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Chapter Text

“Aurora?”

Briar Rose smiled and lit from her bed.  She felt dizzy when she stood, and she had to sit back down, but at the very least she was sitting upright when Philip entered their room.  Prince Philip of the North was a tall and exquisitely handsome man with light brown hair and eyes.  His frame appeared at first glance to be slim, but he was actually rather brawny in stature—his shoulders were broad and his arms were muscular.

“Aurora,” Philip repeated warmly when he saw her, then, “Aurora,” closing his eyes and savouring the name on his lips.

This habit of his already made Briar Rose very uncomfortable, and she had only known Philip for a few days.  Every time he saw her, he said her name this way several times, and he saw her quite a lot.

The worst, however, had been on their wedding night.  She had been so nervous, for she knew absolutely nothing of men.  She had only been informed of her duties for the evening perhaps an hour prior, in a hurried, whispered conversation with her eldest aunt…or she supposed her non-aunt, who, herself, knew little of men.  Briar Rose had left the conversation trembling, and feeling as though she might expel the nonexistent contents of her stomach.

And then, after the initial pain had passed, when she had thought, oh, this is not so bad, he had begun.  Begun to whisper and murmur and moan and cry out Aurora and Briar Rose had, herself, begun to cry for how it shamed her.  She was completely vulnerable—so much more vulnerable than she had ever been, which was saying quite a lot—and Philip, her one hope for a dream come true, for a familiar face in this strange new world in which she found herself, called out for Aurora.

It was as though he were making love to someone else.

She was not Aurora.  She was Briar Rose.

“Philip,” she replied in the present, and she wondered what it must be like for him to hear the one he loved say his own name. 

Perhaps it oughtn't to matter so much to her.  Her aunts...well...  Her non-aunt fairy guardians were making a concentrated effort to call her by her new, old name.  Perhaps she ought to make a better effort to adjust to it, to leave her past behind her.  She'd considered telling him, anyway, asking that he call her Rose, but the request always caught in the back of her throat, another kind of pain entirely.  Briar Rose did not belong in this place.  No one wanted her here.  Perhaps not even Briar Rose, herself.

In any event, she doubted he would understand, for no one else seemed to.  Less charitably, she considered that with how frequently he said her new name, she doubted he could learn to say her old one. 

And anyway, there were more immediate matters to attend to.  “What has happened?  Is she…?”

"The creature is still alive," Philip cut her off, his expression darkening.  "It awoke sometime this morning.  The Good Fairies feel that it would be unwise to kill the beast.  They fear that some greater evil might arise to replace it.”

Philip refused to refer to the wicked fairy Maleficent, of whose existence Rose had just recently learned, by her name or as a woman.  It was Rose’s opinion that referring to her as some kind of monstrous creature only made her sound even more frightening, but who was she to argue?  She supposed she must have personally seen Maleficent at some point before the wicked fairy places her under the Sleeping Curse from which she had just awoken, but she did not remember, and so had no tangible ground upon which to judge how Maleficent ought to be referred to.

According to Philip, upon his escape from Maleficent's fortress, the creature in question had transformed herself into a fearsome dragon, which Philip had defeated with his sword.  After he'd slain the dragon, it fell into the valley below, where it morphed back into its usual form, a green-skinned human-like being.  The Good Fairies had acquired some special magic for just such an event, and together they had imprisoned the creature, in case it should awaken.

“Well, I agree,” said Rose.

Phillip laughed lightly.  “You agree, do you?” he asked, patting her hands.  “And why is that?”

Suddenly Rose felt very stupid.  "It...well, it would be different if she had died in battle," she began, and felt her cheeks flushing hot as Philip's condescending smile widened.  "Now it seems...well, it seems unnecessary, doesn't it?  To take her life when she is already imprisoned?  Perhaps she could come to regret—"

Apparently this was too much for Philip, for he began to laugh, and when he put his arm around her shoulders fondly, she very much wanted to shrug it off.  “My sweet, sweet Aurora.  Such a kind heart.”

Briar Rose wanted to cry.  “Why are you laughing at me?”

Philip attempted to sober himself, but his face was red from the effort.  “That creature is pure evil," he said simply, like it was nothing.  "It could never feel any sort of human emotions.”

Rose frowned, “How can you be so sure?”

Philip shook his head and kissed her, and then rose from the bed.  “I do wonder what it must be like inside your pretty head, my Aurora,” he said fondly.  “But I must be off.  There is still much to discuss.”

Rose had spent much of her time, particularly recently, wishing desperately for someone to talk to who was not one of her non-aunts.  They were very dear to her, but they were all she had ever known, and she wanted very much to know other things.  To say that she had been devastated when she learned that her entire life was a lie would be something of an understatement, and it had been a great source of comfort to her—perhaps the only source—when she learned that Philip would be a part of this new life.  She did not know him, exactly, but she knew that he loved her, that he had fought a fearsome dragon to rescue her, and that he would not let any harm come to her.

What was more, Philip had led the life Rose might have known if not for Maleficent’s curse.  Minus all the dragon-hunting and sword-fighting, of course.  Rose had hoped that he might understand how lost and how out-of-step she felt in King Stefan’s castle.  She had hoped that he would stay by her side while she experienced these new and frightening things, and that when they were alone she might sometimes ask him questions about his life, about all the things Princess Aurora might have known, but Briar Rose did not.

It wasn't precisely that Philip had no time for her—indeed, she saw quite a lot of him.  But whenever he arrived, the way he said her name threw her all out of sorts, and then he had something else on his mind, and whenever Briar Rose endeavoured to speak, he laughed at her, and whenever she asked a question, he made some excuse to leave, and by the nighttime he quickly became preoccupied with matters which were not conducive to talking.

The result was that Briar Rose was left feeling terribly alone, all shut up in her room, waiting for someone to visit and not really speak to her.  She supposed she understood why she was meant to stay here.  The Sleeping Curse had left her weak, and the days that followed had left her vague and overwhelmed.  Still, she longed for the days when she might take a walk through the forest whenever she pleased, so long as the sun was shining and she promised not to speak to anyone.  It had been a small freedom, yet now by comparison she could not help but to feel a prisoner in her own home.

Strange, how not a handful of days had passed, and the expanse of Briar Rose's life with her aunties in the cottage in the woods felt like it might very well have belonged to someone else.  Strange, how in not a handful of days, after the great adventure she supposed those around her must have had, Briar Rose's life had been torn asunder, and now she found herself more or less back where she'd begun.  Waiting for life to happen to her was just as disheartening in a castle as in a cottage.

Her aunties came by far less often than Philip did.  Perhaps they sensed that she was still hesitant to see them after learning of their great list of lies.  Perhaps not.  The last time she checked, they seemed to believe that the only reason Rose had been so upset on the night of her sixteenth birthday was because of the arranged marriage which would keep her from the boy she had met in the woods.  How could she even begin to explain that it was so much more than that, that it was hardly even related?  How could they understand what it was to learn that the very fabric of her universe had unraveled before her?

Briar Rose supposed she ought to try to show her aunties the understanding she so longed for, but that was proving rather difficult under the circumstances.  Her aunties, who were also the Good Fairies who gave counsel to the King, who was also her father, had decreed that Rose was to remain confined to her room until the matter of the wicked fairy Maleficent had been attended to.  After that, she was to begin proper lessons in things like reading, writing, and court etiquette.  It wasn’t that Rose had no knowledge of these things—her aunts had tried valiantly to give her lessons, but they had bored her dreadfully.  After all, why would a simple peasant girl such as herself ever have any use for such nonsense?

Rose squeezed her eyes closed against the thought, the way the ideas of herself as the peasant Briar Rose and the Princess Aurora stood so thoroughly at odds with one another, and turned her attention to another troubling matter.

The wicked fairy called Maleficent troubled Rose quite a bit.  It would have been one thing if she had died in battle, but she hadn't.  She had survived, somehow, impossibly, and the King's guardsmen had chained her up in the dungeons while she slept.  Wasn't that supposed to be the end of it?  If one had committed an atrocity, one ought to be imprisoned, so that she might reflect upon her misdeeds.  To have her executed when she was already thusly imprisoned?  What purpose did it serve?

It seemed...spiteful.  A display of power, a needless crow of triumph over a woman who had already lost the battle.

If anyone ought to be angry with Maleficent, it was Rose.  Maleficent had condemned Rose—or more precisely, the Princess Aurora, to death when she was just a baby, and had not done anything at all.  Indeed, it was because of this condemnation that Rose had become Rose for sixteen years, and now had to become the Princess Aurora again, and pretend that none of that, the entirety of her existence, had ever happened at all.

Rose knew this, had heard the story of the Lost Princess all her life, had been told over and over the last handful of days, and yet she could not connect the story to herself.  She could bring herself to blame Maleficent for her misfortune, for they had never even met.  It felt a bit like blaming nothing at all.

Rose was beginning to feel impossibly restless, like the walls of her room were closing in around her.  They must be discussing the matter at hand right now, within the walls of this very castle, and here was she, confined to her room like an errant child.  She wanted to know what was going on—know for herself, with her own eyes and ears.  She did not want to wait here for Philip to return, to tell her whatever fragment of the truth he deemed appropriate for her to hear.

Rose approached the door, fueled by the fire of a sudden impulse.  She felt light-headed when she stood, wobbly in the knees when she walked, and she leaned heavily upon the door's handle when she reached it.  Her heart fluttered.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, even went so far as to shake her head at the absurdity of her own hesitancy.  The door wasn't locked.  It wasn't as though she were truly a prisoner here.  She was meant to stay in her room for her own health, but what was the worst that could happen to her if she were to take a little walk by herself?

She nodded firmly to herself as she pulled the door open, and did her best to swallow down the terrible rush of guilt that followed.

The meeting in question was surprisingly easy to find.  Philip's voice echoed through the stone corridors, and Aunt Flora's followed after it, quieter, but sharper.  The words were unintelligible from where Rose stood paralyzed in the middle of the hallway, and she felt a fresh wave of guilt and terror at the prospect of committing to her designs to eavesdrop.  She approached the proper door slowly, certain her knees would give out beneath her with each step.

“No, that wouldn’t do at all,” Aunt Flora was saying.  “Rose—Aurora…has been through so much already.  What could she possibly gain by encountering Maleficent?”

“But Flora, you know Rose!  She—”

“Aurora.”

“Rose or Aurora, she’s too curious for her own good,” finished Merryweather.  “Don’t you think she’ll want to know who cursed her?”

“Aurora is weak, as you’ve all seen.  It was a very great shock to her that anyone wanted her dead at all.”

“And why shouldn’t it be?”

“My point, Merryweather, is that I can see no reason for her to speak with Maleficent before the trial, and I can see many reasons against it.”

A trial?  What would a trial decide?

“But won’t it be a greater shock when she attends the trial, seeing Maleficent for the first time?”

“Fauna!  Aurora wouldn’t attend the trial!  How absurd!”

“Well, I just thought, because it has so very much to do with her—”

“What Maleficent has done has little to do with Aurora and much to do with Stefan and Leah,” Flora said firmly.  “Besides, would you have kind-hearted Aurora listen to a death-sentence?”

“I suppose not.”

Rose backed away from the door, or more precisely, she staggered backward, overcome by a wave of something akin to nausea.  She raced back to her room on trembling legs and slammed the door closed with the full weight of her body, heart thundering in her ears as she struggled to steady her laboured brreathing.

She had the dreadful sense that Philip had lied to her, with an easy deliberation that turned her stomach afresh, and that her aunts were planning to lie to her, too.  Had she not endured enough falsehoods for one lifetime?

Rose inhaled deeply.  She oughtn't to jump to conclusions.  Perhaps Philip and her aunts were truly just trying to protect her.  Perhaps Maleficent was to have a fair trial, and on the off-chance that the court decided in favour of...of death, well then they did not want Rose to have to witness such a thing.  Perhaps they knew how Rose felt about the matter, and they knew that Rose would mourn Maleficent even if her demise was for the best.

Rose knew she ought to be angry with Maleficent.  Maleficent had stolen her life from her twice over.  She knew this, and yet she could not bring herself to believe it.  She could not imagine how this person, who had perhaps meant to kill her but had not managed it, deserved to die.

Maleficent was already imprisoned.  If one had committed an atrocity, one ought to be imprisoned, so that she might reflect upon her misdeeds.  Suppose Maleficent came to regret her actions, as Rose had been trying to say to Philip earlier?  People acted rashly.  They made bad decisions.  Did they deserve to die for them?  If Maleficent were put to death, that would be the end of her.  She would be robbed of even the barest chance to see the error of her ways.

Something Aunt Fauna had said caught in Rose's mind, caught like fire and began to spread.  As soon as she noticed it there, as soon as she put a name to her desire, she knew she must follow it, or she would burn forever for the knowledge.

Rose had to go and speak to Maleficent.

This might very well be her only chance.  No doubt everyone would want this trial over quickly, and apparently her husband and her former guardians had decided to keep her very much in the dark on the matter.  Now that she knew—and especially now that she knew no one wanted her to know—Rose absolutely had to know more.

At the very least, it would get her out of this room.  It had on more than one occasion occurred to Rose that doing as she was told wasn’t going to get her the adventure she so craved.  If she continued to wait idly by as she'd been doing, longing for life to happen, in this particular instance, death might happen in the meantime.

Late that night, when Philip was snoring lightly and evenly, Rose crept from their bed and out of the room.  She had only a vague idea of where she might find a dungeon—namely, underground—and so she wandered the castle with nothing but the vague aim of finding a way downward.

It was the first time Rose had seen much of the castle, and in this way, her very first adventure held far more excitement than she had anticipated.  Though she found the main stairway with relative ease, she doubted that was her best course of action.  She wandered past perhaps a dozen closed doors, musing that the castle was much bigger than it appeared to be from the outside, until she came upon another, smaller stairwell.  This one struck her as eerily familiar, and as she made her way downward, she realized that these stairs also led up to the tower room.

Rose hazarded a glance over her shoulder at the path she only vaguely remembered taking, guided by a green light and an entrancing voice, and she felt a shiver course through her.  The familiarity felt much more akin to a strange dream than to a memory, and the dream-memory ended with the top of the stairs.  Though she had been plagued by a plethora of disturbing nightmares while she slept, the next thing Briar Rose remembered (which could have even feasibly happened) was awakening to Philip’s smiling face.

When Rose reached the bottom of two flights of winding stairs, she was greeted with an open door revealing a hallway much like the one she had just left and another door made of metal bars separating her from another flight of stairs leading downward.  It seemed Rose’s search was complete.

The door made of metal bars appeared to be locked, but the lock did very little, as the door was not properly closed.  It made an ear-splitting creak when Rose pulled it open, but Rose knew all too well that no one in the main part of the castle could hear anything going on in this stairwell.  If the Good Fairies crying out for help and the voice of the very wicked fairy who posed such an immediate threat to the kingdom did not alert the scores of guests to the castle that evening, Rose doubted that a screeching door in an old fortress would catch anyone’s ear now.

Rose had to hold onto the wall and feel her way down each step, for all of the sconces in this part of the stairwell had burnt out.  She could see a faint glowing light around the bend, but that did not help her find her footing on the winding staircase.

At last, Rose began to see the faint outlines of steps, and then she ran out of steps and continued along level ground.

“A visitor?” a voice called from the darkness, and Rose very nearly jumped.  The voice was soft and low, almost frail, but resonant, so that Rose could tell that the sound was a mere echo of the power that voice could hold.

It was almost familiar.  But as soon as this thought crossed her mind, Rose felt that she had never truly heard it before, only its shadow, closer to a dream than a memory.

Rose dared another step forward, then another, still bracing herself with a hand against the stone walls.  As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that there were bars.  Behind the bars, she could just make out a shadowy figure of a person, possibly seated, definitely in chains.

“I was not expecting anyone so late.  More secrets, I suppose?”

Rose continued her cautious approach, scarcely dared to breathe, concetrated on making each footstep quieter than the last.  She wanted very much to get a better look at the shadowy figure before it got a look at her.

The figure raised its head, and there was a faint rattling of metal.  “My dear sir, you insult me,” it said.  “I can hear you.  Step into the light, if you please.”

Embarrassment seemed an odd thing to feel, and yet, of course Rose hadn't been fooling anyone but herself.  Still, she did as she was told and stepped into the light.

As she revealed herself, so was the shadowy figure revealed to her.  The prisoner was a woman with long, ragged dark hair and long, slender limbs.  Her skin was possibly tan or olive, and her facial features were very sharp even in near-darkness.  Rose thought she could make out scars across the woman’s face.  Despite the fact that she was positively dripping in heavy chains, there was a regality to her, something commanding in her mere presence.

“Well," she said and Rose could see the glint of torchlight upon her teeth as she smiled.  “The Princess Aurora.  I hope you will forgive me if I do not bow,” she bowed her head, but judging from the numerous chains, that was probably the only part of her body she could move.  “To what do I owe this most surprising visit?”

Rose was quite surprised, herself, by such an amiable greeting.  Emboldened by the prisoner’s apparent willingness to talk, she stepped a little closer.  “Are you Mistress Maleficent?” she asked.

Again the light glinted off of her teeth.  “At your service.”

Rose shivered.  “Philip said…he said his sword pierced you straight through the heart.  How is it that you’re alive?”

“It pierced my dragon form in the chest.  The anatomy of dragons and fairies is understandably rather different.”

Rose considered this, “But still, it must have been an awful wound.”

“Yes, quite,” Maleficent agreed.  She waited a moment.  When Rose said nothing in response, she continued.   “However, wicked fairies are very difficult to kill, you know.  As long as we survive the initial damage, our bodies can usually heal themselves.”

“Truly?” Rose asked, and dared another step forward without fully meaning to.  “That’s remarkable!  I admit I know nothing of wicked fairies.”

“But you know of good ones,” Maleficent offered.

Rose bit her lip, “I didn’t know that I knew of them.”

“Hm,” Maleficent nodded.  “Heaven forbid they should warn you of the peril you faced.”

Rose was going to agree passionately, but suddenly she remembered exactly whom she was talking to, and she felt the need to defend her fairy aunts.  “They were only trying to protect me.”

“And a fine job they did of it,” Maleficent said, and the amusement in her voice sent a chill down Rose’s spine.  “Sending puffs of their oh-so-colourful magic up into the air for any passer-by to see.”

She should have defended them a bit better, perhaps, but she did not feel up to it at the moment.

“But that is a matter of little interest to me,” Maleficent said.  “What is of great interest to me, Princess, is why you have come to visit me.”

Rose suddenly found it very difficult to breathe.  “I…well, I…”

“Have you come to lay eyes upon the monster who wanted you dead?”  Rose’s knees nearly buckled under her, and she grasped at the nearby wall for support.  Maleficent chuckled.  “It’s as good a reason as any.  This is likely your only chance.  Tell me, am I what you expected, Princess?”

Rose bit her lip as she contemplated posing the question she desperately needed to ask.  “Only chance?” she managed at last.  “Philip said that they were going to…well, to keep you here.”

“Hmm,” Maleficent thought for a moment.  “Perhaps he thinks you too kind-hearted to handle the truth.” She tilted her head slightly.  “Or too weak.”

Rose swallowed hard against a lump in her throat, and struggled to steadied herself.  She chose her next words carefully, trying not to sound as frightened as she felt.  “Do you think me too weak to handle the truth?”

Maleficent considered her with an eerie kind of stillness.  “The truth," she said at last, "is that King Stefan has assembled a council of sorts to perform a trial, but it’s all for show for the Good Fairies, who hold the bizarre belief that if they kill me, some greater evil will rise to replace me.  The King wants me dead, however, and so dead I shall be.”

The words caused Rose’s heart to wrench painfully in her chest, and she felt her eyes begin to water.  “I was told King Stefan was a kind man.”

Maleficent said nothing for a long moment, then gave a sort of half-chuckle.  “You are very kind-hearted, aren’t you?”

Suddenly empowered by the strength of her emotion, Rose approached the bars that caged the wicked fairy.  Rose’s breath caught in her throat.

Wide, dark eyes watched her carefully, dramatically arched eyebrows furrowed in suspicion.  The fairy’s lips were a deep red, and across her mouth in a jagged line ran one of two prominent scars on her face.  The second was across the middle of her face, carved across her nose.  Her hair stuck out at odd angles, and some of it was plastered to her face as though by sweat.  Apart from the scars, her skin was...impossibly smooth, flawless, and it was...  From afar in the dim light, it had looked like a darker natural skin tone, but it was green.  Her skin was a light shade of green.

The prisoner was truly a wicked fairy, a creature out of a myth or a legend come to life before her eyes, forged from flesh and bone.  The wicked fairy Maleficent was the most beautiful creature Rose had ever seen. 

Rose felt her heart beating in her throat, and without meaning to, she leaned closer to the bars.  Maleficent, who had recovered her stoic facial expression, raised her eyebrows as if in a challenge.  Rose slowly, carefully reached up and touched one of the bars.  She waited a moment, then reached past the bars and touched the sharpness of Maleficent’s prominent cheekbone with her fingertips.

Maleficent’s expression of aloof haughtiness changed abruptly.  She curled her lip and something rather like alarm danced across her dark eyes  Rose rent her hand away as though scalded.

In a motion so quick Rose might not have caught it had she not been so close, Maleficent’s eyes flicked down to Rose’s hand and back up, assessing whether the danger of being touched again had passed.  Rose rested her hand on one of the bars in silent apology.

“So tell me, Princess,” she hissed with a little tilt of her head, her cool demeanour instantly restored, and Rose could not help but notice how dark and expressive her eyes were as they reflected the dim candlelight, “has the gallant Prince Philip secured your happy ending for you?  Have all of your dreams come true?”

Rose bit her lip and looked down, focusing her eyes on Maleficent’s hands, which were, as could be expected, as long and spindly as the rest of her body, and which were confined by chains that did not look the same as the others.  She could think of no answer to offer this beautiful and terrifying woman who was bound and chained and condemned to death.

“I…I never wanted any of this,” she said at last, but that was hardly an answer at all.  She looked up into those captivating dark eyes, which now regarded her with a glint of curiosity.

“The chains around my wrists have caught your eye,” she said.  Rose felt her cheeks flush, but she supposed Maleficent couldn’t tell in this light.  She nodded.

“They’re quite remarkable, really, if magical artifacts interest you.”

“They do,” Rose replied quickly, before she could think better of it.  Perhaps terrified was a better term, but magic fascinated every bit as much as it frightened.  Briar Rose had grown up surrounded by magic, enveloped in it, even chased by it, and yet she had not known!

Maleficent's lips quirked upward into a small smirk, and she lifted her hands so that the odd chains stood out.  “The light fae and the dark, or the Good and the Wicked, as they are commonly called, have been sworn enemies for millennia.  Their magic has grown so disparate as to be unrecognizable to one another, even inimical.  Some good fairies are very powerful—they make your three little old aunts look comical by comparison—”

Rose flinched involuntarily at the word aunt.  She was sure it did not escape Maleficent’s notice, but Maleficent continued speaking, anyway.  “Most good fairies live by a set of rules, a code which states that they must protect humankind, and that they may not directly harm another creature.”

This caught Rose’s attention.  The way Philip boasted of his battle with the dragon, it was as though he had fought it alone.  She suddenly wondered whether that made sense.  “Did they…” Rose bit her lip.  It seemed stupid to ask Maleficent any questions at all, and yet in the past few minutes, she had learned more than she had in years from anyone else.  “Did the good fairies…enchant Philip?  To…to fight you?”

Maleficent let out a small huff of amusement, “Of course they did!  Mortals are no match for the wicked fae!"  She looked up, as much as she was able, as though looking past Briar Rose, and even the walls of the dungeon itself.  "My kin have fought singlehandedly against entire armies and won.  We can take out hundreds, even thousands of men at once.”

Against her better judgement, Rose leaned in closer.

“I don’t know where your little fairies acquired these,” she said, indicating her chains.  “They are specifically designed to render a wicked fairy powerless.  They suffocate our magic, so to speak, and slowly, over time, drain it."

Rose inhaled sharply, “But that means—if they simply left you here, alive, you would lose your magic?”

“Correct,” Maleficent nodded.  “Not all of it, of course, but after…perhaps a decade, my magic would be too weak to do much of anything besides keeping me alive.”

“But then,” Rose bit her lip and looked away, “I don’t understand why they intend to…to kill you.”

Maleficent tilted her head and studied Rose for a moment with those piercing, dark eyes, shining with torchlight.  “It is a much better ending to their story, isn’t it?  The evil beast was vanquished and the Prince and Princess lived happily ever after?”

Rose wanted to cry.  “That isn’t a very good reason to take someone’s life.”

“You know,” Maleficent began slowly, softly, “another interesting thing about these chains is that they have no key.”

“What?” Rose looked up.  “Then they can never come off?”

Maleficent shook her head, “They can come off at any time.  Anyone may remove them... except for a wicked fairy.”

Rose’s eyes widened.  “That’s…well, it’s odd, isn’t it?”

“Presumptuous.  Arrogant.  Or odd, yes,” the smile upon Maleficent's lips now seemed daring, even dangerous.  “So I have a proposition for you, Princess Aurora.”

“A…a proposition?”

“You implied earlier that you are unhappy," said Maleficent.  "I don’t know to what extent you’re aware, but I am a rather powerful sorceress.  If you were to set me free, there is little I could not give you in return for your mercy.”

Rose’s eyes flickered down to the chains on Maleficent’s wrists, and then back up to those dark, dancing eyes, down to the ruby red lips, over the scars, and for one wild moment, anything seemed possible.  Maleficent’s expression was impassive, but Rose knew what her request meant.  It was the difference between life and death.

Suddenly something very important which had slipped Rose’s mind came crashing back to her, and she staggered away from the cell as though burned.  “You want to kill me.”

Maleficent’s features formed a strange, unreadable expression and she averted her eyes for a moment.  “As I’m sure you have surmised, if you were to set me free, you would be saving my life.  I suppose it depends upon how you assess my character as to whether you believe I would truly repay that kindness by taking yours.”  She sighed, “In any event, I only ask that you consider it, Princess.  I have nothing to lose by asking, and I doubt your Prince will be permitted to execute me tomorrow.”

This, or perhaps a combination of things, made Rose’s stomach churn and her blood run hot.  “You’ve been lying this whole time, haven’t you?  You’ve just been trying to manipulate me into helping you so you can carry out your plan!  Well,” she almost shouted, backing up haphazardly until her hands hit the opposing wall, “I am not the weak little fool everyone thinks I am!  I will not die of stupidity before I have even lived!”

Rose ran around the corner and staggered up the dark and winding stairs.  She tripped and stumbled more than a few times, for she could not bring herself to slow down, to breathe, to think.

She ran all the way up the stairs, barely even fazed by the peculiar familiarity of a half-remembered dream.  She raced back to her room and slid carefully back into bed next to Philip, who was still snoring quietly even as Rose's laboured breathing seemed unbearably loud.  She turned to face away from him and began to shiver violently.  She tried to think of old songs to drown out her thoughts, but they kept resurfacing from the swirling melodies to haunt her.

She turned over again, restlessly, and considered her sleeping husband, the man who had risked everything to save her.  Ot perhaps he had only been enchanted to do so by the good fairies.  Perhaps this legendary fight, of which he told everyone who would listen, was nothing more than a set-up by the three women who had been lying to Rose since she was a baby.

She thought of Maleficent, exquisitely beautiful even in chains, frighteningly powerful even in her weakest state.  She imagined what it would be like to see her at her best, and she imagined that it would be unbearable.  Rose could scarcely handle Maleficent behind bars.  She would be completely overwhelmed by Maleficent free, devastatingly beautiful, glowing with the force of her devastating magic.

Rose now held Maleficent's life in her hands, and this, too, was terrifying.  She almost hated Maleficent for it.  She knew now that her heart would ache for Maleficent every day of the rest of her life if she did not set her free, for it was now officially Rose’s fault if that exquisite creature was put to death.

But what if it wasn’t her fault at all?  There was the very, very distinct possibility that Maleficent had been manipulating Rose throughout the greater part of the conversation, as soon as she had realized that Rose might be gullible enough to help her.  What if Rose would be smart to let the wicked fairy die, even though Rose, personally, thought it was spiteful and unnecessary to kill her?  What if her aunts and her husband were really trying to do what was best for her?

Several hours later, still ensconced in the same argument with the same points, and not a single step closer to a satisfactory solution, Briar Rose fell into a restless sleep.

Chapter Text

Briar Rose's dreams were not unexpected.  She dreamt that she decided to free Maleficent, and that Maleficent transformed from the quiet, broken creature in chains into the fearsome monster of legend, and that the monster proceeded to chase Rose through an appropriately nightmarish obstacle course consisting of frightening elements from her recent past.  Rose called out to Philip, reached for him, begged him to help her, but he patted her head and called her Aurora and told her she must have been dreaming.

Rose ran and ran and ran until her feet tangled on nothing and she fell.  The monster, the dragon of legend, swooped down over her, eclipsed the light of the moon with its monstrous wings, and wrapped her up in its enormous talons.  She screamed and sobbed and begged for her life, and she awoke in Philips arms, still fighting to escape the claws of an imaginary monster.

“Aurora!  Aurora!”

"Let me go, let me go, let me go!" she was sobbing, but the monster would not relent.

“Aurora, my love, calm down.  It was only a dream!”

“I'm not Aurora!” Rose screeched, and with the last of her strength, she finally succeeded in throwing Philip off of her.  He rolled off the bed and landed on the floor with a murmur of surprise.

Rose collapsed, panting, tears still streaming down her cheeks even as she could barely feel the way her body contracted with each exhausted sob.  Gradually, the waking world came into focus.  There was no monster.  The monster had been defeated.  The monster was in chains.

Stunned silence reigned between them for a long, heavy moment.  Philip righted himself and began to stand.  "What do you mean, you're not Aurora?" he wondered, shaking his head.  "That must have been some dream."

Rose closed her eyes, dragged the sleeve of her nightdress across her face to dry her tears.  "I'm just Briar Rose," she replied, feeling rather more like she wasn't anyone at all, like she might just as well belong to the nightmare world from whence she had come.

Philip sat at her side and reached for her hair.  "No, Aurora," he said, in the slow, placating tone of one who thought he understood.  "You've been Aurora since the day you were born."

Impossibly, Rose felt fresh tears prickling at her eyes.  She squeezed them closed and swallowed hard.  "Perhaps," she whispered.  "But what of all the time between then and now?"

The heavy, exasperated sigh that followed was more answer than Briar Rose had ever wished to hear.

 “Aurora," Philip began sternly, in the tone of one who felt he was struggling valiantly, "I know it must have been very frightening for you…these past couple of weeks.  But it all worked out, didn’t it?"  His hand in her hair felt all wrong, warm and heavy and clumsy.  "We’re together, and you have everything you want, and the evil sorcerer has been…has been captured.  So.  So there’s no need to cry about it anymore.  All of that is in the past now.”

Rose opened her eyes.  "Is it?" she wondered.  She frowned up at Philip.  "Is it really?"

The look of realization dawning upon Philip's face was a curious thing to witness.  It wasn't a charitable thought, but he wasn't usually very perceptive.  Perhaps his guilty conscience had aided him.

"You know," he breathed, almost comically aghast.

Rose tried to laugh.  It came out like a shuddering sigh.  "Was it such a big secret?"

"For good reason!"  Philip stood, and Rose tried to follow.  She pushed herself up on her elbows and fought against the spinning in her head.

"I knew this would happen if you found out.  Aurora, you have to understand—"

"Stop!" Rose choked out.

"Aurora!  That creature would—"

"My name is not Aurora!" Rose cried, perhaps screamed, as she scrambled to her feet.  The room was spinning and her knees were weak and her stomach was churning horribly, but she could not endure this, could not allow—  "That creature, Maleficent?  Perhaps she has done terrible things.  How should I know?  You only tell me what you think I ought to hear, so I don't know!  But she is—  She is..."

Rose steadied herself at last on the bedside table, and the waking world came into focus in the grey light of early morning.  Philip looked so different now from the boy she'd met in the woods, from the boy whose smiling face had awakened her when she woke from her cursed slumber.  The lines of his face were...hard, unyielding.  And his eyes were cold.

"She is a person," Rose finished, quietly, almost pleading.  "Just like me, just like you.  And she does not deserve to die.  Not like this."

“Aurora, stop it!” Philip demanded, too loud, all hard lines and cold eyes.  He grabbed her by the arms, too hard, and when she struggled he pushed her back down onto the bed.  “Stop it, you’ll hurt yourself," he was saying, almost yelling.  " I’m going to go and get the Good Fairies and see if they can calm you down.”

“Rose?  Rose, what’s wrong?  What’s going on up here?”

Philip let go of Rose's arms.  Rose didn't try to move again.  She touched the place where he'd grabbed her, stunned at how his grasp had hurt.

"Mistress Flora," Philip was saying above her, calmer now, more deferent.  "You called her Rose."

 “Oh, excuse me, Your Highness," said Aunt Flora.  "Old habits die…hard,” the word trailed off as she met Rose's searching gaze..  “Are you all right, dear?”

“No, she is most certainly not all right," said Philip, long before Rose could even think to respond.  "She’s been raving for half an hour, saying she isn't Aurora, she's Briar Rose.  Why do you think that could be?”

Flora looked horrified, “Aurora, dear…”  She reached a hand out to Rose, who recoiled, instinctively.  Her first thought, however irrational, was of the way her arms still throbbed faintly.  She didn't want to be hurt anymore.  She didn't know hands could hurt like that.

“And there’s something else, Mistress Flora," Philip continued.  "It seems Aurora has found out about the situation with the beast in the dungeons.”

Flora's attention was immediately redirected to Philip, “What?  But how?”

“How, indeed,” Philip folded his arms, stern in the way of a man who has been raised to be a king.  “Mistress Flora, I suggest you take greater care in the future.  If this is the way you keep a secret from a mere girl, I must call into doubt your abilities as King’s Counsel.”

Flora bowed deeply.  Something about it turned Rose's stomach.  “I understand, Your Highness.  I shall be more careful in the future.”  She turned to Rose.  “Now, R…Aurora, dear, I know these past few weeks must have been very frightening for you, but—”

Before Rose could stop herself, before she could even think of what she meant to say, words came spilling out, harsh and vitriolic.  "Don't you dare tell me that everything worked out,” she spat.

Flora backed away, looking almost frightened.  Somewhere, deep down, Rose felt a dreadful wave of guilt threatening to overtake her, but she could not bring herself to abide it.

"Aurora, you will not speak to me that way," said Flora, but even as she attempted a mask of sternness, fear shone brightly in her eyes.

For a mad, terrible moment, Briar Rose felt that it was good to be feared.

Rose pushed herself to her feet, pushed past Philip and past her auntie, and she stormed out the door into the hallway wearing nothing but her nightdress.  It seemed both Aunt Flora and Philip were too stunned to stop her.  They called after her, eventually, starting with Aurora and moving onto Rose, but by that time, Rose was running, racing for the stairs that led up to the topmost tower and down to the deepest dungeon, uncertain of her intention but unwilling to yield without a fight.

A mere girl, indeed!

Rose ran down the winding stairs in the darkness, narrowly avoided tripping over herself in her haste, and she rounded the corner into the torchlight, breathless, with her heartbeat thundering in her ears.  The shadowy figure behind the bars, a broken creature in chains and not a monster of legend, considered her with eyes that seemed to glow in the near-darkness.

"Princess Aurora," said Maleficent,quietly, tone unreadable.  "I confess...I was expecting someone quite different."

Rose didn't speak, hadn't even the faintest idea of what to say.  Her laboured breathing filled the silence as she warred with the icy terror that wrapped around her heart.  Distantly, she knew what had brought her here, but now that the eyes of the monster were upon her, impassive, awaiting her word, Briar Rose could not bring herself to speak.

Somewhere up above them, her pursuers gained ground.

“Aurora!  Aurora, where are you?”

“What are you doing down there?”

Rose frowned to herself.  Was there any turning back?  What would await her if she gave into them now?

“Aurora!”

An asylum, most likely.

Maleficent waited in silence, and Rose could not see her face.

“If I release you,” Rose breathed, little more than a raspy whisper, “where will you go?”

“As far away as I can, I imagine,” Maleficent said, surprised, her voice almost...mirthful.  “What is it you want in return, Princess?”

“I want you to take me with you.”

For a moment, time seemed to stop.  Silence reigned between them, even above them.  The only sound was of Rose trying and failing to catch her breath.  Then, suddenly, there was a terrible clamour of footsteps on the stairs.

"Aurora!  Aurora!"

“As you wish,” Maleficent said, almost inaudibly, and Rose heard the shifting of chains.

Rose rushed forward.  Staggered, perhaps, and landed with her hands on the bars of the cell.  Her eyes locked with Maleficent’s as soon as she could see them, and the intensity therein seemed to rob her of what little air remained in her lungs.  The wicked fairy Maleficent was gazing up at her, black eyes shining as though with tears, wrists held out to her, a silent plea for mercy.

Rose reached through the bars and touched the chains on Maleficent’s wrists with the tips of her fingers.  The chains fell away instantly and clattered to the floor.

The clamouring footsteps came nearer.  Maleficent leaned her head back and inhaled deeply, and a smile crept across her lips as the mountain of chains cascaded from her body.

 “Aurora?  Aurora!”

“What are you doing over there?  There’s nothing to—”

Maleficent chuckled darkly.  Rose's heart leapt.  The voices and the footsteps stopped at once.

Rose turned around.  Philip and her three aunties stood aghast, staring at Maleficent, horrified faces bathed in an eerie green light that seemed to emanate from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

“Rose,” breathed Fauna with a little sob, “What have you done?”

Rose returned her attention to Maleficent.  Not much had changed about her physical appearance.  She was very tall when she stood, and it emphasized the too-long, bone-thin build of her limbs.  Her dark hair still stuck out in odd directions, and now in the light the ends appeared to be charred as though from a fire.  Her clothes were tattered, and they revealed a few nasty scars to rival the prominent ones across her face.

Somehow, there was no vulnerability to her anymore.  The things which made her appear weak—her bedraggled appearance, her emaciated frame, the angry scars of recent injury—only contributed to the overwhelming sense that none of that—indeed, nothing at all—could stop her now.

The bars of Maleficent’s cell literally melted away into shimmering puddles on the floor, and Maleficent walked forward slowly and deliberately.  Rose shrank away, while Philip puffed out his chest and stepped forward as if to challenge her, though Rose knew now that his only real weapons were the Good Fairies, who looked as petrified as Rose felt.

Maleficent afforded Philip a haughty once-over, smirked, and then turned her head to Rose and offered her hand.  Rose narrowly avoided losing her tenuous grasp on consciousness, but there was no turning back now.  Perhaps there never had been.  Rose straightened her shoulders and reached for Maleficent's hand.

It was ice cold, and her grip was like a vise.  A vision of the monster in Rose's nightmare flashed before her eyes, with long, spindly talons that curled around her and wouldn't let go.  Rose hazarded a glance at Philip and the three good fairies, but they stood still as stone, slack-jawed and dead-eyed with terror.  Maleficent raised her free hand and made a sweeping gesture, almost like a wave goodbye, and then they were gone.

Suddenly it seemed as though they were nowhere, and also perhaps flying through the air, and Rose felt nothing beneath her feet.  She clung to Maleficent with a small noise of terror that didn't seem to escape her throat, and Maleficent accommodated her by wrapping long, thin arms around her.  Just when Rose began to feel distinctly embarrassed for her behavior, her feet met solid ground, and they were somewhere again.

Rose collapsed into what felt like dry grass as soon as Maleficent let her go.  Her legs were trembling from the effort of holding her up throughout the entirety of her mad journey this evening.  The cool air and the prickling of the grass against her legs reminded her that she was only wearing her nightgown, and she felt suddenly quite exposed, even though she had spent the better part of the evening running about the castle in just such a manner.

No going back now, her mind offered unhelpfully, but she hadn't even the energy to feel dread.  The air around them was uncharacteristically warm for what must be very early morning, though the sky was still dark.  She could not see very much except for the stars above her, and the faint outline of mountains that didn't look very far away.  Briar Rose had never seen real mountains.  Perhaps they had traveled quite a distance, as Maleficent had promised.

Rose looked around suddenly, in search of Maleficent.  It occurred to her, with a little jolt of fear, that Maleficent might have deposited her somewhere at random, away from the castle, but also away from herself, and Rose found the energy within herself to panic.  She couldn't survive on her own, had never truly been alone a single day in her life, let alone in an unfamiliar place.  Perhaps this was Maleficent's way of finishing her off without breaking her promise.

But the wicked fairy in question stood a short distance away, an imposing shadow in the dim light of the waning moon.  Rose considered how unusual an experience it must be to feel relief upon realizing that Maleficent had not left her alone.

"What time is it?" Rose wondered quietly.  This was certainly not her most burning question, but it was decidedly innocuous.

Maleficent turned her head as though surprised.  She considered Rose a moment before she returned her attention to whatever she had been surveying in the darkness.  "I don't know," she said.  “Four or five o’clock.  A few hours until dawn yet, by the look of the sky.”

"Where...where are we?" Rose dared.

"In the Land of the Two Rivers," said Maleficent.  "Not far from the Dragon Country."  She turned to face Rose again, approached and offered her hand.  Her fingers were still cold, despite the warmth of the night air.  Rose stood, but she had to lean heavily upon Maleficent's proffered arm, for she feared her legs would not support her.

"You must be very tired," Maleficent continued.  "I would have brought us directly to my home, but I have not been here in quite some time, and I was not certain what to expect.  This was a rather volatile territory when I left.”

It struck Rose as very odd that Maleficent had lived somewhere other than her legendary castle in the Forbidden Mountains.  Rose had only been personally aware of Maleficent's existence for a fortnight at most, and yet the way people spoke of her made her seem like some kind of ancient myth, distant, unreal, unchanging.  It was strange to think of her as a normal person who sometimes changed places of residence.

“How long ago did you leave this place?” Rose wondered.

Maleficent thought for a moment.  “More than a century ago,” she said at last, quietly. 

Rose’s eyes widened, and she struggled to wrap her mind around such a revelation.

“Do you feel well enough to walk now?” Maleficent asked.  If she had seen the surprise on Rose’s face, she politely ignored it.

“I think so,” Rose nodded.

Maleficent did not withdraw her arm, however, and though Rose tried very hard not to lean on it too much, she was certain she would have fallen without the help.  Maleficent continued to speak while they walked, “May I inquire as to the cause of your surprise, Highness?  It occurs to me that a century must seem like a very long time to you, but it isn't so long at all to a fairy.”

Rose was far too exhausted to think twice before she spoke.  "It's just that you don't look more than a century old," she said.  "How is it that you appear so young, while my aunties—I mean the Good Fairies...look so old?"  Once she'd finished her thought, embarrassment caught up with her, but to her surprise, Maleficent's response was a low chuckle that sounded almost good-natured.  Indeed, the sound would have been positively warm if her voice were not so chilling.

"Even Mistress Merryweather has a few centuries on me, Princess Aurora."

Before Briar Rose had time to contemplate the magnitude of such a revelation, the lurching, churning nausea from the evening's events returned with a vengeance, and she nearly staggered.  "Would you mind...calling me...  I mean, my name, it's..."

Maleficent waited, silent and eerily still, while Rose grasped at words she'd never found the courage to say to her husband.

"All my life, I've been called Briar Rose," she said.

 “Briar Rose,” Maleficent repeated quietly, and a very different sort of chill coursed through Rose’s body.  It felt so good to hear someone use her real name, and not just anyone, but—  But that thought was entirely too much for her to wrap her weary mind around, and so she ignored it the best she could.  She realized, belatedly, that Maleficent was chuckling quietly.

“What?” she asked, feeling heat flood her cheeks.

“Nothing, nothing,” Maleficent said, but mirth still coloured her voice.  “It’s very subtle of them.”

Rose did not understand the joke, and she was fairly certain that it was at her expense.  Sure as she might have been a moment prior that she had cried herself out for one night, she felt fresh tears welling at her eyes, and she reached up to scrub them away.  Maleficent stopped walking.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” she said, all amusement gone from her voice.  “I wasn’t laughing at you.”

Rose let go of Maleficent's arm and turned away.  "What do you care for my tears?" she scoffed up into the night sky.  "You're a wicked fairy who wants me dead, aren't you?  End my life and be done with me!  I'm obviously too foolish to live."

“That’s rather dramatic,” Maleficent said evenly.  “Anyway, I hardly intend to kill you after you’ve just saved my life.  It's very late…or early, depending upon your interpretation, and I daresay you could use a good night of sleep.  Let us continue our journey on foot, or I shall be forced to carry you like a child.  This is no place to be lurking about."

Rose turned around, tears of embarrassment streaming unchecked down her face, to find that Maleficent was offering her arm.  She could not see Maleficent’s face, merely the outline of her tall frame and the untidiness of her hair.  She was so still when she waited.  Feeling very ashamed, Rose took Maleficent’s arm and they continued to walk.

What had come over her?  Not just now, but all night?  Perhaps Philip and the good fairies were not so wrong to think she had succumbed to utter madness.  She had snapped at her husband and her auntie, she had gone running through the castle to offer her hand to the woman who wanted her dead, and now here they were, who knew how far away from Philip and her aunties and the castle and everything Briar Rose had ever known, everything with which she was even superficially acquainted!

Partially embedded into the side of a mountain stood a fortress.  It reminded Rose a little of the pictures she had seen of the Forbidden Mountains, the colloquial name for Maleficent's home to the south of Rose's kingdom, but the structure was not quite so angular.  Maleficent waved her free hand and the giant doors which made the grand entrance flew open.

Maleficent curled her fingers and conjured a flame, and she cast the flame upward and into several chandeliers that hung above them.  The room revealed itself, and several dozen rats and bats scattered away into the shadows.  Rose felt a terrible shiver course through her at the sight, and she hurried to find something else to think about.

This place was most certainly deserted, and had been for some time.  The furniture looked as though it had once been very impressive, but it had fallen into terrible disrepair, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

Maleficent turned in a circle, surveying the room.  Rose stayed close.

“Well, fetch a broom,” Maleficent said to her.

“Wh-what?” Rose stammered, but Maleficent was already laughing quietly and walking away from her.  She made a sweeping gesture with her hands and the dust slipped away like a blanket.

“I confess I would get quite a kick out of seeing your three fairies cleaning without magic,” she said as she cast the blanket of dust away into nothingness.

Rose dared to smile, just a little.  “That really should have been my first clue.  I did most of the cooking and cleaning, since I was very small, because none of them ever really seemed to...to understand it, at all.  I found it sort of odd, how they never could catch on, but I never gave it much thought.”

Maleficent nodded to herself.  She considered the tattered remains of a table and chairs, and swirled her fingers until the splintered wood began to repair itself.  “Sixteen years is not a very long time to a fairy.  When one has lived for centuries with the ability to wave her hands and achieve nearly anything she can imagine, who wouldn't grow complacent?”

Rose bit the inside of her mouth for a moment, but decided to speak anyway.  “That would explain the gardening, too, I suppose.”

This caught Maleficent's attention.  Her dark eyes glittered.  “Even Flora?  That is her dominion, after all.”

Rose nodded fervently, “Especially Flora.  She was the only one who ever even bothered.  I remember I used to find her just standing and glaring at the flower boxes like they were offending her!  I always ended up watering the flowers, myself, because I couldn’t bear to see them die.  Aunt Flora got so upset,” she shook her head, caught between laughing and crying at the memory.

 Maleficent, who had ceased repairing furniture to engage in this conversation, seemed to sense Rose’s unease.  She returned her attention to her work.

