Ever since his mother's death, Everette had been hearing her heartbeat in his head.
Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.
Now it was drowned out by the bustle of the city square, filling him with overwhelming relief. Sir Lange—who insisted he call him Felix—did not know this was the reason he had offered to join him on patrols. Men and women and children, dwarves and humans and even a few centaurs here and there, all went about their daily business working and traveling in a Central region called Kavak.
Everette rarely, if ever, traveled beyond Central Snow. The palace was located in the capital city of Akburc, where the highest Snow population was concentrated and many noble families resided. The other states that made up Snow were ruled over individually by four duchies in total, all of which submitted to his father's—and previously, his mother's—leadership and taxation. Kavak was not quite so far, just a few towns beyond Akburc, but Everette hadn't visited until today. It felt equally as busy as the capital.
He was burdened on all sides by knights parading stiffly through narrow streets and past crooked buildings. Architecture, it seemed, was not the civilians' strength.
"Are you alright?"
It took several long, stretching moments for Everette to register that anyone was speaking to him. He cleared his throat. "Yes. Yes, of course." The flower spinning between his fingers was crushed ruthlessly. He hastened to stuff it in his pocket, as if hiding the evidence of his perpetual deterioration from emotional stability. As if it was a crime to be torn apart after his mother's death. The idea was laughable, but he felt himself thinking less and less rationally of late.
Felix nodded slowly. He never seemed to believe his empty yeses and his hollow I'm fines. "You should try going out and talking to the citizens. Your mother used to do it... Well, before she became queen, she used to do it. You know how her duties as ruler weighed on her," he said, his voice hushed. But the politeness, the respectful whispering of his mother's struggles and flaws, wasn't all that necessary anymore. It was starting to bother Everette how little she'd seemed to care.
Because one day it would be him on the throne, and the fear that strangled him was that apathy would start to set in.
He shoved down the guilt rising in his throat for his terrible, treasonous thoughts and nodded. "Right. I'd like to see what I can do in the future to improve the people's lifestyles." He looked around. "The cities are quite beautiful." They truly were, architecture aside. Soft, neutral colors and gently falling snow made for peaceful scenery. People wore fur-lined coats in faded reds and blues and greens atop clothing that ranged from beige to white, and the persistent winter flowers he'd always loved were everywhere—growing out of pots and window-boxes, popping out from neatly sculpted bushes, and scattered among the ground. Railway tracks ran this way and that, and miners were easy to spot, carrying pickaxes and covered in grime.
The people were working, they were talking, eating, laughing, and living. He loved that—places that were so obviously full of life. Especially somewhere that could get so cold and dark, it was nice to know that people adapted and sculpted their livelihoods accordingly. The kingdom of Snow was not depressed simply because it was drenched in its namesake. Of course, there would be things to improve. And he would do that someday. Hopefully meeting people would give him a better idea of how things were.
Everette walked the streets, which were so unfamiliar to him that he was nearly run over by a cart (but only once). He went into shops and chatted with store owners, frowning at prices and inquiring about the state of the market. He said hello to children and bought himself a hot cocoa, pet horses and stray cats. He was actually feeling quite a bit better by the end of it.
And that was when it all fell apart.
Outside of a closed storefront, an elderly woman had set up shop with a cart and a stool and a razor. A line of women and children snaked around the block to wait their turn, and as Everette watched, the lady chopped off all the hair of the little girl at the front of the line with scissors and buzzed the rest short. He stepped closer, slowly. She'd done it so fast—there were nicks on the girl's head, and ugly patches left over. The girl's mother handed her coins, far too many coins, and wrapped her daughter's head with a scarf, and they shuffled off.
The woman grunted and ushered the next child forward. Everette's eyes wandered until he found the sign with her price. He'd seen some struggling businesses today, but that was just ridiculous. The fact that everyone was falling for her scam angered him.
"You charge too much."
Everette blinked stupidly upon realizing it was him who had spoken. He'd never had the gall to outright say what he thought before, and he wasn't sure what possessed him to do it now. But he felt only relief upon voicing his opinion. The old woman knifed him with her snarling stare and licked her lips. She didn't recognize him as the prince, he realized. Either that or she simply couldn't care less.
"This is the closest thing to honest work I'm going to get, snowflake. Prices for everything are high. Got to make coin somehow." With the biting end of those words, the razor buzzed and clumps of hair were sheared off none-too-carefully, falling into the bucket on the ground.
He shifted on his toes. "You're charging too high for shoddy work, miss."
She sat up straighter and waggled a bony finger at him. "Who do you think you are?"
