Eve made it to the darkened doorway underneath the stairs just as Cassandra illuminated the little room. From an outsider's perspective, the room looked to be something between a witch's lair and a scientist's lab, and Eve wasn't sure whether she should be fascinated or slightly intimidated.
A large chest with lots of little drawers stood against one wall. The front of the drawers were painted different colors, presumably to indicate what type of ingredient was inside each one. Another bookcase with more books (and a darker gray kitten happily curled up on one of the shelves) sat on the other side of the room, but these books looked different than the ones she'd seen in Cassandra's living room; these looked old and ancient and maybe even otherworldly, their worn spines decorated with gold. The table in the middle of the room, more ornate than any of the furniture Eve had seen elsewhere in the house, held a mix of cauldrons, laboratory glassware, and other supplies. A cabinet with a glass door held vials of varying sizes and a rack of test tubes filled with liquids and colloids in a myriad of colors. Cassandra gave Luna a quick little scratch behind her ears, the kitten leaning into her touch, before turning back to Eve and holding her hands up on either side of her body in presentation. She smiled brightly.
"You're…a mad scientist?" Eve asked.
"I'm a healer," she said. "Well…apothecary, really. I know science, and I know magic, so I can mix medicines, help people who get hurt here or people like me who came here with some kind of condition that sometimes needs managed."
"You need magic to make medicine?" Eve asked knowingly.
Cassandra rolled her eyes. "So maybe I make a little more than your typical medicines," she admitted. She leaned against the chest that held the glass-door cabinet and said, "Judge all you want, but it got me here. I figured out I needed a magic bean to open a portal, so I traded complex potions for one on what little bit of a black market the Northern Isles has. How'd you get here?"
"Same method; different tactic," Eve said as she took a seat on a little stool at the table in the center of the room. "Spent too much of my fortune on a lead to a magic bean of my own, then risked my life fighting the dragon that guarded it," she said. Cassandra quickly stood up straight again, her eyes suddenly wide.
"You slayed a dragon?" Cassandra asked.
"Not slay, really. He's not dead," Eve shrugged.
"But still….you fought a dragon?" Cassandra asked, astonished. "By yourself?"
"Stupid, right?" Eve asked.
"I was going to say impressive," Cassandra said. "And incredibly brave. I'll never be that brave. What, um…what were you running from that made you fight a dragon?"
Eve was quiet as she thought about what to say for a moment before she scoffed. "It's shallow and silly compared to why you're here."
"It's not either of those things if it brought you here," Cassandra assured her. "But I understand if you're not ready to talk about it."
Eve hesitated for a moment, seemingly weighing whether or not to tell Cassandra her own tale, when she deflected the topic and asked, "So what do you have for me in here?"
"Right!" Cassandra exclaimed, as if she'd forgotten, and Eve tried to ignore the small flash of disappointment in Cassandra's eyes as she changed the subject.
Cassandra turned around and opened the cabinet filled with her leftover potions. She started rummaging through the vials, muttering negative words as she checked each one. A small sense of melancholy pooled in her stomach at Eve's reluctance to talk, and Cassandra took a deep breath, reminding herself that once upon a time, she hadn't been so forthcoming with her reasons for abandoning her kingdom, either. So few people in this land knew or could know who she really was that meeting someone she could be herself with after so long had conjured feelings of an instant kinship that, she had to remind herself, wouldn't necessarily be shared so quickly.
"You don't have what you're looking for?" Eve finally asked, pulling Cassandra from her spiraling thoughts. She turned around.
"No," she said. "But that's okay; I'll make more, if you don't mind waiting a few minutes."
Eve shook her head with a shrug. "Where else am I gonna go?" she asked.
Cassandra smiled in pleasantry, her lips closed, and walked towards the center table to clear a space to work. She closed the open books and placed them on a shelf above Luna; the potion she'd be making for Eve was one she'd made a hundred times before, and she knew she could do it from memory. Cassandra turned to her chest of little drawers and began pulling out ingredients.
"I was next in line for the throne in my kingdom," Eve said suddenly, after silence settled between them.
Cassandra, slightly startled by her voice, paused with her hand halfway to a drawer and looked at her. Eve's eyes met Cassandra's blue ones, almost asking permission to continue, and Cassandra shot her a toothy grin before resuming her motions.
"My father is not what you would call a benevolent king," Eve continued. "He's not sadistic, either, but he just doesn't usually mean well…considers the costs to himself rather than our people. He's a good example of what not to be, as a ruler and a parent."