Rose shook her head again, this time to clear her muddled thoughts.  “But didn’t they have to learn to do all of that with magic?  Wouldn’t that be just as difficult as learning to do it by hand?”

"I shouldn't think so," said Maleficent.  "I don’t even remember learning.  My sisters and I were assigned cooking and cleaning and gardening as chores, but it was just a wave of the hand.  It never took much time or effort.”

“You have sisters?”

Maleficent was silent for a moment, and she appeared to be concentrating very hard on a broken bookshelf.  “Had,” she said at last, softly.

Rose knew she oughtn't to press further.  Maleficent clearly did not want to talk about what had happened to her sisters.  At the same time, Rose got the impression that she had never talked about it, perhaps with anyone, and perhaps...  "What happened?" she dared, before she could think better of it.

Maleficent traced a scratch along the side of the bookshelf with her index finger.  "They were killed."

Rose took two tentative steps forward.  “How long ago?”

Maleficent looked up, but her focus was on the blank wall ahead of her.  “More than a century ago.”

Rose reached out and lay her hand on Maleficent’s arm.  Maleficent jumped away from her and threw Rose to the ground with something beyond physical force, something that seared white-hot across her skin as she fell, but nothing she could see.

Rose touched her hand, searching for evidence of the burn she'd felt.  Maleficent stood across the room with hands at the ready, wide-eyed and panting, as though expecting a fight.

“I’m sorry,” Rose choked out.  “I…I’m so sorry.”

Maleficent blinked a few times, staring at Rose as if she could not really see her.  After a moment, her shoulders slumped and she leaned heavily against the table she'd repaired.  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.  “It would be in your best interest,” she said, her voice soft, her words clipped, “not to startle me.” 

She opened her eyes and Rose was stricken by how very black they were.  Maleficent’s expression softened somewhat and she took a step forward and offered her hand to Rose.  “I am sorry.  I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Rose looked at Maleficent's hand and thought of the way Philip had grabbed her earlier, thought about how she had never considered how an outstretched hand could hurt her.  A moment passed in tense silence.  Rose hardly even registered that she was crying again.

Maleficent dropped her hand and knelt down in front of Rose.  Her expression was unreadable now, but there was no longer any trace of malice in it.  Rose felt the overwhelming urge to launch herself upon Maleficent and cry into her shoulder, but given what had just happened when Rose merely touched Maleficent’s arm with her fingertips, she doubted that would end well.  And so she sat despondent on the floor, weeping openly, with nothing and no one to comfort her.

A strange moment passed while Maleficent knelt before her and watched her, impassively, and with that inhuman stillness.  Then, suddenly, Maleficent stood and disappeared up the stairs, and this only made Rose sob harder.  She supposed Maleficent had no obligation to stay with her while she cried, supposed she ought to be glad that no one was staring at her anymore. 

Maleficent was terrifying, volatile, wild.  She'd snapped from participating in a surprisingly civil conversation to lashing out with what must have been dark magic, apropos of nothing.  But Maleficent was now the only person Rose had left.  Maleficent was the only person in Rose's life who did not seem intent upon locking her away for the rest of her life.  Maleficent was the only person in Rose's life who would call her by her name...but she was also the reason Rose's birth name had been stolen from her, the reason her false name had been a necessity to begin with.

A few minutes ago, Rose had not thought it possible to feel any more alone than she already did.  Somehow she had managed it.

Chapter Text

Briar Rose lay back on the hard stone floor, cried out at long last.  She was already half asleep when she felt long, slender fingers running through her tangled hair and cradling her head.  She opened her eyes, too tired to fully register her own surprise, to see Maleficent leaning over her, harsh features impassive as ever.

Perhaps she ought to have been frightened, but the idea of such a feeling seemed distant, impossible to grasp.  All she could think of was how good it felt to be touched so gently, how relieved she was not to be quite so alone as she'd thought.

Maleficent scooped Rose up in her arms as though it were nothing, and Rose allowed it, unthinking.  She wrapped her arms sleepily about Maleficent's neck, idly examined a strand of Maleficent's hair between her fingers.  It was thick, strong, healthy aside from the end, which felt as charred as it looked.  Still, there was something curiously pleasant about touching it--perhaps simply that she was being permitted to touch Maleficent at all.

Maleficent carried her upstairs and into a bedroom.  Rose couldn't make out much about the room in the dim light of morning, but her exhausted mind decided it was largely unimportant.  What mattered to her was that the bed in which Maleficent lay her was exquisitely soft, and the sheets and pillows smelled fresh and clean.  Rose let out a sigh of surpassing relief.

Maleficent tucked her in briskly, but before she left, she held a moment.  She reached out and touched Rose's forehead with the tips of her fingers, just for an instant, a strange, meaningless gesture, and then it was over, and she was gone as though she had never been there to begin with.  Rose decided just before she succumbed to sleep that she must already be dreaming.

When she awoke, the strange room was bathed in golden sunlight.  Her first sensation was that of icy panic, for she could not remember where she was, nor how she had come to be here.  She sat upright, trembling all over, struggling to make sense of the tangle of dreams and memories swirling about in her mind, trying and failing to make any sense of the events of the night before.

Could she really have run away?  Could she have snapped at her husband and her aunties, turned up her nose at her old life and her new one alike, and thrown herself at the mercy of some ancient horror for the barest chance at something more?

It sounded like a nightmare.  It felt like a nightmare.  Yet, here she sat, in an unfamiliar room, with puffy eyes and sore muscles and a nightdress that felt a bit worse for wear.

Briar Rose had run away.

She curled her knees up against her chest and squeezed her eyes closed against the reality of her surroundings.  Briar Rose had run away.  She had run away from home, from her family, from being a princess, from being the Princess Aurora, and for what?  To whom?

She had run to the wicked fairy who wanted her dead.

The thought turned her stomach.  How stupid could she be?  How restless, how foolhardy, how desperate for adventure, that she would fling herself headfirst into mortal danger for a chance at...at anything?  Anything beyond the dismal destiny of the Lost Princess.

She ought to be weeping for all she had lost, and yet she supposed after last night, she must be fresh out of tears at long last.   Sick to her stomach, certainly, and terrified for what would befall her, but no longer sorrowful.  The time for sorrow had passed.  At least for now.

Rose opened her eyes and took in her surroundings at last.

The walls of the little bedroom were faded blue and otherwise bare. The room was sparsely furnished—there were a chest of drawers and a small desk across from the bed where Rose lay. Next to the bed stood a small table with a few books on it.  Rose scooted to the edge of the bed and reached for them.

The one on the top was a large, thick book with a faded black cover titled The Art of Defensive Magic. It had a golden silk bookmark about halfway through. Beneath that was a blue book titled The Magic of the Elements, Volume II. The third was a light brown book with no title on the cover. Rose flipped it open and found that it was called The Biography of Mistress Acacia of the Kingdom by the Sea, and that it was written by Mistress Kinsale of the Kingdom of Hill and Valley.

Rose could not read especially well, and so she decided not to spend too much time trying to flip through any of these books. She doubted she would understand them, anyway. By the sound of it, they were all about magic. She stood on sore legs and walked over to the desk, where there were more books, some papers, and quills made from a variety of colourful feathers.

The chest of drawers was filled with very lovely clothes and underthings, which were ostensibly made for someone much smaller than Rose. They looked as though they might be a child's clothes, and yet they were so beautifully made, Rose could not even fathom such a thing. She had always had to make her own clothing from whatever fabric her fairy guardians offered to her, and there had been no sense in spending a lot of time on something she would grow out of.

On top of the chest of drawers, there was a strange little necklace, a jagged chain that held a large pendant that seemed to catch the sunlight in strange patterns.  Rose picked it up and abruptly dropped it again, for as soon as she had touched the pendant, she was certain she felt a strange sensation wash over her, something palpable but inexplicable.  The pendant must be magical, too.

Rose sat upon the edge of the bed and cradled her head in her hands.  Magic everywhere.  Magic books, magic necklaces, magic fairies, magic aunties who didn't even know how to water their plants.  How had she gotten herself here, surrounded by magic all over again when she'd just managed to escape it?

She'd been so upset when she found out that, on top of the great lie which had been her childhood, her aunts intended to keep yet another secret from her. In fact, she'd been more than upset. Rose had never been angry in her life. She wouldn't know what it felt like if she were. Still, she'd wanted to do something about it, about being kept in the dark.  She'd sought out the truth, if nothing else.

In search of the truth, Rose had found Maleficent, and there was no telling where she lay on the scale of accuracy. If Rose's fairy guardians were to be believed, Maleficent told nothing but wicked lies.

Aunt Flora had told her that Maleficent was pure evil. Maleficent wanted her dead—"You, Rose! Of all the terrible people in this world! You were such a sweet child, too, Rose. You never made a fuss, you were always so happy, and such a pretty babe. And Maleficent came storming into your christening uninvited and cursed you to die!" Flora had explained that the Queen—or rather, Rose's mother—had even considered inviting Maleficent to the christening, kind-hearted as she was, and the king—that is to say, Rose's father—as well as the good fairies, of course, had been vehemently against it.

"But," Rose had asked, "didn't you say she was so angry because she wasn't invited? Perhaps if you had invited her--"

"Now, Rose," Flora had chided, "I know you know nothing of the evils of this world, and I am so glad of it. But Maleficent would have caused trouble no matter what. That is her nature. We were only trying to protect you."

Fauna had been far gentler, but equally set in her opinion. "Maleficent is a very unhappy woman, Aurora," she had said, patting Rose's hands, barely contained melancholy in her tone as she dutifully used Rose's given name.  "And I don't think it's entirely her fault. It's in her nature, you know. She just simply doesn't understand love or kindness or affection…or any of the things that fill a person's life with joy. All wicked fairies are like that."

This statement had made Rose very curious. "What are other wicked fairies like?" she asked. "Do they look the same? Act the same way?"

Fauna had become very nervous at Rose's query and had answered her carefully. "Well, I haven't interacted with very many," she said slowly. "But the others I've met haven't been nearly as…powerful…as she is, to say the least."

Fauna glanced over her shoulder then, as though she expected someone to be listening. "That is the troubling thing about Maleficent," she continued, quietly.  "She's very smart. I don't think any of the other wicked fairies I've met could have cursed someone to…to die, even if they wanted to. It's only…" she bit her lip.  "It's such a shame that she uses her extraordinary intelligence that way. To make bad things happen."

She shook her head, forced a smile, and squeezed Rose's hands, "But as I said, I don't think she could do any differently if she tried. It's the way she was born."

Merryweather had been by far the most aggressive, even more so than Philip. "Oooooh, just thinking about it makes me so mad, I could just…!" She shook her fist at nothing. "Don't you worry your head about that evil thing one minute more, Rose," she said firmly, for she defiantly refused to call her little Rose by any other name. "I'm sorry you had to know about her at all."

A few days and a lifetime ago, Rose would have smiled fondly and agreed to put the matter behind her. But Merryweather had lied to her just as freely as her other two aunts. Merryweather, who so firmly believed in telling the plain truth, had never bothered to mention her own long list of untruths, and did not even have the decency to act ashamed now that the news was out.

As it stood, Rose had frowned ever so slightly. "But Aunt Merryweather, I only want to understand why. There must have been a reason she did it."

Merryweather shook her head. "Sweet girl," she said, patting Rose's hands, "she did it because that is what wicked fairies do. They cause trouble. Maleficent was upset that the King and Queen didn't acknowledge her power by inviting her to your christening, so she decided to show them exactly what that power could do."

"But why would she make it sixteen years?" Rose pressed.  "That seems very strange to me. It's a random number.  Why wouldn't she just kill me immediately?"

Merryweather suddenly became very interested in her fingernails. "Rose," she said softly, her voice weak, "don't say such things. How should I know why she cursed you the way she did? She didn't kill you right then because she thought it would be more painful to give you a short time to live before she took you away. I don't know. Just…just don't worry about it anymore, okay? It's over now."

But oh, Aunt Merryweather, thought Rose sadly, how can it ever be over?

Everyone wanted so desperately for the matter to be over. They wanted Rose back and happy and thriving and cured of the after-effects of the Sleeping Curse. They wanted Philip and Rose married and the Northern and Eastern Kingdoms united. They wanted Maleficent dead and out of the way forever.

No one seemed to see that this ordeal that they wanted over and done with was the entirety of Rose's existence. When it was finally over, what would Rose be left with? Nothing. Rose wouldn't exist anymore. She would be Aurora.

This was the reason Rose had run away. This was the reason she had chosen the possibility of immediate danger over another day in what seemed to her little more than a gilded cage. She had to hold onto herself. No one else was going to do it for her.

Anyway, she had survived the night, brief though it may have been. Maleficent had thus far honoured her twisted promise of a life for a life. Rose wondered idly where Maleficent might be. Was she sleeping? Had she left for some far-off land, abandoning Rose to die alone in this strange little fortress?

The notion left Rose feeling strangely calm.  Whatever had led her here, she had gotten herself into this mess.  She would either die or have quite an adventure, and there was no sense in delaying the inevitable.  She stood with renewed purpose and set out to find the wicked fairy whose company she had decided to keep.

The corridors of this strange little fortress were as different from the elegant halls of King Stefan's castle as anything Briar Rose could imagine.  The floor was raw, uncovered by any sort of carpeting, and it was uneven, made up of jagged stones that had long since fallen into disrepair.  Rose rolled her ankles at least twice stepping into spots where a large stone seemed to be missing.  She wondered whether the floor had been different a century ago, when Maleficent had last been here and her sisters had been...  She pushed the thought rather forcefully aside.

The walls were bare aside from an unsettling multitude of spider webs, most of which were home to some very large and frightening spiders.  Where most of the doors in Stefan's castle were kept closed, most of the doors in this castle either hung open or were not there at all, and almost every doorway was the territory of a fuzzy-legged arachnid.  None of the rooms looked as though they might feasibly be inhabited by anything possessing less than eight legs. Rose considered that she might be underestimating Maleficent's tolerance for dust and creepy bugs, but given the amount of work she had ostensibly put into making Rose's makeshift bedroom livable, Rose imagined she would do the same for herself.

The staircase which Maleficent had so gracefully ascended with Rose in tow—assuming that was not a dream—was anything but sound in construction. Rose could see through some of the steps all the way to the grand ballroom below her, and with every step she took, a little more stone crumbled beneath her feet. It was most unnerving, and she was much happier when she landed upon the solid, albeit still uneven, floor of the ground level.

The grand ballroom now actually looked like one—Maleficent must have done some more work on it after putting Rose to bed. The furniture was immaculate, the rugs were brightly-coloured and looked very clean, and the entire room had the same regality about it as its mistress, where the rest of the castle felt as gloomy and deserted as it looked.

After a thorough inspection of the dining room and the kitchens, which were still in relative disrepair, Rose began to contemplate the notion of going outside to look for Maleficent. She remembered all too well Maleficent's insinuations that the territory was not particularly safe, and Rose somehow doubted that she was referring to dragons. Then again, what choice did Rose have? She could look outside or she could sit and wait and drive herself mad with questions she could not answer. If Maleficent was in the castle, she had hidden herself well. It was bright outside now, and Rose would just take a little look around. She would go back inside if there was no wicked fairy to be found.

Rose pushed open one of the two giant front doors, and it afforded her an enormous creak of protest. She squinted in the morning light as it flooded into the grand ballroom and stepped tentatively out onto the smooth, hard rock outside the door. Though the front of the castle was still in the shade, the stone was warm on her bare feet. She took a few more steps and closed the front door behind her.

This land—what had Maleficent called it? The Dragon Country?—was exquisitely beautiful. The sky was the bluest Rose had ever seen, the clouds were the fluffiest and whitest, and the stone beneath her feet was so smooth it almost shone.  To her right lay mountains, iridescent purple in the light of the sun.  To her left lay lower hills and valleys, covered in deep green grass and dotted with colourful wildflowers.

There was something extremely disconcerting about the whole scene, and it suddenly occurred to Rose just what was wrong, and what had been wrong since her arrival: it was dead silent.

There was no wind, and so there was no rustling of leaves or grass. There were no bird calls and no footsteps of little woodland creatures. There were no distant sounds of people's voices, though of course who knew how far away their nearest neighbours might reside? The only sound Rose could hear was that of her own breathing, suddenly deafening in the utter stillness.

When Rose heard another sound, her heart stuttered and she jumped. Swift footsteps seemed to fall all around her, echoing off the mountains, filling her ears and dictating her heartbeat. Rose did not know what to do—she thought perhaps she should go back inside, but she was too frightened to move.

A woman appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and Rose tried to scream, but it felt as though her voice were too hoarse to make any sound. She backed away slowly, but the woman kept approaching with heavy, sure steps. She was old. Her curly, chestnut brown hair was heavily streaked with grey, her face was lined, and there was a slight hunch to her back. The woman was taller than Rose, and a bit more full-figured. Her face was soft and kind, as were her brown eyes.

"Out of curiosity," said the woman, perhaps not kindly, but her voice was so warm that anything she said would have sounded kind. Rose did not dare relax. "...what would you do if I were to attack you, right now?"

Rose blinked in confusion. "What?"

The woman's brow furrowed thoughtfully.  "Would you accept your fate?  Die, just like that?  Or would you try to run? Or fight?"

"I—I don't—"

While Rose stammered out non-answers, something very strange began to happen.  The strange woman seemed to grow taller and more slender right before her eyes.  She lost the hunch in her back, the fullness of her figure, the kindness in her eyes.  Her hair fluttered in a breeze that came from nowhere, and suddenly a rush of black swept through the greying curls.  Light forest green rained down onto the woman's skin, like a waterfall from an invisible source, and the stranger who was in many ways the exact opposite of Maleficent became very much Maleficent.

Just as she'd imagined she might, Rose fell to her knees, utterly overwhelmed by the sight of her.

Gone was the gaunt, frail creature from King Stefan's dungeons.  Gone were the tattered remains of battleworn clothing.  Maleficent wore a gown of deep purple, with a flowing skirt and sleeves that billowed around her even as there was no wind to cause such a thing.  Her hair shone in the sunlight, longer and sleeker than Rose remembered, and no longer charred at the ends.  With a wave of her hands, she swept it away from her face into a simple, elegant bun that emphasized her dramatic widow's peak.  Her flawless green skin, too, seemed to glow faintly in the gentle light of day, and as far as Rose could tell, there were no more scars to be found on her face or hands.

"I suppose I ought to be glad you didn't invite me in," Maleficent said airily.

"You frightened me," Rose responded, belatedly.

Maleficent raised one eyebrow. "You act as though that were uncommon."

Rose averted her eyes. "That's quite a talent."

"Why, thank you, Highness."  Maleficent bowed her head and made a small flourish with her hand. "It ought to be. I've spent all my life refining it. I hope you will take this the way I intend it: I really wouldn't advise you to wander around outside without my company."

Rose looked down and began to fidget. "I was afraid you might have abandoned me," she said without thinking, but the words sounded so pathetic when spoken aloud that she immediately set about trying and failing to save herself. "I mean, that is…it's not as though I--  I don't know where we are. And I don't exactly have a lot of...survival skills."

Feeble excuses at best. Rose felt her cheeks flush hot and bowed her head.

She heard Maleficent's footsteps approaching, for there was nothing else to hear. "As I mentioned to you yesterday morning when we arrived, this is the Dragon Country."

"Yes, but how far away from the Kingdom of the East is this? Why wouldn't you--" Rose looked up, at last distracted from her shame. "Yesterday morning? I slept that long?"

"Well," Rose thought there might be a hint of mirth in Maleficent's tone, but her expression was impassive as ever.  "You did have a rather eventful evening. We are quite far away from your kingdom. It would take a great deal of effort to reach this place from that without magic, and I doubt anyone would think to do so."

"Why did you think to come here?" Rose wondered.

"I was born here," Maleficent replied with a thoughtful tilt of her head. "And it is rather lovely, isn't it? A bit warm for my taste."

"It is lovely," Rose agreed, and wondered whether she ought to say what discomfited her so. "And…very quiet."

Maleficent nodded, "You've noticed."

"It would be hard not to," Rose said quietly.

"As its name implies, this land was once rife with dragons," said Maleficent.  There was a different colour to her voice now, something softer, almost...wistful.  "But it seems that if any yet remain, they are making themselves quite scarce."

Rose fidgeted with the fabric of her nightdress while she made up her mind to speak.  "I've...only ever seen dragons in story books.  Do you..." she hazarded a glance up at Maleficent.  "Do you mean to say you lived among them as a child?"

A charming half-smile graced Maleficent's lovely features, and Rose found herself captivated by the sight.

"I did, yes," said Maleficent.  She approached and offered Rose her hand.  Rendered foolhardy by the force of her curiosity, Rose took the proffered hand without hesitation.

"Dragons are fascinating creatures," Maleficent continued.  "Fearsome, most certainly.  And formidable.  Some will tell you they are malicious creatures.  Enormous, destructive pests who cannot help but to wreak havoc wherever they roam."

"You disagree?" Rose guessed.

"Just because a creature is capable of great destruction does not mean she actively seeks to inflict it," said Maleficent, with an edge to her expressive voice that felt like a dare.  "Some of us are born dangerous."

The description seemed more apt than Maleficent had perhaps intended, but then again, Maleficent had actively sought to kill Rose until fairly recently.  With that thought, something caught in Rose's mind.  "You're a dragon," she blurted out without preamble, and then shook her head, embarrassed.  "I mean.  You can turn into one.  So I've heard," she finished lamely.

The charming almost-smile made a glorious return.  "You've heard correctly," she said.

She offered her arm to Rose.  Rose took it, not without a brief hesitation, and Maleficent led them in the direction of the deep green hills.  "And I'll have you know that if I had guessed your little auntie was dabbling in magical artefacts far beyond her ken, I would not have been defeated."

Rose's throat felt suddenly very dry.  She spoke these words so pleasantly, as though such a circumstance wouldn't have changed anything, as though it wouldn't have changed everything.  "Then Philip would be dead," Rose murmured tremulously.  "I'd still be cursed."

"And I wouldn't have a sword wound all the way through my chest," Maleficent replied crisply.

"Why do you want to kill me?" Rose asked the grass at her feet.

A long silence followed. "I don't," Maleficent replied simply.

Rose looked up, eyes wide, but Maleficent's expression was as unreadable as ever. "What?"

"If I wanted to kill you," said Maleficent, tilting her head and quirking one eyebrow, "you'd be dead."

Rose suddenly found it very difficult to breathe. She stared at Maleficent, mouth agape, unable to think of any response at all. Maleficent's dark eyes flickered down and back up. Rose shivered under her gaze.

"Let's get you a proper dress," said Maleficent, turning back towards the fortress.

Rose trailed after her, thoughts in a whirl. It seemed unlikely that Maleficent had misunderstood her question, which meant that she had deliberately sidestepped it, or that she had blatantly lied. Talking or even thinking about the issue of her own near-demise made Rose queasy, and it had taken all of her courage to ask Maleficent once...she was not up to pressing the issue just now. Anyway, she rather doubted Maleficent was going to fetch her a proper dress simply to kill her in it, so she was probably safe for the moment.

As they made their way back to the strange castle, Rose scrambled for another topic of conversation to fill the maddening silence.  Something else Maleficent had said stuck out in her mind.  "Magic beyond her ken?"

Maleficent afforded her a passing sideways glance.  "An enchanted sword," she replied.  "And shield," she amended, "but the sword was of more immediate concern to me."

"What was it made to do?"

Maleficent frowned subtly.  "Fly swift and sure," she replied, not a little flatly.

Rose shook her head, not understanding.  "What?" she pressed.  "Have perfect aim?"

"Essentially."  Maleficent waved a dismissive hand.  "Your precious good fairies might tell you otherwise."

Rose didn't know what to make of that, and so she asked a question that came more readily.  "Did Aunt Flora enchant it herself?"

Maleficent scoffed.  "I rather doubt it.  She stole magic from her sisters to cast the incantation alone."

Rose shook her head again.  One could steal magic?  "If she didn't make it herself, where could she have gotten such a thing?"

Maleficent thought a moment while they climbed the stairs.  "I confess I am a bit out of touch.  There are light fae to the north who once favoured them.  Enchanted swords," she clarified.  "A fairy called Mistress Sara was fascinated by enchanted swords for a short while.  One of many devastating whims."

They passed the room where Rose had slept the previous day away and stopped in front of a doorframe with no door, and only an enormous, fuzzy-legged, red-eyed spider as its safeguard.

"Pardon us," said Maleficent, to the spider, and she followed her request with a courteous nod of her head. 

The spider appeared to bow and then pulled itself out of the doorway and completely out of sight. Maleficent ducked her head to avoid the spider's web and Rose stood completely still, dumb-struck by what she had just witnessed.

Maleficent watched her from the other side of the web and, after a moment, said, "Come along," as though Rose were a child. Embarrassed, she immediately ducked as far down as she could and hurried under the spider's web. Once she was inside, the spider lowered itself back into the web and continued whatever spidery activity which had previously occupied its attention.

"It isn't going to hurt you," Maleficent said, more than a little amused, and she turned Rose away from the doorframe by the shoulders.

This room was very different from the one in which she had slept. The colour scheme was all orange and red, and hardly faded at all.  It was not neatly kept like the other room--indeed, if one failed to note the thin layer of dust that had settled over the room in its entirety, one might think the room's occupant had just raced out the door, fresh from tearing her belongings asunder in search of whatever she needed.

Maleficent surveyed the contents of this room's chest of drawers and produced a dress of deep crimson.  "Not your usual style, I daresay, but this is surely the least eccentric thing my eldest sister ever owned. You're welcome to try the room where you slept or my old room, but I imagine we were too young when we left to have anything that would fit you."

The least eccentric thing my eldest sister ever owned.  Rose took the dress with hands that trembled.  "Thank you," she managed, just barely.  It had not occurred to her until this moment, not even distantly, that the room where she slept and this new, brightly-coloured room, might have once belonged to Maleficent's sisters, who had died--who had been killed more than a hundred years ago.

Silence reigned between them a moment more before Maleficent said, "I'll be off now. There's much I'd like to look into before the day is out. I'll return before sunset."  She moved Rose gently out of her way, excused herself to the spider once more, and ducked out of the room.

"There are all manner of books lying about if you're in need of something to do," Maleficent continued.  "I...would caution you against touching anything that looks..." she gestured vaguely, "...too intriguing."

Rose's mind offered up the memory of the necklace that felt like more than a necklace, and she nodded her understanding.

Maleficent turned to leave, then hesitated once more.  "I know you must be very tired of people telling you what to do, and I am not telling you not to go outside, just…" she glanced down and up again, the only subtle sign of her discomfort, "…please do be careful."

And then she was gone, and Briar Rose was left alone with a dead woman's dress and a well-mannered spider.

It felt delightful to change out of her dirty nightclothes. The red dress fit her loosely and the neckline was far lower than Rose was comfortable wearing. She wondered if Maleficent's sister had been tall, or full-figured.  She wondered if Maleficent's sisters had shared her raven-black hair or her dark, piercing eyes.

She fidgeted with the dress in a vain attempt to cover more of her chest as she wandered the room in search of shoes.  She didn't normally mind going barefoot, but the floors of this castle were so dirty and uneven, she feared she might get a bit of stone or something worse stuck in her foot. She found a pair of leather shoes which were only a little too big for her under a pile of clothes on the bed.

"Excuse me again," she said to the spider, who obliged by moving out of her way. She ducked, still feeling very queasy, and exited the room without incident. "Thank you," she said to the spider, who made that bowing movement once more.

Outside of Maleficent's eldest sister's room, Rose realized that she had nowhere to be and no one to find. Maleficent had not forbidden her to leave, or told her not to go too far, or not to speak to strangers. She had only mentioned that it might not be safe outside and asked that Rose be careful.

How delightfully odd.

For Rose's first unfettered choice in what seemed a lifetime, she decided to investigate the other rooms on this floor, now that she knew how to contend with the spiders who occupied their thresholds. She passed one room that was ostensibly empty but for some unidentifiably broken furniture, then the room where she had slept, and a room that appeared to have once been a small library, but whose bookshelves had mostly fallen apart, leaving piles of books and dust all over the floor.  At the end of the hallway was a room which still had most of its door. She knocked, felt very silly for doing so, and then opened it.

The walls of this room were a grayish burgundy, and the furniture was generally much bigger and more lavish than that of the other two rooms. This room was also casually messy, as though its occupant had been going somewhere in a hurry.

There were no books anywhere to be found.  There was, however, a very long scroll of paper draped across a little desk, virtually untouched by the passage of time.  The ends of the scroll rolled off of the desk and onto the floor in either direction, and the paper was covered almost to either end with illegible handwriting and incomprehensible sketches.    Rose leaned in to try to catch a word, an image, anything she recognized, but it was no use.  She was not a good reader to begin with, and the handwriting was so florid she couldn't even pick out any letters she recognized.  The words never seemed to end or form any recognizable shapes, and they were further marred by the occasional angry ink blot.  Rose wondered whether the whole thing was in a different language, or even something only wicked fairies could read.

There were a woman's clothes hanging in a closet and strewn about the floor, not dissimilar from the dress Briar Rose had been offered.  Lavish, exquisitely made, and revealing around the chest, all in the colours of fire.

Rose afforded the strange parchment one last lingering glance before she gave up on trying to glean anything more from this confusing room.

The next room she came to which had anything of substance in it was another bedroom, guarded by a very spindly, but comparatively small brown spider. Rose's breath hitched as she peeked past the web into the room, for she knew almost instinctively to whom it belonged.

"Pardon me," she said to the spider, who was hanging directly in front of her face. The spider froze for a moment--Rose had never imagined she would witness a spider experiencing surprise--but then pulled itself up out of Rose's path. She ducked her head slightly and stepped into the room.

Every detail of this room screamed Maleficent. The walls were a faded sea green, as were the bedclothes. There was a table by the bed and a desk on the right, and both were piled high with books of every shape and size. There were no clothes on the floor in this room—indeed, there was no dust and no sign of life aside from the spider in the doorframe. The clothes hanging in the closet were all just as exquisitely made as all of the clothes Rose had seen so far. Rose held one of them out. Though they were clearly made for a figureless child, they were still very long. She tried to imagine a young Maleficent, a gangly, awkward youth, and could not fathom such a thing.

Rose picked up a few books and examined them idly.  Volume I of The Magic of the Elements was here, but otherwise Rose struggled to understand even the titles.  She gave up on the books and ran her hands idly over Maleficent's bedsheets.  She wondered if Maleficent had ever allowed herself to sleep late, let alone into the next day, and couldn't imagine it.

Maleficent was certainly not what Rose had expected.  She was mostly quiet, refined, and exceedingly polite.  But Rose had already witnessed the way she could snap at an unforeseeable provocation.  Rose thought of herself the fateful night they'd fled the castle, the way her Aunt Flora reaching out to her had caused her to flinch when Philip had just hurt her with his touch, and wondered what Maleficent's life must have been like, that such a reaction was her standard.

What had happened here a hundred years ago?  What had become of Maleficent's sisters, or of her mother and father, for that matter?

Could it be that Rose and Maleficent had something in common?  Had they both lost everything they'd ever known before they'd even truly known it?

Rose shook her head.  Surely she was reaching.  She gave into the creeping lightheadedness that followed her since she'd woken from the Sleeping Curse and sat on the edge of the bed with a heavy sigh.  It shouldn't be so easy for her to forget the precariousness of her situation.  Rose had no problem seeing Maleficent as someone who could cast a fearsome curse.  Still, even in their few, brief encounters, Rose was beginning to see another side of Maleficent.  Far more than the embodiment of pure evil, a creature who could not help but to wreak destruction, Maleficent seemed to Rose an extremely guarded person who might, perhaps, be ever so slightly lonely.

Rose very much doubted Maleficent would approve of her assessment, and she doubted that she was the person for the job of reaching out to Maleficent, but she had little else to accomplish here.  What was the alternative?  To return to whatever remained of the life of the Princess Aurora?  Not two days removed from the Eastern Kingdom, Briar Rose could not even fathom the idea of returning, not when she had just begun to experience what it was not to have to pretend to be someone else.

Then again, would Maleficent take her back to King Stefan's castle, if she asked? Had she truly freed herself by running away with the enemy, or had she merely handed over her chains to a new, and far less predictable, keeper?

Rose took up one of Maleficent's pillows and cradled it against herself, a feeble attempt at comfort.  She longed for someone who might offer her real solace, but that was impossible no matter where she went.  Here, she might be left with only Maleficent for company, but she couldn't help but to think Maleficent far preferable to the alternative she'd escaped.

She closed her eyes and thought of her aunties, of the life she'd had for sixteen years.  Sure, they hadn't understood how to cook or clean or tend flowers, but the three good fairies who had called themselves her family had loved Briar Rose dearly.  It was only when she'd begun to grow up that they hadn't known how to love her anymore.  She hadn't understood it at the time, but now she was beginning to.  Briar Rose longed for new places to explore, new people to meet.  She longed to meet someone who might understand a fraction of how she felt, or, failing that, someone who would simply listen, and try.

This, she supposed, was how Maleficent had so easily won her over.  Her aunties hadn't known what to say to her then, because they had known the path of her destiny all along.

Maleficent must have seen through Briar Rose immediately.  She must have taken one glance at Briar Rose and seen her very soul.  She must have thought, all this foolish girl needs is a listening ear, even for a few moments, and she will do whatever I ask.

But if Maleficent were truly as evil as the good fairies had told her, wouldn't she have just manipulated Rose into freeing her, and then disposed of Rose as she saw fit?

As it stood, Maleficent had honoured her promise: a life for a life.  Perhaps Maleficent had lied. Perhaps she still wanted Rose dead. It was not unlikely. However, if what she said while still in chains was true, Maleficent did not feel that it was right to kill Rose when Rose had spared her life.

That did not seem like pure evil to Rose. That seemed...well, it seemed rather noble.

"Briar Rose."

Rose did not know when she had fallen asleep. She sat up abruptly, embarrassed that she had been caught lying in Maleficent's bed, and she was rewarded with a wave of terrible dizziness for her hastiness. When her vision cleared, she saw Maleficent standing just inside the doorway, hands folded in front of her body, expression aloof as ever.

Rose was expecting mockery, even an admonishment.  "I found something you might like to see," said Maleficent, instead. "Do you feel well enough for a walk?"

Rose nodded, feeling rather stupid, and made to stand cautiously.  She smoothed the covers and replaced the pillow she had clutched to her chest while she slept.  Maleficent led the way out of the room, ducking under the spider, who was also enjoying a midday nap, and back down the crumbling stairs.

"Did you find anything of interest while I was away?" Maleficent asked her.

Rose combed her fingers through her hair and rubbed the sleep from her eyes while they walked.  "A lot of books I couldn't read.  A long scroll I really couldn't read."

"A scroll," Maleficent echoed thoughtfully.  She paused a moment at the bottom of the stairs, long-fingered hand still clutching the bannister, and nodded to herself.  "Foolish of me," she said after a moment.  "Like an overgrown child, I hadn't thought to disturb my mother's room."

"I'm sorry," Rose breathed, certain the flash of sudden rage or defensiveness would come.

None did.  Instead Maleficent regarded her with something like surprise.  "No need," she said.  "As I said, it was a child's reluctance.  Mistress Adara is long dead, and her scrolls might prove..." she frowned.  "Enlightening, if not useful."

Your mother, too?  Rose nearly blurted out without thinking, all wavering tones and pity she knew Maleficent wouldn't want to hear.  Maleficent continued walking, and Rose scrambled to redirect her thoughts.  "Was she a shapeshifter, too?"

"No," said Maleficent, almost like a breath of laughter.  "Her own gifts kept her busy enough."

"Her own gifts?" Rose pressed.

"My mother possessed some form of clairvoyance," said Maleficent.

"What does that mean?  Clairvoyance?"

"She could perceive what might come to pass in the future," Maleficent clarified.  Her voice lacked its usual conviction.  "Perhaps gift is too cruel a designation," she amended.  "It seemed to me very much a curse.  It drove her quite mad, as I'm certain her scrolls will attest."

Rose didn't know how to respond, or whether she ought to keep pressing for more information.  Outside, the sun hung low in the sky, and it rendered the Dragon Country somehow even more beautiful.   Each mountain was lined with shimmering gold, each hill with its deep green grass and its colourful wildflowers was only intensified by the rich tones of sunset, accented by shadow.

Instead of turning towards the hills, though, Maleficent led them towards the mountains.

"It has been a trying day," said Maleficent as they walked.  "The people of this land have known such a long Golden Age of Prosperity that no one I have encountered seems to remember how it came to be."

"Golden Age of Prosperity?" Rose pressed.

"A term for the time that follows a resident wicked fairy's demise," said Maleficent.  "I imagine your kingdom has not yet dared to declare such a circumstance."

Rose was not certain what to say about that. She concentrated on her feet, instead.

"Curious, too--they all seem so young.  I did not expect to glean any useful information from anyone younger than the middle-aged woman whose visage I adopted, but I found no one older."

"That does sound strange," Rose agreed.  She felt that most of the people in her own land were old, or at least older than she.  There were small children, and there were elders--why, even Philip was several years her senior, but he was born in the Kingdom of the North, not the East.  "But supposing there were...hard times, before this Golden Age came to be, perhaps it was difficult to grow old?"

"Even in the worst of times, there are always survivors," Maleficent replied.  "It is possible that there are worse fates than death, but to die is never to know what might have been. One should never underestimate any creature's will to survive."

She spoke the words so casually for one who had so recently faced certain execution, and the thought caused Rose's heart physical pain, so sudden and surprising that she did not even bother to contradict her certainty that Maleficent would have been put to death.

The path before them grew steeper, and it seemed to wind aimlessly, and Maleficent offered Rose her arm as they proceeded.

"What was it like here," Rose dared, "...a century ago?"  She spoke softly, yet without even the sound of a gentle breeze, her words seemed to echo through the mountains, to fill the vast sky above them with the audacity of such a question.  A century ago?  Briar Rose could not even conceive of such a thing.  Who was she to try?

"What was it like?" Maleficent echoed quietly.  "Unpredictable," she said after a moment. "Wild.  Loud.  If we wished to leave our fortress, it was...we must prepare as though for battle.  People--fairies and humans--were always fighting here.  The dark fae enchanted humans to fight one another, the light fae enchanted humans to fight the dark fae...my mother enchanted dragons to protect us.  Or...to protect her, I suppose."

"Were you always able to shapeshift?" Rose wondered.

"Not always," said Maleficent.  "Not then."

"How did you learn?"

Maleficent paused a moment, thoughtful.  Truthfully, Rose was glad of the rest.  The walk was more grueling than she was accustomed to, and her laboured breathing felt far too loud in the silent mountains.

"It is...difficult to explain in words," said Maleficent slowly.  "When I looked into their eyes, I...saw something.  I saw a piece of myself in them, and then I became one of them."

"Is that..." Rose began, but stopped herself, sure she ought to stop prying before she pushed too far.  But Maleficent stood, eerily still, waiting for her to continue, or perhaps only to catch her breath, and so Rose continued against her better judgement.  "Is that how you always transform?" she wondered.  "Looking into someone's soul?"

Maleficent was silent a moment longer.  Rose was too nervous to meet her eyes.

"That was the way the ability showed itself to me," she said at last.  "It's a high magical expenditure, not a trick to be bandied about without cause, but after many years of practice, I can transform at will into nearly anything I've seen."  She gestured to the winding path ahead.  "Shall we?"

Rose nodded, more to her feet than to her companion, as she considered what she had learned.  "Your mother was a clairvoyant," she began, hesitantly, "and you are a shapeshifter.  What of the rest of your family?  Was your father a shapeshifter?"

Maleficent's first response was a small huff of derision.  "I wouldn't know.  It's doubtful.  Male fairies rarely possess such abilities."                                                               

"You never met him?" Rose pressed.

"I was the youngest of my sisters," said Maleficent.  "My father left before I was born."

"I'm sorry."

Maleficent afforded her a sideways glance, and her tone was that of confusion.  "It's the usual way, not unexpected.  Truthfully I had forgotten that humans attach significance to such matters."

"You..." Rose nearly tripped over something along the path, and it distracted her enough to look up in surprise.  "You don't care?"

Maleficent raised her eyebrows.  "Why would I?"

Rose gesticulated vaguely, thought of King Stefan with his kind eyes and distant smile, who hadn't spoken so much as two words to her since her return.  "He's your father?"

"He was as nothing to me," Maleficent replied with a little shrug.  "My eldest sister, Seraphina, remembered him a little.  Black hair and a sharp voice."  She scoffed.  "What does it change?"

Rose considered this a moment.  "Wasn't your mother sad when he left?  If she could see the future, did she know he would--?"

"We're nearly there," said Maleficent curtly instead of answering.  Rose narrowly avoided sighing, but then again, she'd gotten much further in this conversation than she'd expected.

Maleficent led Rose around a large mass of rock and indicated a small, dark cavern on the other side.  It was so dark that Rose could not see in at all.  The darkness seemed to swallow the path whole.  Maleficent led them towards it, but Rose held back.

"What if there's something in there?"

The corners of Maleficent's lips quirked upward, so subtly Rose doubted she'd have noticed the smile if she were any farther away, and her dark eyes seemed to glitter with the warm light from the setting sun.  Rose's breath hitched without her permission, and she could not quite convince herself to look away.

That Maleficent was uncommonly beautiful was often overshadowed by how frightening she was.  Yet, in this moment, Briar Rose saw only her beauty, as though she were any other person, and not one capable of death and destruction.

The absurdity of the notion that Maleficent could be just any other person brought Rose back to reality, and at last she turned her attention to the cave with a little shiver she hoped Maleficent did not notice.

Rose clung to Maleficent's arm like a lifeline as they descended into the darkness of the cave.  Her mind focused very unhelpfully on the subtle warmth that radiated from Maleficent's body, the gentle touch of each long, elegant finger against Rose's back, the lean muscle of the arm Rose held in a vise grip.  She could hear Maleficent's quiet, even breathing, could just barely feel it against the top of her head. Maleficent could kill her, right now, she reminded herself.  This could be the end. Her knees began to quiver and her hands to sweat, but the only thing there was for her to cling to was the very person who engendered her fear.

Then, suddenly, Rose became aware of something else in the growing darkness, a faint rustling trhat turned her stomach.  She imagined an entire family of spiders, a hundred rats, a thousand bats, or something she had never seen, never even heard of.  There was no telling what kind of creatures lived in this Dragon Country.

She felt just the faintest wisp of warm breath, right next to her ear. "It's all right," Maleficent murmured, her low, resonant voice flooding Rose's very heart.

Touch the spindle, murmured the same voice, and despite the terror that gripped her heart, Rose was powerless to disobey. At that moment, Rose would have followed her anywhere, done anything she asked, trusted Maleficent with her life.

Maleficent drew herself up to her full height, thereby distancing herself from Rose's ear, and then she made a small clicking noise with her tongue. The rustling ceased, and was replaced by small, scurrying footsteps.

The creature that emerged from nowhere in the darkness had glowing greenish-yellow eyes which illuminated enough of its face for Rose to see that it was scaly and had a little snout. When it blinked, it disappeared completely.

Suddenly there was light, emanating from a little orb Maleficent held in her hand.  Rose blinked and struggled to take in the new information she'd been offered--the walls of the cave, the something in Maleficent's hand that radiated more than just light, and the creature who stood before them, the size of a small horse or a large dog, scaly and winged and scurrying with the talons of a monster.

It looked exactly the way dragons looked on paper, and yet Rose could not wrap her mind around its existence here before her.  The dragon's scales were the same deep green of the hills at their back, but its wings hardly looked big enough to carry the weight of its body.

"It's a--" Rose breathed, but the word baby didn't seem to fit, and so she kept it to herself.

The dragon which might well be a baby stretched out its neck and held its head high, aloof and haughty, reminiscent of Maleficent, the dragon in disguise. It took a deep, luxurious breath, reared its head back, and blew out a steady stream of fire which threw colourful sparks, and filled the entire cave with warmth and light.

"Showoff," said Maleficent softly, almost fondly.

Rose could not breathe. She could not move, and yet she felt a gentle hand on her back guiding her forward on legs which could barely hold her upright. She glanced up into Maleficent's dark eyes, utterly at a loss. Maleficent nodded, something like encouragement, and Rose dared to step forward of her own volition.

The dragon turned its head to face her, as if to say, how impressive am I? and suddenly Rose felt a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She closed the distance with surer steps and reached out her hand. "May I?" she breathed.

The dragon eyed her with a tilt of his head, and Rose was stricken by the intensity of its luminous eyes. Finally it seemed to decide in her favour, and it bowed its head beneath her hand.

She touched the scales on the top of the dragon's head reverently. She could not possibly have imagined before now what scales would feel like. She examined the small ridge at the top of its head which protected the bones in its long neck. She ran her hand down its neck and felt the powerful muscles shift slightly as the dragon kept its eyes steadfastly trained upon her.  How old must this dragon be, who seemed like it might yet be a child?  Did it have a family?  What had happened here in Maleficent's absence?

Rose reclaimed her hand and bowed her head.  "Thank you," she said.  The dragon retreated into the shadows of the cave, and Rose leaned heavily against the wall, lowering herself to her knees.

Maleficent approached with soft footsteps.  She blew upon the light she held in her hand and allowed it to float up into the air above them.  "As far as she knows, she is the last of her kind here."

Rose could think of nothing to say, nothing to ask.

Maleficent joined her on the floor, and suddenly Rose noticed that it wasn't as quiet here as it was outside.  There were little sounds of life inside this cave, and the notion was strangely comforting.

Maleficent was not in a similar state of mind.

"There used to be hundreds—perhaps thousands of them," she continued, scarcely above a whisper.  Her voice, that voice she'd have gladly followed to her death a few moments prior, sounded strangely hollow.  "All gone."

Rose looked up.  Maleficent wasn't looking at her, or the dragon, or anything.  Her eyes gazed unseeing at the entrance to the little cave, chased the fading light of day.

"It must have been recent," said Maleficent.  "She's young yet.  Her memories hold an explosion, a storm of some sort, the elders falling ill, and then the other children..."  Maleficent sighed heavily.  "Dragons have such long lives.  I'd hoped if I found them, I might..."

She'd hoped she might find an old friend.  A familiar face.  Someone she knew.  Rose's first impulse was to reach out in comfort, to touch Maleficent's arm or her shoulder or take her hand, to tell her that she wasn't alone, that they had one another, and perhaps they might not understand one another, but they could listen, and they could try.

But she remembered how Maleficent had lashed out at her before when Rose had surprised her, remembered how an outstretched hand could hurt, and so she stayed her hand and she waited, hoping Maleficent would continue.

"I feel..." Maleficent inhaled slowly.  "I feel alone. Empty." She was silent for another moment, and then added, with a little huff of something indiscernible, "I feel as though I've lost a piece of myself."

We have that in common, Rose wanted to say, almost did say, but she thought better of it.  She hadn't lost her family, or even her childhood.  Not forever.  Everyone she loved was still alive.  She was the one who had run away.

Guilt washed over her like it had been lying in wait.  They were probably searching for her by now.  They probably thought she'd been kidnapped.  They must be worried she'd already been killed.  That had been Maleficent's plan, after all.  Maleficent had wanted to kill her.

Rose closed her eyes and did her best to push these thoughts aside, for they were of little use to her now.  She did not try to tell Maleficent that they were one and the same, because of course they weren't.  Instead, she turned so that she was face to face with Maleficent, met her glassy gaze and saw the unspeakable sadness that clouded her eyes, and she reached out in the only way she knew.  She held out both of her hands so that Maleficent could clearly see them, and she held Maleficent's face between her hands.