There was something he was missing here. Everette's eyes darted back and forth between the children and mothers in line. Why was she getting paid to shave little girls' heads? If it had been just little boys, she was only a bad barber, but all the children, of all ages and genders, were having their hair sheared off and replaced with headscarves to keep warm. It didn't make sense. Why take away armor against the cold?
The lady went back to making crooked, uneven work of the girl's hair, and Everette's annoyance festered. He folded his arms and called what she was doing garbage using language his mother never would have approved of. The bitter old woman leapt to her feet.
Razor pressed under his chin, gnarly teeth bared before him, Everette did not budge. "What, are you new around here?" she growled, assessing his attire. "Noble scum from up in Akburc, are ya? Lookie here, son. These mothers can't afford to wash their kids' hair. We shave it to stop the spread of disease. Have ya ever heard of that? You remember disease, rich boy? You remember the plague? That's some nice, long hair you've got. Be a shame if you had no shampoo, none of that fancy leave-in conditioner."
Everette was left shell-shocked. She looked far too smug about it, dropping the razor. His mind was racing now, but he could come up with nothing to say.
"Young Snow White—bless her heart. She was a sweet girl. But Queen Snow White was just as awful with money as those idiots down in Rose. I don't know if her job ruined her or she was just never cut out for it in the first place."
Everette fumed. "I am the prince, and I will not tolerate you speaking of the queen this way," he snapped. Queen Snow was—she was beloved among the people. She should be a martyr. And yet she seemed to be the subject of everyone's woes. Apathy, he thought, and wished he hadn't.
If the old woman gave a dollar whether he was the prince, she hardly showed it. "Well, boy, your mother should've humbled herself and remembered where she came from. What she stood for."
He opened his mouth and found himself saying, "My stepmother."
The word was sour and filled him with shame. He immediately regretted the correction.
"Whatever," she said dismissively. "It's her own fault she's dead."
Everette's feet moved without his conscious control, retreating. He didn't know where he was going, just—just away. He couldn't stand to look at the shaved heads of the children anymore or the gauntness of their mothers' bodies. The childrens' cheerful faces, unbothered by whatever burdened their parents, chattering amongst each other as if this was all usual and life went on. Life goes on. His mother was dead and he had to go on, had to face everything she'd left behind. She should've had more time. She might have had the chance to fix the mess she'd been neglecting.
Now that he understood the state of his country, he had to do something about it. About this... mess. He barely knew what he was doing when it came to being the crown prince of Snow, but he knew he had resources. It was just a matter of what to do with them, how to fix everything.
Gah, who was he kidding. He was sixteen. He was dreaming if he thought he knew what was going on or what to do about it.
He found Lange and joined the patrol again, abstaining from going off on his own after that. He saw positive things, sure. But this time he opened his eyes—really opened them. And he saw leaking roofs, peeling boots, long lines at the imports office because the water well was frozen again and everyone was trying to get their hands on extra cartons. There were also small, simple kindnesses, but they were overshadowed by dirty faces and hungry stomachs carrying buckets of fish up and down the hill. The more he watched, the less good he saw, until he couldn't remember what he had liked about this city when he first saw it at all anymore.
Because the poor can live happy lives accepting the fact that they are poor, but perhaps the prince had forgotten that poverty and contentment could coexist. Or maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't have messed with that mirror. Maybe these powers were starting to get to him.
The next thing he knew Everette was glaring down his own reflection in his chambers. He'd refused company, sending away his servants. He felt guilty now for snapping at them. His servants had always been his friends; the castle was unfamiliar to an adopted prince and there was comfort in having ordinary people to talk to while he had adjusted to his new life.
He still remembered very well his childhood of constant traveling, although he often pretended to forget for the sake of learning new manners and new responsibilities. He had been ripped from the palace he was born in, and eventually clung with a viselike grip to this new one. He might never be told why his life had been such a muddled mess. He'd never thought to question it, not when bringing up his birth mother made his father look away. He didn't want to hurt him. Their situation had been inflicted on Ramiro just as much as it had been inflicted on Everette—that much he knew.
What if Everette, too, was a misfit prince? What if, like his father, he was too soft, too romantic, too gullible to play the part? Would he forever be content to be tugged about on strings by his advisors and teachers—what if he never grew into himself like his father had; would he melt into a wax figurehead, moldable and meaningless?
Maybe Everette wasn't really cut out for this after all.
Godmothers, he couldn't stop thinking about those kids. About how many bottles of conditioner his servants went through in a week, just styling his hair and keeping it soft and curly. And long. It was so long. He'd never seen a peasant boy with such long hair.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he got up, crossing the room. Frost began to gather as his fingers closed around the hilt of the dagger Felix had given him that fateful, disastrous day that had since resided on his bedside table. It was nothing pretty, really, a simple thing with no engravings at all. But not everything had to be pretty to be useful. And as he grabbed a fistful of hair and lifted the knife with trembling hands in a fit of anger, like a melodramatic young female protagonist in the climactic scene where she turns to the rudimentary metaphor of haircuts to attempt to take control of her life, it got the job done.
