Chapter Twelve

 

Julian

Evie was shivering in the tent and there was nothing Julian could do.

The tent was made of hide, and it kept the wind and water out, but that didn’t stop it from being cold. Even with the two of them taking up most of the space within it the air still had a bite to it.

It’s never summer in the middle of a forest at midnight, Julian thought, glancing at the huddled figure turned away from him on his right. Evie had taken the top layer of her dress off – insisting she didn’t want to wrinkle it – but that left her in a white underdress that was too thin to provide much warmth. The blanket Julian had given her wasn’t much thicker, either; given that he usually used magic to heat up he’d never thought much about carrying a heavier one.

“Are you sure you can’t light a fire?” Evie asked after a while, the words coming out a little unevenly as her teeth chattered. Julian felt wretched about the fact he couldn’t, since he was warm simply by virtue of having honed fire magic within himself for so long. He was unlikely to feel cold for the rest of his life.

“You know I can’t,” he replied, not unkindly. He watched as Evie shifted her long braid of hair over her shoulder, hugging it closely to her chest as if it might provide some warmth. Julian reached a hand out to comfort her, then thought better of it and pulled it back. “Were you ever this cold in the tower?”

In the darkness Evie nodded. “There were times in winter I thought I’d die. I was never sent enough firewood to sufficiently warm up the room, and I had to forgo heating my bathwater for much of the season. Not the most pleasant of memories.”

“I hadn’t thought about the fact you must have been sent supplies,” Julian admitted. He inched over a little closer to Evie, deciding that if she was too cold to sleep then the least he could do was talk to her until she was exhausted enough to fall into unconsciousness. He could have knocked her out with barely a hint of magic, but if the people tracking them down knew what they were looking for then they’d work out Julian’s location immediately.

“Twice a day for twelve years,” Evie said. She looked over her shoulder at Julian, eyes shining in the darkness. “You’d have thought whoever banished me could have at least ensured I had enough to eat and didn’t freeze in winter.”

Especially since it was your father, or uncle as the case may be, Julian mused. But Francis had said the king loved Genevieve; was his love so easily broken that he would doom his false daughter to spend more than half her life starving?

“Why is it so cold?!” Evie exclaimed a moment later in frustration. She huddled into herself as tightly as she could. “It’s almost July. July. It should not be so cold.”

“The depths of evergreen forests are their own little worlds,” Julian said, staring up at the hide tent above them as if he could see straight through it. “In some countries there are entire races who rule the forests, and the lakes, and all the hidden places humans should never dwell upon for very long. Magical people who can look like exactly like you but are as dissimilar from humans as can be.”

When he heard Evie shift over to face him Julian resisted smiling. He had hooked her with a tale enticing enough for her to forget the cold; he just had to keep it that way.

“Have you met them before?” she asked. “These people?”

Julian nodded. “Once or twice. Both encounters were pleasant affairs, truth be told. They were amused by my powers. I think, had I not been a wizard, I would not have made it out of their forest alive.”

Evie sidled a little closer to Julian, her eyes rapt and alert. This time he did smile, for how could he not? She wanted to hear more about the world – to counter her ignorance with knowledge. It was a feeling Julian could more than relate to.

“You said they live in lakes, too. Are they fish?”

He chuckled, then raised his hands above him. There was just enough difference in the levels of dark shadows inside the tent that Julian could make vague, fuzzy silhouettes appear upon its faded surface. He twisted his hands into a horse’s head, then a seal, and then a fox.

“They take on many shapes,” he explained. “Water horses and sleek-skinned seals by the shore, or murky-faced merpeople deep below the surface. The one I met was a fox, though. I don’t think he wished to be one.”

“I would rather be a fox and have the freedom to roam about than be trapped as a human in a tower,” Evie said, reaching her own hands out to attempt to recreate the fox Julian had made. Hers was smaller than his, and for a few moments they amused themselves by dancing the make-believe animals across the tent. Then Evie brought her hands back to her chest and shivered. “Are there really magical people like that, Julian, or did you just make them up to distract me?”

He raised an eyebrow at the ludicrous suggestion. “Do I strike you as the kind of person who could make such creatures up?”

“I’m not sure,” Evie admitted. “I don’t know much about you, truth be told.”

“You know enough.”

“Then that must mean there’s not all that much to you.”

“You wound me, Princess Genevieve.”

An awkward pause followed Julian’s words. Evie stared at him with wide eyes. “You haven’t called me that with any sincerity even once before now. What changed?”

Julian looked away. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I guess I believe your story now, whereas I doubted it before.”

“And why is that?”

He didn’t want to tell her about what the king had done, or that her real father was his brother, or that it had been Julian’s father who had spirited Evie away to her prison in Thorne tower. He didn’t want to tell her about the fact Francis wished for Evie to stay as far away from Willow as possible, or that the king was looking for her.

He wanted Evie to stay just the way she was, unspoiled by the cruelty of her selfish family.

“Come here, Evie.”

She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“I mean come here,” Julian repeated, indicating for her to lie closer to him. With one fluid motion he pulled his shirt away from his body, much to Evie’s surprise. He grimaced at the look on her face. “I’m much warmer than you. It’s the magic in me. Consider this my attempt at rectifying the fire problem.”

Evie reached out a hesitant hand to touch Julian’s chest but, upon feeling just how warm his skin was, forgot all her doubts and cuddled in as close as she possibly could. Julian resisted the urge to flinch away from her chilly, clammy touch.

“Why did you not tell me to do this earlier?” she demanded, voice muffled against Julian’s shoulder as she eagerly wrapped her arms around him. “I’d have fallen asleep hours ago!”

“Yes, and I’d still be awake,” Julian mused.