Maleficent's eyes widened subtly, but she did not lash out, and she did not pull away.

She considered telling Maleficent that she wasn't alone, not anymore, but this, too, fell short of what she wanted to say. These words would mean nothing to Maleficent. Maleficent was alone. She had been alone for a very long time—perhaps for more than a century, several times Rose's own lifetime. One foolish girl sitting here stupidly with her arms outstretched wasn't going to change that.

She was stricken by the desire to embrace Maleficent, to curl up next to her until she felt the warmth, even if it took years.  But of course that was no way to go about anything.  Maleficent hadn't lashed out or pulled away from Rose's touch, but she remained wary of it.  Even now, Rose could see her waiting, watching like the dragon, wondering what Rose meant to do.

Maleficent would loathe Rose's pity.  She would not understand her affection. She would lash out against her attempts to comfort.  And why shouldn't she?  Who was Briar Rose to her?  Perhaps she was barely restraining herself from snapping Rose's neck right on the spot.

This thought caused Rose to withdraw her hands and fold them in her lap.  The truth was that she didn't know what to say or what to do.  Of course she didn't.  What could Briar Rose know of a sadness that spanned a century?

Somewhere in the shadows, untouched by Maleficent's magical light, the young dragon settled in for the night.  She thought of what Maleficent had said, that she'd looked into the eyes of dragons and seen herself in them.

"She's...magnificent," Rose whispered at last.

If Rose weren't sitting so close to Maleficent, she would not have seen her brow furrow, her eyes gloss over with momentary confusion, for the expression passed as quickly as it had come, and it was replaced by a small, cautious smile. "I thought you'd like her."

Rose looked down at her own hands.  "We'll fix it," she said, with a certainty that surprised her, and she hoped that perhaps Maleficent might understand a fraction of what she could not put into words.  She'd brought them here, by her actions, her choices, and she could not return--not to the life she'd once known, and not to the life which was meant to be her destiny.

Whatever her true motivations, Maleficent had kept her bargain.  Briar Rose had given Maleficent her freedom, and Maleficent had given Briar Rose her own.  Now Briar Rose must decide what to do with the chance she'd been afforded.

"We'll fix it," she said again, looking up.  Perhaps she didn't understand the impact of centuries, or the deep inner workings of a wicked fairy, but she knew what it was to feel powerless, to feel alone.  She could try to help.  She could try to understand.

Maleficent nodded slowly, and there was no confusion in her eyes.  "Yes," she said simply.  Agreement.  Or perhaps...acceptance.

Impulsively, Rose reached out again.  A fool's move, perhaps, but Rose felt oddly certain that the woman she saw before her now was not the same one who wished her harm.  As slowly as she could manage, she drew Maleficent into an embrace, settled herself against Maleficent's stiff, angular frame, and waited--most probably to be removed.

Rose waited, and waited, but Maleficent did not push her away, and Rose was unwilling to relent.  She felt as though it had been forever since she had been so close to anyone at all, and being allowed this close to Maleficent felt like a rare and delightful secret, most likely one she would never be permitted to repeat.

When at last Maleficent moved, to Rose's immense surprise, it was to return the embrace, albeit so cautiously, so stiffly it was almost awkward.  Rose held her breath, fought the urge to grin foolishly or to tighten her own embrace out of sheer joy.  Instead, she resettled herself until she was comfortable, and focused her attention on taking slow, even breaths.

The last light from the sun faded from the cave's entrance, and soon after, Maleficent's magical light began to fade, as well.  Soon the cave fell once more into utter darkness, and Briar Rose began to feel the pull of a more restful slumber than she had known in weeks.

The last thing she heard was the slow, steady breathing of sleep, and she could not be certain whether it was the dragon or the wicked fairy.

Chapter Text

Leah was devastated.

For a few short weeks, a handful of days, she had dared to believe that it was over.  Her daughter had been returned to her, her heiress had been happily married to Prince Philip of the North, and the dark fairy had been slain.  Everything had worked out.  Everything would be all right now.  It was over.

She might have known better.  Leah had been warned all her life not to tangle with magical creatures.  They were not human, and they did not play by the same rules.  They did not show mercy.  They did not forget, and unlike most humans, they had the means to exact terrible revenge when their impossible demands were not met.

She'd been so young then, so frightened.  It had seemed like the only option.

Stefan was a kind man.  Too kind.  In another lifetime, Leah would have broken his heart.  But in this life, where she had backed herself into countless corners and torn herself asunder trying to claw her way out, Stefan had taken her in as his wife and his queen.  She was eternally in his debt, for she knew what would have awaited her had she remained in her own kingdom.  She would have died alone, a disgrace to her family.  No man would have taken her for any noble reason, even despite her legendary beauty.  She had made too many mistakes.  She would not have been given another chance.

The marriage should have been a favour to both of them.  Leah could start anew with almost no chance of anyone discovering her shameful secret, and Stefan could marry a woman of noble blood who was near to his own age and who could still bear children.

Good, gentle Stefan blamed himself.  She saw the look in his eyes, the way they slowly lost their shine, the way his posture gradually sagged and slumped.  One night, shortly after the two year anniversary of their marriage, as they lay together in the dark, Leah heard Stefan begin to speak softly.  “I am so sorry, my Leah,” he said.  “I have failed you as a husband.  I have failed as a man.  You are so healthy and so beautiful...and I am defective.  I cannot give you a child.  I cannot give our kingdom an heir to the throne.”

Leah began to weep and clasped a hand over her mouth, trying desperately to remain silent.  His words caused her heart to ache, for she knew that it could not be his fault.  She was certain that he could give any other woman a child with no trouble.  The worst of it was that if he were any other man, he would have already done so.  There were a fair number of good-looking common girls working in the castle.  She had even seen a pretty blonde tending the gardens the other day.  Stefan’s good friend King Hubert of the North would certainly not have waited for two years to call upon that blonde for assistance in this matter.

Stefan needed an heir.  There were so few young people in the Kingdom of the East as it was.  Stefan was, himself, relatively young, but it wouldn’t do to have a child much later than this.  Suppose something were to happen to Stefan?  Leah was not fit to rule at all.  One of Stefan’s advisors would take over, or another kingdom would take over, or…heaven knew what would happen.

Leah felt Stefan’s fingers stroking her hair, just the little bit at the temple, and her quiet weeping turned into wracking sobs that she could not contain.  She curled up into a ball and all but threw herself at Stefan, who let out a small noise of surprise and obligingly wrapped his arms around her.  “Shhh,” he whispered into her hair.  “You mustn’t cry, my wife.  I didn’t mean to upset you.  It is my shortcoming, not yours.”

Leah wrapped her arms around Stefan’s bare chest and squeezed him tightly, unable to control her sobs enough to speak the words she knew she must.

When she had been introduced to Stefan a little over two years before, she had been ever so slightly repulsed by him.  He wasn’t particularly attractive—he had a plain face which he attempted to disguise with a lot of facial hair.  Their wedding night had been awkward at best, and she had for some time avoided having marital relations with him whenever possible.

It wasn’t as though Stefan ever forced himself upon her.  He implied his interest with an awkwardness that ranged from artless to truly mortifying, and more often than not she felt it would be rude to decline.  What Stefan lacked in looks, he made up in goodness, honour, and kindness.  Stefan was a man of strong morals.  He believed in the power of truth.  He believed that good would always triumph over evil.  Stefan was unfailingly kind to Leah, and Leah seldom saw a reason to turn him away simply because she did not want him.

She had wanted all of those men back in her homeland, and what had that gotten her?

One day, while they were speaking, Leah began to examine his eyes.  They were nice—perhaps the most attractive thing about him.  They were bright blue and they reflected all of the things he believed in.  They were kind and strong and good.  Leah did not remember what he had been talking about.  She did not remember the specific day, what he had been wearing, or what the weather was like outside.  But after that day, Leah had begun to love Stefan, and some time after she began to love him, she began to feel some desire for him.  It was nothing like what she had felt before.  It did not consume her thoughts or set her body on fire.  It was borne of a great trust and respect for him that she desired closeness with him.  And she decided that this feeling was in many ways more valuable than the other.

Two years into their marriage, their nakedness did not feel awkward or disgusting to her anymore.  She felt close to him.  As close as she could be, given her long list of lies.

“Do you know Madeleine?” she asked, attempting to sound casual even though she had just been crying.

She felt Stefan’s head shift to look down at her, “The little blonde maid?  That Madeleine?”

“Yes, her,” Leah swallowed.

“Why?”

Because you need an heir and I cannot give you one.  Because it isn’t your fault.  Because I am not who you think I am.  Because you are so good.  You are too good for me.

“She’s a quiet, lonely girl,” whispered Leah.  “No one would ever know.”

Stefan pulled Leah up to face him, “Leah,” he said, surprised.  “How could you ever think I would betray you in such a way?”

Tears began streaming anew over Leah’s nose and down her left cheek.  She shifted so that she could put her hands on either side of Stefan’s face, and she told him something she had never dared to tell him before.  “Oh, Stefan, I love you so, so very much.”

The next day, Leah had awoken feeling even more miserable than before.  She had moped about the castle all morning long, unable to consider what Stefan had obviously accepted: that they would not have an heir to the throne.

She remembered the day with strange clarity.  Around noon, the King's councilors had received word that a band of criminals who had been terrorizing Hubert's kingdom for months had finally been apprehended, and that they had claimed unanimously that Mistress Maleficent had enchanted them to perform their many misdeeds.  Maleficent, an infamous wicked fairy who resided to the southwest, had been summoned to the Kingdom of the North for questioning, where she had denied any involvement.

What the report had probably failed to mention was that upon being summoned, Maleficent had most likely piddled about her fortress in the mountains doing whatever it was she did for a few minutes, dusted off her hands, snapped her fingers, and appeared right in Hubert’s sitting room accompanied by a puff of green smoke.  She had probably brandished her staff nonchalantly while she asked what the allegations against her could possibly be, and waved her hand in a show of dismissal, conjuring the faintest aura of magic as she did so.  And she had most certainly expressed her sincerest shock that anyone might accuse her of such a thing.

Leah knew this without ever having laid eyes on Maleficent, for Stefan had told her that this was the way every meeting with the wicked fairy went.  She was exceedingly terrifying and also exceedingly polite, which only added to the feeling of unease she engendered.  Maleficent was very powerful and very smart.  All the good fairies in the land couldn’t defeat her, and everyone knew it.  Maleficent made it very clear that she could do anything if she wanted to.

The most terrifying thing about her, though, was that she did not seem to want to do anything.

Few who still roamed the earth had ever laid eyes upon her.  If she did not keep to herself in the Forbidden Mountain, then she did a very good job of hiding.  There were rumours that she was a shapeshifter, but this had not been expressly proven at the time (and indeed would not be confirmed until about seventeen years later).  There were rumours that she was the cause of all the evil in the land, but even when a special committee had been assembled and had come to call on her at random, accompanied by a small army, with the intention of monitoring her activity, she was invariably reported to be at home and engaging in some innocuous activity such as reading a book.

This, her inaction, was the reason she haunted the nightmares of every person in the land.  She was so powerful that she did not need to prove her power.  If pressed, she showed herself, put on her little act, and then disappeared once more to let the rumours fly.  No one knew when at last she would decide to strike.  Beware the sleeping dragon, as the saying went.

People said Maleficent could do anything with her magic.  On that fateful day, when she'd received word that Maleficent had denied involvement in the petty crime of the Northern Kingdom, Leah began to wonder whether Maleficent's power could be bought.

Perhaps the result was to be expected.  Leah certainly felt that way years later, looking back.  SHe had been warned all her life not to tangle with magical creatures.  Fairies were not human, and they did not play by the same rules.  They did not show mercy, they did not forget, and they had the means to exact terrible revenge when their impossible demands were not met.

But how does one explain to one's husband, oh, darling, we simply must invite the scourge of the three kingdoms?  Why did Maleficent want to be invited to the child's christening at all?  Was she truly so lonely?  Surely she must have intended to curse the child from the beginning, invitation or no.  Surely it wouldn't have mattered.

And it wasn't as though Leah hadn't tried.  She and Stefan had been called upon to approve every single person on the guest list—the entirety of their own land, most of Hubert's, and the important people from Gavin's kingdom to the far west, from whence Leah hailed.  And when the fellow responsible for the list had read every last name, Leah had asked him, quietly, "What about Mistress Maleficent?"

Leah had never seen an esteemed gentleman's jaw hang open like that.  In retrospect, she imagined Stefan must have longed for the freedom to express a similar sentiment.  Instead, he recoiled from her side, subtly, and murmured with some urgency, "Leah, why would you say such a thing?"

But Leah had never learned how to speak her mind—indeed, she had been rather harshly discouraged from doing so.  A room full of eyes suddenly upon her, waiting in horrified silence for an explanation she did not have, left her feeling dizzy and ashamed.  "I..." she began, "I only think...well, we’ve invited every last person in the kingdom, and nearly everyone from Hubert’s kingdom, and even some of my brother's people.  And—well.  You cannot deny that Maleficent is a...a powerful person.  It would be a terrible slight not to—"

"We most certainly can deny it!" Stefan cut her off, and Leah was stunned by the vehemence in his voice.  "The only reason that witch holds any power at all is because we allow it!  As far as I can tell, she has never demonstrated so much as a fraction of that power she allegedly possesses.”

"But suppose the slight were to..."  Stefan turned upon her with fire in his eyes.  Leah nearly stopped speaking altogether.  "...to anger her?  What if she does something terrible?"

"Leah," said Stefan, with firm hands upon her shoulders.  She knew this tone well—it was a sound meant to silence as much as to soothe.  "I will not allow that fiend near our child.  I will not allow this—this illusion of power she plays at to cast a shadow upon our happy day."

Leah said no more on the matter that day.  As a last resort, she implored that Stefan consult the three good fairies who advised him on the matter, but while they were under no such delusions regarding the truth of Maleficent's power, they agreed with Stefan that Maleficent must not be allowed near the child.

Reluctantly, Leah had trusted in their judgement.  And when the worst had come to pass, after all, Leah had trusted them yet again.  They understood—or thought they understood—how precious Aurora was to their King and Queen.  As far as they knew, Aurora was a miracle from God, not from the devil, herself.  If they said that hiding Aurora in the forest was the only way to keep her safe, then it was the only way.

Everything seemed to have gone according to plan.  Aurora had appeared as the dawn of a new day at the top of the stairs, and every eye in the grand ballroom had turned to look upon their Lost Princess come home to them at last.  Leah had wept, for she felt Aurora's presence as though a piece of herself had been returned to her.  She loved Aurora as though she had known her for sixteen years, and she had thought perhaps Aurora understood it, too, for Aurora had run to her and embraced her as though they weren't strangers at all.

In the days that followed, however, Leah was not so certain.

Aurora was quiet.  Soft-spoken.  She was polite, certainly, and unfailingly kind, but as time passed and she ought to have settled in, people began to whisper, and to worry.

Aurora was withdrawn.  Fatigued, and distracted, and when she wasn't distracted, she looked distinctly unhappy.

The good fairies assured Leah that Aurora had faced a terrible curse, and that she would take time to recover from the effects of Maleficent's dark magic.  She needed her rest.  She must not have too many visitors, familiar or not.  But she would recover.

Leah wanted to reach out.  She wanted to know what her daughter's life had been like for the sixteen years she had lost, and she wanted to help Aurora to settle into her new life as quickly as possible.  She wanted Aurora to recover.  She wanted the whole matter to be over.

But Leah had never learned how to speak her mind.  If the good fairies insisted that Aurora must be left alone to recover, then who was Leah to argue?

She wished she had argued.  What did it matter now?  Aurora was gone, and this time, she was not safe in the care of the good fairies.  She had been taken captive by Maleficent.  Maleficent had been half-dead, bound with magical chains, and somehow she had still manipulated Aurora into freeing her.  Some illusion of power she played at!

“King Stefan," Mistress Flora was saying, "I think it is time we accept that Maleficent has left the Land of the Three Kingdoms.”

“Very well, I accept it,” Stefan replied curtly.  He had not been himself since Aurora's disappearance.  He had not been himself since Aurora's return.  “What do you propose we do now?"

Flora met Leah's eyes unhappily, then returned her attention to her feet.  "She could be...anywhere, Majesty."

“Then start looking!" Stefan rose from his seat.  "Are you not magical?  It would take my men weeks to reach the nearest kingdom outside of this land.  You could be there in a matter of minutes!  Anywhere should not be impossible to you!”

Mistress Flora stood open-mouthed and defeated.  Mistress Fauna spoke instead.  "With all due respect, Majesty," she said, and punctuated the statement with a curtsey, "Maleficent can be anywhere in a matter of minutes.  We need a bit more time than that."

Stefan was frustrated, and it rendered him unsympathetic.  Before he had fully begun to bluster, Leah rose from her seat and stayed him with a hand at his arm.  She didn't know exactly what she meant to say, only that the time had come to say it.  "Please," she said softly.  "Forgive us our impatience.  Is there...isn't there anything you can try?"

It must not have been the worst thing to say, for Mistress Flora regained her composure and stepped forward with her usual energy.  "Of course, your Majesty.  We meant to say that we wish to search judiciously.  Rather than strike out at random, we've compiled a bit of research on lands where Maleficent was known to spend time over the years before she took up residence here."

"And?" Stefan urged, and the good fairies returned their attention from Leah to Stefan.

"Well, it's said that Maleficent spent a number of years in the Land of Hill and Valley—that would be the first stop, as it's a short journey.  She seems to have had acquaintances in the Kingdom by the Sea, the Desert Lands, the Land of the Black Forest, and the Mountainlands.  She also seems to have some connection to the Kingdom Between Two Rivers—none of the books I’ve found have much to offer, but apparently there is a land nearby known as the Dragon Country.  Given what we have recently learned about Maleficent’s shapeshifting abilities, that seems a worthy destination."

As they continued to talk without her, Leah reclaimed her seat and closed her eyes a moment.  So many names of places with which she was only distantly familiar.  She'd seen pictures of the Sea Kingdom, heard dark tales of widespread fairy mischief in the Land of Hill and Valley, but she knew next to nothing of the other places Mistress Flora had mentioned.

Leah began to feel sick to her stomach.  Maleficent could be anywhere by now.  This endless, swirling list of far-off places was an improvement, an effort, and what did it amount to?

Poor Aurora!  How must she be kept under Maleficent's care?  Was she locked away in some terrible place like a prisoner, taunted and tormented all her days?  Was she permitted to see whatever distant land she'd been whisked away to, hypnotized and manipulated into believing she was safe?  Had Maleficent told Aurora of Leah's shameful secret, and had Aurora believed her?

Or had Maleficent already taken Aurora's life as she'd planned to do all along?

If Briar Rose had hoped she'd made some sort of a breakthrough where Maleficent was concerned, she would have been sorely mistaken.

On the contrary, Maleficent was colder and more aloof than ever.  The following morning, Maleficent barely spoke to her at all, and though she did not go so far as to address Rose as Princess Aurora, she settled upon a very pointed Your Highness.

For the next several days, Maleficent left the fortress before Rose had awoken, and returned long after nightfall.  If Rose was still awake, Maleficent regarded her with a tense sort of surprise.  It seemed absurd that Maleficent should have reason to avoid her.  At worst, Rose had expected to be thrown out into the wild unknown for her forwardness.  At best, she'd hoped for grudging tolerance.  This...Briar Rose did not know how to respond to this.

For all her reckless abandon over the past few weeks, Briar Rose vastly preferred to follow the rules.  In a place far outside the realm of rules Rose knew, only Maleficent's word served as her guide.  Maleficent had warned her that this land might not be safe, and that she oughtn't to venture out into it alone.  Rose was hesitant to disobey.  She stayed indoors.

To pass the time, she wandered the castle collecting a small stack of the least threatening books she could find.  She arranged them in a small pile before a cosy chair in the main hall, and spent her days stumbling through them.

If her aunties could see her now!  Each had tried in her own way to help Rose improve her reading, but the practice had never caught Rose's interest.  The afternoons she spent trying and failing to read would have been so much better spent out in the forest, climbing trees or talking to her animal friends or just soaking up the sun that filtered through the treetops.  Reading was difficult, and boring, and unnecessary.

Not for the first time since she had learned of her true identity, Rose wished she had paid better attention.  Back in the Eastern Kingdom, her desire had been rooted in a sudden and overwhelming terror for her ineptitude.  Now, the feeling was a bit different.  The books Briar Rose had selected were of no practical use to her—as far as she could tell, they mostly described magic spells that existed and what they accomplished.  But they were a feature of this new existence Briar Rose had chosen for herself.  There was so much in this world Briar Rose had never even dreamed of, and she wanted to understand it.

At night, Maleficent crept in through the door in the kitchens.  When she saw Rose sitting up, she said something to the effect of, "It's rather late.  Don't you need your rest?"  No comment upon the book Rose was attempting to read, no information about where she had been, and her tone was cold.

It made Rose's heart ache, and she did not have the wherewithal to attempt conversation in spite of Maleficent's coldness.  She simply nodded her agreement, clutched her book to her chest, and went upstairs to bed.

Some time passed in this way.  Since she had so much time to do so, Rose finally found a book she could actually read.  She had overlooked it at first because the title was so long: The Biography of Mistress Acacia of the Kingdom by the Sea, written by Mistress Kinsale of the Kingdom of Hill and Valley.  But the language of the book was not dense like the others, and it was not a list of magical spells Rose could never hope to understand.  Rather, it seemed to be merely the story of a person's life—more precisely, the story of a wicked fairy's life.

Acacia was the last daughter of a wicked fairy called Mistress Cordelia.  The book referred to Mistress Cordelia as a fairy everyone should know about already.  She had outlived many children, but Acacia was her last.  When Acacia was still very young, a good fairy called Mistress Sara had defeated her.

That wasn't the way the book phrased it—in the book it seemed like Rose ought to know what had happened to Mistress Cordelia already.

When Rose grew weary of trying to make sense of a story she felt like she ought to know, she read about the author.  Mistress Kinsale was referred to as a member of the Dark Fae, who resided in the Land of Hill and Valley.  There was a list of other biographies she had written, a mention of her mother, Mistress Dalia, and a note that she had "no sisters, only four brothers."

Rose quickly lost track of the days.  Some time must have passed, for she actually began to enjoy reading.  She pieced together that Mistress Sara had enchanted all the beasts of the field and forest to rise up against Cordelia, and that many of them had been slain in the final battle against her, leaving the kingdom poor and hungry for many years thereafter.  She was engrossed in trying to understand what happened next when Maleficent spoke, and the exchange had become so familiar to her that she paid it very little mind.

"Good evening, Briar Rose."

"What does transience mean?" she asked without thinking.

A moment's silence passed.  The people of the Sea Kingdom had begun to blame Acacia for their barren lands, 'for humans are forgetful in their transience.'  Acacia was still living in her mother's home following Cordelia's death, but she had not taken ownership of the land—

"Something that is transient is brief, fleeting," said Maleficent.  "It does not last."

Rose looked up, more than a little surprised to have received an answer.  Maleficent stood at the threshold to the kitchen, hands folded atop some kind of fancy walking stick with a glass orb for its handle.

Awkwardness overwhelmed her.  In her desperation for company, she had somehow managed to forget how intimidating Maleficent was.  Without even saying anything, Maleficent's mere presence compelled Rose to run and hide in her borrowed room.  But running away would accomplish nothing.  How long had they already coexisted in this uneasy stasis?

Rose refocused her attention upon the book.  "'Humans are forgetful in their transience,'" she quoted.  "Humans are...brief and fleeting, and they don't last...so they are forgetful?"

"Mistress Acacia," said Maleficent.  She took a step forward.

Rose nodded.

"I remember being fond of that phrase.  The humans of the Sea Kingdom forgot all about the war Mistress Sara had waged, and instead blamed Acacia for their food shortage, even though she was still very young, and many believed she was not even capable of such a magical feat."

"But..." Rose shook her head.  "Why?  How could everyone have forgotten?"

Maleficent continued her steady approach.  "Those are two very different questions," she said.

Rose didn't speak.  She feared that anything she could say might break whatever spell had drawn Maleficent nearer, and she desperately did not want to be left alone again.

"To the humans, it must have seemed like a very long time had passed—several decades, by most accounts.  The lifetime of a human seems very brief to a fairy."

"Oh," Rose breathed.

"And as to why they would elect to blame Acacia," Maleficent continued, "well, who else?"

"Mistress Sara," said Rose.  "It was her fault."

"Mistress Sara saved them," Maleficent countered.

"But she should have been more careful!"

Maleficent's lips twitched into a small smile, but the expression vanished as quickly as it had appeared.  "What would you do, Briar Rose," she wondered, "if faced with an all-powerful wicked fairy who had terrorized your people for generations?  Would you proceed with caution?"

"I...what?"  What would Rose do?  Rose didn't know what to do with anything!

"Or would you do whatever you thought necessary for survival?"

Rose didn't know how to respond.  She didn't know what to make of Maleficent's argument, with all the context she felt she must be missing.  Again she was overcome by the sense that this was a story she ought to know already.

Maleficent did not press her further, however.  "It's an interesting phrase," she said.  "Very...diplomatic.  Many of the dark fae hold a particular resentment for humans, and it shows in their writing.  Mistress Kinsale is a fascinating woman in many respects, but particularly for the way she sees the world."

"You know her?"

The peculiar little smile resurfaced, and this time it lingered a moment.  "I did, once."

Rose felt a terrible pang of sorrow, and subconsciously she clutched the book more tightly to her chest.  "She's...dead?"

Maleficent's smile fell, and she raised her eyebrows.  "No, no, Mistress Kinsale is very much alive."

Rose felt a rush of relief.  It struck her as odd that she should be so attached to an idea of a person, yet this, Mistress Kinsale's book, was the first one Briar Rose had ever enjoyed reading.

"I meant that I haven't spoken with her in many years," Maleficent clarified.  "I doubt I know very much about her anymore."

Something that had caught in Rose's mind suddenly reclaimed her attention.  "The bit about her in the back," she said, all in a rush, as though Maleficent might disappear if she didn't get all the words out in time, "it says she has no sisters, only brothers."  She wasn't sure what she meant to say.  "The way it's written, it's as though brothers are...unimportant.  As though having no sisters is unusual."

It's different with humans, she almost amended, but the words caught in her throat.  "I'm not sure what I'm trying to ask," she said at last.

Maleficent surprised her again by coming to sit down in the chair across from hers.  She leaned her strange walking stick against the chair as she spoke.  "Men are not regarded as the pillars of fairy society," she said.  "The good and the wicked differ considerably in the importance they place upon men, but the vast majority of male fairies are nomadic and possess minimal magical prowess.  As such, they rarely possess desirable skills, hold dominion over elements, keep records of themselves and their travels, et cetera."

"But then how do—" Rose began impulsively, but embarrassment caught up with her before she could finish the question that had come to mind.  She averter her eyes, and fiddled with the cover of the book in her lap.  "I mean..it seems that all these wicked fairies have...many siblings," she said, slowly.  "Are they all...are they all of different fathers?"

Maleficent's first response was a small huff of amusement.  "That would make sense, wouldn't it?  Surprisingly, it's not the usual way.  Mistress Cordelia certainly had many men over the course of her life, but most of the wicked fairies I've known couldn't be bothered.  They mate when a male catches their fancy, and the male often stays around for a few years.  Inevitably, though, he feels the urge to move on, and the woman is left to raise their children largely alone."

"And you never knew anything about your father?" Rose pressed.  "Didn't you ever want to meet him, or—?"

"No," Maleficent cut her off.  "Why would I?"

"Because he's a part of you!" Rose cried.  "Because your parents brought you into the world, and how could they just abandon you?  How could they—?"

She stopped, because she realized she was not talking about Maleficent at all.

Maleficent considered her thoughtfully.  "My apologies," she said.  "Your circumstances slipped my mind.  Family ties amongst my kind are understandably quite different than amongst humans."

"My parents won't even come to see me," said Rose, and was surprised to hear the sound of her own voice.  She hadn't meant to speak the words aloud, and now that she had, she very much wished she could take them back.  She didn't want to talk about them.  She didn't want to think about the life she had left behind.

"I take it you expect me to say something," said Maleficent.  Her tone wasn't sharp or cold any longer, but the words stung nonetheless.

Rose hung her head and closed her eyes.  "I don't know," she said.  "Maybe I did."

The silence that followed felt heavy.  Rose looked up to see Maleficent still watching her studiously.  "I'm certain they love you, in their way," she said.  "They are rather misguided people."

Before Rose could think better of it, she responded.  “My aunties told me that you don’t understand love and are incapable of feeling it.”

She had honestly expected Maleficent to lash out.  Perhaps she had even intended it.  She was feeling vulnerable and exposed, and she wanted a fight.  She wanted to yell.  She wanted to feel angry, or anything that wasn't vague and uneasy.

Instead, Maleficent's lips quirked upward, and her eyes brightened somehow.  "Charming," she said.  "They think very highly of me, you know."

To Rose's immense surprise, she felt herself beginning to return the smile.  This subtle shift in the tone of their conversation filled Rose with such joy that she barely restrained herself from embracing Maleficent out of sheer relief.  Instead, she decided to take advantage of the light-hearted turn the conversation had taken.  "So, has a man ever 'caught your fancy?'" she dared.

Maleficent's smile did not fade, but a certain seriousness settled about her, and she averted her eyes.  "No."

"Really?" Rose pressed.  "Never?  Not one?"

Maleficent met her eyes again, and Rose felt her heart twist in her chest.  "Not one," said Maleficent.  The certainty in her tone soothed Rose in a way she could not even begin to understand.

"Well, men must have fancied you, then," she tried.

Maleficent chuckled audibly.  "Fortunately, no," she said, with a lightness that seemed to fill the room.  "What is it your prince likes to call me?  It?  That Thing?  Beast?  Monster?  I assure you that is the standard reaction."

The mention of Philip dampened Rose's spirits significantly.  "I hope you know it isn't true," she said with a frown.

Maleficent quirked one brow.  "Isn't it?"

There was something Rose had been thinking, vaguely, but she hadn't been afforded the time or the patience or the courage to put it to words.  Somehow the thought fell from her lips, anyway, like it had been waiting for someone who might listen.  "Philip calls you those things because he won't believe you're a—he won't believe a woman could have bested him.  At least..." she averted her eyes, "...that's what I think."

In her periphery, she could see Maleficent nodding slowly.  "An interesting hypothesis."

"He'd have to be mad to believe it," said Rose, spurred on by Maleficent's approval and her own treacherous desire to speak without fear.  "You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen."

As soon as she'd spoken, Rose felt mortification welling up inside her.  She wished she hadn't spoken, wished she had never begun this conversation at all, and again considered the benefits of running away to hide in her room.

But then again, it wasn't as though the words were untrue.  Rose could not imagine what it must be like to be called a beast and a monster once, let alone all one's life.  Maleficent ought to hear something kinder.

Soothed by this revelation, Rose dared a glance upward.  Maleficent was regarding her with head inclined and eyes slightly narrowed.

"Well," she said at last.  "From the Princess Aurora, who walks with springtime wherever she goes, that is quite a compliment."

Somehow, Rose felt even more embarrassed than she had a moment prior.  "Are you mocking me?"

Maleficent looked faintly taken aback.  "Of course not.  It was part of Flora's gift incantation."

"Gift incantation?"

"I believe it went ‘One gift, beauty rare; gold of sunshine in her hair; lips that shame the red, red rose; she’ll walk with springtime wherever she goes.’”

Rose had heard the words before, but Maleficent's description didn't make their purpose any clearer.  “I don't understand...is it a spell?”

"Bestowed upon you at your christening," said Maleficent.  "An old tradition of the light fae.  When a noble child is born, all the fairies in the land may bestow a gift upon the child.  Flora's was beauty, Fauna's was song, and Merryweather's was a rather clumsy attempt to circumvent a curse of which I'm sure you are aware."

Rose's stomach twisted, and she avoided the obvious question.  “What if Aunt Flora hadn’t given me the gift of beauty?  What would I look like?”

"Much the same, I'm sure.  You share most of Queen Leah's features.  What Flora gave you was a magical quality about your beauty.  It draws people to you, a useful quality for a royal.  If you were of a mind, you could learn to use that magic to ensnare the heart of anyone you pleased.  I daresay Prince Philip has used his handsomeness to that effect."

Rose’s eyes widened.  “Did he use it on me?”

"Most likely," said Maleficent, as though it were nothing.  As though it didn't change everything.  Maleficent seemed to take note of Rose's distress, because she added, "It's not all-powerful.  If indeed he did enchant you, it's doubtful you were under the influence for very long.  You share the same magic.  After a certain point, the trick would become useless on you."

Rose sat in stunned silence for a moment.  Then, like a little flicker of hope in her heart, she realized that if she spoke, Maleficent would not stop her, would not chide her, and might even offer her more information.

"I feel..." she began, and closed her eyes against Maleficent's studious gaze.  "I feel as though my entire life has been...warped, by magic.  I feel as though I'd have an entirely different life without it.  A better one."

"Perhaps," Maleficent agreed, almost gently.  "But you cannot simply wish away all the magic in the world."

"I would if I could," said Rose, surprised by her own vehemence.  "I'd wish it all away.  I'd wish away my aunties and the house in the cottage and the lies they told me, and I'd...  Oh, I'd wish away my parents who abandoned me and my royalty and my beauty and my song and Aunt Merryweather's spell and your curse, and I'd—"  She covered her face with her hands, barely realized there were tears in her eyes.  "I'd lead a normal life," she breathed.  "I'd be a normal, simple peasant girl just as I always have been.  There's nothing extraordinary about me, just magic and lies and—and accidents."

When next she heard Maleficent make a sound, she was certain it was the sound of Maleficent leaving.  It wasn't surprising, nor could Rose blame her, but still, the thought of being left alone again filled Rose with a terrible, sinking sort of sadness.

But instead, Maleficent knelt before her, and when Rose uncovered her face, she saw that Maleficent was offering her hand.  "You must know that isn't true," said Maleficent.

Rose eyed Maleficent's outstretched hand with barely-contained longing, but the strangeness of Maleficent's actions rendered her skeptical.  "Name one thing," she said, in a voice all but broken.

Maleficent folded her hands at her knee.  "You are extraordinarily kind," she said.  "No fairy gifted you with your kind heart."

Rose scoffed and looked away.  “What good has that ever done for me?”

Maleficent looked down with a mirthless chuckle.  "A fair point," she agreed.  "It has done quite a bit of good for me, however."

This caught Rose's attention, and she remembered all at once the way she had felt when Maleficent's life had been placed in her hands.  That they were having this conversation at all, it occurred to her suddenly, was nothing short of a miracle.  Certainly it wouldn't have happened if Rose hadn't decided to free Maleficent, but more than that—if she were to wish away all the magic that had shaped her life, she would be wishing this moment away with it.  She would be wishing Maleficent away.

"You are also extraordinarily brave," Maleficent continued.  "Personally, I would never entrust my life to one such as myself."

“I’m very glad you’re here,” Rose said without preamble.  It was all she could think to say, the only sense she could make of the swirling nonsense of her thoughts.

Maleficent frowned, and averted her eyes.  After a moment, she said, "It's very late," and she stood.

Without thinking, Rose reached out and grabbed onto Maleficent's sleeve.  Maleficent eyed her with thinly-veiled panic.

"Please don't leave before I wake?"

Maleficent's glittering eyes were still affixed to Rose's hand on her arm, and Rose felt so badly for ignoring her discomfort that she relinquished her hold.  Maleficent relaxed visibly.  "As you wish," she said, after a moment.

"Thank you," said Rose as she stood.  She added her book to the little pile she'd made for herself before she succumbed at last to the urge to make a hasty exit.

"Sweet dreams, Briar Rose," said Maleficent softly, and the sound stopped her cold.

Rose dared a glance backward, but Maleficent hadn't yet moved, and she wasn't even looking at Rose.  She was holding the Biography of Mistress Acacia, tracing the words on the cover with her fingertips.

"Sweet dreams," she replied with a little smile, and lingered a moment before she continued her journey up the stairs to safety.

She pulled the covers up over her head and squeezed her eyes closed.  She wanted to comb through every last word of their strange conversation, consider each piece of information she'd been offered and each she hadn't, make note of the questions she still had and the new ones that had been raised, things she believed and things she didn't, things that made sense and things that didn't...but she found as soon as she settled into her pillow that she was far too tired to think clearly about much of anything, and she quickly succumbed to a deep, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Briar Rose woke the next morning with a renewed sense of hope in her heart.  She donned another borrowed dress in a shade that matched her name and searched the little fortress for any sign of Maleficent, to see if she had made good on her promise.  Sure enough, she found Maleficent sitting at the desk in her childhood bedroom, attention engaged in one of the scores of books piled there.

"Good morning," said Rose quietly, toes just barely over the room's threshold.

Maleficent looked up sharply, but that was the only evidence of her surprise.  Her expression was cool and collected as ever.  "Good morning, Briar Rose," she said.  "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thank you," Rose felt herself beginning to smile with something like relief.  Maleficent had kept her promise.  "What are you reading?"

“Good fairy drivel,” Maleficent said, waving her hand dismissively at the offending book.

“What does that mean?”

Maleficent closed the book and showed her the cover.  It was called The Big Book of Spells, Volume IV.  “The Big Book of Spells—sounds like it ought to be made for children.  Utter nonsense.”

Rose dared a step into the room.  "Then why are you reading it?"

Maleficent held the book out for her.  "One of your good fairies cast a spell I'd like to undo."

"What spell could my aunties know that you don't?" Rose wondered without thinking.  She looked up from the book, somewhat embarrassed by her own words.

Maleficent considered her a moment.  "I have a raven companion named Diablo.  Someone..." she inclined her head "...turned him into stone."  She paused, as though she expected a response.  When she received none, for Briar Rose could not begin to think of what to say, she amended, "I suspect Merryweather.  Flora's specialties lie more along the lines of...bubbles and flowers, and Fauna wouldn't hurt an animal."

Rose stared blankly in response.  For a moment she could not even comprehend the information she'd been offered.  "I thought...I mean...didn't you say good fairies couldn't harm another creature?"

"The thing about rules," Maleficent extended her hand and Rose returned the book to her, "is that there is always a way around them.  Indeed, I daresay your precious good fairies did you a fair bit of harm without, oh, say, physically hurting you."  She reopened the book, flipped a few pages.  "However, in this case, I believe the exception was that a good fairy ought to do anything in her power to defeat a wicked fairy.”

Rose averted her eyes abruptly, and focused her attention upon the fabric of her crimson dress.  "They didn't mean to.  Hurt me, I mean."

She was sure she could feel Maleficent's eyes upon her.  “Perhaps not,” said Maleficent, “but it hurt all the same, did it not?”

Rose frowned in the general direction of her feet.  “Have you...figured out which spell it was?”

"If I had," Maleficent replied crisply, "I would have used my newfound knowledge to turn all ten volumes of The Big Book of Spells into so many soap bubbles."

The absurdity of it caught Rose's attention, and she found that her mood had brightened almost instantly.  "Bubbles?" she echoed.  "Like..."  Like Aunt Flora, she'd meant to say, but the name caught in her throat.

Maleficent flicked a finger at a book of similar size to the one she was reading, and with a little pop, the book dissolved into what, indeed, appeared to be very colourful soap bubbles, which in turn dissolved into nothingness.

“Well, there goes Volume I,” said Maleficent.  She feigned disappointment for a moment, but she was eyeing Rose surreptitiously all the while, as though gauging her reaction.

Rose felt herself beginning to smile, and felt strange and wrong for doing so.  Something about feeling happy, or light-hearted, let alone amused, did not seem appropriate to the direness of her circumstances.  She had run away from her home and her family, everything she had ever known, to free a woman everyone considered to be a monster and a madwoman.  How could she be happy?

"You know," said Maleficent, almost coyly, "I no longer have any use for Volume II."

"What?" Rose was certain she felt all the warmth, all the lightness, drained from the room as quickly as it had come.

Maleficent took another large book from her endless pile and held it out to Rose.  "Would you like to claim the honour of destroying it?" she asked lightly, like it was nothing.  Like it was a joke.

"I don't understand."  She felt cold.  Cold and terrified, and of what?  A book?

Maleficent raised one shoulder in a shrug.  "Rip it up.  Bury it.  Burn it, for all I care.  Perhaps you would find it cathartic."

Rose took the book into her hands, gingerly, as though it might be the one to burn her.  She stammered an unintelligible string of syllables which contained words such as "I don't...I can't...I couldn't—"

But Maleficent inclined her head until she caught Rose's eye, and she brought Rose's senseless protestation to a merciful conclusion.  "Or leave it awhile," she said, with a little lilt to her voice that suggested amusement.  "Perhaps you'll change your mind."

Rose handed the book back to her hurriedly, and felt rather silly for how the whole exchange had frightened her.  It was just a book, not even a wicked fairy book, and Maleficent was offering her an outlet for her...well, for her frustration.  For her resentment of the magic that had shaped her existence.  And Rose felt...she wasn't certain what she felt.

"So, Briar Rose," Maleficent continued pleasantly, replacing the book on the top of the pile, "since you did not take to spending your days here alone, would you care to accompany me on my journey today?"

Perhaps she ought to have mistrusted such a suggestion.  Indeed, perhaps a few days prior, she would have.  Now she felt a surge of joy in her chest.  "Oh, yes!" she breathed without hesitation.  "Where are you going?"

Maleficent turned to face her, lips curled upward in a subtle smile.  "I thought I might visit an old friend in the Land of Hill and Valley."

Rose recognized the name for two reasons.  First, she remembered it as the place where Mistress Kinsale, the author of the Mistress Acacia biography lived.  Second, however, she was fairly certain she remembered it as the name of a land near the Eastern Kingdom, and this vague recollection proved sufficient in quelling her enthusiasm.  "That's...isn't it rather close?  To...well, to our land, I mean?"

A strange sentiment to express.  That Briar Rose and Maleficent should share anything so commonplace as a homeland seemed unthinkable.

"Relatively speaking, yes," said Maleficent as she stood.  "But it's still quite a journey to make without magic.  If your concern is in being spotted, consider first that the chances of King Stefan corresponding regularly with either Hill or Valley King are rather slim, and even in that unlikely circumstance, we will hardly be travelling amongst human nobility.  All that aside, if by some chance anyone of importance were to recognize either of us, by the time word reached the Kingdom of the East, we would have long departed."

Perhaps it should have worried her that there was such a small chance of being found, rather than the other way around.  Perhaps she oughtn't to have trusted so easily in Maleficent's benevolent offer of companionship and adventure.  But as it was, Rose accepted the information Maleficent offered readily.

"I suspect you will find much of interest to you," Maleficent continued, when Rose offered no response.  "Under different circumstances, I would have sent word to Mistress Kinsale to expect us, but I doubt she will be terribly put out by a surprise visit.”

"Mistress Kinsale?" Rose echoed.  "I...I...oh!...I may meet her?” 

Maleficent quirked one eyebrow.  "How many friends in the Land of Hill and Valley do you think I have?"

Rose shook her head, and she began to fidget with her skirt.  Words came pouring out of her as though they'd lain in wait.  "Oh, but I haven't even finished the story of Mistress Acacia yet, why—I'm not even halfway through, and there's a word in every sentence I don't understand, but it's the first book I've ever really enjoyed reading, you see!"  Rose began to pace, nervously, back and forth across what little floor space there was.  "And oh...oh, what if—  Has she written other things?  Won't I seem—" she stopped short when she very nearly ran into Maleficent, and looked up "—terribly stupid?"

Maleficent was quite a bit taller than Rose, something Rose had been able to forget when Maleficent was seated, and she exuded a regal quality which Rose could never imagine herself possessing.  When Rose looked up at Maleficent now, she felt the urge to curtsey, to show some sign of deference to Maleficent's obvious power.  Indeed, she felt the same urge in the presence of her parents, and of Philip's father, the King of the North.  In the present moment, she settled upon lowering her eyes and bowing her head.

"As I may have mentioned to you," said Maleficent quietly, "Mistress Kinsale is a fascinating woman.  She enjoys the company of humans, and has an excellent understanding of human culture and customs.  I doubt she would find you dull even if you could not read a single word."

Rose dared a glance upward.  "Really?"

Maleficent nodded curtly.  "Shall we be on our way?"

Rose felt another strange and surprising smile tugging at her features, and she nodded her assent.

When Fauna and her sisters were very young, they'd taken a vacation to the Kingdom by the Sea.  It was a rare treat to travel so far from home—a celebration of their coming of age and of their parents' many happy years together before...well.  Even the healthiest and the luckiest of fairies didn't live forever.

On their first day in the grand city that served as the kingdom's capital, there was a parade.  Hundreds of humans and light fairies walked and skipped and marched and fluttered side by side through the streets, waving flags and banners and pretty things and singing their thanks to Mistress Sara, who had driven the dark fairy Mistress Cordelia into the sea.

Fauna and her sisters and her parents had shuffled their way through the crowds until they reached the glittering mansion where Sara lived, and Sara came out onto her balcony and waved, and even from way down below, Fauna remembered the way her smile did not seem to reach her eyes.

Before her trip to the Sea Kingdom, Fauna had always assumed that other light fairies looked and acted and went about their lives the way her family did.  She and her sisters and her parents were accustomed to being small—why, both Merryweather and their mother barely came up to the elbows of most humans—and the story of Mistress Sara sounded like one of those legends that was far prettier than it was truthful, meant to inspire and to guide, not to be taken at its word.

After all, when a young and precocious Flora had asked her parents if she might one day be able to accomplish such a feat, her parents had shared a hearty laugh, and their father had said, "Why don't you see if you can get one stubborn mule to do your bidding, then see if you feel like enchanting a whole forest!"

And perhaps it hadn't been the kindest joke to make, for Fauna could not help but to wonder whether Flora had ever studied quite as hard after that day, and on top of that, she had become significantly more disparaging, herself, in the years that followed.  But a fairy must learn her limits at one time or another.  It was dangerous to reach beyond one's capabilities.

But the fairies in the Sea Kingdom looked so different!  They were tall, and magic seemed to radiate from them, and none of them looked very much like Fauna or her family at all!  Mistress Sara didn't have any wings at all as far as Fauna could tell, she carried a scepter instead of a wand, and she wore a dress that bared her arms all the way up to her well-muscled shoulders.  She must have been well past one hundred years of age by then, and yet, like an adolescent, she wore her dark-golden hair all the way down to her waist and bore a crown fashioned from wildflowers atop her head.

Fauna believed quite suddenly that perhaps the story was much truer than it had seemed to her before.  Mistress Sara could very well have enchanted all the beasts in the land to aid her in her legendary battle.  Something about the way she carried herself, the way she waved with her well-muscled arm, the way her steely eyes did not match her beautiful smile, gave the impression that she could achieve things Fauna could scarcely dream of.

That evening, after her parents had gone to bed and Flora and Merryweather were embroiled in an extensive argument tangentially related to a silly card game, Fauna walked down to the beach by herself, kicked off her shoes, and watched the sunset with her feet buried in the sand.

"Mind if I join you?" came a woman's voice over her shoulder.

"Of course not," Fauna had already begun to say before she caught sight of her new companion in the fading light of day.

It was a wicked fairy.  Fauna had never seen one up close before, and the mere sight of seafoam green skin caused her to flinch noticeably.

"Changed your mind?" said the wicked fairy with a devilish smirk.

"I—" Fauna swallowed.  She knew what her parents and her sisters would do.  Perhaps she ought to have left straight away.  But at the moment Fauna was feeling that her perception of the world and its inhabitants had thus far been woefully limited, and so she chose another path.  "No.  I'm sorry," she said with a forced smile.  "It's just that I've never met a wicked fairy before."