Cassandra had heard tales of such lands before, where the rulers were more concerned with themselves than anyone they were supposed to protect. Her innate curiosity wanted to know more about what living in a land like that was really like, even from the perspective of the princess, but something about Eve's posture and the look on her face told Cassandra it wasn't the time to ask questions or share any of the gossip she'd overheard quietly slinking through the halls of her old castle, so she focused on Eve's words, her hands moving almost unconsciously to create her remedy.
"There's a prince a couple lands over, Moriarty. He's more of a ruthless, illicit mastermind than a prince, but he's never held accountable because he's charming." She said the word with intense disdain, and Cassandra almost snickered at how obviously she disagreed with that popular assessment. Eve continued, "He forces his people to do his bidding for him, lets them suffer the consequences instead. He's third in line for his throne, so not likely to be king of his own kingdom without some divine intervention, shall we say."
"Would he…?" Cassandra asked.
"I wouldn't put it past him," Eve admitted. "But that wasn't going to be necessary because my father likes him. And my father likes his kingdom."
"Oh no." Cassandra couldn't help herself as she sighed, realizing where this story was headed. It was a fate Cassandra had once feared for herself, before the tumor had happened, a fate that just as easily could've been hers.
"He'd been toying with the idea since I turned eighteen, forcing us to spend time together every chance he got; I put him off as long as I could. His impatience was easier to handle when Mom was still around, though she didn't really like what I wanted, either," Eve said.
"And what was that?" Cassandra asked.
"I didn't want to get married. I mean, maybe someday, I guess, but not now. I wanted to join the military, defend and protect my kingdom, lead a little before taking the throne, but that's not what I was supposed to do, as a woman or as the immediate heir to the crown."
"So your dad arranged a marriage with Moriarty," Cassandra said.
Eve nodded. "Whose own malevolent father was far too happy to agree," she said, a hint of dread in her voice. "I come from a kingdom that lets a woman stand in line for the throne above men and then tries to force that woman into marriage. How does that make sense?"
"Was that an official rule?" Cassandra asked.
"I don't know," Eve groaned. "I don't think so, but Dad always said I couldn't be queen without a king. But I have three younger brothers, and Dad never threatened to give the throne to any of them, so I think it had more to do with Moriarty and the partnership Dad wanted with his kingdom than it ever did me or my capability."
"Did you love someone else, or you just couldn't stand the thought of marrying him?" Cassandra asked. In an instant, she realized what she'd asked and said, "That was awfully personal; you don't have to answer that."
"Him," Eve replied, ignoring Cassandra's last statement. "He's not good for me, and he's not good for my kingdom. He and my father together would not be good for the people in my kingdom. I was the only one who could see that. If I had loved someone else, I would've brought her here with me."
"Oh," Cassandra said, pausing her work for a moment. Her eyes were suddenly as bright as they had been when Jenkins had told her Eve was a princess, too, something that caused Eve's brow to furrow slightly as she caught sight of the look on Cassandra's face. Cassandra gently smiled, turned back to her project, and said, "And I guess marrying another princess was out of the question?"
"Yeah, big time," Eve replied with a laugh. "At least as long as Dad was in charge."
Cassandra casually replied, "That probably wouldn't have gone over too well in my kingdom, either, but I never got to find out."
The sparkle in Cassandra's eye quickly made sense as Eve, unexpectedly caught off guard by what she'd just said, turned to look at her. A bit of intrigue filled her gaze, and as Eve's surprised silence brought an abrupt end to their conversation, the younger princess glanced up from her work again to meet Eve's eyes. The same small smile from before graced Cassandra's face again as she resumed what she was doing. Eve's eyes lingered on Cassandra before she shook her head slightly to herself and decided to get back to the topic at hand.
"I probably could've married my best friend; that wouldn't have been so bad," Eve said, wondering out loud. "But Flynn's not noble, so he wasn't an option, either, and the wedding with Moriarty is supposed to be in two days, and Flynn and I were out of ideas."
"So here you are," Cassandra said.
"So here I am," Eve agreed. "I know sometimes in life you just lose, despite your best efforts, but that…"
"Was too close to losing everything," Cassandra finished. Eve simply nodded, a troubled look on her face. "I understand. Besides, it sounds like you really did it for the good of your kingdom."
"It doesn't feel that way," Eve admitted.