Evie looked up at him through her golden eyelashes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re annoying. I thought you knew that by now.”

“If I were the warm one and you were cold I’d have offered to do this from the very beginning.”

Julian sighed good-naturedly. “I know. That doesn’t change anything, though. Now settle down and go to sleep.”

“I know you’re only offering to do this to deflect from answering my questions, you know,” Evie said after a while. Her body temperature had risen enough that Julian no longer wished to recoil from her, and found to his horror that he was enjoying the feeling of having her lying there against him.

“Go to sleep,” he repeated, the words becoming muffled in Evie’s hair. Her long braid snaked across the floor of the tent behind her; Julian wondered how she even coped with such a frustrating abundance of hair when sleeping.

If she had a husband he would insist she cut it, just so that it didn’t interfere when they –

“Julian?”

He shook his head to remove any and all traces of such a dangerous train of thought. “What is it?” he asked, a little sharper than he intended.

Evie’s breath tickled against Julian’s skin, setting his nerves on edge. When she shifted position one of her thighs ended up far too close to his groin; he closed his eyes and willed unconsciousness to take over as quickly as humanly possible.

“Have you been with many women before?” Evie asked, a question no other adult could likely ask in such an innocent manner. “Whilst you were travelling, I mean. Or before that, when you were younger.”

Julian sighed. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Because I was –”

“Locked in a tower. Forget I asked.”

He didn’t answer her question, hoping that Evie would eventually move on from it and fall asleep. Her fingers just barely pressed into his back, sending a shiver running up his spine. Julian tried to ignore it, but then Evie dug her nails in a little more insistently.

He grabbed onto her hair without thinking and pulled Evie’s face up to look at him. “What are you doing?” he growled. “Go to sleep!”

But her eyes were determined. “Why won’t you answer my question?”

“Just what is that you want from me, Evie?”

“Stories,” she said. “Experience. Why can’t I get to know what living feels like, after so long on my own?”

God damn it, Julian thought, irritated beyond belief at Evie’s infallible logic. For hadn’t he only just acknowledged and approved of her thirst to learn of the world around her?

He hung his head in resignation; overgrown locks of his hair brushed against Evie’s face. “I’ve been with a few women. There. Happy now?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“You didn’t explain anything,” she protested. “What were the women like? Was it fun? What did they think of you?”

“I suppose you could just touch me and find out!”

Julian had meant to be mocking; Evie was touching him already, after all. But when she glanced up at him the expression on her face suggested she’d taken him seriously.

“I can?” she whispered. Her voice hitched on the question in a way that drove Julian wild. Was she really that excited by the prospect? It was flattering, to say the least.

But dangerous. Too dangerous. Evie was a princess, and Julian was protecting her. It would be a huge violation of her trust, not to mention how inappropriate it was and –

“Fine,” he muttered, immediately regretting the word the second he saw Evie grin in delight. “You have five minutes to bother me; after that you’re going to sleep without another word. Got it?”

“Got it,” she said, nodding seriously, though there was a mischievous glint in her eyes that suggested Evie might just push past the five minutes anyway.

But then her fingertips ran down his back, and Julian forgot to care. He hadn’t been with a woman in a while, given that he’d largely kept to himself the past couple of years, and his nerves had been shot ever since he’d kept Evie company after her nightmare.

This is wrong, he thought. This is a mistake.

Evie slid her hands across Julian’s waist until she reached his stomach before creeping up to his chest. Her eyes followed her fingertips, watching the way they pressed into his skin almost reverently.

“…having fun?” Julian muttered after a couple of minutes had passed. Evie nodded, though she bit her lip instead of saying anything. She wasn’t looking at him, instead casting her eyes downward to the laces of his trousers.

Lord help me.

When Evie’s hands roamed towards his waist Julian jerked away.

“Please don’t,” he said, pulling Evie’s hands back up until they were cupped between his own, in front of his face. “I can assure you that you don’t want to do that.”

Evie merely frowned in annoyance. “How can you possibly know what I want to do, Julian? And I still have two minutes. Why can’t I –”

He planted a kiss against her hand, the action silencing her mid-sentence. She stared into his eyes, which he knew were likely too bright with the promise of barely-fettered magic. Evie slid the hand Julian had kissed away from his own, stroking the line of his jaw with about as much force as a feather. When she reached his hair Evie pushed it back, running her hand through it until it fell across his face, where it had lain before.

She was pressed right up against him; every curve of her body finding another inch of Julian’s skin to touch. He couldn’t take it; it was unbearable.

“Why can’t I want this?” Evie asked, managing to get her question out in its entirety this time. “Am I really so annoying, Julian?”

He held his breath for a second. Two. Three.

“Yes,” Julian said, and then his mouth was on hers. He rolled Evie onto her back, hands roving beneath her dress to cling to her hips, her waist, her breasts – anything he could find. Evie eagerly reciprocated, flinging her arms around Julian’s neck even as her legs did the same around his waist.

He groaned when she bucked against his groin. She parted her lips to let in his tongue; Julian imagined doing something similar with an altogether harder body part. He pressed down upon her, burying Evie into the blanket, the floor of the tent, the soft ground of the forest below, until there was nowhere deeper he could push her.

He needed more. He needed –

“We need to stop,” Julian gasped, wrenching himself away from Evie as if she were made of flames. He held a hand over his eyes. “Good lord, Evie, we can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

There was nothing but the sound of laboured breathing for a while. Eventually Evie asked, very quietly, “Is it because you don’t like me, or because I’m Princess Genevieve?”

“The latter,” he replied. “Of course it’s the latter. I’d never have gone this far if I didn’t like you.”

“…thank you for your honesty,” was all Evie said, and then she turned from him.

Julian didn’t dare open his eyes again that night.