The wicked fairy's sharp features twisted into a smile.  "Well, well!" she said, and plopped down in the sand not far from where Fauna sat. "A tiny good fairy with a drop of courage!  Will wonders never cease?"

Fauna returned her attention to the ocean before them.  "I didn't know I was tiny before today," she said.

"Here for the parade?" the wicked fairy asked her.

"Not exactly," said Fauna, "but it was hard to miss."  She looked at the wicked fairy again, suddenly.  "Do you suppose it's possible that Mistress Sara really did all the things the stories say?"

The wicked fairy smiled again, a little softer, and her pale eyes caught the light from the setting sun.  "Yes, I'd say she certainly did more than she didn't.  Why do you ask, little fairy?"

Fauna looked away again, and she began tracing shapes in the sand while she thought about what she meant to say.  "My sisters and I...and our parents, we...none of us has the kind of magic that could do anything like that."

"Well," said the wicked fairy slowly, "natural skill is nice, of course, but it's hardly what separates someone like Sara from your average light fairy.  Truth be told, I'm not particularly magically gifted, myself, but that's never stopped me from reaching well beyond what ought to be my limits."

"It's dangerous," said Fauna without thinking, but the wicked fairy was still smiling.

"Definitely," she agreed pleasantly. "But a life ruled by fear is sure to be a very dull one, little fairy.  Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly and threw her head back.  Her hair, an ornate arrangement of pale green ringlets, cascaded over her shoulders.  Now that the sun had set the stars and moon were becoming clearer, and she seemed to glow in the light they shed.  "What a lovely night!  A friend of mine likes to make up constellations.  See those, there?"  She traced a cluster of stars.  "She calls that the Two Lovers, because she thinks they look like trees that grew around one another..."

The wicked fairy's cheerful tone suddenly faded, and she let out a little huff of something reminiscent of laughter.  "I'm messing it all up," she said, almost sadly, and then she stood and began to brush the sand from her skirt.  "It sounds stupid when I say it, but I swear the way she tells it, it's beautiful.  Anyway, enjoy the Sea Kingdom, little fairy.  May you find..." she frowned thoughtfully, looked up at the stars once more.  "May you find inspiration here, to do or to be whatever it is that seems so impossible to you."

"...should have completely sapped her magic!" Flora was saying in the present.

If the strangeness of the emotion that coloured her words hadn't caught Fauna's attention, Merryweather's elbow to her ribs certainly would have. "You still haven't bothered to tell us how you got those old things!"

"From Mistress Felicity!" Flora snapped.  "I told you already, you fool—it's just that you never listen!"

"I think what Merryweather means is that it all happened very suddenly from our perspective, Flora."

Flora turned a withering look and a long-suffering sigh upon Fauna.  "That wouldn't have concerned you if the chains had worked," she remarked coolly.  "And they should have!  Why, Felicity told me they'd worked on every other wicked fairy in the history of their existence!"

Fauna glanced back to Merryweather, and Merryweather mercifully returned her look of quiet concern.  Just because Fauna and her sisters had been next to useless without their magic did not mean that Maleficent was.  All the enchanted chains in the world could not rob her of her clever mind, or of her talent for manipulation...but Flora did not need to be told that, not just now.

"Well," Merryweather began, with as much restraint as she had ever demonstrated, "then it's a good thing we'll be paying Mistress Felicity a visit, right?  She'll be able to—"

Flora cut her off with a scoff.  "And if we're too late already?" she wondered darkly.

"Flora!" Fauna cried.

"A lot of good wandering all across the world grasping at straws will do us if Rose is already—"

"Flora," Fauna said again, as firmly as she knew how, and with an outstretched hand.  "You know what Maleficent is like—she won't just be done with the whole thing like that.  It just isn't how she works.  Why, Rose could be perfectly fine!"

"Oh, I'm sure Rose is just fine with Maleficent!" Merryweather spat.  "Why didn't we think of her for a babysitter?"

"Merryweather, you aren't being very helpful—"

"I'm being realistic," Merryweather countered firmly.  "You're probably right—Rose probably isn't dead.  But I highly doubt she's having a picnic!"

"That's not what I meant at all, Merryweather!"

 “Girls, girls,” Flora said, with a half-hearted wave of her hands.  “Pack your things.  We leave for the Land of Hill and Valley tonight.”

The room fell eerily silent.  Fauna and Merryweather exchanged a glance, nodded, and left to obey their orders.

Everything had fallen apart so quickly.  For a moment it had seemed that Maleficent might be defeated for good!  The Land of the Three Kingdoms could declare a Golden Age of Prosperity, and then it would become the Land of the Two Kingdoms as Stefan and Hubert’s lands began construction to merge into one and Philip and Aurora grew into the King and Queen of the United Kingdoms of North and East.

Though Fauna personally did not believe it was necessary to execute Maleficent, Flora and Merryweather were very set on the matter.  She'd found it extremely troubling a few days ago, but now she wondered if they might have been correct.  What had happened when Maleficent had been left in chains?  She had somehow charmed or cajoled or manipulated little Rose into freeing her.

Rose had not been adjusting very well to her new life.  Flora and Merryweather chalked it up to side effects from the Sleeping Curse.  Flora instructed everyone in the castle—including her younger sisters—to leave Rose alone as much as possible, that she might get the extra rest she needed.

Fauna feared that there was more to it than that.  Rose had always been spirited.  She had never been the sort to behave passively, to stay inside and do her lessons, or to follow orders.  She was not a bad child—not at all—but she was clever, sometimes mischievous, and most of all, very curious.

Here, though, Rose never asked questions.  She rarely conversed longer than she needed to, and she seemed to find it difficult.  Sometimes, when she seemed to be paying attention, she was awkward, as though she did not know what to say.  Most times, though, she was distant and lost track of what little conversation there was to be had.

Honestly, when Fauna learned that Rose had left the confines of her room to explore the castle, she had been relieved.  This was the Rose she knew, and Fauna didn't see why she had to be shut up in her room all the time, anyway.  What harm could come of her taking a little walk around?

What harm, indeed.

Fauna had even suggested that Rose ought to speak with Maleficent before she was put on trial.  Rose's curiosity almost invariably got the better of her, and Fauna knew that far more harm than good could come from Rose not getting all of the answers she wanted.  She feared that the vague idea of Maleficent, some looming, faceless creature who had hunted her throughout her youth, would haunt Rose for the rest of her life.  Fauna thought that perhaps it would be better for Rose to see that Maleficent was not some impossibly fearsome beast, some immortal force of evil who would live on even after her death, the way Prince Philip made her out to be in his gallant tale, and the way Flora and Merryweather sometimes made her out to be in their minds. 

Maleficent was a wicked fairy like any other.  She was cruel and ruthless and far cleverer than any other wicked fairy Fauna had ever encountered, but she was a wicked fairy nonetheless, and all wicked fairies could be defeated.

Though she didn't dare say anything for fear of incurring the longest lecture of her life, Fauna didn't understand her sisters' surprise at what had transpired a few nights ago.  Rose had led a very sheltered life, and she had always been an uncommonly kind-hearted child.  She knew nothing of wicked people like Maleficent, who would tell lies upon lies if it got them what they wanted.  Of course she would not understand why Maleficent must be put to death.

Fauna rather hoped Rose still didn't understand.  She hoped that Rose was just fine, wherever she was.  It wasn't impossible.  Maleficent wouldn't harm Rose if she still wanted something.

Then again, she had never seemed to want anything before, and Fauna couldn't imagine what she wanted now.  Flora and Merryweather and the King seemed to think Maleficent was holding Rose captive for no other reason than because she was Evil and that was the sort of thing Evil Creatures did, and perhaps they were right.  Perhaps Fauna was only holding out hope for some higher purpose because that would mean that Rose stood a chance.

Fauna and her sisters hadn't left the Land of Three Kingdoms since they'd gone to the Sea Kingdom centuries ago, and truthfully, Fauna was looking forward to the change.  But Mistress Felicity was Flora's friend, not hers, and something about her had always made Fauna just the slightest bit uneasy.  She supposed the Land of Hill and Valley must be a very different sort of place to live—the fairies there were sharper, almost aggressive by necessity, as the land had a history of being constantly overrun with nomadic wicked fae.  Still, Fauna had a hard time being around them.

As she packed her satchel and enchanted it to fit into her pocket, Fauna closed her eyes and dared to dream of the Sea Kingdom once more: the tall, muscular fairies, the strange, glowing beauty of the sea when night fell, and the way the damp sand felt between her toes.  Perhaps it was premature, or even insensitive to dream of visiting such a faraway land again, but Fauna privately doubted that Maleficent would make herself easy to find until she wished to be found.

Briar Rose considered that perhaps it had not been a very long time at all since she had come here, but the days that stood between herself and the life she had fled seemed endless.  All the more so when they stepped outside of Maleficent's childhood home and Maleficent held out her hand to Rose, presumably to transport them to the Land of Hill and Valley.

Rose took Maleficent's hand, perhaps a bit too firmly, for Maleficent's eyes flew to Rose's hand in hers before she seemed to recover from the shock and said, in her usual, politely appraising manner, "Ah.  I had forgotten you...don't like to travel."

Maleficent shook Rose's clinging hand from her own, which ought to have been no easy task.  Rose was not certain how she had managed it at all until she realized that her hands were tingling.  She examined her hands, as though she might find the source when she knew the answer already, until Maleficent gently cleared her throat, and Rose looked up to find that Maleficent had tucked her staff under one elbow, and she was extending her arms towards Rose.

Rose took a moment to understand the gesture, and when at last she did, she felt her cheeks flush hot for some reason which felt murky even in her own mind.  She averted her eyes as she walked into Maleficent's waiting arms, but Maleficent seemed unconcerned by her reaction.  She wrapped one arm about Rose's waist and cradled Rose's head in the other hand, and then the awful sensation of being nowhere returned, and Rose had no more time to feel embarrassed.  She clung to the solidity of Maleficent with abandon.

The journey could not have taken more than a few seconds, but when Rose's feet touched solid ground once more, she fell to her knees in relief.

"Do you think me a substandard sorceress?" Maleficent wondered, her voice coloured with the kind of cruel humour that turned Rose's stomach.

Rose, who was preoccupied with trying unceremoniously to stand upon legs that trembled beneath her, did not deign to respond.

"I can bring a scourge upon a kingdom," Maleficent continued, gloating, "yet I cannot magic a mere slip of a maiden to her intended destination?"

"Stop it."

"Oh, do forgive me," said Maleficent, voice rich with mockery.  "You are a maiden no longer."

The comment stung for reasons Rose could not explain.  She felt the most dreadful sensation stirring within her, rising up from somewhere in the pit of her stomach and rendering her nearly dizzy with the force of it.  She didn't have the words to tell Maleficent that if she'd had her way, she wouldn't be a married woman, bound forever to a man she barely knew, and one whom she might perhaps not adore nearly as much as she'd thought at first, but she didn't have a say, she didn't have a say in any of it, because, because...

Rose clenched her fists at her sides.  "And you are a maiden still," she said coldly, and even as she continued to speak, she wished desperately that she could take the words back.  "So perhaps I am not so inferior to you as you imagine."

Maleficent's expression was difficult to parse.  Her features were so dramatic that even a subtle raise of her brow seemed monumental.  After a moment's unbearable stillness, she let out a huff of strange laughter.  "I meant no insult, Highness," she said, with a peculiar sort of amusement that only served to worsen the sickening feeling in Rose's stomach.  "And I am...surprised that you took it as such.  Then again, I suppose a human girl might well harbour such delusions."

"Delusions," Rose echoed miserably.  The word felt like bile at the back of her throat.

"They say that a wicked fairy's magic is a curse," Maleficent continued thoughtfully, "but I daresay I have been fortunate.  My kin would be appalled by the notion of defining one's worth by the base machinations of a man towards her."

Rose swallowed hard, and felt a terrible shudder course through her.  "And how," she began tremulously, "am I meant to define my worth?  By my parents, who sent me away before I could remember them?  By my...my...my non-aunt...fairies, who—who...brought me up just to—to send me away yet again?  By the life I was meant to lead?  The one I can barely understand?  By—by whether you will see fit to spend the afternoon with me, whether or not you speak cruelly and then deny that you meant to insult me?  By whether you will one day decide to leave me, alone in a strange place, and never return?  How?  How am I to define my worth?"

Maleficent's expression remained infuriatingly unreadable.  "Forgive me," she began thinly.  "My concern was—"

 “Concern!" Rose cut her off tearfully.  "What concern could you possibly have for me?  Didn't you want me dead?  Wouldn't it be easier if I were gone?  Would you feel badly, because I saved your life by setting you free?  Is that it?"

"Have you no concern for yourself?" Maleficent countered coolly.

"Obviously not," said Rose, with a sweeping gesture towards Maleficent, and the words tasted bitter upon her tongue.

Maleficent inclined her head thoughtfully.  "You truly believe that?" she wondered.  "You believe that you set me free because you hadn't a care left for what became of you?"

Rose lifted her chin defiantly, silently challenged Maleficent to prove her wrong.  What other explanation could there be?  She could have been held captive by her family or held captive by a madwoman, and which did she choose?

"As you seem to desire my opinion on so many matters at the moment, I shall begin with this one: if you truly had no care for what became of you, you would have let me die.  You would have remained with your husband and family, a good and faithful slave to the fickle whims of mortal minds.  You would have borne children for your noble prince, even if it tore you apart, and you would have faded contentedly into nothingness, your only legacy that you once famously fell asleep."

Maleficent moved so suddenly and so quickly that Rose barely even noticed until she was looming over her, scarcely a breath away.  Maleficent's black eyes seemed to shine, and her lip curled subtly.  Rose swallowed, but her throat was dry.

"Had you told me on the night that we met that you did not care what befell you," Maleficent continued, low and vehement, "I might have believed you.  I might have believed that you would learn to feign contentment within the confines of a grand delusion.  But now I can see you far more clearly.  You set me free, and you asked to accompany me, because you wanted to live."

Rose thought to protest, to tell Maleficent that she had had no way of knowing whether Maleficent would slaughter her and her family the moment her chains had been removed, but Maleficent's tone offered no room for interruption.

"Not merely to survive," she continued, "but to forge a life of your own choosing.  You knew you were not throwing your existence away by setting me free.  You did not remove my chains with a death-wish in your heart.  You believed me to be a woman of my word, believed in my promise to free you from your own prison.  Tell me," she sneered.  "Have you since changed your opinion of me?  Do you think me a lawless monster, after all?"

Rose's lower lip quivered.  She shook her head and blinked back frightened tears.  But Maleficent's fury fled her as quickly as it had come.  She straightened her posture and offered Rose her arm.  "Very well, then," she said quietly.  "Shall we?"

Rose took Maleficent's arm, for she was too frightened to refuse it, but her entire body was quivering.

"To answer your earlier question, I believe that one ought to define her worth independent of the whims of others.  People will come and go, plan and scheme, with or without your own wellbeing in mind, but you will always have yourself to worry about.  You will find no peace until you are contented to live with who you are."

Rose wrapped her fingers more tightly around Maleficent's arm in an effort to steady herself.  She tried to calm her racing heart, to steady her quivering legs, and finally, to take in what Maleficent had suggested to her.

She felt...stupid.  Reckless.  She felt suddenly that Maleficent's assessment of her motives had been overly generous, for what sort of person ran away from her life as a princess married to a decent man who had saved her to...well, to do whatever she was doing?  To live in an abandoned fortress far from anything she had ever known with the very magical being who had attempted to have her killed?

Setting that aside, what sort of person, having already set her mind to such a course of action, then proceeded to push and prod at that magical being, for no other reason than that she felt alone and frightened and wanted to yell at someone?  Maleficent had demonstrated how frightening she could be without even meaning to, and yet Rose so easily forgot herself.

"As I was attempting to say earlier, I would like to apologize for implying that a human girl could not comprehend the worldview of a fairy.  It is different, to be certain, but I do not look down upon you for the disparity of our experience.  I am not merely offering you protection on the basis of honour."

As Rose tried to piece together what Maleficent meant by her strange apology, she found herself hoping she would be able to understand a single word that Mistress Kinsale might say.

But Maleficent was apologizing, and that in itself was rather startling,  She was apologizing for...well, for what Rose had assumed she meant, more than for anything she had personally said.  And she was saying that she was concerned for Rose's wellbeing?  That she wasn't just...

"You...you don't?" Rose stammered belatedly.  "I mean, you aren't?"

She looked up to find Maleficent's attention focused upon the beautiful landscape unfolding before them.  The valley was perhaps not quite as foreign to Rose's sensibilities as was the Dragon Country, and so was it lovely in a fashion more comfortable to her.  The grass was thick and deep green, the late morning sky full of puffy white clouds, and everything around them, from the grass to the trees to the wildflowers, somehow seemed as though it had been placed exactly so.

"One of the few joys of being myself," said Maleficent quietly, in response to a question Rose had nearly forgotten she'd voiced, "is that I do not have to do anything I don't want to do."

The words themselves oughtn't to have been difficult to grasp, but the mere notion of such a circumstance made Rose's head spin.  She felt as though she were drowning in her own thoughts, unable to put voice to any of them.  The thought which made it to her lips was certainly not the most well-formed, but it was perhaps the most immediately pressing.  "You don't...want to kill me?"

Maleficent glanced down at her, "Haven't I said that already?"

Rose averted her eyes.  "Not in so many words."

"I don't know what it is you're hoping to uncover," said Maleficent, returning her gaze to the path before them.  "I could tell you there's no need to fear for your safety in my company, but that wouldn't make much difference if you don't believe me."

Rose stopped walking and let go of Maleficent's arm, wsummoning what little courage she possessed.  "I want to know why," she said, as firmly as she could manage, even as she felt her hands trembling at her sides.  "That's all.  Just why."

Maleficent turned to face her, expression impassive.  "I think," she said coldly, "that you are trying to find a reason to forgive me.  You want your good fairy aunts to be wrong about me."

Rose struggled not to avert her gaze.  "You're avoiding my question."

"There isn't some grand, tragic, misunderstood reason."

"Is there any reason at all, or is that just what you felt like doing one day?" asked Rose almost sharply.

Maleficent tilted her head and quirked one eyebrow, considering Rose for a moment before she responded.  "Queen Leah made a deal with me.  She didn't hold up her end of the bargain."

Rose felt suddenly like crying again, and she clasped her hands together tightly.  "What sort of deal was so important to you?"

"It wasn't of any importance to me at all," said Maleficent, raising her chin defiantly, suddenly with an air of haughtiness that did not fit. A sudden thought occurred to Briar Rose, and she was so stunned that she no longer felt like crying.  She gazed wide-eyed at Maleficent, and for a moment could not manage to say anything.

Maleficent was lying.

Rose was certain of it, and yet she couldn't imagine how she'd be certain of such a thing.  Maleficent could control a conversation without missing a beat.  Rose had previously imagined that most of what Maleficent said to her was probably at least slightly untrue, but if indeed Maleficent had lied to her before, she hadn't exhibited any telling mannerisms whatsoever.  And yet, just now, Maleficent had just lied to her, and Rose had noticed it.  She did not know what to make of that.

She decided not to press the issue any further for today.  She'd gotten a partial answer, which was honestly more than she'd hoped for, and as to the matter of Rose's personal safety, well, there was little she could do but to take Maleficent at her word.

Rose looked away, for she realized she'd been staring.  "I would like to apologize...for...most of what I said earlier.  It was rather childish of me."

Maleficent approached her and offered her arm once more.  "Thank you," she said in her usual clipped tone.  "But there's no need.  In case it's escaped your notice, I'm not particularly accustomed to dealing with humans.  I'd much prefer if you made it clear what you're thinking and feeling."

Something about this comment, which was delivered in Maleficent's usual appraising tone, filled Rose with a kind of gushing happiness she'd only felt once before.  She was consumed by the urge to throw her arms around Maleficent, but that seemed like a very stupid idea indeed, and so she settled upon smiling to herself as they continued to walk.

There was something positively delightful about someone who didn't care what she thought or felt, in the sense that Maleficent didn't expect Rose to think or feel a certain way.  For the first time since her decision to run away, Rose truly felt as though she had gained some freedom in this mad venture.

 “Here we are,” said Maleficent, gesturing with her staff to a rather large manor not far ahead.

The landscape dipped slightly, a valley within a valley, and at its center stood a mansion big enough to be a castle, surrounded by high stone walls with no sign of a gate.  As they drew nearer, Rose wondered whether Maleficent was planning to magic them through, and what sort of a security system that would be if it were permissable.

Before she had very much time to ponder the nature of stone walls and fairy magic, however, a voice echoed across the valley, emanating from nowhere, or from everywhere, "WHO GOES THERE?"

A shudder coursed through Briar Rose, and she clutched onto Maleficent's arm.  Maleficent was unphased.

"Kinsale, it's Maleficent," she said.  "And I've brought a guest.  Is this a bad time?"

When next the voice sounded, its tone had changed utterly from dark and terrifying to warm and welcoming.  "Maleficent?  Truly?  It's been so long, I thought—!  One moment, I'll just..."

The voice faded beneath the rise of a faint rumbling, as though of distant thunder.  Then the earth beneath their feet began to shake.  And then the stone wall began to ripple...to move...to shift so that it formed an archway which offered passage to the massive front doors of Mistress Kinsale’s home.

Maleficent gestured toward the doors.  “After you.”

Rose smoothed her hair and began to fidget with her dress, “Are you certain I won’t..."

"What?"

Rose looked up, timid.  "Embarrass myself?"

Maleficent quirked a brow and let out a huff of exasperation before she placed a hand lightly upon Rose's back to lead her towards the door.  "And why would I deliberately lead you to this place if I thought you would be an embarrassment?  For my own amusement at your expense?”

Rose turned over her shoulder to look at Maleficent skeptically, too cowed by the course of their conversation thus far to say aloud that she did indeed think Maleficent might do such a thing.  To her surprise, Maleficent's lips quirked upward into a subtle smirk, and somehow Rose found herself very nearly returning the smile.

"Come now," Maleficent inclined her head in the direction of the door, and Rose returned her attetion to the task at hand.

The house was even more imposing than it seemed from afar.  The double doors that marked the front entrance must have been twice the height of those in Maleficent's childhood home, and Rose took in a sharp breath when they swung open with no one behind them, as though by magic.

Rose shook her head.  Of course it was by magic.

Behind the doors was a grand ballroom like nothing Rose had ever seen, decorated in shades of silver and gold that glittered as the light streamed in from outside.  As they entered and the doors closed heavily behind them, Rose realized that even without the sunlight, the ballroom was flooded with a rich, warm sort of glow which did not seem to be coming from anywhere in particular.  Along one wall there were rows of banquet tables covered in shimmering silver tablecloths, and around the room there were various seating arrangements, from elegant dining tables to circles of cosy armchairs.  On either side of the room was an enormous fireplace surrounded by big, puffy chairs, and still with all of this, there was a sprawling floor made for dancing.

The room was split in two by a deep red carpet, and Rose followed its path to an equally magnificent throne.  Atop the throne she could see a roaring lion's head crafted from shimmering gold, with a mane that seemed to fly in an imaginary breeze.

So overwhelmed was she by all that she saw that she did not notice the figure sitting beneath the lion's head until it moved to stand up, and Briar Rose found that Mistress Kinsale was every bit as magnificent as the house she inhabited.

Rose stood frozen in awe, vaguely aware that she must be staring slack-jawed, but unable to move until she felt Maleficent's hand on her back once more, urging her forward.  Together they traveled the length of the red carpet to greet their host.

"I can scarcely believe my eyes," said Mistress Kinsale in a voice that was like music.  "Mistress Maleficent of the Three Kingdoms, here in my very own humble abode once more."

She held out her hands as she descended the stairs to her throne to greet them, and though Rose distantly wondered what Maleficent's reaction might be, she could not bring herself to look away.  Mistress Kinsale was tall, but not quite as impossibly spindly as Maleficent, and her build was altogether much sturdier.  She wore a breathtaking gown of silver that flared at her waist in the modern style, with little gold accents that caught the light as she moved.  Where Maleficent's skin was a pale grey-green, Kinsale's was the colour of the forest in summer, deep and rich, and with a healthy glow Maleficent lacked.

When Kinsale reached Maleficent, she took her by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.  Rose felt herself startle instinctively, prepared for the same violent reaction she, herself, had received.  But Maleficent endured the gesture stoically, and when she had been released, she smiled thinly.  "It is good to see you again, Kinsale," she said.  "I hope I haven't put you out by dropping in unexpectedly."

"Oh, not at all, darling!" Kinsale waved a hand dismissively.  "Now," she turned, with an inhuman sharpness that set Rose's nerves on edge.  "Are you going to introduce me to your charming guest?"

Rose managed an uneasy smile and a wavering curtsey, but she could not bring herself to speak.  Kinsale's eyes were not coal black like Maleficent's, but very dark browm, shining not with cunning or suspicion, but with something akin to warmth.  Kinsale's features were sharp like Maleficent's, strange in a way that set her apart from a human even setting aside the green skin, and her hair, which was the same dark brown as her eyes, was pulled back into a very intricate, braided hairstyle, revealing that the tips of her ears were pointed.

"Mistress Kinsale," Maleficent spoke, and Rose wondered whether she had been silent overlong in her fascination. "may I introduce her Royal Highness, the Princess Aurora of the Kingdom of the East?"

Mistress Kinsale smiled, revealing teeth that gave off the impression of unusual sharpness, and Rose felt herself shiver.  She offered a deep, sweeping curtsey which put Rose's feeble attempt to shame, and when she had finished, she reached out for Rose as she had done to Maleficent.

"The famous Princess Aurora?" Kinsale wondered, delightedly.  "Why, Maleficent, but you are unbelievable!  Your Royal Highness," she took Rose's hands and lowered herself again so that she could touch them to her forehead.  "I cannot tell you what an honour and a pleasure it is," she continued, with a richness in her voice that felt remarkably like sincerity.

"Now, you simply must come and sit down," she said as she righted herself, "for I sincerely hope that this is as good of a story as I suspect!"  She ushered them across the sprawling dance floor to one of the many lush seating arrangements in the room, comprised of three large armchairs and a tea table.

“Sit!” she exclaimed.  They sat.  “Tea?” she asked, and before they could answer, she waved her hand absently at the table and conjured an entire tea set, complete with a steaming tea kettle that smelled of raspberries.

“Maleficent, let’s begin with you.  Last I heard, you found Aurora and enacted your intended curse, captured Prince Philip of the North and were planning to keep him in your dungeon until he ceased to amuse you.  Did something go wrong?” she looked at Rose and her deep brown eyes quickly took in Rose’s entire body, down and back up.  Rose shivered.  “Or perhaps right?”

Rose looked to Maleficent, hoping she might share more information with her friend.  Maleficent rolled her eyes.  “I suppose you wouldn’t know this, but the minions I kept had become rather pitiful—rampant inbreeding.  I shouldn’t have entrusted anything to them.  In any event, the three good fairies managed to outrun them, turned Diablo to stone, and made off with Philip, apparently equipping him with a Sword of Truth and a Shield of Virtue.”

“A what?” Kinsale interrupted her.  Rose realized that Kinsale was on the edge of her seat.  “Where did Flora get those?  I’ve never met even one of those sisters—I wasn’t aware they had any kind of network.  Or have they become significantly more powerful since last we spoke?”

Maleficent shrugged, “They must have acquired them somewhere—Flora had to steal magic from her sisters to enact the Sword Incantation.”

“No!” Kinsale’s hand flew to her mouth.  “Oh, Maleficent, were you badly hurt?”

Maleficent waved a hand dismissively, “I am obviously quite all right.  My point was that Flora not only acquired a Sword of Truth and a Shield of Virtue, but the Chains of Avasina.”

Kinsale sat back in her seat, brow furrowed dramatically in concetration.  “I wonder how she managed that," she said, slowly.  "Do you have powerful enemies of whom I’m not aware?”

Maleficent averted her gaze for an instant.  “It’s not impossible, but it’s more likely that Flora appealed to someone with a more...general hatred for the wicked fae.”

“You don’t mean Mistress Sara?”

“Hmm,” Maleficent considered this.  “I would have suspected someone a bit closer to home.  I don't think the Righteous Three travel much.”

Kinsale shrugged.  “Felicity?  I never thought her the type to trifle with such artefacts, but there have been so many drifters here over the past few years, perhaps she has taken to drastic measures.  She’s quite good at enchanting objects to do her bidding.  Sometimes I worry about inviting her to my soirees.  I fear my dinnerware might come after me.”

Maleficent chuckled.  Rose's head was spinning, and she couldn't even begin to make sense of half of the information she'd just heard.  She had a strange and contradictory impression of Kinsale.  On the one hand, she exuded warmth and enthusiasm, something Rose had been sorely missing with no one but Maleficent or herself for company.  On the other hand, Rose realized that, just as readily as Kinsale had accepted Rose's presence, she would have accepted her absence and rejoiced in Maleficent's victory.

It occurred to Rose, in the form of a jolt of fear, that Maleficent might have brought Rose to Kinsale to get rid of her, since Maleficent did not want to kill the person who had spared her life.

“Anyway, what was it like?" Kinsale asked, and Rose tried to imagine her a cold-blooded murderer.  It wasn't a difficult thing to see in Maleficent.  Though Kinsale was similarly intimidating, Rose found it a challenge to reconcile her evident pleasantness with the possibility of cruelty.  "I know of only two fairies who have been put in those things and lived to tell the tale, and one of them is not very keen on talking to me."

Rose could certainly see how this woman had written a biography so compelling that even someone as illiterate as Rose wanted to read it.  The world was a story to her, and she was so disarming that Rose imagined it must be easy for her to draw the stories she wrote out of their keepers.

Or perhaps it was just her.  Maleficent, for her part, looked distinctly uncomfortable.  Her posture was stiffer than usual, and her focus was on the fire Kinsale had lit in one of her fireplaces without Rose's notice. 

"It is...difficult to explain," Maleficent began slowly.  "It's the feeling when a fairy has utterly sapped her magic, yet the magic does not return.  I think I nearly...forgot...what it was like, to have magic."

“That’s horrible,” murmured Kinsale.  “What of your sword wound?”

Maleficent shook her head.  “Apparently I was unconscious for many days.  When I came around, I was in a great deal of pain that occasionally overwhelmed me back into unconsciousness.  The wound began to heal when my magic was returned to me, of course, but very slowly.  It no longer pains me very much.”

Rose's brow furrowed in concern.  Maleficent had seemed so untouchable to her even that first night.  It hadn't once occurred to Rose that she might be in pain from her near-fatal injury, and she felt rather stupid for forgetting to even ask after it.

 “I am sorry for excluding you, Princess Aurora," said Kinsale and Rose jumped to attention.  "How do you like your tea?”

Rose had not taken a drink of the tea.  Though it smelled delicious, Rose had idly wondered whether it might be poisoned and had been eyeing it suspiciously ever since the idea had occurred to her.  Faced with Kinsale's frightening smile, however, Rose quickly took a sip.  "It's delicious," she murmured with a nervous smile.  "Thank you."

“I’m glad," said Kinsale.  "Are we being dull?  It isn’t often I entertain royalty, and I shouldn’t like to give you a bad impression.”

“No, no,” Rose shook her head, concentrating on her tea.  "Of course not."

"Are you getting new information?  I could interrogate her a bit more if you'd like," said Kinsale with a wink.  Rose was so taken aback that she nearly dropped her teacup.

“So!" Kinsale cried, mercifully returning her attention to Maleficent.  "When we left off, you were in—Stefan’s dungeon, I presume?—bound by the magical Chains of Avasina." her voice took on a dark, dramatic quality as she wove her tale.  "Your magic was slowly draining out of you, to be lost forever, and you were surely to be condemned to death—what happened next?”

Against Rose's better judgement, she found herself drawn into Kinsale's story—or perhaps the captivating way in which she spoke the words—and for a moment she found it easy to forget her own involvement.

“My," said Maleficent, her expression more pleasant than Rose had ever seen it, "you can spin a story into something far more gripping than it was.” 

Kinsale bowed her head in thanks. 

“Prince Philip, King Stefan, and a council of nobles I had never seen before came shortly after I awoke and informed me that as I had survived, I would be tried for my crimes.  Later, Stefan came alone to inform me that he would see me dead no matter the cost."

Though Rose had barely spoken with King Stefan—her father, she had to remind herself—she found this revelation distressing.  She tried to understand it, to think, if I were my daughter...and Maleficent had cursed my daughter to die...but this made her head ache.  King Stefan did not feel like her father, and she could not imagine how he could think of her as his daughter when he knew nothing about her.  That was a thought for another time, preferably when Rose didn't have so much other troubling information to contend with.  She tried to refocus her attention on Maleficent and Kinsale's conversation, instead.

"I considered telling him exactly where his little deal with Hubert would be without my help, but I imagined there was little point as he would not fully believe me, and in any event, I would not be around to enjoy the court intrigue I might engender.  Later that night,” Maleficent shot Rose a sidelong glance, “the Princess Aurora paid me a secretive visit of her own.”

“And why did you think she had come to visit you?”

Maleficent raised her eyes to the ceiling.  “I supposed she had gotten wind that I was alive and wished to see me for herself, perhaps ask why I wanted her dead.”

“And Princess Aurora," Kinsale turned to Rose, "why did you come to see Maleficent?”

Kinsale was still crafting her story.  A part of Rose still found it disturbing, but she was also rather helplessly drawn in by Kinsale's enthusiasm.  “I...well," she began, her voice weak, "Philip...told me that she was alive and I...well, he doesn't ever tell me everything, anything, that's going on, so I...sort of snuck out of my room and learned that my...that the good fairies were planning to...to execute her," she swallowed, "and...I don’t know, I had to know the truth.  About...many things.”

Kinsale nodded and motioned for Maleficent to continue.

Maleficent's lip curled, but somehow it seemed more mocking than malicious.  “As I’m sure you’ve been hoping from the beginning, out of the kindness of her heart, the princess agreed to remove my Chains on the condition that, wherever I went, I would take her with me.”

Kinsale leaned forward, “I see!  Aurora gave you your freedom and you gave Aurora hers!  How delightful!”

Maleficent responded with a huff of derision, then cast another sideways glance at Rose.  “The princess is very fond of one of your books,” she said, a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Really?” Kinsale clasped a hand to her heart, redirecting her attention to Rose, who shrank into her seat.  “Oh, how wonderful!  Which one?”

“The Biography of Mistress Acacia,” said Rose.  She tried to swallow the lump slowly forming in her throat.

“Mistress Acacia!  Oh, that is wonderful!  Have you read the whole story?”

Rose blushed and looked down at her hands as she shook her head.

“Oh dear, I did not mean to cause you embarrassment!” she exclaimed.  She placed a hand gently on Rose's arm, and Rose flinched away in surprise, but Kinsale pretended not to notice.  “How far have you gotten?”

“Not very far at all,” Rose said to her hands.  “I just read the part about the people of the kingdom beginning to blame Acacia for the food shortage.”

“Oh, what a fascinating story!  I could have written several volumes on Mistress Cordelia, given the opportunity.  Unfortunately, I only ever met her once, and she'd gone well off the deep end by then.  I was a young thing then, had never published anything, had no name, no credibility, of course she wouldn’t have anything to do with me, legend that she was."

Kinsale's exuberance served as a perfect distraction from Rose's embarrassment, and Rose looked up with renewed interest.

"And you know, a story like that isn’t really anything without some first-hand information," Kinsale continued.  "Acacia was quite remarkable, though.  She suffered such adversity at such a young age, and yet at the end of her life, she turned out to be quite a charming woman.  Not unlike Mistress Maleficent,” Kinsale said with another wink.

Rose averted her eyes once more, but she wasn't quite able to contain her smile.  Kinsale spoke of Acacia and Maleficent as Rose might speak of someone like Kinsale, but she supposed Maleficent did possess a darker sort of charm.

“Tell me, Aurora," said Kinsale.  "Were you offended by my portrayal of the humans in that part of the story?”

Rose shook her head, surprised.  "No!" she cried, too fast.  "No, I thought it was...diplomatic," she remembered Maleficent saying, and grasped onto the word in want of her own.  "I don't really...think it's right, that they didn't blame the good fairy who started the problem."

Kinsale afforded Maleficent a sidelong smirk.   "You’ve been a bad influence on her already, I see.”

“I have done nothing of the sort," Maleficent replied crisply.  "I was not aware that she was reading Mistress Acacia until yesterday evening.”

Kinsale chuckled, “Whatever you say.  Well, Aurora, I hope you will keep me informed of what you think of the rest of the book!”

Rose nodded quickly, hoping this meant that her part of the conversation was over for the moment.

“Now, where have you been since the dungeons of the Eastern Fortress?”

"Eastern Fortress," Maleficent echoed derisively.  "We've been living in the castle in the Dragon Country, of course.  Where else?"

“What a beautiful land," Kinsale replied, undeterred.  "How do you find it, Aurora?”

"Oh...yes.  Very lovely."

“How are the dragons these days, Maleficent?”

“Well, that is actually the purpose of my visit.  I hoped you might have some insight on this matter.  All of the dragons are gone except for one, who is at most a year old.”

“No!” Kinsale gasped.  “Does the juvenile know anything?  Can you communicate with her?”

Maleficent nodded and Rose saw in her eyes an echo of the listless panic Maleficent had exhibited a few days ago.  “She faintly remembers a storm or explosion of some sort.  Shortly thereafter, everyone became very ill and started dying off in scores.”

Kinsale’s expression of jovial fascination had turned to one of grim concern.  Rose wondered whether Kinsale truly cared or whether it was merely another story to her.  “That doesn’t sound good at all, does it?”

“To make matters worse," said Maleficent, "I haven’t seen a single person in the nearby village who is even middle-aged.”

 “That is odd.  And it doesn’t seem like a passer-by thing to do,” Kinsale tapped her pointer finger to her chin thoughtfully.  “But to my knowledge, you’re the only living wicked fairy with any connection to the Dragon Country.”

“Unless of course Adara is still alive.”

Kinsale shook her head, “Now who’s making a good story?”

“Tell me it's impossible,” Maleficent challenged.

"Maleficent,” said Kinsale firmly, “no one has seen or heard from her in over a century.”

Maleficent averted her gaze with a certain impetuousness Rose had never seen in her.  “Yes, yes," she conceded distantly.  "I suppose I only wanted your opinion on the matter.”

“My opinion," said Kinsale, "is that it was not Adara.  You’re right, of course—nothing is impossible, but it makes less sense than, say, a disciple of Mistress Sara.”

“Ah,” Maleficent responded, but she seemed to return only partially from whatever faraway place her mind had taken her.  “I had not considered Mistress Sara.  That's the second time you've brought her up.”

Kinsale nodded grimly, “I fear that Sara must always be considered these days.  I am dreadfully sorry, Aurora—do you know about Mistress Sara?”

“Is she the same Mistress Sara who defeated Mistress Cordelia?” asked Rose.  Hadn't that been centuries ago?  How long did wicked fairies live, exactly?

“That’s the one!” said Kinsale, her previous glee returning in an instant.  "My, but the Sea Kingdom is a lovely place to visit!  Have you ever seen the ocean?"

Rose shook her head and leaned forward in her seat.

“You think the Dragon Country is beautiful—oh, just wait until you see the Kingdom by the Sea!  And if you are fond of Mistress Acacia’s story, you simply must visit all of the historical places there!  Why, if Maleficent is too busy brooding over her schoolbooks, I shall take you, myself!”

Maleficent's expression was as impassive as usual, but somehow her eyes burned.

“Excuse me,” said Kinsale, “I’ve gotten off-topic.  Maleficent, you wouldn’t know this, having been so preoccupied over the last few years, but Mistress Sara has gathered something of a fanatical following amongst good fairies.  Happens every so often, you know, she goes on one of her little rampages, and this time, Felicity is one of her followers.  Honestly, I would have expected Flora to subscribe to her nonsense.”

“Yes, well,” said Maleficent, “she was rather busy hiding the princess from me.”

Again, Rose felt her stomach twist.  She could easily imagine their friendly conversation without her presence as they rejoiced in her endless Sleeping Curse, or in her death.

“Of course, of course,” said Kinsale lightly, waving her hands as though to clear the air.  “My, what a lot of serious talk in one sitting!  Aurora, would you care to take a tour of my home?”

"Oh!" Rose exclaimed without meaning to, startled to be addressed once more.  "Yes, of course," she amended, and forced a smile.

"Wonderful!" Kinsale cried as she stood.  "Maleficent, are you staying here?"

Maleficent, whose attention had not quite returned to the conversation for several minutes, rested her chin in her hand as she contemplated the fireplace.  "I'm certain you two will find much to discuss in my absence," she said distantly.

Kinsale waved her hand at the teaset and Maleficent's cup refilled itself with steaming raspberry tea.  "Enjoy the sound of your own voice," she said sweetly.  She turned with a flourish and offered her arm to Rose.

"There's little to see on this floor," said Kinsale as they made their way across the ballroom and into a foyer which contained nothing but a grand staircase, "apart from the ballroom and the perpetual stormcloud looming over Maleficent's head."

Rose looked up, surprised, and she almost laughed.  "I thought it was my fault."

"Of course not!" Kinsale shook her head.  "Why, Maleficent's worst enemy is her own mind!  Though I expect you get under her skin a fair bit more than she likes.”

“How do you figure that?” Rose wondered.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Kinsale led her down a hallway towards a room with a closed door.  It occurred to Rose, distantly, that perhaps she ought to be frightened of Kinsale, but she just could not bring herself to remember it.  Kinsale's warmth and friendliness, though jarring in comparison to the things she seemed to find important, were too welcome a change from Maleficent's gloomy demeanour.

Kinsale opened the door and gestured that Rose should enter.  "This is my library," she said.  Though there was plenty of natural light, Kinsale waved a hand and the room was flooded with the same warm magical light from the ballroom.

"Oh," Rose breathed, for she had never seen so many books in her life.  The walls were lined with them, from floor to ceiling, and just as soon as it had occurred to her that there was no way of reaching most of the books, she remembered that the owner of this magnificent collection could use magic.

“Maleficent used to have a stunning library," Kinsale continued. "It put this one to shame.  But I suspect it’s very much out of date and untended now.  And I know Adara never cared much for books.  She was very creative with spells, though.  That was her most frightening advantage.  Excuse me—I meant to say, Maleficent isn’t used to being fond of people."

Rose whipped her head around to look at Kinsale.  "Fond of people?" she echoed incredulously..  "Half the time I think she's barely restraining herself from snapping my neck."

Kinsale chuckled lightly, and Rose abruptly wished she hadn't said anything.  "I'm afraid that's just her sweet disposition," said Kinsale with a shrug.  "If you want my opinion, I don't think Maleficent ever had it in her to kill an innocent girl like you."

"Innocent," Rose breathed.  "What is more innocent than an infant child?"

"Hmm," Kinsale tapped her chin thoughtfully.  "Let me see if I can explain this.  It's much easier for someone like Maleficent to imagine ending the life of something like a baby—something which doesn't have any significance to her, personally, something which is more a representation of a concept than it is a baby, in her mind—than ending the life of a sentient person, especially one she does not actively dislike.  Does that make sense?"

It felt...wrong, and sickening, that a baby could seem insignificant and easy to kill.  "I'm afraid I still don't understand.  How could someone wish harm to someone so...completely defenseless?"

Kinsale considered this a moment before she spoke.  "Consider that a newborn baby princess isn't completely defenseless," she said slowly.  "She has her parents, the King and Queen, who have an army at their disposal.  She has three Good Fairy guardians who are bound by their duty as King's Counselors to defend her.  Indeed, this particular newborn princess has three kingdoms worth of people who will likely go to task for her if the need arises."

Rose averted her eyes and wrung her hands together uncomfortably.  "I suppose I see what you're saying, at least," she said, with some difficulty.  "But that doesn't really excuse what she did...or what she meant to do, anyway."

"I wasn't trying to excuse Maleficent's actions, only to clarify them," Kinsale replied lightly, as though it were nothing.  "Maleficent's curse was not an act against you, personally.  It was an act against you as a faceless entity—namely, the baby princess—and an act against you as you relate to your kingdom.  I can't speak for her, of course, but based upon what I know of Maleficent, this seems the most likely explanation for her behaviour.  That certainly doesn't make it excusable by human standards."

What about your standards? Rose wanted to ask, but she bit her tongue and considered the information she had been offered.

It made sense with what Maleficent had told her earlier, namely that she had cursed Rose because Queen Leah, her mother, had broken some kind of deal with her.  And if Rose were to believe Kinsale, that would mean that she was truly no longer in danger.  It didn't seem like a particularly good idea to let her guard down, and yet if she were still in danger, there would be little she could do to defend herself.  Her disbelief wouldn't stop someone who was bent upon killing her, anyway.

"I'm still not sure I believe that she doesn't actively dislike me, as you put it," Rose murmured, still wrapped up in thought.

Kinsale laughed again and placed a hand on Rose's shoulder.  Rose flinched involuntarily, but she made an effort not to shy away.  "I'm afraid you'll simply have to trust me on that one," said Kinsale, squeezing Rose's shoulder affectionately.  "I've known Maleficent since she was only a bit older than you are.  On we go."

Rose followed Kinsale out of the library contemplating an entirely new branch of questions.  How long ago had Maleficent been nearly Rose's age?  Rose had thought at first glance that Maleficent was fairly young—maybe in her thirties at most.  The thinness of her face emphasized the sharpness of her features and gave her an air of maturity, but she didn't have a single wrinkle.

But Maleficent had left the Dragon Country nearly a century ago.  Meaning she was more than a century old.

Apart from Maleficent's apparent deference to her, Kinsale generally appeared and gave off the air of being younger than Maleficent.  Her face was rounder, her voice was lighter, and she seemed altogether far less troubled, though that mostly proved to be somewhat disconcerting.

"This is my study, and it doubles as my mail room," said Kinsale, as she opened a door at the end of the hallway.  Behind the door were a few stairs which led to a large room with a high ceiling.  In the center of the room was a writing desk covered in loose papers and many unique, colourful quills.   The room was lined by huge windows which overlooked the hilly fields over which Rose and Maleficent had walked.  Occupying the windowsills were perhaps a dozen doves of varying colours, all of whom cooed happily at the sight of Kinsale.

"Oh!" Rose exclaimed with a smile.  "What lovely birds!"

"They're very friendly," Kinsale said with an encouraging smile.

Rose glanced back at her uncertainly, but her curiosity quickly won out, and she ventured toward the windowsill.  The birds cooed to her, as well, and when she smiled in response, one of them flew to her and lit upon her shoulder.  "Oh!" Rose breathed as she reached up to stroke the peach-coloured feathers above the dove's beak.  "Hello there!"  And perhaps it was an odd thought, but Rose found that she instantly liked Kinsale much better.

"I've always found birds to be very good judges of character, you know," said Kinsale, as though echoing Rose's own thoughts.

Rose turned back to her.  "Sometimes I think I understand birds better than I understand people," she said.

Kinsale tilted her head slightly, studying Rose, but the gesture didn't make Rose as uncomfortable as it had before.  "I do hope you'll take my offer of correspondence seriously," she said as she approached.  "It must be a difficult situation that brought you here, and Maleficent is a difficult person.  I may not be an ideal confidante for you, but I'd hate for you to feel you have no one to talk to."

Rose averted her eyes.  "Thank you," she said, and she found that the words were genuine.  "I think I'd like that.  To have someone to talk to."

Kinsale tapped Rose's chin lightly, and Rose did not flinch this time.  "You and Maleficent might have more in common than you think," said Kinsale.

