Hello, Evil?

Chapter 2

At least, that was what I thought.

The following morning, my eyes fluttered open, and I brushed back my hair from my face, slowly making my way to an upright sitting position. Then I froze. I was still in this colossal bedroom, surrounded by expensive trinkets and all sorts of fine material. Panic washed over me as I realised I had not gone back to real time. My ‘dream’ was actually reality, and I had no idea how to change that.

My heart began beating faster and I began to feel sick. My eyes felt so dreary I could barely open them, and I gasped as tears rushed down my cheeks. Despite my distress, I was eager to prevent myself from becoming too stressed. I decided that I was going to live my life in the palace as happily and as well as I could. Besides, I was the queen of these people, and they expected me to lead them with pride. It was decided - I would not let it show that I was breaking apart. I had to keep up appearances. As well as this, I might even be able to change the book into the way I wished it would end. Perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing.

The steady flow of tears from my eyes had come to a halt, and I blurrily gazed around the room. There were no clothes laid out in preparation for me, so I assumed I was supposed to wait for someone to bring them to me. In the meantime, I wandered around the room, brushing my delicate, long waves of hair. In a way, I liked being in this body. Queen Emlyn was beautiful, and I found myself not wanting to go back to my old looks, though I knew it was vain of me.

While I was absorbed by the sight brought upon me by my huge mirror, a small knock sounded from behind the door. As I gave the order to enter, a small girl hesitantly shuffled through the door, awkwardly trundling along with a huge gown in her arms. I hurried over to help her, taking one end of the gown myself. “Thank you, Your Majesty.” She looked shocked at my willingness to help, and I had to remind myself that I was supposed to be a heartless queen.

She seemed eager to help me fit my dress, though I gasped with shock as she tightened the corset strings. It would take me a while to get used to the style of dress used in this century. Despite my aching chest, once the dress was fully fitted I glanced at it in the mirror and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

It was a deep blue, and the sleeves covered my arms. It was pulled in at the waist, after which it tumbled down and brushed the floor, and the neckline was covered in a delicate white lace. This seemed to be perfectly normal for Emlyn, though it was the first time in my life I had worn something so extravagant. I thanked Genevieve over and over again for creating and delivering such a stunning piece of fabric to me. She had so much talent, despite her only being 17. She was clearly shocked by my praise and awkwardly chuckled every time I complimented her.

That day, I decided it was about time that I found out slightly more about what was going on in the palace. I realised that I would need to memorise all of the names and faces I had been too lazy to pay attention to in the book. Why did I not care more about the minor characters? I scolded myself for my inability to appreciate other characters in the book.

Throughout my day, I passed different people and made sure their faces remained imprinted in my brain. As night came, I rang the bell for a servant to enter, and asked for some parchment to write on. I matched every name I knew to both their description and their occupation, and that night I spent hours going over them until I knew my brain couldn’t take any more information in. My head flew to my pillow and I blacked out immediately. When I was awoken by the chattering of the birds in the morning I knew I had only obtained a couple hours of sleep.

The following day, I repeated my routine. The next day, the same. I went on like this for about a week until I was able to hold my own in the palace. I gracefully tapped my way down the stairs, calling out greetings. “Good morning, Captain! Lovely day.” Further down the stairs, I noticed a teenage boy and spoke to him, also. “Good day to you, George.” He looked thoroughly surprised at being spoken to by name, and I felt pride wash over me at the effort I had put into learning about these people.

Despite my concerns about staying in the palace, I was finding that I fit in quite well. I had learnt my way around, thanks to a full architectural drawing of the building supplied by one of the talented workmen. In return, I promoted him to the assistant head architect, despite the protests I received from my head architect. 

I found new struggles in the reactions following my compliments. Most people were shaken to the core whenever I decided to say something kind, and I had to bite my tongue to remind myself that I was a heartless villain. My facade wouldn’t last long if I continued acting like myself. The only person who didn’t seem to notice a difference was Hunter; Emlyn had clearly been overly kind to him in order to manipulate him to her own will.

Later that night, Hunter knocked at my bedroom door. (I had become quite used to accepting it as my own, despite it actually being Emlyn’s private quarters.) I allowed him to enter, and he joyfully sauntered over to me. Since our first meeting I had come to know him better, and his jokester side had become more apparent. “Guess what I have prepared for you tomorrow morning?” The beaming smile on his face made me curious.

“What have you got planned? And what is the reason for this sly smirk of yours?” I couldn’t help but to let out a small laugh.

“I’m sure you’ll be overjoyed to know that you are going to be training daily with Maksim!” My heart dropped as the words came out of his mouth. Maksim was employed by Queen Emlyn to train all of the new recruits. He was the best, but he was ruthless. This body had clearly not been trained before, due to the skinny and fragile limbs, so that was an advantage; nobody would wonder why I was so weak and useless at fighting.

Hunter had clearly noticed my horrified facial expression, because he gently began to poke my cheek, trying to make me smile. “Cheer up, eh? I think Maksim might have a real challenge taking care of you.” The twinkle in his eyes betrayed the joke, and I fought back the urge to punch him. “Oh, come on, I’m sure Maksim will go easy on you if you show him those puppy eyes.”

“I can’t believe you would set me up like this! I won’t even be able to hold a sword properly!” Hunter waved his hand to dismiss my thoughts and gave me a reassuring hug.

“I’m sure you’ll do great, Emlyn. Just try your hardest and you’ll be able to out-spar me in no time.” His words were surprisingly comforting to me, and I found myself feeling less nervous about my training. Besides, it couldn’t hurt to learn more sword skills - I was in unknown territory, and had every number of enemies. “Oh, and by the way, you start in twenty minutes. Your combat outfit is being sent up, so get changed!” Forget everything I said about being grateful for his comforting words. I was about to kill this man.

Fury boiled up in me, and I flashed out a hand at Hunter, but he caught it mid-air and stood up to leave. “If you do this training, I won’t be able to stop you next time. Let’s hope you have better luck with Maksim!” He skipped out of the room before I had a chance to retaliate, and my fists clenched. At least this gave me motivation to try hard in training; I needed to get my revenge.