"Would Flynn have married you, if that had been an option?" Cassandra asked.
"He helped me get here, was trying to help me come up with a less drastic solution, so…yeah, probably," Eve said with a shrug. "If I had asked."
"He wouldn't have wanted a chance to find a love of his own?" Cassandra asked.
Eve chuckled to herself at the idealistic romance behind Cassandra's question and said, "I'm pretty sure part of him has a crush on Moriarty."
Cassandra laughed along with Eve and then stepped back from what she was working on. She held her hand out towards the cauldron and let a bolt of blue lightning hit the raw mixture of ingredients; the cauldron rattled on the table, Eve reacted with an involuntary jolt of her body, nearly falling off the stool upon which she sat, and Luna jumped up on the shelf across the room, letting out a loud hiss as she landed on her paws. Even Cassandra looked a little surprised at the ferocity of what had just come out of her own hands as she gasped and quickly traveled across the room to scoop the kitten into her arms. To Eve's surprise, the kitten went willingly as soothing noises escaped Cassandra's lips.
"I'm with her," Eve said, her heart rate slowly returning to normal. A steadying hand still rested on the table as the cauldron stilled.
"Sorry!" Cassandra exclaimed. She shifted Luna to one arm, the kitten resting in the crook of her elbow, and used her freed hand to stir her swiftly-thickening potion. "I…I must be a little nervous; I'm not used to having much of an audience."
After a few more stirs, Cassandra replaced the kitten in her arms with the cauldron, and Luna hurried back to the safety of her darkened shelf. Cassandra reached in and swirled the white mixture around with her finger, and Eve peered into the cauldron as she approached her.
"Medicine or magic?" Eve asked as she saw the slight shimmer the homemade cream gave off when it caught the light.
"Both," Cassandra answered. "It's going to take a little magic to heal that."
"It's just a scrape," Eve said.
"We're not immortal here," Cassandra reminded her. "We're just frozen, so even though our bodies don't feel frozen, and this land gives the illusion of time still passing, time can't actually heal any injury you get once you arrive here."
"If your tumor can't grow, this abrasion won't go away, either," Eve realized. Cassandra nodded. Eve joked, "So I guess I shouldn't be cutting my hair any time soon?"
"Go ahead," Cassandra said. "I have potions for that, too."
Eve glanced down at the magical medicine and said, "You must make a fortune here with things like that."
"I do okay," Cassandra said with a slight smile and a bashful roll of her eyes. "Can I?"
"Well, I don't want to have this on my face for eternity," Eve said.
Cassandra coated her fingers in the magical remedy and stepped closer to her to gingerly apply the congealed potion to Eve's face. The medicine was still a little warm, Cassandra's touch feather-light against her inflamed skin. Before Cassandra could even finish, a tingling sensation centered on her wounded cheek overcame Eve, and she leaned away as Cassandra moved to apply a second coat.
"What's wrong?" she asked with wide eyes.
"Is it supposed to be stinging like that?" Eve asked.
"That's the magic," Cassandra said. "It's fast; you'll look completely normal in less than ten minutes."
Eve sat back up straight slowly. She'd seen more magic since arriving at Cassandra's home than she'd seen in the last year of her life put together, but she tried to fight the hesitation she was feeling with magic so readily on display. She inexplicably trusted that Cassandra knew what she was doing, her magic bred within her bones, but magic hadn't been quite so open and abundant in Eve's kingdom. Those who had it or knew how to use it hid it, threatened people with it, or used it for other nefarious purposes. Magic was something to be feared where she came from; Cassandra didn't seem to fear it at all. Despite her apprehension, she allowed Cassandra to coat her cheek with another layer of the shimmering lotion as the sensation on her cheek began to subside.
"What do I owe you?" Eve asked as Cassandra grabbed a nearby towel and wiped the leftover potion off her fingers. Cassandra looked at her quizzically, fingers still encased in the cotton fibers. Eve clarified, "You get paid for this stuff, right?"
"Oh," Cassandra said. She chuckled and waved her hand again, tossing the towel aside. "You don't owe me anything."
"Are you sure?" Eve asked. "I can pay."
The bright smile returned to Cassandra's face as she grabbed an empty container and secured it in a clamp to preserve the leftover treatment. "I'm happy to help," she said, and for once in her life, Eve knew those words were genuine.
Thanks, as always, for reading! And thank you for the comments so far! Let me know what you think :)