Rose scoffed and shook her head.  "Maybe, but you said yourself she's not the easiest person to communicate with."

"Perhaps not," Kinsale sighed thoughtfully.  "Maybe..." she frowned, averted her gaze to the birds on the windowsill.  "Consider that the reasons she can be a bit...standoffish...aren't what you think they are.  Oh!"

Before Rose could ask for clarification, Kinsale moved past her to gaze at something outside.  Rose turned to look, too, but she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"It seems I have more unexpected guests," said Kinsale pleasantly.  Shortly after she had finished speaking, bells and alarms began sounding from everywhere and nowhere, and Rose yelped.  Not a second later, Maleficent appeared in a burst of green flame, which caused a fresh wave of terror to course through Rose's veins.

"What in Hell's name is that disdainful noise?" she snapped at Kinsale.

Kinsale seemed remarkably unconcerned.  She ignored Maleficent and waved her hands, and the alarms gave way to a heavy silence.  “Excuse me,” she said.  She touched two fingers to her throat and then, as she had when Maleficent and Rose had arrived, bellowed “WHO GOES THERE?”

The voice which responded came, as Kinsale’s voice and the alarm sounds had, from nowhere and everywhere.  It resonated in Briar Rose’s head and in her heart, and she felt as if there were no escape to be had, in this life or any other.

“Mistress Kinsale of the Valley?  This is Mistress Flora of the Three Kingdoms.  We have never met before, but my sisters and I have come on an errand of the utmost importance.  Can you spare us a few moments?”

Chapter Text

The sound of her Aunt Flora’s voice, so familiar and yet so very different, struck Briar Rose with the force of a physical blow.  She clasped a hand over her mouth to stifle a sudden and terrible sob.

Both Kinsale and Maleficent watched her expectantly, all dark eyes and inhuman stillness.

Rose shook her head.  “I can’t,” she breathed.  “I…  Oh, please, I can’t talk to them!  Not yet!”

Kinsale held one finger of her free hand to her lips in a shushing motion, then said, for the benefit of her visitors, “Why, Mistress Flora!”  Strange, to hear the same lightness in her tone while her features remained stoic, her brow subtly furrowed in thought.  “It will be a pleasure to make your acquaintance!  Please, come in.”

Kinsale removed her hand from her throat.  “What is it you want me to tell them, Highness?” she asked, rather gently.  “Shall I lead them off your trail?  Grant you a bit more time to think about it?”

Rose nodded, too overcome for further thought on the matter.  All she knew for sure was that she could not speak with her dear aunties now—not yet!

Kinsale nodded her silent understanding, still looking strangely lost in thought, and exited the mail room.  The sound of the door closing was followed by the click of a lock, but there was none on the door as far as Rose could tell.

Rose sank to her knees upon the floor and covered her face with her hands.  Oh, how guilty she felt for allowing her aunts to search far and wide for her, surely believing she was in mortal danger!  Indeed, had she not wondered from moment to moment whether that might be the case?  Suppose she had not realized that she was Maleficent’s prisoner only because she had not yet wanted to return to the Eastern Kingdom?  Suppose this were her only chance at a rescue, at a return to the life she left behind, and she had just given Kinsale the word to lead her aunties off her trail!

Briar Rose did not feel like a prisoner.  In fact, she felt she was just beginning to grasp at the barest beginnings of freedom, new and frightening and tenuous and wonderful.  If she looked at her dear, overbearing aunties, if she spoke to them, she would be well and truly overcome by the guilt that roiled in her stomach, and she would return with them whether or not she wished it.

And once she was back in King Stefan’s castle, well, there would be no leaving again anytime soon.

This, the memory of that beautiful room where the Princess Aurora was meant to lie with her Prince, where no one was meant to speak with her and she was not meant to learn anything but what others thought she ought to know, sent a fresh wave of sorrow coursing through Briar Rose, and she felt hot tears welling in her eyes once more.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed tremulously, perhaps for the inconvenience of her sorrow, or perhaps for daring to compare Maleficent’s company to the dreadful circumstance which had led Rose to flee.

Maleficent stood looming over Kinsale’s writing desk, appearing to contemplate the surface, itself, rather than the scattered papers atop it.  Her brow furrowed subtly.  “Is there…anything I can do?” she wondered quietly, more to the desk than to Rose.

Rose sighed heavily and shook her head, even though she knew Maleficent wasn’t looking at her.  “I feel so dreadful,” she whispered.  She tried to run a hand through her tangled hair, and somehow this small detail made matters infinitely worse.  “And oh, I must look a fright!” she cried.  “Why, I haven’t even combed my hair!  Some houseguest I am!”

Maleficent looked up suddenly, as though the words had surprised her.  She considered Rose for a moment with a subtle frown, then muttered, “Ah.”  She reached up into the air and pulled a lovely silver comb out of nowhere, then crossed the small distance between them to offer it to Rose.

Rose examined the comb with unmitigated fascination.  It was beautiful, exquisitely detailed, and Rose had not quite recovered from seeing it materialize out of nothing.  “You made this?” she breathed.  “Just now?”

“No, I never leave home without my invisible storage cabinets,” said Maleficent, with a look of utter disbelief.  She pushed the comb into Rose’s half-outstretched hand.  “Of course I made it.”

With magic, Rose almost said, stupidly, and she was rather glad she held her tongue.  “Thank you,” she managed, instead, and she quickly found herself profoundly glad of the mindless task of combing her hair.

She thought of the way her aunties used to do her hair when she was a little girl, one of the few normal things they’d been able to do, and seemed to enjoy.  Merryweather especially had loved to brush and braid Rose’s hair, sometimes over and over for what felt like hours.  Rose had never minded—it was nice to feel cared for.

“I wonder what they’re talking about,” said Rose idly.

Maleficent, who had returned her attention to Kinsale’s writing desk, waved her hand absently in the direction of the door.

"…originally wanted to speak to you about, if you don't mind?" Rose turned her head from the door back to Maleficent, awestruck yet again by magic, but Maleficent wasn’t paying any attention at all.

“Of course, of course,” said Kinsale, much of the warmth drained from her musical voice.

“Do you know of a Mistress Maleficent?” Flora asked her.

“Why, yes, of course,” said Kinsale.  “Why do you ask?”

“Maleficent recently caused a great deal of trouble in our homeland, the Eastern Kingdom,” said Flora.  “Are you aware of that?”

There was a way Aunt Flora spoke, quite often now that she had returned to her place in King Stefan’s court, that made Rose feel sick to her stomach.  All the warmth, all the kindness left her, and she seemed impossibly cold, even when she was acting out of care.

Kinsale, too, spoke in a different manner now, not unfriendly, but with a noticeable edge to her tone.  Indeed, although Rose had a hard time seeing Kinsale and Maleficent as very similar, she might liken Kinsale’s demeanour now to the way Maleficent often spoke when she was particularly on her guard.

Kinsale hummed thoughtfully.  “She put a curse on the king’s heir a handful of years ago, isn’t that right?  But I was sure I had heard that the child was quite all right in the end.  Is there something else?”

Rose wondered whether her beloved Aunt Flora would be as chilled as she by Kinsale’s cavalier attitude towards Maleficent’s curse.

“Quite all right, indeed!” Flora huffed.  “Maleficent’s curse has broken that poor child.  She couldn’t tell up from down after she awoke.  And her poor husband!  Why, he can hardly bear to be around her for all her confusion, and who can blame him?”

The words stung, and Rose felt her eyes beginning to well with tears once more.  Impossibly, she looked to Maleficent, hoping against reason for some sort of comfort, or even recognition of her pain, but Maleficent’s focus was still upon Kinsale’s writing desk.

Perhaps Briar Rose had gone utterly mad, hoping for comfort with the evil fairy who had cursed her to begin with.  Perhaps the Sleeping Curse had broken her.  How would she know?

“And Maleficent was defeated!  Slain through the heart!” Flora was saying, as though the matter were a tremendous annoyance.  “We wouldn’t have bothered locking her lifeless body in the dungeon if not for Mistress Felicity’s warning.”

Kinsale chuckled airily.  “I daresay Mistress Felicity spared you a tremendous shock.”

“What an odd thing to say!” said Flora, affronted.  “As though the shock we have received weren’t enough.”

“Forgive me, Mistress Flora,” said Kinsale, but she did not sound very sorry at all.  “Being a member of the dark fae, myself, you’ll understand that I’m already familiar with what you must have realized—our bodies are rather magnificent at rapid healing.”

Flora huffed her displeasure.  “You’ll understand my reluctance to agree with your glowing assessment.”

“Tell me,” said Kinsale, voice still tinged with good humour, “however did you manage to keep Maleficent in a dungeon at all, once she had recovered?”

Flora’s response was another tone that turned Rose’s stomach: one of haughtiness.  “I acquired the Chains of Avasina from Mistress Felicity,” she said, and Rose could just see the way she lifted her chin and peered down her nose smugly.

On the other hand, the thought of little Aunt Flora trying to look down upon someone so tall and so regal as Mistress Kinsale was a bit funnier than it was sickening.

“I see,” said Kinsale, as though this were a revelation to her.

“But they didn’t work,” Flora continued.

“Oh?” said Kinsale.

This caught Maleficent’s attention.  She looked up sharply.

“Did Felicity make the Chains?” Kinsale wondered.  “Her magic alone could not subdue someone as powerful as Maleficent.”

“No, Felicity did not make them,” Flora spat, as though she were chiding her sisters for saying something impossibly stupid.  Rose could not imagine looking upon Mistress Kinsale and daring to speak to her that way.  “The Chains came from the Mountainland Fairies, of course.”

“In that case,” said Kinsale, not a little flatly, “they’d have worked.”

“If that were the case,” Flora huffed, “then can you explain to me how Maleficent could have enchanted the princess to come down to the dungeon and set her free?”

“Hm,” said Maleficent quietly.  She turned away from the writing desk at last and went to the windows.  A bird lit on her shoulder and she reached up to stroke its head idly.

“I see your problem,” said Kinsale, as though she did--as though she believed it.

“I am such a coward,” said Briar Rose.

“Why?” Maleficent wondered, though she didn’t sound particularly interested.

“Hiding from them,” said Rose.  She shook her head sadly.  “Hiding from…everything.  They’re only trying to help me.”

“I would argue,” said Maleficent, “that they are trying to return you to where they think you belong.”

“That’s not…” Rose wanted to protest, but the words felt hollow.  “It can’t be true,” she tried, instead.  “Not…  I mean, they think I’m in danger!”

Maleficent turned over her shoulder to look down upon Rose at last, all shadow against the pale light of the sky behind her, as beautiful as she was formidable.  “Do you?”

Rose held Maleficent’s gaze for as long as she could bear it.  Overwhelmed, she looked away.  “I don’t know,” she confessed.  She felt embarrassed, and compelled to apologize for her mistrust.  After all, she had already surmised that if this was indeed her prison, it was infinitely preferable to the one she had left behind.  “I’m sorry,” she said to the floor.

“I am not offended, princess,” said Maleficent.  “It is wise to be wary of others’ motives, no matter the circumstance.”

Rose dared to look up then, more than a little surprised that Maleficent hadn’t snapped at her.  But perhaps Maleficent’s attention was elsewhere entirely, for she had gone back to staring out the window and stroking the head of the cooing dove upon her shoulder.

“—and then she disappeared, and took the poor princess along with her!”

“Oh, my,” said Kinsale, feigning sympathy alarmingly well.

“I am relieved that you can see our point of view,” said Flora, still in that chiding tone she used with her sisters, and moreso now with Briar Rose.  “So you can understand that we should very much like to find Maleficent before she can do the poor girl any more harm.  Have you any idea where she might have gone?”

Kinsale was silent a moment.  “I'm afraid I haven't seen Maleficent in many years,” she said.  “She once spent a bit of time in the Mountainlands, but aside from the Three Kingdoms, she's never stayed in one place for very long. I'm terribly sorry I can't be of more help."

She really did sound sorry.

“Where are the Mountainlands?” Rose asked Maleficent.

"Very far away," said Maleficent quietly. "North of the Sea Kingdom.”  She inhaled, hesitated, then turned over her shoulder once more.  “If you are hoping for a valiant rescue,” she said, “now might be the time to speak up.”

It was a strange thing to say, and Rose didn’t know what to make of it.  Was she in danger, after all?  Was Maleficent giving her one last sporting chance?  Was this all a game to her, a part of her sick and terrible plan to wreak havoc upon the Eastern Kingdom?

“I see,” Flora was saying.  “And you wouldn’t happen to know whether Maleficent has any connection to the Kingdom between Two Rivers, would you?”

"The Kingdom between Two Rivers," Kinsale echoed slowly. "Is that the one with the Dragon Country?"

"That's the one," said Flora.

"Well, that's the only connection that comes to mind,” said Kinsale lightly.  “Maleficent is a very talented shapeshifter, you know."

"All too well," Flora sighed. "Thank you,” she continued, with the air of someone who was trying very hard to be gracious, “for what information you could give. We'd best be on our way."

Rose swallowed hard, but there was a lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away, and she was acutely aware of her heart beating in her chest.  Aunt Flora thought she was in danger.  Aunt Flora had come all this way because she was worried for Rose, because she was trying to help her, and here Rose sat, hiding away with the very person who would have happily seen her dead not a handful of days prior!

"If it's any consolation to you," said Kinsale, "I sincerely doubt Maleficent has harmed the princess."

Flora scoffed.  “You’ll forgive me if I cannot believe it.”

“The princess saved Maleficent’s life by freeing her, did she not?” said Kinsale.  “Granted, I have not spoken with Maleficent in some time, but as I knew her, she would not be so quick to disregard such a debt.”

“You speak of her as though she acts with honour,” said Flora derisively.

“She’s hiding something, Flora.”

Oh, Merryweather!  Oh, how Rose missed the life she had once known, in her little cottage with her three loving aunties!  How foolish she had been, how ungrateful to wish for more than that!

“I’m sure it wouldn’t seem that way to you,” said Kinsale, not unkindly.  “But we dark fae are not immune to reason, or to mercy.”

Perhaps it was just the same now.  Perhaps Rose was selfish and thankless to wish for more than the new life from which she had fled.  After all, what kind of person would go from a commoner to a princess, would be married to a handsome prince who had risked his life to save her, and turn up her nose?  Perhaps one day she would look back upon this moment and wish desperately for what she had disregarded.

“Mistress Kinsale,” Flora spat, “it brings me no comfort that our sweet Aurora is in the clutches of a monster.  I am told your kind can feel some shadow of compassion, and yet I see none in you.”

“I am sorry you feel that way,” said Kinsale coolly.  “It seems we’ve nothing more to discuss.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Merryweather, not now.”

“I think you know exactly where Maleficent’s gone!” Merryweather cried.  Rose could just imagine it, the way her whole body shook with rage at the slightest provocation, the way she pointed her finger accusingly at anything that dared to wrong her.

 Rose adored all three of her aunties, but the ways in which Aunt Flora cared had always been harder for her to understand.  This, Merryweather’s outrage, wounded Briar Rose’s heart afresh.

“I bid you good day, ladies,” said Kinsale.  “I wish I could say it had been a pleasure, but—“

“No!  No, you’re hiding something, I know it!”

“Merryweather, please!”

“Oh, but I am a terrible coward!” Rose cried.  She ought to solve this, herself.  She ought to face her aunties and tell them—  Tell them—

Tell them what?

Rose turned her eyes upon Maleficent once more, still gazing out the window, lost in thought.  “I’m sure this must seem very trivial to you,” said Rose, not a little coldly.

“Hm?” Maleficent turned her head, and something subtle shifted in her sharp features when she noticed that Rose was crying.  She looked at the door then, as though she had just noticed the rising voices downstairs.

“Mistress Merryweather, I understand that you’re upset—“

“Upset!  Upset, she says!  Oh, it’s almost lifelike, really!”

“—but you really are making a bit of a spectacle of yourself.”

“Tell me what you know!  Tell me!”

“Merryweather—“

“I don’t care, Flora, I don’t care!  She knows where they are, I know it!”

Rose covered her mouth to stifle a fresh sob, anguished by the pain she had wrought and yet unable to bring herself to face it.  Maleficent turned her attention to Rose and she approached slowly, with something remarkably akin to hesitation in the way she held herself.  Maleficent knelt down beside Rose, hands folded upon her knee, eyes alight and searching.

Rose wiped a sleeve across her face and looked up into Maleficent’s eyes, feeling rather pitiful and plaintive.  “What am I to do?”

Maleficent’s brow furrowed subtly, and she inclined her head just by the slightest of degrees.  “Do as you wish, Briar Rose,” she said.

“But my aunties—“

“Think you’re in danger, yes,” said Maleficent.  “But you are not.”

“But if I let them keep thinking it—“

Maleficent quirked an expressive brow at her.  “Then they will worry,” she said, as though worrying were nothing.  As though worrying could not tear a person apart.  “And search for you.  Nothing less, to be certain, but also nothing more.”

“And…” Rose shook her head.  “And you don’t mind?”

The corner of Maleficent’s lips quirked into the smallest of smiles, perhaps a bit cruel, but decidedly genuine.  “I confess,” she said richly, “I don’t mind the notion of wasting a bit of their precious time.”

Rose almost felt like laughing.  “No, I mean…” she closed her eyes and shook her head again, searching for the words she needed.  “If I stay…  If I were to stay, with you.  Is that all right?”

Maleficent’s smile fell, but her eyes brightened, and her features seemed altogether just the tiniest bit softer.  She nodded slowly.  “Yes,” she said.  “If that’s what you wish.”

“You’re lying!  You lot always lie!”

“Merryweather!”

“She’s lying, Flora!  I know it!”

“But Mistress Kinsale, if you did know something else…”

“My, but the fae of the Eastern Kingdom lack something in the way of manners,” said Kinsale crisply.  “You have come into my home as my guests, I have treated you with the utmost civility, and yet you continue to insult me and my kin.  I shall have to ask you to be on your way, else you shall be forcibly removed from my presence.”

“You’ll have to drag me out!  I won’t leave until our little princess is safe, I won’t, I won’t!”

‘That can be arranged,” said Kinsale, far more darkly than Rose could have imagined.

Rose turned a wide, frightened gaze upon Maleficent.  She didn’t want to say the words, didn’t want to accuse Kinsale of cruelty when she had just done the same to Maleficent without much reason beyond the obvious.  But Maleficent couldn’t read her mind, and still looked at Rose like she was searching for the answer to a question at which Rose could only guess.

And what was it that Briar Rose was really after here?  What did she want that was simple and straightforward?

The answer came surprisingly easily: comfort.  She wanted to feel that everything would turn out all right, even despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  She wanted to feel…less alone, at least for a moment.  Perhaps not fully understood, but seen.

Impulsively, Briar Rose held out her hand to Maleficent.

Maleficent’s gaze darted downward to Rose’s outstretched hand and back up again, perhaps more bewildered than before.

“—then I guess you won’t mind if we have a look around!”

“Merryweather, that’s enough!”

“I’m afraid I do not extend such invitations to those who insult me.”

“Oh, that’s awfully convenient, isn’t it!”

“Merryweather, please, let’s just go—“ this from Aunt Fauna, who so seldom spoke in official settings, whose voice was soft and sweet and whose intentions were always pure.

Maleficent took Rose’s outstretched hand, just by the fingertips, and this proved more than enough to distract Rose from her inner turmoil.  Maleficent’s fingers were unusually long and ice-cold, but her touch was surprisingly gentle.  Rose returned her attention to Maleficent, eyes wide with delighted surprise, and just the barest beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

Maleficent’s brow furrowed and she averted her gaze, almost awkwardly, but she did not let go of Rose’s hand.  After what felt like an eternity, suspended in time, Maleficent’s thumb brushed idly across the tops of Rose’s fingers.

“Ladies, I’m afraid this is your final warning,” said Kinsale.

“Merryweather, come on!”

“I’ll fight you myself if I must!”

Kinsale let out a little huff of mirthless laughter, so far removed from the sweet musicality of her voice before that it didn’t seem like the same person at all.  “Oh, I’d like to see you try,” she said darkly.  “Begone!”

There was a terrible crash, like thunder followed by the rush of a storm, and Maleficent withdrew her hand with a small exclamation of pain.  She looked up at the door.  “My spell went out,” she murmured.

“Oh, she didn’t hurt them, did she?”

The door unlocked itself and banged against the wall as it opened, and Kinsale reappeared looking ever so slightly disheveled.  “No, no,” she said.  “Your little fairies are quite all right.  I do apologize for all that—I fear my temper got the better of me in the end.”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Maleficent muttered as she drew herself to her feet.  To Rose’s surprise, she offered her hand to Rose to help her stand.

“I take it you’re close with the Eastern Fairies, Highness?” Kinsale asked her.

Rose stood with Maleficent’s help while she tried to put her racing thoughts into words.  “It’s…I feel very badly for making them worry, really.”

Kinsale waved a hand dismissively.  “Oh, I daresay they’ll recover.  Indeed, it might do them a bit of good to see the world outside their little kingdom.  Who can say where they’ll go next, but in the event that they do make their way to your home in the Dragon Country, you are of course welcome to come back and visit.  That is to say—“ Kinsale’s attention shifted over Rose’s shoulder to look at Maleficent, and something about her expression changed in a way Rose could not understand, “—if you would prefer to avoid the confrontation.”

Maleficent didn’t quite meet Kinsale’s gaze.  “Thank you, Kinsale,” she said, somewhat absently, and in the general direction of the far wall.

“Won’t you stay the night, darling?” Kinsale asked her, with a subtle step forward and a tilt of the head meant to capture attention.  “I’ve plenty of room, and I’d be very glad of the company.”

Maleficent’s brow furrowed subtly, and though she did look at Kinsale, something about her eyes said she was still very far away.  She inhaled as though to speak, then hesitated a moment.  “Another time,” she said.  “Thank you again for your hospitality.”

“Suit yourself,” said Kinsale.  She turned her attention to Rose.  “And I do hope you’ll write me if ever the mood strikes you—I do so love receiving mail!”

Rose smiled, not a little awkwardly, and nodded.  “Thank you,” she said.  Then, like an impulse, added, “I will.”  She would.  She could already think of countless things she’d like to ask Kinsale, and it would be lovely to have someone to talk to who seemed far more inclined to conversation in general.

Kinsale showed them out, and just as Maleficent made to pass her by, Kinsale took her by the arm.  “Maleficent,” she said, softer and far less certain than before.  Rose remembered the way Maleficent had lashed out when she’d been startled and winced in anticipation.  Maleficent, herself, winced just a little, and turned her attention rather sharply upon her assailant, but she did not attack, and she did not push Kinsale away.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Kinsale continued.  Her musical voice held such emotion that Rose felt suddenly rather uncomfortable, like she was intruding upon a moment that ought to be private.  “It really was very nice to see you again.”

To Rose’s immense surprise, Maleficent’s sharp features softened considerably.  She took Kinsale’s hand from her arm and reached for the other, as well.  “You are, as ever, far more generous than I deserve,” she said, with a gravity that belied the simplicity of her words.  She bent at the waist in a low and regal bow and touched Kinsale’s knuckles to her forehead.

Mistress Acacia was described as a small, willowy sort of person with a shock of black hair and skin and eyes like sea glass, whatever that meant.  She was said to be generally well-liked, perhaps because she was neither naturally powerful nor ambitious, and many described her as a simpleton with little understanding of herself or the world around her.

Mistress Kinsale assured the reader that this was not the case, but a fabrication crafted both by the well-meaning and the vicious.  Briar Rose did not understand this assertion, either, and made a note to ask Kinsale about it in her letter.  The vast majority of sane-minded wicked fairies, wrote Mistress Kinsale, found Acacia to be intelligent and charming, although understandably reserved, given her precarious situation in the Sea Kingdom.

There was a footnote which read: It is worthwhile to note that the available pool of sane-minded wicked fairies is not a large one.

Rose wasn’t certain what to make of that.  Indeed, she wasn’t certain what to make of Mistress Kinsale as a whole.  She’d found Kinsale to be far more fascinating than frightening, far more welcoming than disconcerting, and there was certainly something to be said for someone with whom Briar Rose did not find conversation difficult.

The thought of her fairy aunties came to the forefront of her mind, and her stomach lurched in response.  She still felt dreadfully for hiding from them, and for running from them in the first place, but what could she have said?  Briar Rose scarcely knew her own mind well enough to put it into words, and whenever she managed it, she was so seldom heeded!  Why, Phillip and her aunties could scarcely stand to be around her now—Flora had said it herself, and to a stranger, no less!—and when they deigned to speak to her at all, it was only to tell her how wonderful everything was and how happy she ought to be!

Perhaps Briar Rose was hesitant to speak with either Maleficent or Kinsale, frightened of embarrassing herself or having nothing worth saying to creatures with experience so far beyond anything she could possibly imagine.  But oh!  What a joy that she might speak freely at all!

Rose placed a bookmark in the Biography of Mistress Acacia and traced the cover fondly.  In her periphery, she could not help but to notice another book, which she could have sworn had not been sitting upon the dresser a moment prior.  It was The Big Book of Spells, Volume IV.

Rose stood and stared down upon it, inexplicably panic-stricken at the mere sight of it.  Maleficent had offered it to her earlier to do with as she pleased—to destroy, if she wished it—but somehow it felt like so much more than that.

She touched the cover, hesitantly, with just the tips of her fingers, and felt rather foolish for doing so.  The item itself wasn’t magical.  She flipped open the cover with a bit more abandon, although there remained a part of her that expected something terrible to jump out at her from the pages.

Changing the colour of objects, read the first page.

Briar Rose thought of her birthday dress, which turned into her wedding dress, and the way Aunt Flora and Aunt Merryweather had argued endlessly about whether it ought to be pink or blue, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or to cry.

She flipped to another page, and then another.  Baking cookies, wrapping gifts, tending flowers, mending clothes…

"You could learn, you know," said Maleficent from the doorway.

Rose very nearly dropped the book for how it startled her.  “What?” she stammered.

“Magic,” said Maleficent.  “You could learn.”

“No,” said Rose.  She felt her heart racing, felt as though all the air had suddenly left the room.  “No, that’s not possible.”

Maleficent inclined her head curiously.  “If it were impossible, why would I say such a thing?”

“It’s not,” Briar Rose insisted.  “It isn’t.  It can’t be.  And even if it were, I couldn’t--!  I would never!  Magic is…it—“

Maleficent quirked a brow, perhaps a bit dangerously.  “Magic is what?” she prodded.

Rose averted her gaze and began to wring her hands.  “Magic only…complicates everything.”

“As you say,” said Maleficent.  “Although without any knowledge of magic, I don’t know what you hope to gain from reading the Big Book of Spells.  The text itself is far from scintillating.”

“And with magical knowledge, I might gain something from it?” Rose wondered.  “You didn’t seem to find it very helpful.”

“Then you were considering my offer?” Maleficent wondered.

“Offer?” Rose echoed, more from a rush of nerves than because she had forgotten.

“Of destroying it,” Maleficent supplied, anyway.

“Oh, I…  I don’t think I could…”

Maleficent regarded her a moment in studious silence.  “Far be it from me to distract you from the driest read imaginable, but would you perhaps care to have a cup of tea with me, instead?”

“Oh!” Rose looked up, excited and more than a little relieved for this unexpected turn in the conversation.  “Oh, yes!” she cried, and eagerly followed Maleficent downstairs.

“So, tell me,” said Maleficent while she poured.  “How did you find Mistress Kinsale?”

“Oh, she was…” The memory of their meeting with Mistress Kinsale near-overwhelmed her with thoughts and observations and vague feelings she could not name.  She felt like she ought to choose her words carefully, for Kinsale was obviously an old friend of Maleficent’s, and who could say what a friendship that could span centuries might be like?  But there was too much to think about, and Briar Rose was practically brimming with questions she didn’t even have the words to ask.  “Fascinating!” she managed at last.  Then, more cautiously, she added, “Not…what I would have expected.”

Maleficent let out a quiet chuckle.  “You were expecting someone more like myself, perhaps?”

Rose shrugged, embarrassed, and turned her attention to her tea.  “Perhaps.”

Maleficent curled her long fingers around her own teacup and held it thoughtfully for a moment.  “You may learn in time that we are both rather unusual for our kind,” she said.

“It’s funny,” Rose began, before she had fully decided to speak at all.  “She seemed so…friendly, at first.  Warm.  I might have forgotten that she was…”

“What?” Maleficent prodded after a moment’s silence.  “Dangerous?”

“Well,” Rose averted her eyes.  “Yes.”

But Maleficent nodded serenely, apparently unoffended by Rose’s assessment.  “One might argue that Kinsale’s demeanour is far more malicious than one such as mine, that she controls her victims through kindness rather than fear.”

“Oh,” Rose uttered.  Her stomach twisted uncomfortably at the notion.

“You are disappointed?” Maleficent wondered.

“Well,” said Rose again, “yes.  I suppose I am.  I’d thought…but perhaps it was foolish of me.”

“I don’t mean to say that it’s entirely true,” said Maleficent.  “Only that one could argue it.”

Rose looked up, bewildered.  “Then what is the truth?” she very nearly demanded.

Maleficent raised her chin and looked down her nose in the manner that suggested she was issuing a challenge.  “Who can say, really?  None of us can ever truly know what lies in another’s heart.”

“But you know her!” Rose shook her head incredulously.  “Why, I’d even dare to guess that you once knew her very well!”

“I did,” Maleficent nodded, unperturbed as ever in the face of Briar Rose’s emotional outburst.  “And in that time, I saw Kinsale act with what appeared to be genuine kindness, and I saw her twist that kindness to suit her own ends.  Who am I to say which is truer?”

“But then, what am I to make of her?” Rose insisted, rather miserably.

“What, indeed?” Maleficent agreed.  “I can tell you with certainty that it would be a grave error to underestimate her power, or her willingness to use it, because of her cheerful disposition.  However, I can also tell you that Kinsale does genuinely enjoy the company of humans, far more than any other wicked fairy I’ve met, at least.  She would truly enjoy it if you were to write to her.”

Rose leaned back in her seat, struggling to process what Maleficent had told her.  “I’d like to,” she said.  “Only I don’t write very well.  There’s so much I’d like to ask her, but…”  Perhaps appropriately, Briar Rose was unable to articulate the way that words so often seemed to fail her, to fall short of what she meant if she managed any at all.

“Oughtn’t your little fairies to have taught you?” Maleficent wondered.

“They tried,” said Rose.  “They did, really!  It’s…I wasn’t a very good student.  I never thought…”

So much to learn now, so much she never thought she’d have any use for.  What good was a peasant girl who could read and write, recite obscure literature, or name a bunch of far-off places and their rulers?

“Perhaps it might have been easier, had you been made aware of your situation,” Maleficent suggested.

Rose let out a little huff of disbelief.  “I can’t imagine, honestly.”

 “I wonder,” Maleficent continued.  “Why do you suppose it is you weren’t permitted to know the truth?”

Dread settled in Rose’s stomach, and a very large part of her wanted to say that she didn’t want to talk about it, perhaps even storm out of the room entirely to avoid any further questions on the matter.  Instead, she took a long sip of her tea and tried to take a deep breath.  “Because…they were afraid if I spoke to someone, I might…might give myself away.”

“But they forbade you from speaking to strangers.”

“Well, yes—“

“And you did as they asked?”

“Well,” Rose stammered.  “Yes.  Apart from the one time, but Phillip kept pestering me, and I was so very lonely, and…well.”

“Then, the question remains,” said Maleficent, stoic as ever.  “Why couldn’t you have known?”

Rose frowned deeply into her tea.  She hadn’t really tried to think of a reason.  In truth, it had not occurred to her that things could have been any different than they were.  “Perhaps…perhaps they thought I’d be frightened.”

“Is that all?”

“I don’t know!” Rose snapped, quite suddenly.  “I don’t know why, all right?  Perhaps it was as nothing to them!  Perhaps they thought I’d be so happy to learn that I was a princess that nothing else would even…even matter to me!  Is that what you want to hear?”

Maleficent remained, as ever, infuriatingly impassive.  “It is a dream come true, is it not?  A simple maiden becomes a princess overnight, marries a handsome prince, and lives happily ever after?”

“No!” Rose stood from the table, dizzy with rage, and the teaset shivered dangerously.  Distantly, she realized there were tears in her eyes.  “Not mine!  Not my dream!  I was happy!  Oh, sure, I made up stories about falling in love, but it was never meant to be real!  It wasn’t!  I did not ask for this!”

Maleficent regarded her with an unreadable expression.  Her features were soft, but her eyes shone with intention.  “Who are you trying to convince, Briar Rose?”

“You, of course!” Rose cried, incredulously.

“But I believe you,” said Maleficent.

“You—“  Rose felt suddenly rather hollow, and she sank slowly back into her seat.  “You do?”

“I think perhaps you feel guilty without cause,” Maleficent continued.  “Certain though you are that the life of a princess was not to your liking, you cannot help but to wonder whether your idlest of daydreams betrayed your truest desires.”

Rose wrapped her arms about herself subconsciously, feeling suddenly very exposed.  “Something like that.”

There was a moment’s silence.  “Have I offended you?”

“No,” said Rose, and she found with some surprise that this was the truth.  “It’s only…”  She looked up.  “If you believed me all along, then why did you keep pressing the issue like that?”

Maleficent lifted a shoulder.  Rose had never seen a shrug look so elegant, or so purposeful.  “Merely making conversation, Highness,” she said.  “Do you not find it stimulating?”

Rose let out a little huff.  “Perhaps a bit too much so.”

Maleficent scoffed quietly.  “Would you prefer to lounge about in your castle, talking only of how wonderful everything is, and how much you agree with everyone?”

Impossibly, Rose felt herself beginning to smile.  “I suppose not,” she conceded.  “Shall I take that to mean you speak with everyone this way?”

“Hardly,” said Maleficent, much to Rose’s surprise, and secret delight.

“I…confess, I do wonder whether you’ve always spoken so well,” said Rose.  “I feel I’m always tripping over my words, especially when I’m upset.”

“Well,” said Maleficent, with the faintest beginnings of a smile, “I did have two older sisters.  Common arguments were inevitable.”

Rose felt herself startle at the willing mention of Maleficent’s sisters.  She’d wanted so badly to ask more about them without upsetting Maleficent unnecessarily.  “What were they like?” she pressed, gently.  “Your sisters, I mean.”

Maleficent’s expression fell, but she answered.  “The eldest, Seraphina, is the one whose clothes you wear.  She was…spirited, to say the least.  All fire and contention, always looking for a fight, or a rule to break.  My middle sister, in whose room you dwell, was called Acacia.”

“Oh!”

“Curious, isn’t it?” said Maleficent, but she had a very distant look about her, not unlike the way she’d spent half their time at Kinsale’s manor staring out the window, lost in thought.  “Acacia is a name as infamous as Avasina among my kind.  I daresay Kinsale might have given everything she owns to know the true reason behind the namesake.”

“Did she never ask?” Rose wondered.

Maleficent’s brow furrowed subtly, and Rose felt a pang of regret for pushing too far.  Still, Maleficent answered.  “Poor Acacia was a sensitive soul.  A poor fit for the life of a wicked fairy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Rose, for there was nothing else to say.

Maleficent looked up suddenly.  She waved her hand, and after a moment, a book came floating into the room.  Maleficent caught it, opened the cover, and handed it to Rose.

The Biography of Mistress Acacia, second edition, Rose read.  Beneath the title, there was an ink drawing of what Rose could only assume must be Acacia.  Then, a little lower on the page,

Dedicated to the memory of Mistress Acacia of the Dragon Country,
and to her loving sister.

“Oh!” Rose breathed, and touched her fingers to her lips in a vain effort to stay her imminent tears.  “That’s…well, it’s very kind, isn’t it?”

“I thought so,” said Maleficent quietly.

Briar Rose traced her fingers over the dedication again and again, thought of what she had observed of Mistress Kinsale and of what Maleficent had said of her, and found that she was trying to come to some sort of conclusion she hardly understood.  Finally, she closed the book and handed it back to Maleficent, who sent it floating back to wherever it had come from.  They finished their tea in silence, but it was not tense or strained.  Indeed, it felt quite companionable.

The Big Book of Spells, Volume IV, wasn’t dedicated to anyone.

There were numerous authors, all with little pictures that might as well have been Rose’s aunties, for how similar they looked.  The book began with changing the colour of objects and ended with how to enchant a pair of knitting needles.

Rose could not understand any of the actual spells—they swirled and melted together like spilt ink.  She traced her fingers along the unintelligible patterns and wondered idly how they looked and sounded.  Were they words a fairy might speak?  How were they pronounced?

How might a book of Maleficent’s spells look?  What was the shape of the spell that had sentenced Briar Rose to death?

Countless spells, far more than four volume could contain.  What was the spell that turned Maleficent into a fearsome dragon?  How had a fairy created the magical Chains of Avasina so that they had no key but always served their purpose?  How had Aunt Merryweather taken Maleficent’s spell and rewritten it, so that Briar Rose might sleep, instead?

Were they all just meaningless scribbles?  Blots of spilt ink that had shaped the entirely of Briar Rose’s existence?

Rose flipped through the book again, stopping to glare at random pages.  How to bake a cake, how to enchant a room, how to end a life—what did it matter?  By mere chance, these women had been given a power which Rose, which all of humankind had not, and so, by that chance, they were free to rewrite the laws of nature as they saw fit.

Briar Rose slammed the book closed and turned away from it, overcome with a surging, sickening kind of anger.  All of the ills that had befallen her because of magic, great and small, from an evil curse to a dress that changed colours, and she could do nothing but to accept her fate, one way or another.  You cannot wish away all the magic in the world, Maleficent had said, and Briar Rose had felt her words like weights upon her ankles, dragging her under.  No escape, not really, not ever—

Rose turned upon the book once more, flipped open the cover, and tore out a page.  A cold kind of panic surged through her once she realized what she had done.  Now she looked upon the picture of Mistress Hilda of the Mountainlands, whose coiffed hair and haughty smile reminded her very much of Aunt Flora.

She ripped that page out, too.

A terrible feeling overcame her then, somehow indistinguishable as either rage or maniacal joy, and Briar Rose ripped out page after page after page and tossed them up into the air.  Baking a cake—rip!  Tending a garden—rip!  Enchanting a broom—rip, rip, rip!

At last—and this gave her a tremendous thrill—she heaved the book's cover, now devoid of pages, directly at the bedroom door, where it landed with a resounding thud.  Rose stood among the wreckage, her ragged breathing the only sound in the eerie silence of the Dragon Country, until, not a moment later, three gentle knocks sounded upon the other side of the door.

Rose could not bring herself to speak.  She could not even move.

Maleficent opened the door, unmoved as ever by the sight that greeted her.

“What a shame,” said Maleficent.  “However shall I learn to enchant knitting needles now?”

Panic washed over Briar Rose like icy water, and she began frantically stammering her apologies.  “Oh no, oh dear, I am sorry, I thought you—but it must be here somewhere, and I didn’t mean--  I can find it, I will!  I’ll just—“

Maleficent held up a hand.  Rose fell silent.

“The Eastern Kingdom has never learned to appreciate my sense of humour,” said Maleficent.  “First of all,” she held out her hand and a piece of paper emerged from the pile upon the floor to fly to her.  She showed Rose the page.  Enchanting Knitting Needles.

“Second,” said Maleficent, “there is a wicked fairy spell for knitting needles.  Whyever would I want to use this one?”

Rose could not gather the wherewithal to speak.  She stood in silent shock, unable even to feel indignant at what had apparently been rather harmless teasing.

After a moment’s silence, an idea seemed to occur to Maleficent, and she pulled from thin air what appeared to be a long matchstick.  She blew upon the match and it caught fire—the strange, green flame Rose had heard about in stories and, she realized suddenly, had witnessed for herself.

Maleficent held the matchstick out to her.

Rose could scarcely breathe.

“There’s no need to worry,” said Maleficent, still with the lightness of a joke.  “If ever you decide you want to learn, I can teach you.”

Rose took a tentative step forward.  Distantly, she realized she was trembling all over.

“And,” Maleficent added, with a little tilt of her head, “I won’t tease you anymore about wanting the book back.”

Rose felt herself reaching out without realizing it.  She stayed her shaking hand and curled it into a fist.  She looked up into Maleficent’s eyes.  “Promise?”

All the mockery, and much of the mirth left Maleficent’s sharp features.  She nodded, quite sincerely.  “I promise,” she said.

Rose took the matchstick between her fingers.  She felt a surge of something indescribable, coursing through her hand and up to her elbow, warm and almost painful.  It surprised her so that she nearly dropped the match, and brought her other hand hurriedly up to steady her grasp.

The green flame flickered, dimmed, then stabilized.

"As I suspected," said Maleficent, reverently.

"What?" Rose breathed.

"You have magic."

Chapter Text

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Merryweather had yet to calm down from their highly unsuccessful visit to Mistress Kinsale of the Valley.

“She knows,” Merryweather would mutter miserably every half-hour or so.  “She knows where they are.”

“Perhaps, dear,” Fauna tried, “but—“

“But,” Flora interrupted, well past the limits of her admittedly limited patience, “now that we’ve made fools of ourselves, we’re not going to get that information from her, now, are we?”

Merryweather humphed her displeasure.  “So, what?  We’re meant to follow her advice?  Even though it’s probably a wild goose chase to who-knows-where?”

“Suppose it is true, hmm?” Flora demanded.  “What then?  What if she thought that we wouldn’t believe her, and so she told us exactly where Maleficent is, and then we didn’t go and check?”

“Oh, what if,” Merryweather scoffed.

“And now that we know Mistress Kinsale is most likely on Maleficent’s side—“

“Most likely?” Merryweather erupted.  “They’re wicked fairies, Flora!  Why, I could have saved you this whole trip!”

“—we know that we ought to be prepared before we try to seek Maleficent out, wherever she may be.”

“And the Dragon Country?” Fauna wondered.

Flora shook her head dismissively.  “It’s not high on my list of priorities, I’ll tell you that much.  For one thing, I don’t know of a single good fairy who lives nearby.  Speaking of which, let’s hurry along.  Felicity will be waiting.”

Mistress Kinsale’s sprawling home stood in the deepest part of the valley for which the nearby kingdom was named.  Mistress Felicity, her sisters, and usually a whole assortment of visitors lived atop one of the highest hills in the neighbouring land.

Flora seemed to genuinely like Mistress Felicity, something that her sisters couldn’t rightly say they had observed about anyone else in their entire lives.  Though Fauna wouldn’t dare admit it, and even Merryweather usually held her tongue, both found Felicity to be somewhat grating, not least for the strange company she kept, and for the apparent affectedness of her demeanour.

Felicity’s security system was not nearly what Mistress Kinsale’s was.  Indeed, the three little fairies merely flew up to her front door and knocked.

Felicity threw open the door with a bright smile which did not reach her eyes.  “Flora, darling!” she enthused.  “It’s been ages!  Oh, and you’ve brought your sisters, how wonderful,” she added, as an afterthought.

“Felicity, dear, thank you so much for meeting with us on such short notice,” Flora was saying.

Fauna was reminded of seeing Mistress Sara for the first time, and what it had meant to her to learn that a fairy could do so much more than Fauna had ever dreamed of.  She wondered if it was the same for Flora.  Mistress Felicity had powerful magic and powerful connections, and Flora surely admired that.

“Oh, not at all, Flora!” said Felicity.  “Your definition of short notice is my sisters’ definition of planning ahead.  Please, sit.  Tea?”

“Oh, that would be lovely!”  But before Flora had even finished speaking, Felicity had conjured a lovely little tea set upon the table between them.

“I confess I am a little surprised to see you here just now,” said Felicity as she took up her teacup.  “I’d have expected the whole Three Kingdoms to be beside itself with celebration!”

Flora’s mood darkened significantly.  “Circumstances have changed since last I wrote you,” she said.  “Maleficent survived the blow from the Sword of Truth, and the Chains of Avasina did not contain her.”

Felicity’s strange mask of pleasantness cracked abruptly.  “I beg your pardon?”

Flora looked up from her tea, nonplussed.

“Maleficent survived the blow from the Sword of Truth,” Felicity repeated, slowly, like she didn’t understand the words, “and the Chains of Avasina—I don’t understand what you mean.”

Flora stuttered, unsure of how to proceed.  “What more is there to say?  Maleficent escaped the Chains and kidnapped the Princess.  Goodness knows where she is now.  The kingdom is in an uproar.”

“Maleficent…escaped….the Chains…”

“Yes, and kidnapped the Princess!” Flora repeated, growing frustrated.

“Flora, the Chains never fail.  The Chains were perfected over the span of centuries.  If the Chains were to fail, that would mean—“ Felicity averted her gaze.  Fauna had never seen her looking so genuine.  “I don’t even want to think about what it would mean.”

“What would it mean?” Merryweather demanded suddenly.

Felicity looked up, surprised.  “You said Maleficent escaped the Chains?  No one helped her?”

“Who would have helped her?” Merryweather threw her arms out emphatically.

Felicity touched her fingertips to her lips and frowned deeply.  “Mistress Sara will want to know of this at once.”

“Mistress Sara?”  This from Flora, who had not quite intended to speak aloud.

“She’ll know what to do,” Felicity nodded, as though they ought to understand exactly what she meant.  “If Maleficent will not yield to the combined power of the Mountainland Fairies, well then…”

“Well, that is why we’ve come to see you,” Flora chimed in again, in the way that indicated she was eager to regain control of the conversation.

“Oh?” Felicity looked at her, not a little sharply.  “I see.  I can try to arrange a meeting for you, but I don’t hold all that much influence in the Sea Kingdom.  Perhaps I could send you to—“

“No, no,” Flora waved her hands.  “We were hoping you could help us to assemble a force to go after Maleficent.”

“A force,” Felicity echoed flatly.

“It wouldn’t have to be too large,” Flora clarified.  “We’ve already imprisoned her once, after all.  Only we’d need—“

Felicity stood suddenly, sharply, and all three fairy sisters jolted with surprise.  “Do you realize what you’re saying?” she demanded.  “You had the help of magical artifacts well beyond your own skill.  Somehow you managed to wound her—by sheer dumb luck, I daresay—and to keep her imprisoned for a handful of days, after which she kidnapped the very princess you’ve risked your lives and your magic to protect.  You’ve no idea where she’s gone, nor what vile plans she has for the princess or for your kingdom, and you want to, what?”  Felicity laughed sharply.  “Gather a group of friends and try again?”

“Well.  No, not like…  I didn’t—“

“What?”  Felicity’s lovely face contorted into something like a sneer.  “Think of it that way?”

Flora stared, mouth slightly ajar, speechless.

Felicity closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.  She shook her head, almost sadly.  “Have you any idea what is going on outside of your own little kingdom?”

In fact, though perhaps Flora would be the most loath among them to admit it, they did not.  And although Felicity made a great show of sighing her displeasure, she was the sort of person who delighted in telling everyone’s business to anyone who would listen, in no more and no less than precisely the way that she personally perceived it.

Dearest Aurora,

What a thrill to receive your letter!  I had dearly hoped you might take my offer of correspondence seriously, and I am delighted to hear that you are enjoying the story of Mistress Acacia.

Perhaps this won’t be apparent to you as a non-fairy reader, but it is not unusual for wicked fairy mothers to murder their children.  It happens most often in the year after birth, when the mother finds herself physically and emotionally incapable of caring for her child, and this is, more often than not, an accident.  Almost as common is around the time the child is fifteen to twenty, and has really begun to show magical promise.  A wicked fairy’s magic has a profound influence upon the world around her, and as such it’s uncommon for more than one wicked fairy to live in the same area.  The mother can become paranoid that her child will want the land for herself, and she will attack before the child is old enough to properly defend herself.  This should explain to you why Mistress Cordelia’s many children left the Sea Kingdom as soon as they were able, and why it is something of a curiosity that Acacia did not.

