As she felt the bright light diminish, her lashes fluttered and her eyes opened back up. If she wasn't sitting on the bed, she was sure she would've stumbled and fallen to the ground.
There was no sign of Stanley anywhere. Instead in his place, a tall man stood on the carpet facing her with a small smile. He had a long mane of brown hair with a few silver strands here and there. His eyes were a darker shade of green, resembling an emerald very clearly. Instead of his previous shabby clothes, he now wore an expensive-looking tailored shirt and coat with matching white slacks to go along with the suit.
'Who the hell is this guy?' Eva asked herself and looked up into his eyes with a question.
"I expected you to run away and scream bloody murder," he spoke, and his voice was no longer a croak like before. It was a smooth voice, not too deep, but energetic with a small bit of baritone mixed with it.
"So you expected me to be a scaredy-cat, Mister... ?"
"Don't you know who I am?" he asked, and Eva raised a brow in sarcasm.
"I know you are Stanley, but apparently I have been lied to all my life while you were a young man who kept an eye on me. Isn't that right?" she stated and watched the man's eyes slightly widen before taking an impressed expression on his face.
"You are smart." he declared and walked towards her. Eva stood up and took a step back to maintain a distance between them. His gaze narrowed but he stopped, not pursuing her.
"So let me get this clear," spoke Eva and puckered her lips as if she was thinking hard. "From my childhood till now, a young man has been watching me. While I felt comfortable with you as an old man, you made me sit beside you at times and feed you food and hold your hand. Am I right?" she gritted out the words one by one and tried not to punch his face as much as she wanted to.
She liked that he looked uncomfortable all of a sudden. "My name is Alastor. And before you can blame me for all that, I was doing it for you. To keep you safe. I was an actual old man, okay? My bones did ache." he muttered the last part but Eva heard him loud and clear.
"Well, don't think that I'll be letting this slip by so easily. But right now, I have much bigger problems to deal with," she gritted out, her anger bubbling in her chest and she wondered if it was her rage speaking on her behalf.
"Where am I?" asked Eva, tilting her head.
Alastor sighed helplessly and rubbed his temples with his forefinger. "You are in Queen Isabella's castle, in Vermont." Her brows narrowed as she folded her arms across her chest, her silver hair covering parts of her chest. "What am I doing here?"
He looked reluctant, his eyes darting towards the door again and again.
"What's wrong?"
"Uh..."
Abruptly, the door swung open, hitting the wall with a loud smash. Eva didn't flinch even though she could hear her heart beating furiously in her chest. Her eyes locked themselves on the woman who had just made a dramatic entrance into the room.
The woman was beautiful even though Eva felt a strange sense of danger from her. Her hair was longer than hers with strands of black and silver mixed together. Her features were sharp and there was something that flashed in her eyes that made Eva wary of her.
She couldn't be trusted.
"The Queen is calling you," she spoke, not sparing a glance in Alastor's direction. "I'll handle things here."
Eva had seen Theo be intimidating. Her observations were sharp, and she had noticed the look he gave an enemy before ruthlessly choking them. She didn't lower her gaze from the woman even when Alastor passed her a worried look. She wasn't going to step back.
"Leave." the woman uttered once again and glared at the silver-haired girl who still wasn't lowering her gaze. Did the King influence her so much that she suddenly became confident and powerful?
Alastor spared Eva a last sympathetic look and turned his back on her, exiting the room and leaving the two women behind glaring at each other.
"Do you know who I am?"
Why was everyone asking her that as if she was supposed to know?
"Did you forget?" asked Eva, putting up a shocked expression on her face though her eyes mocked the woman silently. Diana clenched her fists, hissing out at the girl in front of her who looked nothing less than an angel who just released her demons out in the world.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were a snake."
"You slut!" shouted Diana, approaching her with her hand raised but Eva only smiled. She didn't know where this courage came from but the woman in front of her was forcing her to act against her.
Stepping aside in time, she pushed out a leg which Diana then stumbled over, waving her arms around which Eva then grabbed.
"Don't touch me!"
"Sure." Eva consented and let go of her hold.
THUD!
Diana fell face first onto the floor and straightened herself up, gritting her teeth. Her nose ached and somewhere she wondered if it was squished and would never be fixed again.
Argh, she would teach that little witch a lesson that she would never forget!
Diana raised her hands and Eva watched with widened eyes as she began muttering something under her breath. What was she reciting? An incantation of some sort?
All of a sudden, Eva felt her knees buckle as she fell to the floor and felt excruciating pain flow from the tip of her toes to the rest of her body. She bit her lip to stop an incoming scream but she couldn't help but cry out because of the pain she was going through.
She realized it was the exact pain she had felt when she fainted back in the gardens of the castle. This woman was the one who had made her fall and Eva glared up at her through her amber orbs.
"Enjoying it?" asked the woman and laughed out like a mad witch as Eva's head began to throb more painfully than ever.