Ever After

Chapter Twenty-One

A guard came with a tray for my daily meal. It came twice a day, for breakfast and dinner. They skipped lunch, although they didn't give us much food anyway. The tray consisted of a small piece of bread, a tiny bowl of gruel, and a goblet of water. I could barley stomach the gruel or the moldy bread they gave us, but I had to eat something to survive.

Belle and Rapunzel weren't doing much better. Even though it had been only a couple days, I saw how starved they looked. They got skinnier and tried to eat as much as they could with the horrible food they gave us.

Adam didn't move. He always sat in the same spot. He didn't talk to anyone, look at anyone or anything besides the ground, and only ate the smallest part of the food that was good. He still didn't believe I wasn't the one who put him here, no matter how much I tried to convince him. I wanted so badly to take off my mask and hood, and prove to him that I was the girl who had befriended him long ago. But I knew that if I revealed my identity, the Queens would know. But what did I have to lose? I had no family left that I cared about, all my friends were either prisoners, traitors, or dead. I already hit rock bottom.

I looked at Adam, who was still sitting on the makeshift bed next to the wall, and walked over to the bars between our cells. He looked up for a split second, but turned his head backwards as if it pained him to look at me. Which might be fair, but he has to know I didn't do it.

"Adam." I said. He didn't look at me. "Adam please. I don't know how to convince you that I'm not the person who put you here. But if I was and if I was working with them, why would they lock me up?" He mumbled something under his breath, but still didn't look at me. I sighed and let go on my grip on the bars. How am I supposed to make him believe I'm not the person he thinks I am?

I was snapped out of my thoughts when I heard a loud bang of a door being closed, and footsteps coming towards me. The woman and her soldiers came in front of my cell. I got off the bars and walked over to the wall leaning on it. The woman was wearing a purple dress that had a long veil that followed her on the bottom. Her hair was in a high ponytail that went sideways down her chest, but she wore no crown today. Her soldiers wore the same black and silver armor.

"What's she been eating? She looks so skinny and starved." She asked one of the guards on duty. The guard straightened himself and answered back.

"Same food given to the rest of the prisoners Your Majesty." She snapped her head at him and stared at him coldly.

"What?" She said.

"I-I said th-the same food as the rest." He said with fear in his voice. He trembled and lost his straight posture.

"I know what you said you blithering idiot." She snapped, and with a wave of her hand, the guards head twisted and he lay lifeless on the ground. I gasped and stared back at the woman who was ordering her guards around. Like she didn't just kill a man for no reason.

"Get this girl some proper food. We can't have our guest of honor be served such horrid food. She needs to be energized for her trip." The woman said. She looked at the guard on the ground. "And get another man on duty here. Take this one out." She pointed to the body, and two guards took the body away. She walked closer to the bars on my cell, and reached out to me through the bars, then pulled back making her hand into a fist. When she did that, I was pulled towards her like there was an invisible string around me. And she grabbed my face in her hand pulling me closer to her. "Such a shame. All this beauty to go to waste. Really horrible." She said.

I wriggled out of her grasp but didn't change my position so I was staring right into her cold jade eyes.

"What's horrible is what you did to that poor man." I said just as coldly as she did. She smirked and laughed quietly.

"Well they don't call me the Evil Queen for nothing." She emphasized the word evil, and snapped her fingers, and a guard walked right to her side. "Give this girl a meal three times a day, with all proper foods. Not whatever we are feeding these," She looked at Adam in the cell next to me. "cell scum." She waved her hand and suddenly Adam was pulled off the bed and was standing on his tiptoes as if someone was holding him in a choke hold. His face looked strained, and he wasn't breathing.

"Stop!" I said. And when the Evil Queen didn't listen, I felt sparks come out of my hand. My stomach twisted in knots, and next thing I know, the Evil Queen is jumping around while the guards are trying to get a flame off her dress. I laughed, but kept my hand over my mouth to keep quiet. I looked over at Adam who was kneeling on the ground catching his breath. He looked up at me, then at the Queen and mouthed a "thanks". I nodded my head in return and looked back at the Queen. She glared at me while her guards patted out the fire.

"Nice trick. But next time, try not to reveal any weaknesses dearie." She gave me a wicked smile, and looked at Adam who was up now and glaring at The Queen with his hands in fists. She walked out with her guards, still holding that smile. I slumped back into the wall, and sat against it.

"Why did you do that?" Adam asked. I turned to look at him, he actually talked to me. He hasn't said a word since he strangled me when we tried to rescue him. I was surprised and didn't answer for a while. He looked at me from his bed.

"Because I'm not who you think I am." I crawled over to the bars and held them while looking through them. "I only want to help."

"Why should I believe you?" He said. I thought about that for a moment. Why should he believe me? The Ashes he saw, kidnapped him, took him to this place, and tortured him for weeks. But Ella didn't do any of that. Maybe he'd believe her.

I took off my hood, letting him see my face, and wiped off the ashes I used for a mask. I looked down before I let him see me. I breathed in and out, and lifted my head up. He gasped and came closer to me.

"Ella?" He said and he was close to the bars, but he wasn't leaning against the bars.

"Now do you believe it wasn't me who did that?" I asked. He was still staring at me, and it wasn't until he got his voice back that the silence broke.

"If this is another illusion I am going to be furious." He said. "Tell me something only the real Ella would know." If this is what it takes for him to believe me, then there has to be something that only I would know about him.

"I know about the place at the end of the forest that leads you to the waterfall. The one that you took me to one year ago." I remembered the day he showed me that place. It was beautiful there, but it was also the place that we lost Red. I almost let a tear fall at the memory of her. He smiled at me and I reflected it.

"I bet your really sorry about choking me now." I said laughing. He laughed too and came closer to the bars.

"Yeah, I didn't know it was you. But how-"

"It's a long story, that I'll tell you later."

"Yeesh, get a room you two." Belle said from across the hallway. Rapunzel flicked her in the head through the bars, and both Adam and I laughed. Even though we were trapped in this prison, I was glad to have Adam back.