Acacia’s magic, health, and intellect were often called into question in the years leading up to her trial, by her advocates as well as her enemies.  Perhaps your time away from the palace has spared you this phenomenon.  Those who wished to frighten everyday humans and light fairies painted Acacia as something foreign to their sensibilities, something to be feared and mistrusted.  Those who wished to protect Acacia painted her as something not to be feared, but pitied.  They made her out to be incapable of the acts of which she’d been accused, not from any practical or moral standpoint, but from one of physical inability, which surely did her far more harm than good in the end.

Acacia’s magic was, by most accounts, not strong, but neither is that of Mistress Joy of the Desertlands, and she has accomplished many feats of complicated magic that many would have considered far beyond her natural ability.  It is possible that Acacia was not particularly healthy, and remained in the Sea Kingdom for this reason, but it would be anomalous, as the dark fae are naturally quite hearty, and there’s nothing other than incredibly biased nonsense to support the theory.

You seem deeply conflicted regarding the discovery of your own magical ability, but it should not come as a surprise.  Most royal children are given small magical gifts by the light fae in their land.  Assuming nothing has gone terribly amiss in your family history, magic has been in your blood for generations, and any human with even a touch of magic is predisposed to call upon it to some degree.  As you’ve been touched by Maleficent’s magic since your conception, you’re likely to have considerably greater power at your disposal than most of your kin.

The spells of the light fae look like spilt ink to me, too, actually.  It’s always baffled me that Maleficent can read and use them with no trouble.  After many years of study, I can scarcely make them out at all, and I’ve never used one for fear it might go horribly wrong.  Perhaps you ought to take a look at a wicked fairy’s spell?  Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a Big Book of Spells for the dark fae.  Basic spells are generally passed down from mother to child, but most families keep a small notebook of basic spells scribbled down in case something dreadful should happen.  You could ask Maleficent if Adara kept one, but the more useful ones have been published.

As to the moral conflict you seem to be expressing, I realize that you must feel utterly victimized by the magic that has touched your life, and I can understand how you would want nothing to do with the force which has harmed you so much. An argument could be made that magic is a tragically unnecessary complication in a world already filled to the brim with sorrow; however, we cannot deny it from existence. I'm not certain what your intentions are, but you must know that if you continue to live among fairies, magic will always be a threat to you. It's true that you could find yourself some secluded, non-magical corner of the world in which to live out your life free of the stuff, but I imagine another move to a place full of unfamiliar faces would be very lonely indeed, and even that would be no guarantee of your freedom from magic forever.

If, however, you intend for any length of time to remain in the midst of the likes of Maleficent and me, we and our kin have an unfair advantage over you. You will always require the protection of someone with magical training in order to do anything or go anywhere without putting your life in imminent danger. Would it not be in your best interest to attempt to level the field? My advice to you would be to learn some defensive magic for your own safety. In this way, you won’t be using magic in a manner that goes against the dictates of your heart.

Additionally, you’ll get Maleficent off your case.  I’m sure you feel that she’s pressing the issue or trying to manipulate you, but I assure you it’s only that she hates to see a talent go to waste, and perhaps also that she is similarly concerned for your safety in the company of fairies.  I do applaud you for holding out—she can be most exhausting when she wants something.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but if you do decide to pursue the art of magic, certainly with Maleficent, but most especially under the tutelage of anyone else, make certain that it is always on your own terms.

Oh, I almost forgot!  I’d be delighted to offer you some book suggestions, but I fear I don’t know just what will strike your fancy!  Mistress Hilde of the Mountainlands is quite the prolific writer.  In addition to her tremendous contribution to the Big Book of Spells series, she’s written many biographies of the great light fae, mostly aimed at younger or less experienced readers.  She’s written quite a lot on Mistress Sara, being one of her chief advisers, but it all reads a bit like propaganda to me.  Her earlier works might interest you, though.  I’m afraid I have the market cornered on wicked fairy biographies, but I imagine Maleficent has a copy of Mistress Joy, which you might find worthwhile.  Mistress Konstanze of the Dark Forest writes lovely fiction—mostly romance.  I doubt Maleficent has any of those, so I’ve sent along one of my favourites. 

I fear I’ve droned on long enough for one letter.  Do be kind to my poor messenger bird and give her a pat on the head for her efforts!  I hope to hear from you again soon!

Warm regards,
Mistress Kinsale

Mistress Kinsale’s handwriting was neat and easy to read.  Without the strange contradiction of her presence, it was easy for Briar Rose to think of her words as warm, and of her concern as genuine.  This, coupled with the unmitigated joy of receiving a letter delivered by a dove who cooed sweetly upon her windowsill while she read, endeared Kinsale to Rose quite significantly, and she felt certain that she would write again very soon.

A little over a fortnight had passed since Rose had discovered her magical ability.  Rose was bizarrely certain that Maleficent meant no ill in encouraging her to learn, but until she’d read the words from Kinsale, she hadn’t been able to fully believe in her own intuition.

The letter had also put into words a need she hadn’t been able to express for herself—that if she were to learn magic, it must be on her own terms.  Setting her fear of magic aside, she knew very well that she was rather predisposed to becoming swept away in the excitement of the moment, and she could only imagine what manner of disaster this might wreak when coupled with the danger of magic, not to mention the power Maleficent could wield with mere words.

Rose and Maleficent had formed an uneasy camaraderie, but the nature of their relationship remained unnervingly out of balance.  Whether or not she meant Rose any harm, Maleficent still held all of the power and all of the knowledge between them, and Rose was unsurprisingly weary of feeling helpless.  The possibility of going somewhere else, without Maleficent’s protection, or, indeed, anyone to guide her, had never even occurred to her until she had read Kinsale’s letter.  She could not deny that the mere idea of such a venture, or quite simply being capable of it, held considerable appeal to her.

 Rose reached out to the peach-coloured dove who had delivered the letter and the little book Kinsale had sent along, which was titled Yet So Far.  The dove pressed her little head into Rose’s hand and cooed happily.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” Rose asked the bird.

The bird tilted its head and cooed inquisitively.

“Not a creature in sight around here,” Rose clarified.  “Well,” she amended with a wince, “besides the spiders, I suppose.”

Another “Coo coo?” somehow more confused than the first.

Rose sighed.  “Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t be rude.  They can’t help that they look frightening, after all, and they are surprisingly well-mannered, would you believe?”

“Coo, coo!”

“Anyway, thank you very much for the letter, and for the book,” said Rose.  She scratched underneath the dove’s beak with her fingertips.  “Safe travels, pretty bird!”

One significant improvement in Rose’s relationship with Maleficent since their visit with Mistress Kinsale was that Maleficent seemed much more inclined to conversation than she had before.  Indeed, Maleficent had thus far proven to be every bit as fascinating a conversationalist as Rose had initially suspected.  It came as an immense relief to Briar Rose that Maleficent no longer seemed to end conversations before they had begun, and Rose found it rather exciting to be able to look forward to speaking with Maleficent on a regular basis.

She found Maleficent reading in one of two armchairs she had set up in front of the enormous fireplace in the ballroom.

“Are you always in the mood to read?” Rose wondered as she approached.

Maleficent looked up.  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said.  “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I was just thinking, I always seem to find you reading,” said Rose, averting her gaze.  “I can barely manage a few pages before I tire of it.”

‘You find reading difficult,” said Maleficent, with a small shrug.  “I find it relaxing.  It’s possible that, given more practice, you will begin to find it thus.”

“I…suppose you’re right,” said Rose, far more to the floor than to Maleficent.

A moment’s silence passed.  Rose knew what she wanted to say, but the words caught in her throat.

“Was there something you wished to discuss?” Maleficent wondered.

“There was.  There is.  I want…”  Rose clenched her fists in the fabric of her borrowed dress and looked up with all the courage she could muster.  “I want to learn magic.”

Maleficent’s expression remained stoic and unreadable as ever, but her dark eyes sparked with interest.  “Is that so?”

Rose swallowed hard and straightened her shoulders.  “I want to learn to defend myself.”

Maleficent inclined her head thoughtfully.  “And what, pray tell, has swayed you at last in the direction of common sense?  Surely not a letter from Mistress Kinsale.”

“Sort of,” said Rose.  Her flimsy façade of confidence was no match for Maleficent’s piercing gaze.  “She also, uh…offered an explanation for why I couldn’t understand what I saw in the Big Book of Spells.”

"That you're a wicked fairy?"

Rose scuffed her shoe against the floor.  "That I should try reading wicked fairy spells, anyway."

"It's certainly not out of the question,” said Maleficent.  She raised her hand and pulled a book from nothingness.  She held it out to Rose.

Rose stared blankly, once more overcome by the sheer terror of anything even remotely magical.

“Open it,” Maleficent encouraged.

The book was entitled Essential Camouflage, and the author was Mistress Zenovia of the Mountainlands.  Rose flipped past the introduction to the first spell, called Don't Mind Me.

“This spell will render you…unimportant to the casual observer,” Rose read aloud, slowly and clumsily.  “Advantages: low magic ex—ex—“

“Expenditure.”

Rose looked up.  “Expenditure?”

“Magic expenditure is the amount of magic a spell requires to perform,” Maleficent elaborated.  “That one might be a bit tricky for our purposes.”

“Why?”

“Read on.”

Rose looked down, squinted at the words.  “Disadvantages: ineffective on someone who has…already found you.”

“May I?”

Rose didn’t know what Maleficent meant, but nodded her assent, anyway.  No sooner had she done so than the pages of the book in her hands began to flip rapidly, as though from a great gust of wind.  The book landed on a new spell called Mistaken Identity.

“This spell will cause your facial features to appear altered,” Rose read, tracing her fingers idly over the words, “so that someone who has spotted you will believe she has found the wrong person.  Advantages: very low magical…expenditure.  Favourable results with all targets.  Disadvantages…”

Rose looked up.  “A last resort?”

“As I recall, at the time of writing, Mistress Zenovia intended the art of camouflage to be used as an alternative to active magic.  If all other methods of avoidance have failed you and an unwelcome acquaintance has already recognized and approached you, this spell is a final attempt to avoid the interaction entirely.”

Rose looked back down at the book.  “Mistress Zenovia must not like parties very much,” she murmured.

To her surprise, she was sure she heard Maleficent chuckle quietly.

Rose’s eyes found the incantation for the spell, and she marveled at how different it looked from the spells she had seen in the book for good fairies.  Indeed, it looked far more akin to words than to shapeless blobs, and Rose felt somehow infuriatingly certain that if she could just concentrate hard enough, she ought to be able to make sense of them.

“Touch the words,” said Maleficent.

Her voice was low, and strangely chilling, and it reminded Rose of something else she had said once, something Rose couldn’t quite remember just now.

"What?" Rose stammered, belatedly.

"With your fingers,” said Maleficent.  “Touch the words of the spell."

Hesitantly, like the words might burn her, Rose just barely tapped the incantation with the tip of her finger.  Nothing happened.  She tried again, a little longer.  Maleficent’s approach took her by surprise, and she startled when Maleficent took her hand gently.  She pressed Rose’s pointer finger against the page and guided it in a slow, sweeping motion over the words, around below them, and back.

Suddenly, Rose could read the words.  Indeed, she could read the words far more easily than she’d ever been able to read anything.  It was like she knew them already, like the familiar cadence of a favourite story from her earliest youth.

“I am someone else,” Rose murmured aloud.

Maleficent let go of her hand.  The world came back into focus, and Rose couldn’t read the incantation anymore.

“Oh,” she sighed sadly.  Her face felt strange and tingly, and she touched her cheek subconsciously while she tried to make sense of what had happened.

Maleficent turned the page.  “Try this one.”

The spell was titled Now You See Me.

This spell will render the caster invisible, said the book.

Advantages: favourable results on all targets.

Disadvantages: high magic expenditure, especially when unpracticed.  If one does not position oneself with caution, one might be left with some explaining to do.

“This seems like a bit of a leap in difficulty,” said Rose skeptically.

"Perhaps,” said Maleficent.  “Try it."

Rose took in a deep breath and gazed at the incantation.  Again she contended with the strangeness of the text, and how she was certain it was almost, almost legible.  She traced her finger over the words, the way Maleficent had shown her.  This incantation had two lines, though, and Rose wasn’t certain how to proceed.  Should she trace both at once?  One after the other?  Trace from the beginning to the end and back again?

She focused instead on the first line.  She traced it the way she’d done with Don’t Mind Me, in sweeping circles, until she was almost certain the text looked to her very much like the title of the page.  “Now you see me,” Rose murmured.

Her fingertips began to tingle, pleasantly at first, but then the sensation grew stronger and stranger, and the words she traced, now you see me, were all that mattered to her.  They were everywhere, all over the page and written in the murkiness that obscured the rest of the world around her.  She tried to move onto the next line, but the instant her fingertip stopped touching the page, the words were gone, and the corporeal world came jarringly back into focus.

Rose sighed.  “Now you see me, then what?” she wondered, perhaps to Maleficent, perhaps to herself.  “When I stopped touching the words, I couldn’t…see them anymore.”  She shook her head. "That sounds like nonsense."

"It isn't nonsense,” said Maleficent.  “In order to learn a spell, you must feel it.  It is not uncommon for young sorceresses to conceptualize that by touching the incantation literally.  Do the same thing with the second line only.”

Rose sighed again.  She bit the inside of her cheek and followed Maleficent’s instructions, until she could see ‘now you don’t, now you don’t, now you don’t,’ everywhere she looked.

The tingling turned quite suddenly into a painful spark, and Rose withdrew her finger with a small yelp of surprise.  The feeling subsided instantly, almost like she’d never felt the pain to begin with, but when she looked at the page again, she was certain she could still make out the words of the incantation.

Now you see me,
Now you don’t.

Rose felt the faintest beginnings of a smile upon her lips.

“I’ve issued you a bit of a challenge, Briar Rose,” said Maleficent lightly, “but I daresay you are equal to the task.  The next step is to hold the sensation you feel in your fingertips when you’ve stopped touching the page, and then to use that magic to cast the spell upon yourself.”

Rose eyed her pointer finger warily, remembering the painful spark that barely was.  “Is it going to hurt?” she wondered.  “What if I can’t get myself back?”

“There is no danger of remaining invisible,” said Maleficent.  “If the spell goes out, the caster merely comes back into view.”

Rose waited a moment, but Maleficent did not offer an answer to her first question.  “All right,” said Rose.  “Tell me what to do.”

“I’ll give you all of the instructions at once, as it must be done in one go.  Trace the incantation in one fluid motion, first line, then back to the second,” Maleficent demonstrated.  “Each time you need to trace it again to feel the magic, keep your finger connected to the page, but don't touch anything else on your way back to the beginning. Once you feel the magic, speak the incantation as you trace the words with your fingers. Do you understand so far?"

Rose nodded.  “How will I know when…I don’t know…”

“When to let go?” Maleficent supplied.  She frowned subtly.  “You’ll…” she lifted a shoulder, “know.  When you feel it, the magic will be strongest in the very tips of your fingers.  As a test, try running them over your arm, when you’re ready.”

“All right,” said Rose.  “So.  Trace the spell: first line, swoop back, second line, swoop around." she traced the pattern in the air to remind herself. "When I feel…”

She thought of the tingling in her hand, the way it had grown so intense as to be painful.  Had that been the feeling of magic?

“When I feel the magic,” she continued, hesitantly, “I should speak the incantation as I trace the words.  When I feel…ready, then I should let go, and run my fingers over my arm.”

Maleficent nodded.  “Correct.”

Rose traced the incantation several times before she felt anything at all.  Indeed, it was only when she was beginning to feel hopelessly frustrated that she felt the strange tingling in the tips of her fingers, and she began to speak the words.  “Now you see me, now you don’t,” she said, but felt nothing different, not even a change in the way her fingertips tingled.

She paused, and felt the same painful spark from before.

“Ouch!” she exclaimed.  “I didn’t do anything!”

“Did I not say,” said Maleficent, not unkindly, “that my instructions must be performed without interruption?”

“Oh,” Rose sighed.  “Right.”  She looked up wearily.  “Suppose it worked before because you were helping me?”

“It did,” said Maleficent.  “Magic in mortals is a curious matter.  I confess I know little more than stories and idle observation, but it seems to me that almost always, an impetus is required to…” Maleficent frowned subtly.  “To awaken the magical ability, so to speak,” she said at last.  “Try again.”

Rose began again, an admittedly lackluster attempt at first.  She was beginning to think that she ought never to have agreed to this at all, for now that she had begun, she remembered all too keenly that as much as magic frightened, it fascinated at least twice as much.  Now that she had begun, Briar Rose wanted to learn, and she would be rather devastated if it turned out that she couldn’t, after all.

Even still, she began to feel the faintest of tingling in the tips of her fingers, and the sensation sent a terrible jolt of longing through her veins.  Could it be so?  Could Briar Rose, who had lived her whole life a victim of the magical whims of others, truly learn to wield the power, herself?

“Now you see me, now you don’t,” she began to chant as the tingling grew stronger, and spread from her fingers to her palm.  “Now you see me, now you don’t, now you see me, now you don’t, now you see me—“

She felt another spark, utterly disparate from the ones before.  It was not exactly pleasant, but neither was it strictly painful.  She felt a surge of undeniable power, not merely in her fingers or her hand or even her arm, but throughout her entire body.  She felt like she had on the best days of her life, filled with energy and life and drive and purpose.  Briar Rose felt strong.

Rose swept her fingertips from the page to her left arm, and watched as it faded curiously.  It did not become completely invisible, but she could clearly see the uneven stones of the floor beyond it.  Entranced by the sight, she continued the sweeping motion of her fingers along the rest of her arm, but the magic fizzled out just past her elbow, and her arm returned to its usual solidity.

All the power, all the energy and the vitality and the excitement, left her in a rush, and Rose felt suddenly as though she could go to sleep, or even fall unconscious to the floor right there and then.  She felt tired and disappointed, far more than intrigued or accomplished.  She looked up at Maleficent, hoping vaguely for answers to questions she did not know how to ask.

Maleficent was smiling subtly.  The sight startled Rose a little.

“Well done,” said Maleficent, with a small nod.

“But it didn’t work,” Rose sighed.  “And now…oh, now I am so tired…”

“It did work,” said Maleficent.  “It will take practice to perfect, of course, but do not underestimate the feat you have accomplished.”

Rose yawned heartily behind her hand.  “Will I always be so tired?”

“Certainly not,” said Maleficent.  She gestured that Rose should sit down, and Rose obeyed readily.  “The spell requires a great deal of magic when unpracticed, and what little you posses has lain dormant for upwards of sixteen years.  It is weak and finite, and it will take time to replenish itself.”

Rose curled her legs up against her chest and settled into the armchair, basking in the warmth from the fireplace.  “Then it will get better?” she wondered.  “Stronger?”

“Of course,” said Maleficent, taking her place in the other armchair.  “Your magic has as much potential to grow and strengthen as you have willpower to devote to it.”

Rose yawned again, and hadn’t even the energy to cover her mouth for the sake of politeness.  “Is that what it was like for you?” she wondered dreamily.  “Learning magic?”

Maleficent was silent a moment.  “It’s a bit different with fairies,” she said at last.  “More about control and discipline.  Young fairies are often a veritable font of wild magic.”

“I’ll take that to mean that making yourself invisible is akin in effort to a sneeze,” Rose said airily.

There was a pause, and then a quiet chuckle.  “As I said, I don’t know much of human sorceresses.  But I see the fear of magical power that mortals instill into one another.  Surely this affects a human’s ability to find and acknowledge the power within herself.”

Rose shifted in her chair so that she could look upon Maleficent.  Maleficent sat with the regality of a queen, dark eyes reflecting the flicker of firelight.

“Don’t you think it’s understandable?” Briar Rose wondered.  “The fear of magic, I mean.”

Maleficent inclined her head thoughtfully.  “Consider fire,” she said.  “Powerful, dangerous, but inextricable from human life as you know it.”

“Hmm,” Rose murmured.  She was certain she’d have more to say about that another time, but she didn’t have nearly enough energy for one of Maleficent’s spirited debates.  “How do you suppose it is that I can read wicked fairy spells and not good fairy ones?” she wondered instead.

"I suspect it's because you're innately wicked."

Rose’s eyes snapped open.  Maleficent awarded her a soft smirk.  “It could be that the magic I gave you is considerably stronger than the magic you possess from your three little guardians,” she said, “but I’ve also heard that most humans can only read the spells of the wicked fae.  Good fairy spells are...intentionally difficult to understand.”

Rose relaxed, and her eyes began to fall closed once more.  “Kinsale said you read them just fine.”

“In the same way that some are more inclined to learn another language,” said Maleficent, “I am more inclined to understand the nuances of disparate magics.  It isn’t so unusual.  Mistress Zenovia’s magnum opus was a text called Demystifying the Light Fae, an effort to deconstruct some of the more useful good fairy spells and show wicked fairy readers how they worked.  It was quite controversial, of course.”

“Why?” Rose wondered, but she didn’t have the strength to open her eyes.

“A few millennia ago, the light fae spent ages trying to make their magic unintelligible to us, and here was one wicked fairy handing out their secrets.  A handful of rather…militant light fae led a rather bloody crusade over the text.  Zenovia was Chained, and any wicked fairy too weak to oppose them was marched out of her home and given the choice of burning the text or facing the same fate.”

Rose felt dizzyingly sleepy, but this was enough to will her to sit up in her chair.  “How could they do such a thing?” she demanded.  “How could they…how did they get away with it?”

Maleficent lifted a shoulder nonchalantly.  “Easily,” she said.  “There are far fewer wicked fairies in the world than good ones, and we aren’t highly regarded.  Who would champion us?  Indeed, Kinsale is of the opinion that Mistress Sara intends to try again with far less provocation.”

‘Try again?” Rose asked, warily.

Maleficent waved a hand vaguely.  “To wipe the lot of us out of existence,” she clarified, like she was talking about something of little importance.

“But…”  But why, Rose wanted to ask.  And how?  And why doesn’t anyone seem more concerned?  “But she couldn’t, could she?” she tried at last.

Maleficent afforded her a sideways glance, a note of surprise hanging about her features.  “If indeed that is her plan,” she said slowly, “she could make us very scarce, to be certain.”

The notion made Rose’s stomach turn.  “Is it true?” she demanded.  “You don’t seem very concerned.”

Maleficent inclined her head thoughtfully.  “While I doubt that Kinsale would mention it without some evidence, such an attack is not imminent.”

Rose sighed and lay back in her armchair, too exhausted to press the issue any further.  She had a lot of vague thoughts swirling around in her head, about the way Kinsale had acted and the way Maleficent had acted, about how troubling she found Kinsale and also how warm and welcoming, about how knowledgeable Maleficent was, and about how solitary a life she seemed to lead, and all she managed to say in the end was a very sleepy, “I’m glad you have a friend like Kinsale.”

There was a pause, filled only with the quiet crackling of the fire, and then Maleficent chuckled quietly.  “Perhaps you would benefit from a proper bed.”

Rose heaved a long sigh.  “Perhaps,” she conceded, dropping her feet lazily to the floor and dragging herself up.  “But only if you’ll promise to get some rest, too.”

Maleficent quirked a brow at her.  “I think I might wait until the sun has set, at least.”

Rose startled and looked around for the nearest window.  “Oh,” she uttered.

“Magic is a tiresome skill to learn,” Maleficent assured her evenly.  “Get some rest.”

Rose made her way drowsily to the stairs with a sweeping gesture.  “Good afternoon,” she said wryly.

“Sleep well, Briar Rose,” said Maleficent as she returned her attention to the book she’d been reading when Rose had found her.  Rose could swear in her sleepy delirium that Maleficent’s voice sounded almost warm.

Before she’d made it even halfway up the stairs, a thought occurred to her.  “Maleficent?” she asked, leaning heavily upon the banister.

“Yes?”

“Would you show me?”

"Show you what?"

"The spell."

Maleficent gazed back at Briar Rose thoughtfully for a moment, and a small smile graced the corners of her lips.  “Now you see me,” she raised her hand and swept it downward over herself, and the voice that finished the incantation came from nothingness, “now you don’t.”

Rose rested her face in her hands and let out an unconscious sigh of contentment.  “Thank you,” she said softly to the empty room.

“Sweet dreams,” said Maleficent, from everywhere and nowhere.

Rose yawned again as she straightened her posture.  “You’re quite remarkable,” she said as she turned to continue the arduous journey to her bed.  “But I’m sure you already know that.”

Maleficent’s form came back into being, and she took up her book once more, not a little relieved to be returning to the task that most concerned her.  She held the corner of a page she intended to turn between her fingertips for far too long, unable to focus on the page’s contents.  She read a sentence twice, then a third time, and still could not commit it to memory.

You’re quite remarkable, the little princess had said, half-asleep and dizzy with the headiness of new magic, no doubt.

Foolish.  A ridiculous thing to say.

Maleficent turned the page forcefully.

Petrification, read the next page, in the strange, flowing shapes of the light fae.

Maleficent nodded slowly.  To think she’d bothered with the Big Book of Spells at all.  Surely such an act was not in line with how the light fae preferred to view themselves at their most essential.  Surely Mistress Hilde’s magical tastes had changed since she’d become one of Mistress Sara’s sycophants.

“A message for you, madam.”

To say that Mistress Sara hadn’t been what Ophira was expecting would be a tremendous understatement.

Ophira had seen her countless times as a child, of course, always way up on the balcony of her ivory tower, waving to the adoring masses.  She glowed, Ophira thought, like the sun had kissed her skin, smiled brighter than a sky full of stars, and her long, dark-golden hair was always decked with flowers.

Perhaps Ophira had expected someone who matched the way Mistress Sara looked from afar, someone warm and kind, or someone vibrant and effervescent, the sort of fairy who never really grew old, who was so full of life that she swept up the whole room in her zeal just by virtue of being there.

In the present, Mistress Sara barely moved in response to the sound of Ophira’s voice.  Her right hand twisted around an old silver chain with a little pendant dangling from the end.  Ophira had assumed at first that it was a magical artifact of some sort, but it looked rather common for that, and Sara always seemed to be holding the same one.

After a long moment, heavy with the silence of the room, Sara looked up, her steely grey eyes clouded over, like she hardly saw Ophira standing at the door.  Ophira had been beside herself with joy at the honour of serving as Mistress Sara’s personal assistant, but now she often wondered how many assistants had come before her, and how many would come after, and whether the great Mistress Sara even noticed the change.

Sara held out her left hand.  Ophira startled slightly and approached in a hurry, handing over the letter.

Mistress Sara was nothing like Ophira had expected.  She was unnervingly quiet, unfailingly stoic.  And Ophira was loath to admit it, even in the privacy of her own mind, because it truly was an honour to work for Mistress Sara, no matter her personal eccentricities.  She was a brilliant fairy, and her image, far more than she, herself, inspired and directed the light fae all across the world.  But—

“If you’ve nothing to do, stand outside,” said Mistress Sara.

“Madam?” Ophira startled yet again.

Sara looked up, grey eyes clear and sharp as a blade, “I won’t be watched while I read.”

Ophira very nearly staggered backward.  “Of course, madam,” she stammered.  She fumbled with the doorknob and in her rush to leave, very nearly slammed the door behind herself.  She leaned heavily against it and sighed.

Ophira was loath to admit it, even in the privacy of her own mind, but—

Mistress Sara was cold.

She shook her head firmly and made up her mind to think differently.  Mistress Sara had seen and done things utterly foreign to Ophira and her kin.  She had faced the very worst dark fairy the world had ever seen.  She had lived in the Sea Kingdom at a time when light fairies bowed to the whims of mortals, when they were not permitted to do most of the things Ophira took for granted.  So what if she was a little…well.

Some time later, Ophira knocked gently upon Mistress Sara’s door.

“Yes?”

Ophira balanced her tray carefully as she pushed open the door, eager to appear poised and sure of herself.  “Tea, madam,” she said.

Sara looked up, surprised.  There was a quill in her left hand.  Her right hand still clutched the same little necklace.  “I didn’t ask for tea,” she said.

Ophira struggled to feign lightness, but she stammered when she spoke.  “Sincerest apologies, madam, but I, well, that is to say, I thought you—“

Sara narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.  “You wanted to do something kind for me,” she said.  It was strange, the way she said it.  She made it sound like a bad thing.

“Well,” Ophira managed, “yes.”

Sara’s frown deepened.  “Thank you,” she said, flatly, and Ophira’s heart twisted with shame.

But then Sara nodded, slowly, like her thanks had been of the gravest sincerity, a gesture so at odds with her tone that Ophira hadn’t the slightest idea what to make of it.

“Of course, madam,” Ophira curtseyed, and then left the room as quickly as possible.

Chapter Text

Memory was a curious thing.  There was a human boy, Fauna remembered, on the beach in the Sea Kingdom, with bright eyes and a sweet voice, but she didn’t remember the colour of his hair, or the shape of his features.  They walked and talked for hours, about the land he called home, about Mistress Sara, about Fauna and her sisters, and she didn’t even remember his name.

What she remembered was the way it felt when he said hers.

Early one morning, for Fauna’s was a family of heavy sleepers and late risers, the boy brought her a handful of flowers he had picked himself.  He told her the human meanings of each flower and he asked her to stay, or better yet, to run away with him.  Fauna didn’t know what to say.

“You know I am a fairy, don’t you?” she asked him.

“It would be difficult to forget,” he laughed.

“And you are a human,” she continued. 

She didn’t have the words then for what she’d wanted to say.  He had told her that Mistress Sara’s heroic acts had done a great deal for the way fairies were viewed among his people, and that it was rumoured that Sara’s own father had been a human.  Still, Fauna had never even heard of such a union, and she couldn’t imagine that it would end well.  What did a human know of the span of a fairy’s life?  What did a fairy know of the handful of years a human had to his name?

“It doesn’t…concern you?” Fauna tried, after a lengthy pause filled only by the crashing of the waves at their side.

“And why should it?” he wondered.

“We must be very different, after all,” said Fauna, “and anyway, we hardly know one another!”

He stopped then and took hold of her hands.  “Don’t you believe in true love, Miss Fauna?” he asked her, and in this moment alone, outlined by the crashing waves and the first light of the approaching dawn, Fauna could almost remember his face.  “Why, I daresay that the more I learn of you, the more I should grow to love you!”

Later on in the afternoon, Fauna’s sisters were predictably embroiled in an argument with very little substance.

"You're so wrong, Flora! Don't you agree, Fauna?"

"Of course I agree, Merryweather."

"Merryweather, that's complete nonsense! Isn't that nonsense, Fauna?"

"I'm sure it is, Flora."

"Flora, you are such an idiot! I'm right, aren't I, Fauna?"

"You're right, Merryweather."

Fauna didn’t know whether those were the exact words they had spoken, but they might as well have been, back and forth, back and forth across the span of centuries.  Fauna had been otherwise preoccupied that day, thinking about what it would mean if she were to leave her family to run off with a human boy she barely knew.

Quite suddenly, a shadow fell upon the family, and Fauna looked up to set eyes upon the dark fairy she had met on the beach when she’d first arrived.  She was not a person of substantial size; yet, she easily dwarfed Fauna and her family.  Fauna could practically feel her parents tense up behind her.

“Good afternoon,” said the dark fairy with an unfriendly smirk.  “Out of curiosity, do you have any intention of controlling your offspring?”

“Please,” said Mother, in a voice that trembled.  “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Nor do I,” said the dark fairy.  “Unfortunately, I can hardly hear such peaceable thoughts over the screaming of your children.”

“Flora, Merryweather, will you be quiet?” Mother hissed, but her voice was weak with fright, and Fauna’s sisters would not be so easily silenced.

“Flora, Merryweather?” the dark fairy echoed, and this proved enough to draw their attention away from their senseless argument.  “Your mother has asked you to be quiet.  If my mother had told me to be quiet, and I had so gleefully disobeyed her, she would have cursed me into next week.”

Fauna dared a sidelong glance at her sisters.  They gazed up at the dark fairy with awe and terror in equal measure.

“Have a pleasant day,” said the dark fairy lightly before she strode away from them.

The family sat upon the beach in silence for some time after that.  Fauna rather wished her sisters had kept arguing.  The noise had provided her with a much-needed distraction from her thoughts, and perhaps even a reminder of her responsibility to her family.  She couldn’t just go running off, could she?

Fauna took to the beach yet again as the sun began to set, ignoring her sisters’ desire for a card game and her parents’ words of concern regarding her evident lack of sleep.  She kicked off her shoes and dug her feet into the sand, and tried to focus every last bit of her energy upon the way the sunset looked.  This, she still remembered perfectly.

“We meet again, little fairy.”

Fauna flinched in surprise and turned to look upon the dark fairy in the light of the setting sun.  Her eyes caught all the colour in the sky, and Fauna thought for a moment that the dark fairy looked quite beautiful.

“I’m…terribly sorry that my sisters and I disturbed you earlier,” Fauna managed.

The dark fairy shrugged and lowered herself gracefully into the sand next to where Fauna sat.  “Think nothing of it,” she said.  “In fact, perhaps I owe you the apology.  I was in a bit of a foul temper earlier.”

“Oh,” Fauna laughed nervously, “sometimes I think my sisters might drive Mistress Sara, herself, into a bad temper.”

The dark fairy’s expression changed then, from something rather pleasant to something lopsided and wry.  “That might not be so daunting a task as you imagine,” she said.

Fauna wanted to ask more, but she was so caught up in the idea of the saintly Mistress Sara having a temper that she didn’t speak for some time.  In the end, the dark fairy broke the silence between them.

“So,” she said airily, “what brings your family to this lovely place?”

“A sort of vacation,” said Fauna.  “Mother and Father mean to stay here and retire.  We’ll return to the Land in the Plains and assume our responsibilities to one of the royal families there.”

“Aren’t you a bit young for that?” the dark fairy wondered.

Fauna shrugged.  “Perhaps,” she said, though she’d never thought of it that way before.  “But most of the responsibility will fall to Flora, I imagine.  And Mother is too tired to continue to serve.  She wants to spend the rest of her life here, with Father.”

“I can’t imagine,” said the dark fairy with a little huff of something like distant amusement.  “That’s…quite an accomplishment.”

Fauna looked up into the darkening sky and sighed heavily.  “It feels impossible to me,” she said.

The dark fairy chuckled.  “You’re also a bit young to be so cynical.”

Fauna looked over at the dark fairy suddenly, so overwhelmed by the conflicting feelings in her heart that she could not restrain herself.  “Have you ever been in love?” she asked the dark fairy.

She’d heard the dark fae weren’t capable, of course, but she thought that would be a very rude thing to assume about a person who had thus far been rather pleasant to her.  Still, the dark fairy frowned subtly, and instead of answering, she asked, “Have you?”

Fauna looked away.  She pulled her left foot out of the sand and began pushing it around with her toes.  “It’s impossible,” she said.  “I shouldn’t.  I can’t!”

“And why not?” the dark fairy wondered.

“My family wouldn’t approve,” said Fauna.  “No one would.  Even if…  Well.”  She remembered what the boy had said when he spoke of Mistress Sara, and what the dark fairy had said before, like she knew something about Sara from personal experience.  “Do you suppose it’s true that Mistress Sara’s own father was a human?”

The dark fairy laughed then, high and sharp, like a kind of terrible music.  “No, I don’t think so,” she said, not unpleasantly.  “There’s no way a human-fairy hybrid would have that kind of power.  But oh, can you imagine?”

In the silence that followed, the dark fairy looked at Fauna, and her expression softened somewhat.  “Not that there would be anything wrong with it, if it were true,” she amended, “and I’m sure it’s more common than you think.”  She looked out over the sea and frowned thoughtfully.

“It’s my experience,” the dark fairy continued, “that someone is always going to disapprove of you, even if you're exactly where you're supposed to be, keeping your mouth shut and causing no trouble. Perhaps chasing this impossible love of yours would be a difficult road, but…well.”  The dark fairy cast her a sidelong glance, and her lips quirked into a subtle smile.  “You might find it a fair bit more rewarding than spending the rest of your life telling your sisters that they're right about everything."

Fauna averted her eyes.  “I know they must seem very difficult, but…” she shook her head.  “But they’re my sisters, and I have a responsibility to them.  And I have a responsibility to the Four Kingdoms, and to—“

The dark fairy waved her hand dismissively.  “You also have a responsibility to yourself,” she said, not a little sharply.  Then, just like before, she seemed to soften again.  Her next words were far kinder, but they were also a bit sadder.  “It’s not every fairy who gets the chance to experience love, you know.”

“Fauna?’

Fauna realized distantly that Merryweather was shaking her by the shoulders.

“Sorry,” said Fauna.

“Are you all right?” Merryweather frowned.

“Oh,” Fauna sighed as she stood.  “Just…lost in thought.”

Merryweather didn’t look like she believed Fauna, but she didn’t press the issue, and instead gestured that Fauna should hurry along after her.  Today, Felicity was taking them to see Mistress Joy of the Desertlands, to see if she might know anything about where Maleficent had gone.

“Joy is…a different sort of wicked fairy,” Felicity was telling Flora.  “She served as an adviser to the Fairy Queen, herself, for a time.  She isn’t very magically gifted, but she’s quite clever, and very diplomatic for one of her kind.”

Fauna had learned of the identity of the wicked fairy she’d met in the Sea Kingdom almost immediately upon her return to her homeland.  It had felt like happenstance, stumbling upon the fairy’s picture, but Flora had become very interested in a trial being held in the Sky Dominion around that time, and she’d asked a few acquaintances to keep them informed when the time came for them to leave.

Following the trial, Mistress Joy had stepped down from her position as chief adviser to the Fairy Queen, and although both she and the Queen insisted they had parted ways on excellent terms, there was speculation that Joy had been forced out of her position due to the verdict in the trial.  Fauna didn’t fully understand what that meant, and she imagined it hardly mattered now.  What had mattered to her at the time was that she had apparently met a very famous and very unusual sort of wicked fairy, and that she hadn’t had any idea at the time.

Her stomach had been tied in knots all morning with thoughts of the coming meeting.  Fauna had never told her sisters anything about the human boy she’d almost run off with all that time ago, let alone about her late-night talks with a wicked fairy.  Of course none of it ought to matter now, centuries later, but what would happen if Joy recognized her?  Would she say something?  What would her sisters think?

Quite unlike either Mistress Kinsale or Felicity, Mistress Joy’s home in the far south of the Desertlands was relatively modest.  She opened the door just a crack after Felicity knocked, and when the light touched her face, the first thing Fauna noticed was that she had cut off most of her seafoam green hair.  It stuck out jaggedly from her sharp face and drew attention to a subtle and simmering kind of anger in her grey-green eyes.

“Why, Mistress Felicity,” said Joy flatly.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Mistress Joy,” said Felicity thinly.  “I wonder if we might borrow a moment of your time?”

Joy flung her door wide and made a sweeping gesture to usher them in.  “By all means,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.  Was this truly the same fairy she had met?  Was this the sort of wicked fairy Felicity would describe as ‘very diplomatic’, that the Fairy Queen would take as her adviser?

“There have been rumours, Mistress Joy,” Felicity began.

“Aren’t there always?” Joy cut her off with a saccharine smile.

“Rumours,” Felicity continued, more severely, “of an unidentified fae presence in this area.  Is there anything you can tell us about that?”

Joy opened her arms wide in a mockery of an amicable shrug.  “Oh, but I am a weak and simple sprite, Mistress Felicity,” she drawled.  “What would I know of such matters?”

“You know, Mistress Joy,” said Felicity, with the faintest hint of something sharp around the edges of her tone, “I daresay you may soon regret refusing to aid your better kinfolk.”

Joy snorted.  “Oh, no, however shall I manage?”

Felicity closed her eyes and made a great show of sighing her displeasure.  “The dark fairy to the north.  Do you know her?”

“Makeda?” Joy smiled cruelly.  “Intimately.”

Felicity’s rage flashed brightly across her face then.  “Do not waste my time with your disgusting insinuations.”

Joy threw her head back and laughed coldly.  Fauna could not help but to think that it was very nearly the opposite of the way she had laughed centuries ago on the beach.  There was no mirth in the sound, no warmth, no life.

“Mistress Joy, please,” Felicity demanded.  “Control yourself.”

“Or what?” Joy teased.  “You’ll report me to your precious leader?”

“Rest assured, Mistress Joy,” said Felicity darkly, “that was already a given.”

Joy laughed again.  “Do tell Queen Sara all about how bad I’ve been.  Do you waste her time with such matters often?  Why, I’ve answered every inane question you’ve bothered to ask, haven’t I?”

“You have not,” said Felicity, sounding rather like an impetuous child in the face of Joy’s contentiousness.  “The dark fairy in the north is named Makeda.  Will you swear to that?”

“What sort of swears do you prefer, Mistress Felicity?”

“And you know nothing of the unidentified fairy suspected to be hiding in the area?  Would you swear to that, as well?”

Joy waved her hands in mockery.  “I swear, I swear, now would you be so kind as to leave me in peace?”

“There’s just one more thing, Mistress Joy,” Flora spoke up suddenly, and Joy looked down upon the three fairy sisters as though she had just noticed them there.

Joy locked eyes with Fauna, even though Flora was the one speaking.  “But of course, little fairy,” she said with a chilling grin.  “I’m an open book.”

“Are you familiar with Mistress Maleficent?”

Joy’s horrible smile fell, and she frowned thoughtfully, and suddenly she was so much more the fairy Fauna remembered.  “Maleficent?” she echoed.  “Why, I haven’t heard anything about her in nearly a century.  Poor girl.”

“Poor girl, indeed,” Flora humphed.  “She has defied your Chains of Avasina and kidnapped our princess, and you dare to say—“

Felicity put a hand rather firmly upon Flora’s shoulder.  “Thank you for…well.  Good afternoon, Mistress Joy.”

After they’d put significant distance between themselves and Mistress Joy’s home, Merryweather spoke up.  “I thought you said she was decent for a wicked fairy,” she said drily.

Felicity’s expression darkened somewhat, and a long silence hung between them before she answered.  “She is…much changed,” said Felicity quietly.  As soon as that flash of softness had come, however, it was gone, and when she spoke again, it was with her usual briskness.  “Though I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any better,” she finished airily, and they continued the remainder of their journey in silence.

When she was certain her guests had departed, Joy hurried over to her bookshelf and traced a finger across the spines until she found the one she was seeking.  It was more a keepsake than anything else, a funny joke that she’d found oddly touching in hindsight, that Joy had told the romance author a silly story about a little light fairy she’d met, and the author had turned her silly story into a book and called it ‘loosely based on a true story.’

Joy traced the picture on the cover fondly, an image of a winged woman and an earthbound man reaching for one another across a great divide, and even went so far as to open the book to the page with the dedication to herself.

Konstanze didn’t think much of her now, she knew, but at the time, it had felt like a tremendous show of friendship.

Funny, to see that wide-eyed little fairy again after all these years.  How long must it have been by now?  The centuries since Acacia’s trial had all blurred together for Joy, and now that she thought of it, that particular visit to the Sea Kingdom had been one of the most difficult times of her life.  That was when Terra had—

Well.  No sense in dredging all that up just now.  Joy put the book back into its place upon the shelf and returned her attention to her afternoon tea. 

She tried to remember what she knew of the land from whence the three little fairies hailed—it had been the Two Kingdoms, then the Four, then the Three, and then the Eastern King’s daughter was going to marry the Northern King’s son so it would be the Two Kingdoms again, but then something else had happened.

Joy hadn’t even realized that something had anything to do with Maleficent of the Dragon Country.  My, but those three little fairies were in over their heads if Maleficent had become too powerful for even the Chains to hold her!  Joy wondered why they hadn’t sought assistance sooner, but she guessed the eldest sister’s pride might have something to do with that.

Still, Joy was privately very glad that her young friend had evaded death, at least for a short while.  She was also glad, perhaps for the first time since she’d stepped down, that she was no longer in the employ of the Fairy Queen.  If matters escalated, as they often did when the Chains of Avasina were being bandied about, Joy would be under no obligation to side against Maleficent.

About a fortnight after Felicity’s visit, Joy received another surprising guest, this one a far more welcome sight.

"So let me see if I understand you,” said Joy to Maleficent.  “You just…talked her into freeing you?"

Maleficent nodded.  “She’s a very…kind-hearted girl,” she said with a subtle frown.  “She didn’t wish to see me dead.”

Maleficent hadn’t changed very much since the last time Joy had seen her.  She was a fair bit calmer, to be certain, but this proved far more unnerving than comforting.  Joy could still see that old nervous energy crackling just beneath the surface, like Maleficent might lash out at the slightest provocation, despite her serene exterior.

“Even though you wanted her to die?” Joy asked.

“Yes,” said Maleficent.  Her frown deepened.

Joy laughed, not a little nervously.  “And now you’re teaching her magic,” she said.  “Oh, that’s funny!”

Maleficent quirked a brow.  “Your sense of humour eludes me.”

“What is it with the Land in the Plains and fairies falling in love with humans?” Joy mused, eyeing Maleficent carefully for her reaction.  “Must be something in the water over there.”

“What in Hell’s name are you talking about?” Maleficent snapped.

Strangely, this flash of the old Maleficent, irritable and defensive, put Joy far more at ease.

"First little Fauna had that sad affair with the boy in the Sea Kingdom, now you're mad about the damned Eastern Princess, of all people!"

Maleficent scoffed.  “That’s the maddest thing I’ve ever heard, Joy.  Fauna having an affair with a human?”

“Haven’t you read Konstanze’s book about the light fairy and the human?” Joy demanded.

“I’m not much for romance novels.”

“Oh, come now, you know the one I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Deny it if you please, Maleficent,” Joy shook her head smugly, “but I swear to you it’s about little Fauna!”

"How can you swear to something so absurd?" asked Maleficent thinly.

“Why, I told Konstanze the story, of course!” Joy cried delightedly.  “Now, I know you got me all off-topic to distract me from your passionate love for the princess, but—“

“Enough of that!” Maleficent snapped.  “She is a child!”

Maleficent was so easy to rile up that Joy never could tell whether she’d actually struck a nerve, but oh, how she had missed this!  Most people weren’t even nearly such good sports.

“What is she, seventeen or eighteen by now?” Joy pressed.  “A human would very much disagree with you, Maleficent.  Anyway, I’m sure you’ve realized that if Felicity convinces anyone of note that you’re more powerful than their precious Chains, you’ll be hunted like a dog.  I’ll contact Zenovia and see what she thinks, but do be on your guard.  This thing with Sara is bound to come to a head soon, anyway.”

“Thing?” Maleficent echoed.  “What thing?”

“Oh, you know, some of her fangirls are starting to whisper about how much nicer the world would be without the lot of us, and Felicity made some vague threats about me wishing I’d helped my ‘better kinfolk.’  I doubt Sara’s even really responsible, but they’ll plaster her face on anything these days.”

“You know her?  Mistress Sara?” Maleficent asked, something new and unreadable about her eyes.

Now it was Joy’s turn to frown.  “I did, a long time ago,” she said.  “She’s a strange fairy.  Certainly not what you’re imagining.”

“Nothing like Felicity or Flora, then?” Maleficent wondered, not without a touch of humour.

Joy felt herself smiling and shook her head.  “Nothing like that,” she agreed.

Maleficent grew very still and very silent for a moment, and Joy was certain she was going to say something else, but instead, she turned to leave.  “Thank you, Joy.”