He slashed and hacked, aimlessly, ruthlessly, until there was nothing left of the Everette that had once been except a small, terrified boy buried deep inside him and a crumpled flower in his pocket.
By the end of it, he discarded the blade, letting it clatter to the floor. By now it had frozen by his touch, largely useless anyway. He was sure he'd figured it out by now—the more his emotions consumed him, the more he would succumb to the power he'd absorbed from the mirror. It was probably too late to do anything but accept it.
He looked in the mirror at his vanity again, and this time the sight was something unkempt and disgusting, hair flying in all directions, chopped off at all angles and lengths. The back of his neck burned hot; he felt it to find that he had cut himself a few times. His bloody fingers were fascinating in the sickest way, and as the old Everette looked on with helpless regret, he smeared them across the mirror. How satisfying.
He stepped back shakily, his feet fumbling under him until he collapsed on his back on the bed.
Holy Jack Horner, what was he doing? What am I doing?
🙤 ˖ ࣪⭑ ┈┈┈┈ · ✦ · ┈┈┈┈ ˖ ࣪⭑ 🙦
"I thought you were done recruiting, Red," Lucien murmured, glancing out onto the street from the narrow alleyway where he'd slid his nimble, fluid form behind a dumpster. No one would interrupt a shady conversation like this anyway, not in these parts of West Fairy, but it was better to be as discreet as possible. He pulled the white hood of his cloak lower, shadowing what little was visible of his face outside of the mask that covered most of it. Vicious red spider lilies spilled across the sweeping lower layers of his cloak like blood, petals falling to the ground and sticking to heat-dried pavement.
"Blackhearts?" she said wryly, judging where he was going based on his attire. She was wearing her usual, unassuming combination of dark clothing, chestnut hair tied up beneath a bandana. A mask secured from the bridge of her nose down also disguised her identity. "Look, Lycoris. If what Griffy says is true, he could be the key to us gaining the upper hand."
Lucien laughed. "And Griffin McDonald's testimony is enough for you to change plans? The man's a lunatic."
"I want this all to be over with as much as you, alright? I just want to go home to my daughter and my sister and no longer have to worry about the incompetent buffoons ruling over us and wasting our tax money anymore. Things have to change. The royals have to go. They don't care. They don't care about you or me, a poor man or a rich woman, and they're young and naive and don't have a clue what they're doing. You think this boy hasn't figured that out by now? His father was stripped of his royal status, expelled from his family's palace, for impregnating a woman out of wedlock. If anyone can come to understand how corrupted the world's leaders are, it's this child."
Lucien sighed, grip loosening and tightening again on the handle of his scythe. "Sounds like getting rid of just the Royal Alliance isn't enough. Perhaps all the leaders need a lesson in humility," he said lightly.
"Perhaps they do indeed," replied Red. "But the Sandman would never stand for it. He has a very specific goal in mind."
"I do tire of listening to him," Lucien mused.
Red watched him carefully, no doubt apprehensive of his motives. "Don't."
"Relax. I won't create a bigger mess than need be. But someone else might."
"I fear Thumb has little respect for authority," she admitted. "Aurele, too, but she loathes the Writer more than she's frustrated with the royals, at least. I almost feel sorry for the girl."
He eyed her. "She doesn't need a mother," he said, guessing what was going through her head. Maternal instincts or whatever. "She just needs a better world to live in. We're creating one." He rolled his neck, finally begrudgingly accepting her new idea. "Fine. The boy's powers could be useful and his intel even more so. But good luck convincing him to join the cause."
Red's smile felt cold and soulless. "He lives in a world of blacks and whites. We're the bad guys and the royals are the good guys. He just needs a little... motivation to see things differently."
Lucien hefted up his scythe, exiting the alley. "Well, whatever sick method of 'motivation' Queenie comes up with—keep me out of it."
With a sweeping spin of his cloak, he vanished into thin air, like the ghost of Death.
-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈
Hello! I hope everyone had a good holiday! Sorry for the long wait; I know I typically update once a month but I largely took a break from writing this in November and December and I had a really hard time with these two for some reason. I honestly forgot like half the plot and had to go back and reread to finish this because it's been that long.
This isn't an action-filled pair of chapters, so it probably comes across as filler (it's the transition from the tower to the convention so it kind of is), but it's stuffed with setup and important information, so hopefully no one dismisses it as such. I don't have a lot for an author's note today :)
For today's poll: soup or salad? (The correct answer is soup.)
That's it; love you; toodles!