Evie sat on the ground looking outside through a dirty window, she should ask someone to clean it. She should ask one of the servants to give her food as well, her tummy was hurting.
She blinked trying to ease the pain from her swollen eyes.
She should stand up and go find her father, she was missing him dearly. She wanted to be embraced by his warm and comforting arms. He needed to tell her that everything was going to be okay.
She was breathing, living, so why did it feel like she was dead inside. Evie blinked again, one of the only physical signs showing that she was actually a living creature.
Could she be alive when her heart had been left to bleed?
It must have been a mistake, she must have died.
Because she was now empty, numb, lifeless. The light that has once shined in her eyes was gone.
Perhaps all of this had only been a dream and soon she would be waken in her own soft bed. One of the servants would make her bed as another would brush her long hair into an updo. She might ask them to braid it instead this time.
Only her aching heart told her the truth, this wasn't a dream. She wasn't dead even if a part of her dreamed of it. She should have cut her wrists when she still had the knife she had found on the floor.
Evie had almost managed to cut her skin before he appeared and ripped it away from her. He had taken it and thrown it across the room.
He shouldn't have done that.
He should have allowed her to leave.
Because she remembered.
Evie remembered the reason she was wearing the red dress that didn't belong to her. She recalled the reason why her head had been hurting and her tummy was bruised.
She didn't want to remember it, her calling him sunshine. Because he wasn't sunshine even when once upon a time he had been her sun. The only reason she had the power to rise from the bed, only for the hope of seeing him again. Only now had she realized that he wasn't a sun, nothing about him could bring light and warmness into the world, he only brought gloom and pain. He truly was a mystery, a mystery that would have been better to leave unrevealed.
Because she regretted everything, every little choice that she had made that had made her end sitting on the hard floor.
She shouldn't have ran away two years ago. She shouldn't have tried to change her fate. She should have crossed her ankles while sitting and married the man her father had chosen for her.
Evie blinked once more trying to ease the burning in her eyes.
She had wanted to yell at him, curse at him trying to understand the reason why. But she hadn't done that, she had only stared at him.
Why would anyone want to kill her?
There was nothing to benefit from her death.
It had been a cruel twist from fate. Her own mystery man was also the person who should have killed her, the one to twist a knife into her heart. Which was the reason why she couldn't understand why he had saved her. Why he had ripped the knife away from her hand with frenzy in his eyes. Why had he hurt her in the process of doing it.
Evie let out a sob.
She could feel his eyes on her back.
She had been ignoring him for a while now. Not that Chasen would have made the effort to ignite a conversation either. But she could feel him looking at her every time she moved a little or made a sound.
Evie turned her gaze back to the window trying to think clearly.
***
When the sun went to hide Evie looked away from the window. The coming winter had made the air chilly even in the abandoned cottage, not that there were much to warm it. Usually Chasen had made a fire to warm them but now he hadn't.
He was sitting on one of the wooden chairs with his eyes closed
It was the first time Evie had turned to look at him since she had sat down. If truth to be told she wasn't sure if she wanted to see him.
Her heart jumped when he opened his eyes staring straight at her, his black eyes clashing with her blue ones.
His face muscles tightened.
Evie watched as he reached his pocket taking something out and threw it towards her.
Evie watched as a red apple fell to the ground next to her with a thud.
"Eat it." It wasn't a proposition but a command.
It made her mouth water. The candle on the table close to Chasen, the only source of light in the room, made it seem like it was shining. Her stomach was hurting from not eating for a long time and the apple seemed like a gift from gods themselves. She could almost imagine its sweet taste and it felt like pure torture.
Slowly Evie reached out and took the apple, it's skin hard against her touch.
It took all her willpower to throw it towards him as hard as she could. He grabbed it from air. Chasen lifted his hand holding the apple carefully inspecting it.
Something in it made Evie's insides melt.
No.
"You see, I wasn't asking, princess."
When would he realize that she wasn't a princess. She was broken.
"Wouldn't it be easier for you if I starved," she whispered knowing that he could hear her. Even if she wouldn't have known it, the flash of rage in his eyes would have confirmed it. "You could have poisoned it for all I know," she hissed at him.
He looked at her before taking a bite from the red apple and throwing it back at her, hitting her chest.
"Not poisoned," he said.
Evie looked at the apple on her lap, he truly had bitten it. She took it into her hands, carefully inspecting it.
"Why do you care?"
Her heart had once known the answer to that question. Because they were each others swans, soulmates. Evie could almost feel the red yarn tightening between them. A part of her still believed it, sworn on it. Because if he wasn't her swan, why hadn't he killed her yet? He has had multiple chances to put her six feet underground but he hadn't done that. Only a day ago he could have snapped her neck in half.
"Perhaps, I am a swan." He almost grimaced saying it.
Evie let out a sad laugh.
"No, you aren't."
He was everything but a swan. The bird known for its elegance and beauty. A symbol for purity. He was a raven, a symbol for evil.
"Wasn't it only last night when you claimed I was one?" His voice felt like whip against her skin, even when he hadn't meant it to sound so harsh.
Evie was still sitting on the ground, the red hem of her dress covering her legs. "And you rejected it."
He didn't answer her.
She squeezed the apple in her hands gently, "I remember."
"What do you remember?" His voice sounded rougher than usual.
Evie turned to look into his eyes, "why you can't be a swan."
The room was dead silent, Evie could only hear her own heart that was trying to escape its prison.
"So tell me, sunshine, what are you?"
"What. Are. You." She repeated.
Evie gulped as she tried to catch his reaction, trying to understand if all of it had only been a nightmare. But she knew that it couldn't have been a dream, it had been too vivid. She could smell the reek of the man's blood as Chasen had sinked his claws into the man's neck. Evie could hear the sound of his neck cracking.
She could still see the man's terrified eyes.
But he didn't give her a reaction.
"What do you think I am?"
Evie stayed silent. She didn't want to be the one to say it, to admit to herself that there truly were other creatures in their world than humans. And if all of it had only been a fever dream, she would seem like she had lost her mind. Evie knew what she had seen, she could sworn that. All of the attack on the inn had started to make sense when she had realized it, or at least most of it.
The wolf in the room had been him, her swan.
Or rather her lycanthrope.
Evie turned to look at the apple on her hands quickly before turning her gaze back to him.
"A wolf."
His face didn't betray any emotion. She wanted to know if his heart was beating as fast as hers, if his palms were as sweaty as hers.
Evie lifted the apple to her lips and bit into its sweet flesh, its juices falling to her chin. It might have meant nothing to him, but for her they had just made a pact. They had shared the same apple, the same wine goblet, the oldest sign of alliance.