“Maleficent?” Joy called after her, impulsively, because she had no way of knowing whether she’d struck a nerve or not, but just in case, she had to say—

“Yes?”

“She could do a lot worse than you, you know,” said Joy with a wry smile.

Maleficent turned away with a scoff.  “The heat has addled your brain, Joy,” she replied, and then, in a burst of green flame, she was gone.

Someone was coming to take her away.  It wasn’t set yet, not certain or solid, but once they found out who she was, of course that was the path they’d take.  Those righteous light fairies and their ideals.  Where had it begun this time?  Who had whispered that most treacherous thought, and how many had quietly, hesitantly agreed?

The faintest fluttering of wings, too soft to hear in the physical realm, but loud like a gust of wind between her ears.  Then, louder still, knock, knock, knock, from without and within.

There had been others who had nearly found her.  She had seen their paths winding around her, just shy of her, sometimes even brushing her shoulder, realizing that she was not quite human, but unwilling or unable to press the matter any further.

The wings and the knocks and the voices were so loud, she reasoned, because innumerable paths were converging at her doorstep.  There were no alternatives.  They would not just simply give up and go away.  She would not stand up to the lot of them in a fight.  Not now, not the way she was.  Perhaps before, when---

But she could not see what might have been, only what might be.  Perhaps that was a blessing, in its way.

"On the authority of Mistress Sara of the Kingdom by the Sea, I command you to open the door."

Mistress Sara, then?  The fairy with the cold eyes who had defeated Cordelia and pointed the finger at Cordelia’s daughter.  How very expected.

She opened her door.  “Good afternoon.”

Had she ever truly believed that she might live out the rest of her days without setting eyes upon another fairy?  Now the notion seemed ridiculous.  Of course someone would always have found her out eventually.  Still, she had seen the surprise in the faces of her human neighbours when that new one had arrived, small and fair and willowy and weak.  The humans had never seen anything like her—she could sense it rolling off of them in waves of awe and terror in equal measure—and she found that she missed that reaction sorely.  She wanted to be that fairy, even small and weak as she was.  Better still—she wanted to be herself again.

Perhaps the wanting had given her away.  Perhaps some ancient thing within her had taken root in the land she called home against her will.  It hardly mattered now.

“Are you good or wicked?”  The light fairy at the door held her wand like a sword.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked with a thin attempt at a smile.

The light fairy returned her mirthless smile.  “I needn’t have asked.  I shall make this simple: you may tell me your true identity and your reason for masquerading as a human, or I will get the information out of you by whatever means I see fit.  Take your pick.”

“Why does it matter to you?” she wondered, quite genuinely.  “I’ll die either way.”  Not any way—not any possible way, not yet, but the light fairy didn’t need to know about those.

The light fairy flicked her wand without even the faintest tell, and the hot slash of pain that followed surprised far more than it hurt.  She had never personally witnessed a light fairy inflicting harm, not even upon a dark fairy.  Quite the character, this Mistress Sara must be.

“It matters,” said the light fairy, advancing upon her, “because Mistress Sara wishes to be aware of every fairy residing on Earth.  It was of some concern to her that one of your kind had been hiding for such a long time.”

She smiled, not a little proudly.  “It is no small feat, what I have done,” she agreed.  Indeed, it was not.  She wondered whether even the youngest and most powerful of her daughters could have managed it.  She did not know why she couldn’t reach out and see.

The next slash from the light fairy’s wand did hurt far more than it surprised.  “Your arrogance does you no favours,” said the light fairy.   “Tell me your true name while I have the patience to hear it.”

The dark fairy smiled coolly.  “My name is Maleficent.”

She doubled over in pain before she noticed the movement of the light fairy’s wand.  What sort of light fae were these, who harmed without so much as a shadow of intent in the recesses of their minds?

“I think we both know that isn’t true,” said the light fairy with a little chuckle.

Still alive, then, and well-known.  Powerful, certainly.  Infamous.

“If you know so much about who I am not,” she managed as she attempted to right herself, then how is it you need me to tell you who I am?”

The light fairy smiled thinly.  “Consider it a courtesy.”

The dark fairy laughed for what must be the first time in a century.  “Do you think you can scare me?”

A different sort of pain overtook her then, something colder and darker than she could have expected, and when she regained her bearings, she found herself on her knees with a wand aimed at her throat.  She saw another path then, a path that ended here and now like a spill of dark ink that consumed everything around it.

“My name,” said the dark fairy quietly, willing away the all-consuming darkness of the path she had not expected to fear, “is Adara.”

At least the light fairy had the good manners to look surprised.

Several months passed in a curious manner.  Briar Rose spent all her waking hours practicing magic, and as a result, her waking hours became very few, indeed.  She often exhausted herself not an hour or two after she had awoken, and the difference between day and night ceased to mean anything to her.

She seldom saw Maleficent.  Her only indications that Maleficent had not abandoned her were the books she left on Rose's bedside table. Defensive Magic, Defensive Magic for the Offensively Inclined, The Art of Defense, and, bizarrely, Gardening for Wicked Fairies: Putting that green thumb to work! Rose suspected that one had been left as a joke, but she found to her dismay that she was far more skilled at coaxing blades of grass to grow from the cracks in her bedside table than at any other feat of magic she had attempted thus far.

Once, surely in the dead of night by the look of the sky, Maleficent knocked at Rose’s door and found her awake and able to showcase the fruits of her labour.  After months of constant practice, Rose could consistently keep her entire person invisible for about three seconds.

She sighed heavily as she faded back into view, already exhausted.  “Useless,” she said.

“Progress,” Maleficent corrected her.  “Did any of the books interest you?”

Rose thought of the spell for flowers and twirled her hand at the corner of her bedside table.  A tiny daisy sprouted and bloomed.  She cast Maleficent a teasing glance over her shoulder, and was rewarded with a wry smile.

"I am glad to see you've devoted your time to such useful skills."

Rose turned to face her and lifted her chin in something like a challenge.  “I can also do this,” she said.  Quickly, she raised both of her hands and cried, “Stand back!”

Maleficent and the chair she occupied skidded backward, just slightly, and Maleficent let out a small exclamation of surprise.

Rose clasped her hands in front of herself and smiled broadly.  She wondered whether anyone in the history of the world had ever caught Maleficent off her guard.

“I rescind my sarcasm,” said Maleficent at last.

Rose’s heart leapt: Maleficent was impressed with her!

“Perhaps you’d like to put your skills to a test tomorrow?”

“What kind of test?”

Maleficent quirked a brow.  “I’ll be gentle,” she said, with a touch of dark humour that sent a chill down Rose’s spine.

She had missed Maleficent’s company, unsettling as it was, and of course there was no other way of testing her newfound ability.  Maleficent didn’t really intend to hurt her, after all--well, she probably didn’t, anyway.  Even still, Briar Rose could not think of a more intimidating opponent for her first magical duel.

“All right,” she agreed hesitantly.  “But I really don’t even know all that much yet.”

“I assure you,” said Maleficent with a dismissive wave of her hand, “learning magic is far easier with some instruction.”

Rose averted her gaze and began to fidget with her skirt.  “Have you visited anyone else interesting lately?” she wondered, feeling suddenly rather desperate to change the subject.

Maleficent stood and moved her chair back to its original position.  “I suppose that depends upon your definition of interesting,” she said.  “I met with Mistresses Konstanze and Eleanore in the Forestlands, and Mistresses Makeda and Joy in the Desertlants.”

“Mistress Konstanze wrote the romance novel, right?” Rose asked.  “The one with the fairy and the human?”

Maleficent scoffed.  “Don’t remind me.”

Rose didn’t know what to make of that.  “Did you learn anything from her?” she asked, instead.

“Very little,” said Maleficent.  “We’ve never been on the best of terms, and she and Eleanore both have young children.”

“Kinsale wrote that wicked fairies are…sometimes ill-equipped to raise children,” Rose began cautiously.  She wasn’t certain exactly what she wanted to say, or what she ought to say.  Fortunately, Maleficent understood.

“Incapable mothers usually cannot keep a single child alive for more than a year or two.  Konstanze and Eleanore each have three children who seem healthy and happy enough.  It’s always possible they could face danger when they approach maturity, but that’s a long way off yet.”

“I want to ask you something, but…”

Maleficent inclined her head curiously.  “But?”

Rose averted her gaze.  “I don’t want to upset you.”

Maleficent was silent for a moment, and it drew attention to the unbearable silence of the Dragon Country around them.

“You want to ask about my mother,” Maleficent guessed.

Rose nodded in the general direction of the floor.

“There was a conflict…long before any of us reached maturity,” said Maleficent darkly.

Rose found that she didn’t want to know any more.  Not now.  Not yet.  She changed the subject again.  “I’ve…heard the name Joy before, too.  From Kinsale.  She wrote a book, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

“Yes,” said Maleficent, and Rose was more than a little surprised to hear a shadow of warmth in her tone, “Joy is very famous.”

Rose looked up.  “Why?”

Maleficent let out a quiet chuckle, and her expression was that of one just a bit lost in the past.  “Mostly because she gets along so well with the light fae.  Or used to, at least.  She was chief adviser to the Fairy Queen for a time.”

“And you spoke with her?  Mistress Joy, I mean?”

Maleficent nodded.  “Apparently your three little fairies paid her a visit already, in the company of Mistress Felicity, no less.”

“Mistress Felicity,” Rose echoed.  “Of the Hill Kingdom?”  She vaguely remembered Kinsale mentioning a Felicity, and something about enchanting dinnerware.

“That’s the one,” said Maleficent.  “It does strike me as curious, though.  Felicity isn’t well-known for doing anything that doesn’t provide her with a very obvious benefit, and I can’t see what those three idiots have to offer her.  In any event, they asked Joy if she knew anything about me, Joy told them she didn’t, and Felicity made some vague threat about ‘wishing she had helped her better kinfolk.’”

“Better kinfolk,” said Rose, “as in good fairies?”

Maleficent nodded.

“And…” Rose continued slowly, “does Joy believe what you were saying—that Mistress Sara wants to get rid of all the wicked fairies?”

Maleficent frowned thoughtfully.  “Something like that.  Although I gather she doesn’t believe Mistress Sara is the source.”

“But why would Felicity threaten her like that?” Rose wondered.  “Don’t the good fairies like Joy anymore?”

“I expect many still do.  The Fairy Queen certainly still does.  But she is not of this earth, nor does she generally concern herself with its troubles.”

There was something else she wanted to ask.  It hung heavy and twisting and terrible in her stomach, and she didn’t quite have the words for it.  She tried to speak anyway, and hoped that Maleficent might somehow understand her, as she so often seemed to.

“What about Kinsale?” she asked, haltingly.  “If Sara did…if the good fairies…”

Maleficent did seem to understand.  She averted her gaze and folded her hands in her lap.  “Kinsale would be a prime target.  She is very famous, and many mistake her friendliness for weakness.  They would soon discover that she is not to be trifled with, but she would certainly yield to the Mountainland Fairies.”

“The Mountainland Fairies?”

“A force of light fairies in the Mountainlands.  They practice a highly specialized form of…cooperative combat, for lack of a better term.  They are some of the most powerful light fae residing on Earth.”

Rose swallowed hard.  She felt a cold kind of panic creeping through her.  “What about you?  If the good fairies were to…”

Maleficent looked up at the ceiling with a subtle frown.  “Another thing I learned from Joy is that I seem to have made something of a name for myself recently.”

“How so?”

She lowered her gaze and smiled.  Her smile felt very genuine, but there was also a distinct air of sadness about her features.  “Somehow, while imprisoned by the Chains of Avasina, I managed to enchant a princess to set me free.”

The words stung.  Briar Rose felt betrayal rip through her like a physical pain, far greater than any she had ever felt.  The moment she viewed as a new beginning, as a second chance to make something of her life, had been nothing more than someone else’s magical whim, and Maleficent had not even bothered to tell her!

“You enchanted me?” she managed, her voice small and close to breaking.

Maleficent’s smile fell, and she looked distinctly taken aback.  “Of course not,” she said, as though it were obvious.  “I couldn’t have enchanted you if I’d tried.  Have you forgotten the effect of the Chains?”

“But you said—“

"The Chains of Avasina are based entirely upon two presumptions: that a wicked fairy is useless without her magic, and that no one would help a wicked fairy apart from another wicked fairy,” Maleficent clarified. “Perhaps I was a bit…manipulative in our conversation, but I didn't lie to you, and the decision to set me free was entirely yours."

Slowly, painstakingly, understanding settled into the place where betrayal had been, and Rose began to calm down.  Maleficent had not enchanted her.  She had chosen to free Maleficent.  The moment that had brought her here had been of her own volition.  “Then…what do you mean to say?”

"That the good fairies of the East believe I enchanted you is of little consequence,” Maleficent continued.  “That they have convinced Felicity is something of a different matter.  Felicity has many powerful connections, who, in turn, have many more.  If the story were to make it to someone such as Mistress Sara, every light fairy in the world may come to believe that I am too powerful to be contained by the magic of the Mountainland Fairies."

“What would happen then?” Rose dared to wonder.

“Then, I imagine, the light fae would find some way of deeming me a threat to all life on Earth, and they would call upon the services of fairies living elsewhere.”

"Elsewhere?" Rose echoed, and then the answer hit her. "The Sky Dominion?"

Maleficent nodded. "The results of their interference could be disastrous for everyone,” she said, almost casually, like the words meant little to her. “They don't know their own strength, so to speak."

“But…” Rose began, imploring, as she felt her entire world imploding for what seemed the dozenth time, “isn’t there anything to be done?  Can’t you…I don’t know…tell everyone that you didn’t enchant me?”

“That would be…difficult,” said Maleficent, sounding strangely hollow.  “Felicity would never believe me.  Theoretically I could demonstrate that I am not immune to the Chains, but that would be putting myself at her mercy.”

Rose felt the overwhelming urge to reach out to Maleficent, and had to fight herself to suppress it.  She knew Maleficent would not want it, would not understand it, and indeed, that it might make matters even worse for her.

“Announcing my weakness to any light fairy would be courting disaster,” said Maleficent with a sigh.  “They would refuse to believe me or interpret it as some pathetic plea for mercy.  Either way, I don’t see what good it would do for me to die simply to prove that I can be killed.”

“Then…there’s nothing you can do?” Rose asked, feeling distinctly as though she might begin to weep.

Maleficent focused her attention upon Rose rather suddenly, and she considered Rose with a curious look about her striking features.  “It’s not as though anyone is going to come knocking at the door tonight,” she said after a moment.  “In all likelihood, if indeed the matter does escalate, you’ll be a sorceress in your own right by then, and you won’t require my protection any longer.”

Before Rose could even think to respond, Maleficent stood.  “Anyway, if you’re interested, I plan on making a return trip to the Forbidden Mountains tomorrow.”

Rose stared up at her, unable to process all that Maleficent had told her quickly enough to form a response.

“To see whether I am able to revive my raven companion,” Maleficent added.

“Oh!” Rose exclaimed.  “Then you found the spell?”

Maleficent nodded.  “There is no reverse written for it.  It may well be useless, but I must try, nonetheless.  Would you like to come along?  The castle is deserted but for a lot of ravens, and I have a rather extensive library which might interest you.”

Rose nodded.  “I would,” she said hesitantly.  “I would like to come along.”

“Very well,” said Maleficent with a curt nod.  “I’ll wake you in the morning, then.”  Before she left, she looked back over her shoulder.  “I look forward to our challenge,” she said with a small smile.

Before Maleficent could disappear, Rose spoke up. "Maleficent?"

"Yes?"

There was something Rose was trying to put into words—something about the way Maleficent had misunderstood her just now and the way Kinsale had spoken of Maleficent when they’d visited her.  Maleficent had interpreted Rose’s concern for her well-being as concern for what would become of Rose in Maleficent’s absence, and Rose found that she could not abide that.

Still, Rose hadn’t the faintest idea of how to explain herself.  She had already found herself wanting desperately to communicate to Maleficent that she was not nearly as alone in this world as she believed, but she had not yet thought of a way to do so that Maleficent would understand, or even accept.

Rose had been silent for too long, she knew, but Maleficent waited patiently at the door for whatever she might say.  Rose decided that she must try, even if it didn’t matter, and even if she said the wrong thing.  It was better than not trying at all.

“I wanted to say,” Rose began, slowly, “that I am very grateful for your protection.”

Maleficent raised a brow.  After a moment’s silence, she responded, “It’s no trouble, Briar Rose.”

Rose stood and moved closer, struggling not to bow her head.  “Wait,” she said.  “I mean to say…  I mean to say that I am very grateful for your protection, but I am also glad of your companionship.”

Maleficent did not respond.  Indeed, she grew strangely still, and her expression became more unreadable than ever.

“I know it doesn’t matter to you,” Rose continued.  “I know that if you were in danger, you would be perfectly capable of fighting back, and so this is going to sound meaningless to you, but…”

Rose took another step forward, fighting the urge to reach out.  “I don't want you to be in danger. I don't want anything bad to happen to you. It's not lost on me that I wouldn't survive for very long without your help, but that's not the reason. I only want you to be well and…and happy and out of danger…because I think of you as a friend. Perhaps my only friend.”  She looked down, overwhelmed at last by the intensity of Maleficent’s gaze.  “I hope that's all right."

Maleficent remained silent for a moment, then Rose faintly heard her swallow. She affixed her gaze upon the far wall, and then upon the ceiling. "Well," she said at last. "Wanting such things for me may leave you disappointed. Get some sleep."

She left very quickly. It seemed as though she removed herself from the room and closed the door behind her faster than Rose had time to blink.

Rose sighed heavily and sat down upon her bed.  If she were being honest, Maleficent’s reaction had been better than any she could have hoped for.  Maleficent didn’t lash out in anger, or deflect her words with a snide comment.  Maleficent believed her, then, at least a little bit.  Rose nodded to herself.  Maleficent did believe her.  That was more than enough for now.

Chapter Text

The urgency of the task at hand proved to Maleficent no small mercy in the battle against her own mind this evening.  She was agonizingly close to an answer, a solution to the problem of her sole remaining friend and an enthusiastic insult to the fairy who dared to curse him, but light fairy magic felt like water between her fingers, difficult to grasp onto and impossible to predict.  She longed for the expertise of someone like Zenovia or Joy, but could not fathom the humiliation of asking.

Instead, as the moon rose high above her, she practiced.  She began with bugs she found along the way, turning them to stone and attempting to release them, then birds and squirrels.  She saw the faintest hint of a fox’s bushy tail disappearing into a thickening of trees, but could not bring herself to chase it.

A few survived, a few didn’t.  Maleficent could not rightly say what determined the outcome.  She could not guarantee that more practice would improve her own contribution.  Light fairy magic was crafted over the span of centuries to be a mystery to the dark fae.  That Maleficent could manage it at all was something of a happenstance.

With a huff of worried frustration, she cast the spell for release at a little bird she’d found sleeping just above the level of her eyes.  The bird came to life with a start and fluttered away, screeching.  Curiously, the noise from the bird seemed the only noise in the world, as it had been here since Maleficent’s arrival.

Maleficent sighed heavily and sat against the trunk of the tree.

She could do a lot worse than you, you know, Joy had said, with her usual airy wryness.

Flashes of the princess with her wide eyes and her tremulous tone mocked Maleficent every time she dared to blink.  Briar Rose looked to Maleficent for guidance, for understanding, for caring, for a sign that her decision to free Maleficent had not been a tremendous mistake, when of course it had.  Even a fool with half a sense of self-preservation would have known not to trust Maleficent.

Maleficent opened her eyes and stood.  Perhaps this, the princess’s utter guilelessness, had saved her.  Killing her because she had allowed it in her innocence would have felt cheap and unsatisfying.  And now, well.

Maleficent had encountered so little in the way of unobjectionable company over the years.

That was the end of it.  Just like her ability to wield light fairy magic, albeit quite clumsily, her tolerance for the human princess was mere happenstance.  And if Maleficent preferred to ascertain that Briar Rose be made capable of some basic self-defense in the face of a cruel world to which she seemed all but blind, well, then, call it a favour for a favour, the evening of the playing field.  Nothing more, nothing less.  No need to go making a grand affair of it.

Joy always was well-suited to court intrigue, the sort of idle gossip fairies got up to when they’d nothing better to do.  Maleficent only wished she hadn’t said anything because now the thought would not quite leave the recesses of her mind.  In love with the princess.  What an absurd notion.

The grey morning light found her with precious little sleep and a jaybird settled upon her knee.  It startled and fled when it noticed her awake, the flutter of its wings eerily quiet, like something out of a half-remembered dream.

Maleficent did not relish the notion of approaching a task without reasonable certainty as to how it would unfold, but there was no sense in delaying this any longer.  The light fae did not bother to mention the long-term effects of their nastier spells.  Maleficent feared that her odds of success might only decrease with time, while her makeshift countercurse was unlikely to improve at all.

She woke Briar Rose with a brisk knock upon her late sister’s door and a nagging thought that would not quite leave her in peace.  Rose appeared a few moments later, sleepy and not a little wild about the eyes, in the way of those who immersed themselves a bit too deeply in the study of magic.  Seraphina’s dresses hung loose upon Rose’s slight frame, but the deep red suited her very well, an observation Maleficent would not share under threat of torture.

Indeed, Maleficent found it difficult to hit upon an observation that felt innocuous enough to share this morning, and so they made the trip to her former home in stilted silence.  Maleficent could feel Rose’s searching gaze upon her, which only exacerbated the tension between them.  As soon as they’d arrived, Maleficent showed Rose rather hurriedly to her library and left her there without bothering to ask if she required assistance.  Briar Rose wasn’t an utter fool—surely she’d manage.

Maleficent’s home to the southwest of the Eastern Kingdom had never been in immaculate condition.  She had stumbled upon the dilapidated structure nearly a century prior, a relic from a human war which had ravaged the land so deeply that nothing could grow through natural means.  Maleficent had wondered whether perhaps a fairy’s magic had intervened, but she had been too young and inexperienced to sense such things at the time, and any such traces would have long faded by now in the wake of her own magical influence.  The magic of the dark fae was strangely possessive in this way.

Still, Maleficent had tended far better to her home prior to the events of the past two decades, and it pained her to see the extent to which she had allowed it to fall to ruin in her preoccupation.  The unfortunate battle with the prince and his fairy champions had left its mark, to be certain, but it had been the proverbial last straw—the fortress had been on the verge of collapse long before that fateful night.

Diablo stood undisturbed upon the balcony of Maleficent’s favoured tower room, wings spread as though in flight.  The sight of him sent a fresh pang of sorrow through Maleficent, and she touched his stone head softly as though he might be able to feel.  It was infuriating not to know whether he could—the light fae did not bother to document the effects of their nastier spells.

 “I am sorry, my friend,” she whispered.  “This is the best I can do.”

She held her makeshift countercurse between her hands like precious water and willed it towards the statue of her raven companion.  It washed over Diablo, strange and grey as the morning sky, and he came to life with a terrible sigh.  His wings fell limp at his sides and his eyes fell closed as he tumbled into Maleficent’s outstretched hands, dead.

Maleficent sank to her knees and hung her head in shame.

The best she could do, and it was not even nearly enough.  Wasn’t that just the sum of it all?

Perhaps the coolness Maleficent had exhibited toward Briar Rose that morning was to be expected.  Whatever progress Rose felt she had made with Maleficent, it always seemed to fluctuate back and forth for awhile before it stuck.  Still, Maleficent had brought her along as she had promised, to a place Rose had only ever known as the Forbidden Mountains, and truthfully, Rose had hardly realized how greatly she’d have relished nearly any change of scenery.

Maleficent's library was, as she had indicated, quite impressive; however, three quarters of Maleficent's entire collection was physically beyond her reach. Maleficent was quite a bit taller than Rose (indeed, she was quite a bit taller than most people), but the bookshelves seemed to go on forever above her head.  Rose felt quite embarrassed when the answer finally occurred to her: Maleficent could simply summon the books using magic.

A considerable stretch of time must have passed while Rose attempted to fabricate a spell for magically beckoning books down to her.  She would have given up and asked Maleficent for help long ago, but Maleficent had come here to attempt to revive her raven companion, and Rose did not wish to disturb her from this far more important task.  Instead, she sat down upon the floor and thought about the small list of spells she could fully understand—stay back, grow, don’t mind me…

There was a book with a pretty red cover just a couple of shelves beyond her reach.  Rose stood with as much intention as she could muster, eyed the book and held out her hand, and tried to remember what it felt like to cast a spell, to feel the power of magic coursing through her veins.  “Come here!” she told the book, and as though surprised, the book hesitantly obliged.

“Oh!” Rose cried and held the book close to her chest.  She danced happy circles around the small room and beckoned other books to her, setting aside those with titles she felt might be of some use to her.  The gold-embossed title of a book with a faded blue cover caught her attention enough to distract from her delighted perusal—the biography of Mistress Joy, as written by Mistress Kinsale of the Valley.

Rose traced the pretty lettering with her fingertips and glanced around her for a place to sit.

Joy was born to a Desert Land fairy called Mira.  She had an older sister named Hester and four younger brothers by two different fathers.  She was described as a small fairy, both in height and stature, and was therefore not expected to be as powerful as her mother or elder sister.

Hester proved to be mild-mannered, however, and uninterested in intense magical study, while Joy possessed a fiery ambition that drove her to work tirelessly against the constraints of her natural skill.  Mistress Kinsale noted that it was fortunate Joy never paid much mind to others’ opinions of her, else the world might never have known the beauty a dark fairy could offer it.

It was not stated explicitly, but somehow Rose got the sense that something terrible must have been occurring during this time, something like the crusade against wicked fairies that did not seem to worry Maleficent very much.  Joy’s family was left largely undisturbed, Rose gathered, because Mira had a husband and young children.

Hester left home as she neared maturity to avoid any potential conflict with her mother.  Around the same time, a light fairy family took up residence nearby, perhaps hoping to escape the vague conflict that seemed to be taking place just beyond the scope of the story.  Joy found a fast friend in the light fairies’ eldest daughter, Terra, much to the chagrin of both families.

“As is often the case when a light fairy and a dark fairy choose to look beyond their ancient enmity,” Kinsale wrote, “Joy and Terra were able to learn a great deal from one another.  Where Joy was quick-witted and contentious, Terra was kindhearted and grounded.  Even at such a young age, Joy knew a thousand ways to outmaneuver an opponent, in battle as in conversation, and in return, Terra was able to teach Joy that most complex art of reading the spells of the light fae.”

Where Joy’s mother and elder sister had gotten along quite well, Joy and Mira had always been at odds. Joy’s friendship with a light fairy did not ease the conflict between them.  The way Kinsale described their fights seemed strangely intense for something so vague, but Rose guessed she could not expect to fully understand the enmity between the light and dark fae, let alone hundreds of years ago.

Conveniently, the father of two of Joy’s younger brothers was preparing to depart from the family around the same time, and Joy made a hasty decision to depart in secret with him until she could find a place to call her own.

“Joy had, in her haste, neglected to mention her plans to Terra.  The news of her departure came as a dreadful shock to Terra, and Terra’s resultant devastation as a dreadful shock to her family.”

The description of Terra’s grief continued for some time.  She stopped eating, barely slept, and disappeared for long stretches of time, utterly at odds with the constancy of her character.  Kinsale did not so much as posit a reason for the severity of her distress, and Rose could not begin to understand it.  She had never had a friend, and so perhaps she was in no position to judge, but wouldn’t Terra have understood that Joy needed to leave?  Couldn’t they have kept in touch somehow?

As with much of this strange tale, Rose got the sense that there were large pieces of information she was missing, and that she might just simply know if she were a fairy.

‘Briar Rose.”

Rose almost dropped the book.  She stood hastily and faced Maleficent as though she were guilty of some unknown trespass.

Maleficent quirked a brow.  “Perhaps you ought to read something on situational awareness,” she said.  Rose knew it was meant to be a joke, but something about Maleficent was decidedly somber.

“I didn’t—“ Rose stammered.  She averted her eyes.  “Is…is your bird all right?”

“No,” Maleficent replied.

Rose looked up, stunned.  I’m so sorry, she wanted to say, but Maleficent’s demeanour did not invite such a sentiment.

“He may have been dead as soon as the spell hit him, or I may have killed him just now,” Maleficent continued evenly.  She averted her eyes briefly, and the corner of her lip twitched, but these were the only signs of emotion she showed.  “Impossible to say.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rose managed at last.  She reached out without even meaning to, but the moment her hand grazed Maleficent’s arm, Maleficent flinched away, and something in her dark eyes flashed dangerously.

“I’m sorry,” said Rose again.

“It is done,” said Maleficent darkly.  “If you don’t mind, I should like to leave this place as soon as possible.  In any event, I owe you a challenge.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary, not after—“ Rose began, suddenly cold with rising panic.

But Maleficent met her gaze, and Rose fell abruptly silent.  She didn’t need to state the obvious, and perhaps Maleficent would prefer the distraction of a magic lesson.

Rose gathered the books she wanted without further comment and turned back to Maleficent, who was gazing upward at nothing in particular.  Maleficent held out an arm to Rose and transported them back to the strange silence of the Dragon Country.

“Are you prepared to begin?” Maleficent asked her when they came inside.

Rose placed her borrowed books beside the chair she had once occupied next to Maleficent’s, before her months of dedicated practice in solitude.  She was as ready as could be expected, she supposed.  She turned to Maleficent and nodded solemnly.

There was something off about Maleficent just now, Rose thought, but she felt she was not adept enough at reading people to know for sure.  To say that Maleficent seemed stiff about the shoulders or that her dark eyes seemed somehow dangerous was more than a little ridiculous, as these things were often true of Maleficent even in her lighter moods.  Perhaps Rose was merely thinking of how she would feel if her treasured bird companion had just perished, let alone by her own hand, and wondering how one such as Maleficent might handle that terrible emotion differently.

Maleficent set her staff aside and raised her hands in front of her, one higher than the other, turned slightly inward.  Rose tried to match her stance.

“Go,” said Maleficent calmly.  Streams of violet light burst forth from Maleficent’s fingertips.

Briar Rose crossed her arms in front of her face and cried, “Shield me!”  The purple light stopped just short of her and dissipated, but before Rose had time to relax, Maleficent called out the name of a spell Rose did not understand, and a fresh wave of strange light came towards her.

“Shield me!” Rose cried again, worried that her previous shield had already failed.  She felt some intangible thing within herself dim and flare, and though Maleficent’s spell fell away, Rose felt lightheaded and dizzy.

“Good,” said Maleficent.  She folded her arms and seemed to examine the fingernails on one hand.  “But I wouldn’t let down my guard; this is meant to be a challenge, after all.”  The hand she was examining suddenly made a sweeping gesture, quick as lightning, and produced from nothingness a crackling sphere of energy.

Maleficent threw the strange spell in Rose’s direction, perhaps not particularly fast, but Rose was too fascinated to react.  She brought up her arms to shield herself far too late.  The ball of crackling energy hit her like a blow to the stomach and knocked her off her feet.

Rose examined the place where the strange magic had hit, but it had not left a mark, nor had it really hurt very much apart from the fall to the floor.  Lightning-fast, Maleficent had already crossed the room and was offering her hand to Rose before Rose had noticed her move at all.

“I let down my guard,” said Rose, like an apology.

“The shield you seem to be favouring is a high magical expenditure and better for long-term use,” said Maleficent.  “For something like that, you could have simply…caught it, and thrown it back to me, so to speak.”

“But suppose it were to hit you?” Rose wondered as she regained her footing.  “Wouldn’t it hurt you?”

Maleficent raised one eyebrow, but remained otherwise unnervingly expressionless.  “It would hurt the fairy who failed to catch it,” she said drily.  “Would you care to try again?”

Rose nodded.  Maleficent returned to her previous position and created another ball of energy.  This time Rose managed to catch it between her hands.  It felt strange to hold—it wasn’t really touching her hands; yet, Rose could feel it all the same, like the tingly feeling she got when she’d been sitting in the same position for too long.

Rose looked up at Maleficent, who waited stoically.  She wouldn’t feel right about casting a spell that could hurt another person under any other circumstance, but she knew Maleficent would not be caught off her guard even a fraction as easily as Rose.

Maleficent did not catch the orb so much as she struck it back in Rose’s direction.  Rose was a bit surprised by this, but she did not lose focus.  She caught the ball and threw it back, far more slowly and gently.  So it went for some time, back and forth between them, until Maleficent struck the orb in some strange way that caused it to spiral.  Rose was seized by the cold inaction of panic and allowed the energy ball to knock her to the ground once again.

“You saw the spell,” said Maleficent as she offered her hand to Rose, “and you saw that its path was unpredictable.  What could you have done then?”

“Use the other shield?”

Maleficent nodded.

“I’m hopeless,” Rose sighed.

“You’re slow on your feet,” Maleficent corrected briskly.  “You will improve with time.”

They continued practicing with the same energy spell for what must have been a long time.  Rose learned the correct ways to respond to the various techniques Maleficent used to cast the spell, but usually only after being knocked off her feet a few times for lack of any reaction at all.

As Maleficent heightened the challenge of her exercise, Rose felt her heart racing and her brow beading with sweat, while Maleficent seemed infuriatingly unaffected.  What must it be like, she wondered, to be so far above everyone and everything?  With a cry of frustration, Rose grabbed the sphere of crackling energy with both hands and thrust it hard at Maleficent’s knees.

Maleficent held out one hand and the magic dissolved into nothingness before her.  “It was a good move,” she said.  “Are you feeling tired?”

Perhaps, distantly, somewhere beneath this crackling, surging energy which was all her own, Rose could admit that she was feeling a bit tired.  But she could not rest, not now, not yet.  She shook her head.

Maleficent inclined her head thoughtfully, but she did not argue.  “Very well.”

Maleficent pulled another glowing ball of energy from thin air, but this one was different from before.  When Rose tried to strike it with the side of her arm, the magic burned her skin.  Rose inhaled sharply, less from the pain and more from the surprise.  The next time the ball of fire came hurtling toward her, Rose crossed her arms and tried to cry out, “Shield me!”  But the words came out as little more than a whimper.

Maleficent was moving towards her now, not the way she usually walked, too quick to notice, but slowly and deliberately.  Rose backed away on instinct, and once more her attention was drawn to that nagging feeling she had that there was something off about Maleficent.  To say that her shoulders were stiff seemed absurd, but Rose could now clearly see the tension in the exposed skin of her neck, just shy of the high collar of her robes.  To say that her dark eyes held danger might be true in the best of times, but now Briar Rose could clearly see that Maleficent’s eyes, usually bright with depth and terrifying intelligence, were somehow flat, dull and lifeless.

“Stand back,” Rose tried, but her throat was dry and her voice cracked when she spoke.  She struggled to swallow her terror and straighten her posture.  “Stand back!” she tried again.  The spell formed, but it hit Maleficent with little more force than a gust of wind.

“I’ve one more lesson for today,” said Maleficent.  “It’s quite important.  Humans and fae alike, but particularly mortal men, believe that practitioners of magic are strongest at range.”  She was still walking towards Rose, who continued to stumble backward.  “They will endeavour to close the distance between you, not only because they believe they can overpower you, but because they believe they can frighten you.”

Rose’s heel hit an uneven stone in the floor of the great hall and she staggered to keep her footing.  Maleficent was undeterred in her steady approach.

“They would be correct,” said Rose tremulously.

Maleficent shook her head.  “The magic in your veins makes you stronger than a dozen men.  If you can believe in that, then what cause have you to feel fear?”

Rose tried to think Stand back! very hard without speaking the words aloud, to cast the spell without Maleficent’s notice.  The spell hit with even less force than the previous attempt.  Maleficent stopped moving and looked at the spot on her shoulder where Rose’s feeble magic had grazed her.

“You find me frightening now,” said Maleficent, as though it weren’t obvious.

Rose nodded.  She felt her eyes stinging with unshed tears, and had to force herself to blink.

Maleficent inclined her head, and her lips twisted into a small, mirthless smile.  “It’s about time.”

She raised a hand and Rose flinched.

“Now,” said Maleficent.  “Suppose I am not magical.  I am still relatively strong and quick, and I think that if I can get close to you, your magic will be useless against me.”

Rose tried to back away again, but her palms hit a hard stone wall.  She felt a terrible sob threatening to double her over, but she swallowed hard and raised her eyes to meet Maleficent’s hollow gaze.

“Suppose that I have you cornered,” said Maleficent with a tilt of her head.

Rose shivered.

Lightning-fast, too fast to comprehend, Maleficent closed what little distance remained between them.  She held Rose’s wrist above her head and pressed her other arm against Rose’s chest, just below her throat.  Rose’s free hand grasped uselessly at Maleficent’s robes, and she felt hot tears upon her cheeks.

“What will you do?” Maleficent asked her, low and quiet, but so close the sound seemed to reverberate within her, a perfect echo of the voice from a half-remembered dream that would never quite leave her in peace.

“Please,” Rose breathed.

“Push me away,” said Maleficent, but her voice was not quite as infuriatingly calm as before.  There was some dark and dreadful shadow of emotion buried beneath her even tone.

“What?” Rose shook her head.

“Push me away,” Maleficent repeated, slowly, emphatically, and so close that Rose could feel Maleficent’s breath upon her cheek.

“I can’t!” Rose cried.

“You can.”

“You’re stronger than I am by far!” Rose insisted, tugging uselessly at the sleeve of Maleficent’s robes with her one free hand.  “You’ve proven that already!”

“Remember what I’ve said.  I am not magical.  I am merely a mortal who has trapped you.”

But of course Maleficent could never be merely anything.  Of course Rose could not even imagine Maleficent as mortal, or as nonmagical, or as someone she didn’t care for.

“You’re not,” Rose shook her head sadly as fresh tears welled in her eyes.  “You couldn’t be.”

Maleficent was unmoved.  “Push me away,” she commanded again, harder than before.

“I can’t!” Rose snapped.

Maleficent’s lip curled.  “You can’t,” she sneered, “or you won’t?”

“Fine, perhaps I won’t!” Rose wept helplessly.  “Please, just stop!  Don’t you care that I’m frightened?”

“Do you think someone who meant to harm you would stop if you asked?” Maleficent demanded coldly.

“No!” Rose screeched, and in this moment, ironically, she did push with all her might against Maleficent.  “But I thought you would!”  Briar Rose pulled her arms close to her chest and leaned heavily against the stone wall, too overwrought with grief to realize that she had done as Maleficent had asked, after all.

Several moments passed before Rose was able to calm herself.  She wiped at her eyes and steadied her breathing, fully expecting to see Maleficent looming over her, cold and impassive as ever, waiting to say something like oh, I suppose you’d like a rest now.

But when at last Rose dared to look up, Maleficent was gone, and she was alone in the great hall of Maleficent’s childhood home.

Rose leaned back against the stone wall and took a deep, shuddering breath.  She couldn’t stay here any longer.  Perhaps that would have been evident to a cleverer person much sooner.  But she hadn’t anywhere to go.  She couldn’t return home, not yet, and it must be nearly winter by now.  She would not survive for long if she simply set out in some unspecified direction and hoped for the best.  Why, Rose could not even defend herself against…well.  Rose didn’t want to think about that just yet.

Rose rested her head upon her knees and squeezed her eyes shut.  A thought occurred to her then, of a place she might be welcomed, at least for a short time, if only she knew how to get there.  Perhaps Mistress Kinsale would even be able to tell her why this had happened when everything had seemed…

Well, if not fine, then as good as could be expected.

Rose stood on shaking legs and made her way upstairs.  Beneath her lingering terror she could feel that she was beyond exhausted, though she doubted she would be able to sleep soundly.  When she arrived at her borrowed room, however, she found that it was not quite as she had left it.  One of the books she had taken from Maleficent’s library in the Forbidden Mountains lay open on her bed.

Rose approached the book with the utmost caution, unable to fathom why Maleficent would have left it out for her after all that had transpired.  She traced her finger across each item on the table of contents as she read.  Mirror an attack, deflect an attack, delay the effects of an attack, transport yourself—

“Transport yourself elsewhere,” Rose whispered to herself and hurriedly flipped to the corresponding page.

The incantation was only one line long, and part of it was describing the intended destination.  “If you do not concentrate completely upon your intended destination,” the book warned, “if even a small part of you wishes to remain where you are, you may find that small part rather painfully left behind.”

On any other day, Rose imagined that these words would spark paralyzing fear within her.  In this moment, however, Briar Rose felt that she could not possibly feel any terror greater than what she had already experienced today.

She ran her fingers over the incantation and tried to remember every detail of Kinsale’s beautiful home, from the foreboding outer wall to the lion’s head upon her throne to the pretty doves who had endeared Kinsale to her.

I am not here, went the incantation.  I am…

Rose withdrew her hand from the book and sat upon her bed, drawing her knees close to her chest.  She felt all spread out standing up, and of course there was a part of her that longed to stay, but she could not pay it any mind just now.  Perhaps if she drew herself as close together as possible, it would be easier to disregard the part of her that wished to pretend that none of today’s events had happened at all.

“I am not here,” Rose began.  “I am in the Valley Kingdom.  I am not here, I am in the Valley Kingdom.  I am not here…”

And indeed, she was no longer there.  She was not strictly anywhere.  It was strange to experience that harrowing sensation of being nowhere with only the faintest echo of fear.

“I am not here, I am in the Valley Kingdom,” she began again, squeezing her eyes shut and trying very hard to ignore the feeling of nothingness that surrounded her.  She held her knees even tighter to her chest and tried very hard to forget about everything except the things she remembered about the place she wanted to go.  “I am not here, I am in the Valley Kingdom,” she continued.  “I am not here, I am in the Valley Kingdom, I am not here, I am…”

Rose felt solid ground beneath her and crisp autumn air upon her cheeks.  She fell back into the grass with a tremendous sigh of relief and smiled up into the cloudy sky.  At the very least, she was somewhere.  She had done it.

My, but it seemed to Kinsale that she was getting an awful lot of surprising visitors lately, and very few of them welcome.  Lady Ophira was a lovely young thing from the Sea Kingdom who had recently ingratiated herself to the famous Mistress Sara, and what Kinsale would give to learn by what means!  But Ophira approached in the strange and secretive way of light fairies who hadn’t met many pleasant dark fairies, and her tone was far from conversational.

“I have…a concern,” she said, when Kinsale asked her if she might like to take a seat, or have something to drink.

“And?” Kinsale prompted after a moment.

“Are you…no.  I shouldn’t name names.”

“Darling, I’m afraid I already know who you work for.”

Ophira flinched at the term of endearment.  Kinsale felt her smile wane.

“It’s not…that.  It’s not her, not exactly.  Not completely.”

Kinsale waited.  She raised her eyebrows.  Finally, Ophira seemed to make up her mind to continue.

“It seems to me that some of the light fae in the Sea Kingdom grow...increasingly hostile towards your kind,” said Ophira, her eyes affixed to the far wall.  “And…without any cause, as far as I can tell.  Each day Mistress Hi…well.  Each day, it seems someone comes in with some new report on a wicked fairy—“

Ophira gasped and turned wide eyes upon Kinsale.  “Sorry,” she said.  “A dark fairy.”

Kinsale inclined her head thoughtfully.  “No offense taken,” she said, not a little wryly.

Ophira turned away again, this time in the direction of Kinsale’s fireplace.  She was a lovely girl.  The firelight caught the strawberry tones in her golden hair and brightened her worried green eyes with flecks of gold.

“And they’re…well, what business is it of ours, if a dark fairy is masquerading as a human?” Ophira continued.  “So long as she hasn’t done it to cover up for some heinous crime, well then, what’s it to us if that’s how she wants to spend her time?  Why would they--?”

Ophira hesitated, inhaled sharply as though she oughtn’t to continue.

“Why would they what, Lady Ophira?” Kinsale prompted gently, after a moment.

“I shouldn’t say it,” Ophira whispered.  “Oh, I shouldn’t even think it!  But I feel if I don’t say the words to someone, I shall come apart at the seams, and I--!”

She turned rapidly upon Kinsale, eyes afire and pretty face strong with certainty.  “Swear to it,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Ophira approached with none of the skittishness she’d displayed up until this point.  “Swear you won’t tell another soul what I say to you now, as long as I shall live.”

Kinsale studied her a moment longer, struggling to understand the sudden change in her demeanour, but more than a little desperate to hear what Ophira was so afraid to say.  “I swear,” she said at last.  Anyway, surely there was a way for a dark fairy to outmaneuver a light fairy’s promise, should the need arise—it would be Ophira’s mistake for trusting a dark fairy she hardly knew.

Ophira nodded slowly, studying Kinsale in return.  Finally, she turned away once more, and she spoke her mind, confident in the meaningless pact she had forged.

“There is something…amiss in Mistress Sara,” she said.  “I look into her eyes and see only steel and stone!  I shouldn’t even think it, for I know she must have witnessed horrors I can scarcely imagine, and we do owe her so very much, after all, but she is…”  Ophira closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists at her sides.  “She is cold!” she cried, as though the words had burst forth from her without her permission.  “Not cruel, not to me, but to the fairies she hunts down?  I don’t know!”

Ophira turned on Kinsale once more, tears shining in her eyes.  “I don’t know what she’d do!  I don’t know what she wouldn’t do!  Do you understand me?”

Kinsale considered her response for a long moment.  She did not wish to appear dismissive, but the whole thing was a bit much, even for her.  “It wouldn’t be the first time, Lady Ophira,” she said at last.  “You do know that, don’t you?”

“What?” Ophira breathed, horror-stricken.

“I appreciate what I assume must be a warning, Lady Ophira, I really do,” Kinsale continued, rising from her chair, “but surely you must know that my kind are not strangers to the ill sentiments you describe.”

“But it’s—“ Ophira began, and though Kinsale could guess what she meant to say, she was not afforded the opportunity.  Kinsale’s alarm sounded, and Ophira was startled into silence.

Kinsale waved her alarm away and pressed two fingers to her throat.  “WHO GOES THERE?” she demanded.

A moment’s silence followed.  Then, a small and stammering voice managed to say, “Mistress Kinsale?  I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, but it’s--  Well.  I’m sorry, I haven’t—it’s Aurora.”

“Aurora?” Ophira echoed.  She looked at Kinsale quite differently now, as though Kinsale had betrayed a confidence between them which had never existed.

Kinsale reached for her staff slowly, and with great caution, watching for Ophira’s reaction.  Ophira might be easily fooled by a pleasant demeanour, but Kinsale was not.  She could see the way Ophira clutched her wand beneath her sleeve.

 “You know!” Ophira said suddenly.  “You know what happened and you’re—what?  What is this?  Are you in league with Maleficent?  Is it really true?”

“Lady Ophira, I assure you, it’s nothing like what you’re thinking—“

“Oh, isn’t it?”  Ophira backed away.  “I…oh!  Oh, I should never have said anything!  How stupid must I be, to think--!”

“Mistress Kinsale?  I’m sorry if…”

“I’m going to let the poor girl in now, Ophira,” said Kinsale, as calmly as she could manage.  “Please, don’t do anything rash.”

Ophira did not move, did not even blink, and her shoulders rose and fell rapidly with her harried breathing.  She gave every indication that she might, in fact, do something very rash.  But Kinsale couldn’t very well leave the princess outside waiting, ostensibly on her own, and without any idea of the circumstances which had brought her here.

Kinsale lowered her wards for Aurora to enter.  She approached the main doors with staff at the ready and the better part of her attention trained upon Ophira.  She opened a door to find the little princess trying very unsuccessfully to hide fresh tears, a sight which distracted her significantly from the situation unfolding behind her.

“I’m sorry to disturb you—“ Aurora began tremulously.

