Chapter 7: "You have such nice hair."

The sun hit Roxanne directly on the face and for the first time in a long time, she had a smile on that face.

"Hey, sit still, will you?"

Roxanne giggled as she sat down more firmly into the chair.

It had already been a few days since she had the encounter with the cursed prince and she was already trying to cast the incident out of her mind.

He had simply helped her out.

Nothing more. 

It didn't really matter that he had given her his name and it didn't matter that she couldn't stop thinking about him.

The way his mask had given him an aura of mystery and danger might be the reason she couldn't stop.

That was probably it.

Roxanne sighed looked in the waters of the clear stream she had her feet submerged in. She would have to go into it almost totally later on but that was something she would think of when the time came.

Annabelle had insisted that they come out here to dye her hair. 

She said Roxanne could put herself halfway into the small river and she would sit on the riverbank and apply the dyeing paste.

It was a formula Roxanne had developed herself, and it was the only one she was totally sure of that wouldn't leave any part of her hair uncolored.

For some odd reason her hair always seemed to reject normal hair dye. It had been through a series of trial and errors that she had finally managed to get the right formula for a paste potent enough to dye her hair black. It would last for a few days, a week at most, but that would be enough to get her out of the town safely.

No one would be able to recognise her with ebony colored hair.

Annabelle sighed as she ran her fingers through her friend's fiery red locks. They had the softness of silk to them and the thickness of an elegant horse's mane.

"You have such nice hair."

Annabelle's voice sounded wistful but Roxanne only scoffed and tried to keep the lump in her throat down.

"I feel I could have done well without it."

That was true.

They both knew it.

Roxanne's hair was what marked her as the daughter of a traitor.

Lycanos had only two sorts of people.

People with black hair.

And people with blonde hair.

The usual brown could be found here and there but that was about it'.

Hair the color of fire was an anomaly, and everyone else knew that it belonged to the Traitor.

"What do you think he even did anyways?"

Annabelle cocked an eyebrow up.

"Who?"

"My father, the traitor. What do you think his crime was?"

Annabelle's face scrunched up in distaste first. She hated when all they talked about was Roxanne.

The distaste on her face steadily morphed into confusion though and a frown soon replaced it.

That was a valid question.

 What did the traitor do anyways to get him and his descendants so hated?

"I think he tried to sleep with the queen."

Roxanne wanted to laugh.

"And so the whole kingdom hates me because my father tried to sleep with the king?"

"The queen."

Roxanne rolled her eyes.

"Right, the queen."

Annabelle worked the paste Roxanne had mixed steadily into her hair. Her hands would be totally black for a while after she did this, a side effect of handling Roxanne's special hair dye with the bare hands, but some alcohol would get it off, besides, Annabelle liked the way Roxanne's hair smelt.

It always had that floral essence to it.

"I don't think that might be the only thing he did though."

Roxanne turned to look at her friend. Annabelle turned her head back so she could have acess to Roxanne's hair.

"He should have done something much worse than sleeping with the queen to be hated so much. Right?"

Roxanne nodded and looked at the sky instead.

Violent and tumultuous feelings roiled in her heart as she did so.

She was hated throughout the land because her father was a traitor.

Her mother had run off with some rich duke and left her and her sister to fend for themselves on the streets.

Some men had kidnapped her younger sister, or maybe she had wandered off and gotten lost, Roxanne didn't know and that fact only made her heart ache even more.

She didn't have the strength for all this.

Tears choked her and she had to take deep breaths to start breathing steadily again. 

The thought of her sister being out there alone always hurt her the most.

She was barely surviving herself and she had Lord Alex and Annabelle to protect her. Even with that, they could barely do so without it directly affecting them in one way or the other.

It made her feel like a liability.

Annabelle had been the one to plead for her to stay now, but what would happen when her decision put her and her father in danger?

She was a beacon of trouble.

Wherever she went something bad was bound to happen, and it made her hate herself.

Lord Alex and Annabelle might be used to it already but she would never forgive herself if anything bad was to happen to them because of her.

"There, I'm all done."

Roxanne sighed and let the familiar tingle of her dyeing formula burn its way into her scalp. The tingles meant it was working.

Roxanne could feel Annabelle's eyes on her though and she opened one of her eyes to look at her.

"What?"

Annabelle simply shook her head and averted her eyes from Roxanne's.

'"What do you think made the cursed prince so interested in you?"

Roxanne groaned internally at this.

They had already had this talk countless times now.

"I really don't know Anna. It may have been because i was about to get raped by some men."

Annabelle scoffed at that.

Her mouth was half open and she looked like she had something else she wanted to say, but she had been distracted.

Roxanne followed her friend's eyes and her heart sank at what she saw.