Julian had cleaned and untangled every last golden strand of it, and had woven it into so intricate a braid that Evie couldn’t tell how and where it started. The style brought her hair off the floor, the end of the braid only just skimming her ankles, which was far more practical for walking and running and just about anything else Evie could think of.

“Julian, this is –”

“Don’t you dare thank me,” he muttered, before heading for the door. “I did that for my own benefit, else I’ll end up having to carry you to Willow just so you don’t trip up over your damn hair. We leave immediately after sunrise.”

And then he slammed the door and was gone, leaving Evie to stand in front of the mirror alone.

In contrast to her glorious, shining hair, the rest of her was underwhelming. Evie’s skin was sickly pale, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. The bones of her elbows jutted out too much, and her cheekbones were too prominent. There were barely any signs that she had an adult woman’s body, though Evie remembered her mother’s figure had been invitingly curvy. She longed for the rest of her to match her hair – to look as beautiful as her mother and father.

“Guess I need to eat more,” Evie decided, returning to the bedside table to retrieve the half-eaten loaf of bread from earlier. “I want to look my best when I return to the palace.”

For there was nothing else Evie could control about the situation, and she knew it. She didn’t like it one bit.

Perhaps it was because of the wine in her system, or the fact that she had a full stomach for the first time in years, but that night Evie fell asleep so quickly she might have been inclined to believe Julian had put a spell on her.

Maybe he really had.