There's no one Mal trusts more, in the world than her friends. The only people she'll let close to her unguarded neck are Jay, Evie, and Carlos, and even that took years of practice. So she doesn't go to Dizzy, tells herself she'll let her hair grow out and that she'll then cut it all off, like cutting out a tumour.
She fights with blonde hair, and when the strands cover her vision and tame her magic and she feels like she might cry, she looks at Ben instead, Ben who never did anything wrong, and she keeps fighting, blowing her bleached hair out of her face.
Evie won't even let her attend Cotillion with the bleached hair.
Mal has never loved her more.
Evie dyes it. She chooses a darker purple than Mal's natural colour, so dark it was almost black. And she braids it, using complicated braids that Mal couldn't begin to unravel and more hairpins and hairspray than Mal knew existed.
She looks otherworldly. She looks like a goddess.
The guests smile at her when she appears. They ooh and aah at her hair, hair that she'd unmade for them, hair that she's now made for herself.
And when she and Ben are dancing, and he spins her, her hair flies out around her, dark and beautiful and Isle.