“Oh,” Kinsale faltered, somewhat at a loss.  “Not at all, darling,” she managed, and ushered the princess inside.  “Please, do come in.”

But as soon as Kinsale closed the door behind her, she heard a very small and pitiful sort of yelp, and instantly realized her mistake.  She whirled around to find Ophira, who was not a big or strong fairy, but certainly bigger and stronger than the average human, with an arm wrapped around the Princess Aurora’s waist, and her wand aimed at Aurora’s throat.

Chapter Text

Kinsale couldn’t help but to think that if this had happened not so very long ago, she would have reacted quite differently.  Indeed, her first instinct, brightest and clearest in her mind, was just to kill one or both of them, dispose of the remains, and go on about her day.

Why should she have to deal with this?  Kinsale was not a warrior like Mistress Zenovia, or a public influencer like Mistress Joy.  Why, if she were clever—and of course she was—she might manage to keep her head down long enough to wait out Mistress Sara’s latest hissy fit in its entirety.  What was a human girl to her but an unnervingly fragile inconvenience?  Indeed, what was Maleficent to her now, that Kinsale should feel compelled to protect the princess on her account?

Kinsale looked from Ophira to the Princess Aurora, who looked to Kinsale with wide, fearful eyes.  What a fool, to trust Kinsale for protection!  What did she know of Kinsale?  They had met once, when Kinsale had felt compelled to be overly gracious (as she often did), and exchanged exactly one letter apiece, with precious little in the way of substance.  Frankly, Kinsale would have thought that Maleficent, paranoid snake that she was, would have warned the princess against trusting Kinsale so easily.

Kinsale looked back to Ophira, still brandishing her wand and trying very hard to look intimidating.  Kinsale could see now that Ophira was trembling.  What a lot of nonsense, the two of them at odds when each of them amounted to little more than a frightened child longing for guidance.

“Why don’t you let me return the Princess to Mistress Felicity and her friends for you?” Ophira began tremulously.  “It will…it will save us all a lot of trouble, if you do.”

“Please,” the princess closed her eyes, and tears glistened upon her cheeks.  “I can’t go back.”

Kinsale sighed heavily.  She dug her nails into her palm.  “Ophira,” she said, as calmly as she could manage.  “Look at yourself.  Isn’t this exactly what you were worried about?”

“Yes, it is!” Ophira cried.  “I thought you would—“

“No,” Kinsale raised a hand to silence her.  “I mean, look at what you’re doing, right now.”

“Who are you to judge my actions?” Ophira demanded.  She turned her attention to the princess, tightened her grip and aimed her wand with more virulence.  “You!  Human!  Do you know why you’re here?  Come on, you can tell me—I want to help you!”

Aurora squeezed her eyes closed tighter and her body shook from the force of her terrified weeping.  Kinsale wanted to feel disgusted by her weakness, or put out for the inconvenience, or angry with Maleficent for bringing trouble to her doorstep after all this time.

Alas, she could not manage it.

While Ophira’s focus was diverted, Kinsale cast a disarming spell.  Ophira’s wand flew across the room, and the surprise of it caused her to let go of the princess.  Aurora fell to her knees and doubled over sobbing.

Ophira looked up at Kinsale with something hard and cold shining in her eyes.  “You’ll regret this, Kinsale,” she said.

I already do, Kinsale wanted to say, but she held her tongue.  “Run along, Ophira,” she said evenly.

Ophira stood paralyzed for a moment, shoulders heaving, hands still atremble at her sides.  She summoned her wand in a quick, twitchy motion, and she did not turn her back to Kinsale as she moved to the front door.  She glanced in the direction of the weeping princess and frowned deeply before she returned her attention to Kinsale.

“I beg you to reconsider,” she said.

Kinsale, too, cast a passing glance upon Aurora.  “I don’t think I shall,” she replied quietly.  I don’t think I could if I tried, she did not add.

Ophira pursed her lips and shook her head, looking suddenly like she might begin to weep, as well.  She inhaled as though to say something else, hesitated, but let her breath out in a little sigh before she left, closing the door behind her with a heavy click.

Kinsale, too, felt compelled to sigh deeply as she returned her attention to her newest guest.  She approached hesitantly, with half a thought to reach out her hand.  “There now, darling,” she began.  “She’s gone.  You’re—“ 

What?  Safe?  Was she?

Kinsale bit the inside of her cheek and knelt down beside the princess.  Aurora’s face emerged from behind the curtain of her golden hair, and she wiped uselessly at her eyes with her sleeve.

“What’s happened, Aurora?” Kinsale asked her.

Aurora met Kinsale’s gaze at last, face all red and puffy from crying, bright blue eyes still shining with fear.  Something about it sent a pang of regret through Kinsale’s heart as she remembered what she’d considered not a few moments prior.  She smoothed Aurora’s hair away from her face and brushed away the newest of Aurora’s tears.  ‘You’re safe now,” she said with certainty.

Aurora shook her head sadly.  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“But why?” Kinsale asked her.

“Well, it’s my fault, isn’t it, what’s just happened?  You’re in trouble because I just had to show up at the wrong time, and now—“

“Oh, that,” Kinsale waved a hand dismissively.  “No, no, darling, that wasn’t your fault.”  Well, perhaps it was, but Aurora couldn’t have known.  And anyway, “I imagine things couldn’t have ended peaceably between myself and Lady Ophira, no matter the circumstances.”

Aurora averted her eyes and frowned subtly.  “Still,” she said, “I am sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you.”

Kinsale felt the corner of her lip twitching into a strange sort of smile.  “Think nothing of it, darling,” she said, although Kinsale, herself, felt that she might think of it quite a lot.  “Now,” she continued, standing, “won’t you tell me what’s brought you here in such a state?”  She offered her hand to the princess.  “Perhaps somewhere a bit more comfortable?”

Aurora took Kinsale’s hand and rose shakily to her feet.  She leaned heavily upon Kinsale’s arm as Kinsale led her to a seat by one of her fireplaces.  Kinsale tapped her chin thoughtfully for a moment before summoning a tea set.  She wondered whether she ought to employ a calming spell, but the princess seemed to be settling down on her own, and Kinsale always seemed to take calming spells just a step too far.  In this case, she did very much want the intended target to remember what had happened.

The princess accepted the cup of tea she was offered with a quiet “thank you,” and took several long, thoughtful sips.  “I’m trying to understand what happened,” she began at last, haltingly.  “Everything seemed—“ she sighed.  “Well, perhaps not fine, but just as well as ever.”

Kinsale frowned.  “Then…Maleficent’s done something,” she guessed.

Aurora bit her lip for a moment before she responded.  “Sort of.  I suppose.”

Kinsale felt as though her heart had twisted in her chest.  She took a long sip of her tea, and briefly considered employing a calming charm upon herself.  “Well,” she sighed, “why don’t you just…tell me what’s happened?”

“Well,” Aurora set aside her own teacup and curled her legs up to her chest.  “All right.”  She rested her arms upon her knees and her chin upon her arms with a heavy sigh and a thoughtful frown.

“Yesterday, Maleficent asked if I’d like to come with her to the Forbidden Mountain—that was what her home was called, you see.  One of my aunties—well, she did something awful.  She turned Maleficent’s bird to stone!  I didn’t think a good fairy could be so cruel, but—“

She paused and bit her lip again.  What a curious thing it must be, for a human to witness the potential for cruelty in a light fairy.  What a tragedy, for a young girl to witness the potential for cruelty in one she called ‘auntie’.

Kinsale felt herself smiling, not a little ruefully.  What an anomaly, that a human should call any fairy by such an endearment!

“Well,” Aurora continued.  “Maleficent was going to try to change him back, but…  I don’t know what happened.  But she couldn’t.  She said…she said he might have been dead a long time, or she might have killed him by trying to revive him.”

Aurora paused again and turned her attention to her teacup.  When they’d met before, Kinsale hadn’t noticed the way the princess took her time to speak.  It was an unusual quality in someone so young.

“Anyway, she’d said before—well, she had offered to give me a challenge, for my magical study.  And I wanted to say no, not after what had happened, but I thought perhaps she might prefer not to think about it, that it might be a sort of distraction for her!  I didn’t mean for—“

Aurora’s frown deepened, and she drew her legs more tightly against her chest.  “I knew something was off,” she said, so quietly Kinsale could barely hear her.  “I should have—I don’t know.  What should I have done?  Would she have stopped, before?  Would she have listened?”

“What happened, Aurora?” Kinsale prodded, as gently as she could manage.  “What did Maleficent do?”

Aurora looked up suddenly at the sound of her name, eyes wide, but clearer than they had been before.  She met Kinsale’s gaze for only a brief moment before she looked away again.  “She…trapped me,” said Aurora.  “She backed me into a corner!  She told me I could push her away if only I tried, but I was so frightened!  But then—“

“Then?” Kinsale asked, after a moment of agonizing silence.

“Then…then she was just…gone,” said Aurora, as though she were surprised even to recall the event.

“Gone?”

“She left,” said Aurora.  “She was there, and then she was gone, and I was…” she looked up, eyes shining with fresh tears.  “I couldn’t stay there anymore,” she said.  “Not after that.  I didn’t know…I still don’t understand.”

Well, Kinsale thought, not without a touch of bitterness, that sounded rather more like the Maleficent she knew.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use magic,” said Aurora suddenly.

“What?” Kinsale looked up, jarred from her reverie.

“Not when it counts, certainly,” said Aurora.  “I couldn’t do as Maleficent asked because I was too frightened.  Of course I couldn’t save myself just now.”

“Save yourself?  From whom, Ophira?” Kinsale shook her head, trying and failing to understand the princess’s leap in logic.  “Why, you’ve only been practicing for a few months, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—“

“How could you have known Maleficent would lash out at you?  How could you have expected a light fairy to attack you?” Kinsale insisted.  “Why, you’d have to be paranoid.”

Aurora took up her long-neglected teacup as she considered this.  “Or perhaps just a bit smarter,” she said, with a touch of melancholy.  “Someone with a bit more sense would never have trusted Maleficent to begin with.”

The words stung in a way Kinsale would be hard-pressed to explain, even to herself.  “Perhaps not,” she agreed quietly.  She considered saying a great many things, some helpful, some less so, some true, and some bold-faced lies.  In the end, at the very least, Kinsale did not lie.  “But if you want my opinion,” she began, perhaps a little reluctantly, “you weren’t wrong to trust her.  She’s a difficult woman, to be certain, but…”  Kinsale sighed to herself before she met Aurora’s searching gaze with a small smile.  “Well, I don’t think she means you any harm, darling.”

Aurora considered this for what seemed a long while.  “Do you think I shouldn’t have left?” she asked.

Kinsale averted her eyes.  “Well, I wouldn’t say that.  You were right to leave, if you were feeling frightened.  And of course--”

The words caught in Kinsale’s throat—words she had offered to a hundred or more others with far less reason.  “Of course, you’re welcome here,” she finished, perhaps less easily than she’d have liked.

“You’re sure?” Aurora looked up.  “I don’t want to put you out, really, I just…I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, and you’ve been so kind to me—“

Kinsale stopped her.  “I’m sure,” she said, and indeed, she felt sure.  “Really, it will be nice to have the company.  And…I can continue your lessons, if you like.”  Yes, Kinsale thought, she might like that.  She might really, really like that.  “I’m not even half the sorceress Maleficent is,” she amended, “but I am a fair bit less volatile.”  Usually.  Mostly.

“You would teach me?” Aurora’s pretty face lit up when she began to smile, and Kinsale felt a rush of warmth in her heart.  

My, but this little human did have a way of endearing herself to a fairy, didn’t she?  Kinsale was beginning to understand quite clearly what must have vexed Maleficent so—to say that the dark fae were unaccustomed to such guileless sincerity would be a rather magnificent understatement.

“Of course, darling,” said Kinsale, perhaps a bit taken aback.  “I stand by my previous assertion—it is vital that you should be armed with the tools to defend yourself, at the very least.  Speaking of which, I’ve had to create quite a bit of extra security lately.  Shall I give you another tour?”  Kinsale stood and offered Aurora her hand.  “I’m sure you’d like a place to rest after all this.”

Aurora hesitated only a moment before accepting.

Kinsale showed Aurora how to use the locks on her library and her study.  Then, she showed Aurora to one of her many guest rooms and helped her to fashion a personalized lock for that room, as well.  It was simple magic, but Aurora had accomplished quite a magical feat in coming here at all.

“If I may ask,” Kinsale put voice to her thoughts rather suddenly, “how is it you managed to make your way here?”

“After Maleficent left, I went up to my room,” said Aurora.  “There was a book on my bed…it had a spell called Transport Yourself Elsewhere.”

“Hmm,” Kinsale uttered aloud, without meaning to.  So Maleficent had intended to drive her away.  Not unexpected, perhaps, but Kinsale couldn’t help but to feel affronted on the princess’s behalf.  It was placing an awful lot of trust in a human to expect her to follow through on such a ridiculous series of mind games.

“Well,” Kinsale continued, with a thin attempt at lightness, “I must say, I am relieved that the spell was successful.  The first time I tried that one, I left my arm on the other side of the room!”

Aurora stopped cold and looked up at her, horrified.

“It…occurs to me that may have been disturbing,” Kinsale averted her gaze.  “Well!  You may rest assured, the reattachment of my arm was almost entirely painless.”  She patted her right shoulder heartily for emphasis.

“Oh,” Aurora looked away.  She did not seem very assured, but she refocused her attention on exploring the guest room.

“Anyway,” Kinsale waved a hand dismissively.  “There’ll be some nightclothes for you in the drawer there.  Tomorrow, if you’re feeling up to it, I can fashion you a few day dresses.  I’m afraid I haven’t any conveniently-sized sisters, but I’m quite good with alterations, if I do say so, myself.  I’ll be in my study if you need anything.”

“Kinsale?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you again,” said Aurora.  “I can’t thank you enough.”

She looked particularly small and fragile amid the extravagance of Kinsale’s guest room.  Kinsale was reminded, quite surprisingly, of someone else who had once looked at her in exactly the same way.  Perhaps the Princess Aurora had more in common with Maleficent than either one—and, indeed, more than Kinsale would ever have thought.  Kinsale had said this before, but it had been more of an empty gesture then, a vague attempt at comfort based on the fact that nearly anyone could find something they had in common.  Now, she found that she was beginning to believe her own words.

“It’s no trouble, darling,” said Kinsale, with a small smile.  “Sleep well.”

She closed the door to the guest room and leaned heavily against the wall.  Was it no trouble?  The way things were going, Kinsale had the distinct impression that it would prove to be a great deal of trouble.

As she had promised, Kinsale retired to her study.  She sat upon the stone floor before her great wall of windows and sought comfort in the gentle cooing of her birds.  The sun had just set, and the cloudy sky gave way to a bright waxing moon. 

She would enjoy the company, she knew, and perhaps it would even be good for her to have someone around again, but a human?  It was one thing to study humans, to talk to humans, even to play at their silly politics, but if this particular human continued along her current path, she might soon find herself at the center of some particularly nasty fairy politics, and Kinsale did not find those to be very fun at all.

Kinsale was not a warrior like Mistress Zenovia, or a public influencer like Mistress Joy.  Kinsale was a writer—and not even a very good one.  Why, she’d scarcely written anything in the last hundred years, for this reason or that.  While Mistress Hilda and her Big Book of Spells and her trite biographies were off ingratiating themselves to one of the greatest minds of a generation, what had Kinsale been doing?  If Kinsale involved herself in this, then she stood a very good chance of involving herself in a great deal more.

Then again, what other option did she have?  Maleficent didn’t want the girl around for whatever reason just now, and Kinsale knew from personal experience that Maleficent could be rather miserable when she didn’t want a person around.  That the princess didn’t want to return to her kingdom was understandable, of course—even ignoring all manner of potential unpleasantries that fell under the expectations of a princess, no doubt her existence would be made all the more unbearable by restrictions put in place to protect her after her infamous abduction.  And much as Kinsale wished she didn’t care, she certainly wouldn’t be complicit in that.

One of her doves, a peachy young girl named Hestia, lit upon Kinsale’s shoulder and cooed sweetly.  “Do you know what I say, darling?” Kinsale asked her.  “I say, let Ophira return, if she dares.  Let her send Mistress Felicity and her self-righteous sisters!  Let those three little fairies from the Eastern Kingdom wag their fingers at me for my heinous lies!  Why,” Kinsale straightened her shoulders and held her chin high, “let her send Mistress Sara to my doorstep, if indeed she cares so much!  I have vowed to protect this human, and protect her, I shall.  Because…”

Hestia inclined her little head as though to ask the question reverberating in Kinsale’s own mind.  Because, what?

“Well,” Kinsale sighed, but she felt herself smiling, just a little. “It is awfully nice to be needed, isn’t it?”

Hestia cooed happily.  Kinsale scratched lightly under her beak.  “I’m so glad you agree.  Can you deliver something for me, pet?”

Kinsale stood and went to her writing desk. 

She’s here.

I hope you’ve a very good explanation for this.

I am very sorry to hear about Diablo.

Kinsale paused, quill held in mid-air, a strange coldness settling upon her skin.

With love, she wrote, despite her better judgement.

Kinsale.

Far away, very nearly on the other side of the world, a very different sort of fairy had just received her mail for the week.  Where Mistress Maleficent preferred the company of ravens, and Mistress Kinsale had a particular fondness for doves, Mistress Zenovia’s bird of choice was an owl.  They were loud, messy, and contrary to popular belief, quite stupid, as far as birds went, all things Mistress Zenovia was not. 

Indeed, when Zenovia had realized this, she had been more than a little disenchanted with her owls, but that had been nearly a thousand years ago.  In all that time, the wretched creatures had somehow managed to endear themselves to her once again, and though Zenovia would be loath to admit it, she certainly would not trade them away now.

Zenovia had never been what one might call a “fairies” fairy.  She was a scholar, a writer, a devoted practitioner of her craft.  Not only did she have little time for idle chatter with fairies who were invariably digging for compliments or advice, she had absolutely no patience for it.  Zenovia had given her birds very clear instructions to deliver her mail only once weekly, at sunrise each Monday morning, and to tear to shreds any mail which was not worth delivering at all.

To their credit, her owls never delivered her mail at an egregious time.  Unfortunately, they were rather miserable at guessing which mail might be better off torn to shreds.  Why else would Zenovia have received a letter from Mistress Kinsale?

Indeed, on this particular Monday, in addition to a book she had ordered and a brief note from a great-great-great niece who insisted upon writing her occasionally, Zenovia had received no less than three extraneous correspondences.  One from Mistress Kinsale, who was prone to extraneous correspondences, one from Mistress Sara, who was not, and one from Mistress Joy, who was at the very least aware of Zenovia’s preferences and kept her letters mercifully to the point, most likely for fear that Zenovia would instruct her owls to tear Joy’s letters up on sight.

Zenovia considered tossing Kinsale’s letter without reading it, but a more reasonable line of thought gave her pause: Kinsale was not the fool she acted.  She must be aware of Zenovia’s feelings, towards her and towards unnecessary letters, and would not contact her without reason.

Zenovia sighed heavily and retired to an armchair by the fire to attend to her letters.  Kinsale’s was, predictably, riddled with endless pleasantries, and Zenovia would have stopped reading after the first paragraph if she didn’t sense that Kinsale was working up to something.  Indeed, the point of the letter came no sooner than the fourth paragraph.

“—brings me to the reason I’ve written you.  I cannot help but to feel that this conflict with the fairies of the Sea Kingdom is leading up to something dreadful, and that they may try to make something of an example out of Maleficent.  Forgive me if you’re already aware of this, but Maleficent recently ran afoul of some trouble in the Eastern Kingdom.  She was Chained, but the kind-hearted princess agreed to set her free, in exchange for her own freedom—isn’t that a lovely story?

“Anyway, it seems there’s been a dreadful misunderstanding regarding how Maleficent’s freedom came about, and you know Maleficent—she’d never admit she needs the help, but even the fact that she’s asking around means she’s at a loss for how to proceed.  I hoped I might appeal to you on her behalf, assuming she hasn’t already—I wonder if she might feel shy about asking you, herself.  Your assistance in this matter would be—“

Zenovia closed her eyes and huffed her displeasure.  The letter went on for another full page.  Zenovia was very glad indeed that Kinsale had never written anything on the study of magic, for Zenovia doubted she’d have been able to stomach it.

The letter from Sara was something of a curiosity, and perhaps just the slightest bit troubling.  To say that Sara and Zenovia hadn’t parted ways on the best of terms would be a rather magnificent understatement, and to say that Zenovia hadn’t hoped Sara’s brush with power and acclaim might have come to an end by now would be a bold-faced lie.  Zenovia might not be a “fairies” fairy any more than Sara was, but Zenovia did not have nations—indeed, she did not have scores of young, impressionable fairies looking to her for guidance.

Mistress Zenovia,

I hope this letter finds you well.

It has come to my attention that a former associate of yours, by name of Mistress Maleficent of the Eastern Kingdom, has begun to make herself into something of a menace.  Mistress Maleficent was recently said to use magic whilst imprisoned by the Chains of Avasina, after which she escaped custody of the Eastern Royal Family and took their heir apparent, a young woman by name of Princess Aurora, with her as a hostage.

The light fae of the kingdom are not well-connected, nor well-versed in the ways of our world, and were therefore unaware of the implications of Maleficent’s advanced magical power.  As you are one of her few known associates, and a powerful sorceress in your own right, I request on behalf of the Eastern fae that you locate Mistress Maleficent and rescue the princess, if she is still alive.  I trust you understand what is at stake in this matter.

Regards,

Sara.

Zenovia frowned deeply at the letter for some time.  I trust you understand what is at stake in this matter, Sara had written, and in truth, Zenovia did not.  She could guess at what the light fae of the Sea Kingdom were planning, quite simply because the longer she lived, the more time seemed to march in a neverending circle, but frankly, she’d expected Sara to be the tiniest bit smarter than that.  Still, what else could be so threateningly ‘at stake’ that Sara felt she could compel Zenovia to action on the matter?

Now, Maleficent—there was another matter entirely.  Zenovia was quite fond of Maleficent—always had been.  Maleficent had come to her for guidance after besting her own mother in a battle for her life, a feat Zenovia, herself, had also weathered.  Far more than a surpassing magical talent, Maleficent was frightfully intelligent, delightfully studious, and, on a more personal note, not a person prone to excessive nonsense. 

Indeed, on that note, Zenovia had always found Maleficent’s friendship with Kinsale to be bizarre at the very best, and predatory at worst—Maleficent had been young and ostensibly friendless the last time they had spoken, and Mistress Kinsale had something of a reputation for beguiling the foolish with her superficial charm.

Zenovia returned her attention to Sara’s letter and bit the inside of her mouth while she considered it.  She wasn’t going to comply, of course, and Sara must know that, so what was her greater purpose in sending the note at all?  Was it merely to threaten Zenovia with a conflict she already knew must be on the horizon?  To gloat?  To warn?

Zenovia tossed the letter into the fire.  Joy’s letter was, as she had predicted, mercifully brief.

Z,

You’ve probably heard by now that M is in a bit of a pickle.  I have some ideas I’d like to discuss in person.  I know you’re busy, but this is important.  Meet soon?

J

Three letters!  Three!  And each one of them regarding Maleficent!

Well!  Zenovia was most certainly going to track down her former associate.  She was going to uncover exactly what sort of mad game Sara was playing at by writing her, and she was going to turn it on its head.  If centuries of unerring adoration had truly addled Sara’s brain so deeply that she had settled upon that most ancient and idiotic of notions that the world would be much better off without a single dark fairy in it, then she deserved whatever misfortune befell her.

Zenovia called to one of her birds, an older fellow she named Alfie, who had grown a bit less snappy and screechy than the others over the years, and set about composing exponentially more letters than she had written in years beyond counting.

Chapter Text

It was strange, how easily one could grow accustomed to a place.  Briar Rose had long forgotten how eerily silent it was in the Dragon Country, or how deeply she had feared the mere idea of Maleficent’s wrath.  These things had quickly become as nothing to her, an insidious backdrop to the events of her days.

The Valley was in many ways the Dragon Country’s opposite.  Birds chattered from dawn until dusk, while crickets chirped and wolves howled in the night.  The grass was soft and wet, and it rained nearly every afternoon.  Indeed, for a few days, Briar Rose had found the noise unbearable by comparison.

By the same token, Kinsale was, in many ways, the exact opposite of Maleficent.  She was chatty at all hours, poised but never stiff, and she positively exuded endless patience.  She was, in fact, overwhelmingly kind to Briar Rose, and Rose often found herself at a loss for what to say or do in thanks for her generosity.

Kinsale’s lessons in magic were not challenges, but conversations.  Where Maleficent viewed her magic as a skill to be mastered, Kinsale seemed to treat magic as something akin to breathing, so innately part of herself that she could not imagine viewing it as difficult.

“Why, of course you’re exhausting yourself!” she exclaimed one afternoon as she observed Briar Rose’s tragic attempt at now you see me, now you don’t.  “Can you feel your shoulders?”

Rose looked at her a moment, uncomprehending.  She put her hands on her shoulders.

“No, no,” Kinsale waved her hands as she stood.  “Try the spell again, and this time—may I?”  She held her own hands aloft just shy of Rose’s shoulders.

Rose nodded, dumbfounded.  “Now you see me,” she began, “now you don’t.”  She swept her hand across the other arm, trying to envision erasing herself from view, but she flinched and dropped the spell when Kinsale touched her shoulders.

‘There!” she exclaimed.

Rose looked over her shoulder, not a little alarmed.

“Your whole body is so tense!” Kinsale continued.  “Can you feel it?  I mean, without touching your shoulders, can you feel them?”

Rose still didn’t know what Kinsale was getting at.  More than anything, she was acutely aware of Kinsale’s hands upon her shoulders, heavy and warm, and of how little she had been touched in the past few months.

But Kinsale would not lose patience with her, and she would not move on until she was certain Rose understood what she meant.  And so Rose closed her eyes, and she tried.  She tried to think about parts of her body and how they felt without touching them.  She flexed her fingers, wiggled her toes, rolled her neck, and then—

“I think I understand,” she said.  The tightness she felt when she rolled her neck extended into her shoulders.  She inhaled deeply and tried to relax them, and somehow immediately felt better.

“Excellent,” said Kinsale.  “You’re tensing up when you cast, you see.  Not only is it taking up more energy, but I daresay it’s interfering with the natural flow of your magic.”

She said things like that a lot.  The natural flow of her magic, just let it flow naturally, relax and just let it happen.  As though magic were natural to Briar Rose!  Rose felt the urge to snap back, to say maybe this is just all the magic I have, to say maybe magic isn’t as natural to me as it is to you, but she held her tongue.  Kinsale had been endlessly kind to her, and though that kindness often felt like too much to bear, Rose was not eager for it to end just because she’d had a fit of temper.

“All right,” she said at last, quietly.

Kinsale removed her hands from Rose’s shoulders and came around to face her.  “It’s a common beginner problem, Aurora,” she said, as gently as ever.  “Easy to fix.  But if you’re feeling frustrated, we can take a break.”

Rose hesitated, but this time she felt acutely what Kinsale had just pointed out to her.  She sighed heavily, and forced her shoulders to relax.  “I suppose I am,” she said.

“Wonderful!” Kinsale cried, as though she were the one who had needed the break.  She summoned a tea set at a table before one of her enormous fireplaces.  As though on cue, just as Kinsale lit the fire, the skies outside darkened and it began to rain.  “Oh, I do love a nice afternoon rain!” Kinsale remarked as she sat.

“It is…very lovely here,” said Rose.  There was more she wanted to express, but she lacked the words.

“Isn’t it?” Kinsale agreed.  “There’s a superstitious notion among the dark fae that the land bends to our whims when we fully inhabit our power.  Nothing but anecdotal nonsense to back it up, unfortunately, and all the world’s true scholars scoff at the idea, but I rather like it, personally.”

Where the Dragon Country had been eerily still and silent, Kinsale’s valley was full of warmth and life.  “This place does seem to suit you,” Rose agreed.

“And you?” Kinsale asked her.  “Is there anything I’ve neglected?  I confess I’ve had my fair share of guests over the years, but never a human.”

“No, no, you’ve been too kind, really!” Rose said in a rush.  Truthfully, even if she had needed anything, she would have felt badly for asking.  As if it weren’t enough that Kinsale had offered her a place to stay and a continuation to her magical instruction, she had positively inundated Briar Rose with supplies and items she had heard that humans used, most of which Rose had never even seen before.

Kinsale watched her thoughtfully for a moment.  This was the one trait she shared with Maleficent, and Rose wondered whether it was just a fairy thing—whenever Kinsale looked at Rose a moment too long, Rose felt distinctly as though she were being studied.

“Forgive me if this seems a bit…forward,” said Kinsale slowly, “but there is something else that may be hindering your magic.”

Rose felt herself tense.  She could not will herself to relax.  She waited, feeling equal parts irritated and, strangely, frightened.  It was strange, because she had not felt frightened while she’d been here.

“You have trouble…” Kinsale frowned at the ceiling, gesticulated vaguely with one hand.  “…wanting things,” she finished at last, with a slow nod.  “And magic, even the most harmless magic,” she leveled Rose with an uncommonly serious stare, “is all about imposing your own will upon the world.”

Her gaze was so intense that Rose had to look away.  She picked at her skirt to distract herself.  “You make it sound so easy,” she said, not a little bitterly.

“Oh, but it is!” said Kinsale.  “Wanting something is only hard if there’s a good chance you can’t have it.”

Something inside Rose’s chest twisted painfully.  She felt suddenly quite aware that all of the things she wanted were out of her reach.

“Wanting love?  That’s hard,” Kinsale continued, with her usual cheer.  “You can’t force someone to love you.  Well, you could manufacture it, but trust me, darling, it pales in comparison to the real thing.  But wanting, oh, I don’t know, a roaring fire, a nice afternoon rain, a delicious cup of tea, and perhaps a magical shield to aid you if you should need it?”

Kinsale waved her hand idly.  The fire went out and the rain stopped abruptly.  She smiled, the same way she always did, but there was something dangerous in her eyes.  “That’s easy.”

Briar Rose knew it must be wrong to feel this way, but this, the flash of darkness Kinsale had just shown her, perhaps by accident, spoke to her far more easily than overwhelming kindness.

“I think I understand,” Rose breathed.  “I mean…I want to.”

Kinsale leaned in, and narrowed her eyes studiously.  “I thought you might,” she said.  She flicked the fire back into the fireplace and the rain back onto the roof, never looking away from Briar Rose.  “Drink your tea,” she said.  “Then we’ll try again.”

“Hello?  Flora?  Flora, are you awake yet?”

Fauna entered the realm of the waking slowly, and with great regret.  She had dreamt of walking along the bright white beaches of the Sea Kingdom, and to say that she was reluctant to return to the reality of her surroundings would be something of an understatement.

Fauna stretched and rubbed uselessly at her eyes.  She inspected the guest room to find that her sisters had gone somewhere without her, which had become increasingly typical in the time they had spent in Mistress Felicity’s company.  Fauna was not a suspicious person by nature, yet even she felt that there must be something amiss in that.

“It’s only me here just now, Charity,” she called to Felicity’s younger sister.

“Oh!” Charity exclaimed as she entered the room.  She thrust a letter in Fauna’s direction.  “Well, just let Flora know she’s received word from the King, won’t you?”

As Charity departed, Fauna examined the note.  It was addressed to the three of them, to Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, not just to Flora.  Of course Flora had always been a bit pushy like that, wanting to assert herself as the eldest, and therefore the leader, but there was something different about it here.  It had never felt like this before.

Fauna bit the inside of her cheek.  She ripped open the letter.

Your Most Honoured and Exalted Excellencies, Mistresses Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather,

It has been some time since I have received word from you regarding the matter of our beloved Princess.  I understand that your task is not a simple one, and I urge you to proceed with the utmost care; however, I pray that you will take pity on a heartbroken Kingdom and disclose the details of your progress, even if they are not what you had hoped.

Additionally, I require the presence of a Royal Fae Adviser to the Crown in order to proceed with the Eastern Kingdom’s intent to unite with the Kingdom of the North, as it seems the Royal Marriage must be further postponed.  It is largely a formality, as outlined in an ancient text, and I assure you only one of you need return for the task.  Once you have returned, however, countless other matters will surely benefit from your attention.

I await your prompt response.

Kind regards,

King Stefan of the East

Fauna sat with a heavy sigh and thumbed the edge of the letter worriedly.  How she wished she could have voiced her concerns to the King in this moment!  How she wished she could have said that she, too, longed for any news, any progress, any way forward in this matter, even if it was not what she had hoped!

Instead, she wanted to tell him, her sisters, or more precisely, Flora, had become caught up in some madness Felicity fed them, about the inherent superiority of the Light Fae, and how it was all wrong that they should serve a human king!  Mistress Sara had overthrown a tyrant for their right to forge their own destinies, Felicity had said, and sure, it was a very compelling story, but hadn’t she overthrown a dark fairy because she was a threat to all humanity?  And hadn’t Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather come here with another matter in mind?

And even setting aside all that, assuming Fauna, too, had gotten all swept up in Felicity’s words, did that mean that they ought to just stop looking for Aurora?  Did that mean they ought to just give up, because what had the Eastern King ever done for them anyway?

Fauna didn’t like to cause a fuss.  Why, she’d spent the better part of her life trying to avoid doing just that.  She smiled, she nodded her head, she tried to find common ground even when she was certain she could feel something inside her shattering, because Fauna did not want to feel like she was breaking apart.  Fauna wanted nothing more than a peaceful existence.

Well.  So she told herself, anyway.  So she had told herself, in fact, for the better part of the last five hundred years.  Fauna had seen a glimpse of another path she could take, another life she could live, and the sheer terror of it had overwhelmed her.  Fauna was not the sort of person who made bold, rash decisions.  Fauna did not want to be that sort of person.

What would have happened, Fauna wondered, if Maleficent hadn’t escaped?  Would the land truly have known peace, even then?  Would little Rose really have just married Prince Phillip, united the two kingdoms, and lived happily ever after? 

It seemed foolish to think of, just now.  And yet, wasn’t that the result they were courting, in going after Rose now?  Were Flora and Fauna and Merryweather really hoping that even after all this time, wherever Rose was and whatever had become of her, she would return easily to the path that had been set for her, and that all would be as it could have been?

Why, suppose Fauna had left with the boy from the Sea Kingdom who had told her he loved her!  Suppose after some time they had fallen out, or he had died, as would of course have been inevitable, and suppose Fauna had returned to her sisters.  Would everything have just gone back to the way it was before?

No.  In fact, Fauna wasn’t certain whether her relationship with her sisters would ever have recovered from such a thing.  That was, in the end, the reason she had chosen not to go.

Now, though?  What would become of Briar Rose if her protectors—indeed, if the only three people she had ever known—abandoned her?  What would Fauna tell herself when she looked back upon this moment, this letter she could not bring herself to answer, and the burning questions her sisters seemed suddenly so disinclined to answer?

Fauna had to do something.  She felt it like a weight in her stomach and a pounding in her chest.  She could not sit idle a moment longer, could not linger in slumber whilst her sisters conspired without her.  Fauna did not know what she would do, or what she could do, but she had to do something.

Sara,

While I’m certain your concern for the affairs of mortal royals is most noble, I am not a trained dog who will fetch something for you without reason.

Zenovia

Sara sighed quietly and tossed the note aside.  The owl who had delivered it screeched from the windowsill.  Sara waved him off.  Absently, she reached for an old charm necklace at the side of her desk and twisted it tightly around her fingers.

Someone was crying.

She frowned and listened harder, sure it was a trick of the mind, a memory so attached to the necklace that it had begun to seep into reality, but the sound did not go away.  Sara stood and went to her door.  When she threw it open, Ophira startled and gasped, and tried to surreptitiously wipe at her face.

“Lady Ophira,” said Sara.

Ophira startled at the sound of Sara’s voice.  It wasn’t an uncommon reaction.  She stiffened her shoulders and wiped hurriedly at her face.  “I’m sorry, madam,” she whispered.

Sara was surprised to find that she did not feel irritated, by the sound or the sight of tears.  Perhaps it was because Ophira was young, and that she was not the first assistant Sara had unintentionally frightened.  Perhaps it was the memory of the necklace still twisted about her fingers that willed her to ask, not a little reluctantly, “Is something troubling you, Lady Ophira?”

Ophira’s lip trembled and she covered her face in shame.  Sara glanced idly at the walls of the foyer outside of her office, wondering whether she ought simply to tell Ophira to cry elsewhere and return to her work.  But Hilda would be here soon enough, and though she would sooner die than admit it, Sara didn’t particularly relish being teased about making her assistants cry.

Sara sighed imperceptibly.  “Perhaps I can help,” she offered, but her tone sounded flat, even to her.

“I’ve done something terrible,” Ophira managed at last.

Sara raised her eyes to the ceiling.  “And?”

“And?”  Apparently this shocked Ophira into looking up.

Sara very nearly flinched.

“I went to see Mistress Kinsale,” Ophira confessed.  “I was afraid of what—well, you know, I thought Mistress Kinsale was a decent sort of wicked fairy, and I didn’t know what would—I mean, I just don’t see what’s so bad about a wicked fairy masquerading as a human, and I was worried—“

Sara nodded slowly.  “You were worried that Mistress Kinsale, or someone like her, would be imprisoned under false pretenses.”

Ophira averted her gaze and wrung her hands together.  “Yes,” she whispered.

Sara did not reassure her.  That was a conversation for much later.  The laws that governed the fae were vague and nebulous things.  Sara had learned far too young that she must bend the rules in order to take action when it was most needed.  She would prefer to keep such a lesson from one so young and so innocent.

After some time, Ophira continued.  “But then the girl came, the missing princess from the Eastern Kingdom!  Kinsale acted like I was being crazy, but Maleficent kidnapped that poor girl, and Kinsale thought that was just fine!  Oh, I’m so stupid!”  Ophira covered her face again.

“You’re not stupid,” said Sara plainly.  “If you were, I wouldn’t have hired you.” 

She hesitated a moment, then placed a hand carefully upon Ophira’s shoulder.  Ophira startled and looked up at her again, eyes still glistening with tears. 

“You are young enough yet to hope for the best in others,” Sara continued.  She patted Ophira’s shoulder and withdrew.  “It’s an admirable quality.  Not a fault.”

Downstairs, Sara could hear Hilda’s grating tone and affected greetings as she approached.  Sara glanced pointedly in the direction of the stairs.  “Some of us lost it long ago.”

“Sara, darling!” Hilda cried as she ascended.  “And, oh, I’m sorry, dear, what was your name again?”

“Ophira, madam.”

“Of course, of course,” Hilda waved her hands.  “Forgive me, Lady Ophira, it’s just that Sara goes through so many assistants, an old lady like me has a hard time keeping track."  She patted Ophira’s cheek as she passed, then took Sara by the shoulders and kissed her cheeks.  Sara felt irritation settle over her like a warm blanket, familiar and comfortable.

“Good to see you out of your hidey-hole today, Sara,” Hilda continued with a condescending smile.  “You know, I’ll bet you’d feel a lot brighter if you just took a little walk around the village every once in awhile.  Lots of people would be very glad to see you!”

“Would they,” said Sara flatly.

“I expect you’ll want to get on to business as usual, then,” said Hilda, a touch less brightly.

Sara considered snapping back, but she felt a little badly for stealing some of Hilda’s joy.  Instead, she gestured that Hilda should enter her office.

Ophira made to leave, but Sara stopped her.  “You, too,” she said.

Ophira opened her mouth as though to protest, but Sara knew she wouldn’t dare.  Eventually, she scurried after Hilda without so much as a word, and Sara closed the door behind them.

“What news, Sara?” Hilda wondered.  “I do hope there’s something big going on, since you seem to be ignoring your paperwork.”

“Lady Ophira will tell you what she’s seen,” said Sara impassively as she returned to her desk chair.  For several centuries now, Sara had seen to it that she must sign off on all new policies set forth by the human royals.  Over the last hundred years or so, however, Hilda had seen to it that more and more power was awarded to the fae, and now it seemed that the majority of policies Sara read were Hilda’s own handiwork.

Not a bad thing, necessarily, but Hilda was a fair bit trickier than the average human royal.  She liked to add small clauses into her policies that seemed harmless at first glance, but would have far-reaching consequences that a mortal would have no way of understanding.  Sara needed her wits about her when she read one of Hilda’s proposals.

After a moment’s tense silence, wherein Sara assumed Hilda was looking at Ophira with her characteristic overwhelming condescension, Ophira spoke timidly.  “The missing princess from the Eastern Kingdom, the one Felicity sent word about?  She’s with Mistress Kinsale of the Valley.  Kinsale acted like she was there by choice.  I don’t know if they’ve done something to her, or if she was just too frightened to say anything.”

“And you’re sure it was she?” Hilda advanced, holding out a rudimentary picture of the princess in question.

“Yes,” said Ophira, but under Hilda’s scrutiny, she did not sound very certain.

“And she was unharmed,” said Hilda, looking over at Sara.  Sara loathed the way her face looked when she was acting particularly surprised.  She raised her eyebrows too high and widened her eyes too much, and there was the faintest hint of laughter about the set of her cheeks.

“If Kinsale is working with Maleficent, then we have a problem,” said Sara.  “One powerful dark fairy can do enough damage all on her own.”

“But Kinsale has always cooperated quite well with us in the past,” said Hilda, in the sickly-sweet tone of one who was pretending very poorly not to be delighted by this turn of events.

“And I’d rather not antagonize her without due cause,” Sara told her flatly.  “It is possible that we don’t have the full story.”

The smile left Hilda’s eyes, and she folded her arms.  “Then how do you suggest we proceed, Sara?”

Sara inhaled slowly while she thought.  “My primary concern is with Maleficent,” she said after a moment’s silence.  “We all know the danger of a dark fairy who cannot be held by the Chains.”

The last known dark fairy whose power could not be contained by the Chains of Avasina has been Mistress Cordelia.  Sara had been the one to defeat her, but at a tremendous cost.  Indeed, five hundred years later, Sara felt that the Sea Kingdom had not entirely recovered.  Humans forgot such matters.  Fairies did not have the luxury of being so short-sighted.

“But it’s possible that this, too, is misinformation,” Sara continued.  “Maleficent must be forced somehow into demonstrating her power.”

“And if—“ Ophira gasped, as though she were surprised to hear herself speak.  “I’m sorry.”

Sara turned to her.  “If?”

“If she isn’t as powerful as we think?” Ophira breathed, looking as though she might weep once more.

Sara hesitated.  Hilda spoke up instead.

“Then we still have a problem,” Hilda said, not a little sharply.  “Her power isn’t what’s important, dearie.  It’s what people think of her.  Why, look at Mistress Sara here!”  Hilda wrapped an arm about Sara’s shoulders and shook her gently.  Sara struggled not to lash out against the touch.  “You’ve seen for yourself what a ray of sunshine she can be, and yet the people adore her for what she represents to them.”  Hilda patted Sara firmly before she let go.  “We don’t need the dark fae looking for role models.”

Ophira looked to Sara, as though for confirmation.  Sara distanced herself from Hilda subtly, hoping to avoid being touched again while she considered her options.  She owed a great deal to Hilda’s influence—Hilda had a way of making people believe the things she said, perhaps merely by continuing to say them, over and over, with such overbearing conviction—but if she thought there was a way she could continue her work without ever having to see Hilda again, she would do it without hesitation.

“Well then?” Hilda prompted, still with that grating sharpness about her tone.  “I expect you have a plan?”

Sara sighed.  She did have an idea, but it wasn’t a pretty one.  None of her ideas ever were.  “The prisoner.  Where are you keeping her?”

“Which one?” Hilda asked her airily.

Sara turned on her sharply.  Again the horrible smile left Hilda’s eyes.  “The dungeons, of course,” she said, as though it ought to have been obvious, but Adara was not just any prisoner.

“I want to speak to her,” said Sara.  She tapped her pointer finger upon her desk.  “Here.”

Silence answered her.  Hilda and Ophira stood unmoving, staring at her as though she’d said something outrageous.

“Now,” Sara bared her teeth.

“Yes, madan,” Ophira managed, and all but ran from the room.

Hilda remained, looking uncharacteristically tentative.  “What are you going to do?” she asked, in the hushed whisper of those who had heard stories of the things Sara had done, but could not truly imagine doing the same, no matter the direness of the threat.

Something in Hilda’s eyes sparked an old echo of an emotion in Sara’s chest.  Countless people, human and fae, had looked to Sara in just the same way, frightened for their future, terrified of what must be done to secure it.  Sometimes Sara looked into their eyes and saw a depth of fear, of hope, that she herself could not remember ever experiencing.

“Don’t trouble yourself with it, Hilda,” she said.

She knew it was exactly what Hilda wanted to hear.  It was exactly what everyone wanted to hear.

Kinsale,

Meet me at Joy’s next Monday.  If you’re able, tell M that S knows, and she’s obviously planning something.  Not by mail.

Zenovia

Kinsale would be lying if she had to pretend that there wasn’t a certain thrill in receiving mail from Mistress Zenovia of the Mountainlands.  It was well-known that Zenovia disliked correspondence of any kind, and it was, mercifully, less well-known that Zenovia did not particularly care for the company of one Mistress Kinsale of the Valley.

A few centuries back, Kinsale had become positively enamoured of some fractured idea of Mistress Zenovia, crafted from the straightforwardness of her very complicated work, the myth of her public persona, and a scratched up picture she’d seen on a dartboard once when she’d been running around with her older brothers.  Zenovia was known for many things, from being a ruthless duelist to a scholar beyond compare, a humble and reclusive academic to an insufferable egomaniac, not to mention that she was known in some circles just simply for being the granddaughter of the dark fairy Avasina, for whom an infamous artifact had been named.

Kinsale had always taken special care to extend a personal invitation to Zenovia for any party she threw, and even for some she attended as a guest.  Zenovia had attended only one, to which she had been dragged along by her younger sisters, and she had made it abundantly clear during the course of the evening that she did not care for Kinsale in the least.

Kinsale would have liked to say that this had dulled her admiration, at least a little, or at least for a little while.  Unfortunately, this might well be the greatest lie she had ever told.

Once the thrill of receiving a letter at all had passed, however, the weight of Zenovia’s words began to sink in, and Kinsale began to feel strangely cold.  She traced a finger idly over the signature one last time before she set the letter aside and leaned her head back in her chair to gaze up at the ceiling.

The task that lay ahead of her this evening was not one she would wish upon her worst enemy: she needed to talk to Maleficent, even though Maleficent didn’t want to talk to her.

With a heavy sigh, Kinsale willed herself to stand.  Perhaps she was stalling by checking in on the sleeping princess before she left, but Kinsale had always had a bit of a protective streak, and she had grown surprisingly fond of Aurora in the brief time they’d spent together.  It was a comfort to see her at peace in her slumber, a peace she never seemed to grasp in her waking hours.

And perhaps it would fill Kinsale with enough righteous indignation to really let Maleficent have it for whatever she’d done to frighten the girl so.

Kinsale hadn’t visited the Dragon Country much.  When she’d been close with Maleficent, Maleficent had been disturbingly paranoid, utterly convinced that her mother would return from exile at any moment to kill her.  She’d come here once just after Maleficent had left, perhaps hoping to find her again, perhaps just to mope, but she could not help but wonder at the strange silence of it now.

No wards, no misdirection spells.  Kinsale found her way to the fortress easily.  The doors weren’t even locked.  Maleficent sat in a chair before an empty fireplace, staring blankly at the far wall.  Her black hair was loose, and it spilled down over her shoulders into her lap.  Kinsale approached hesitantly.

“I thought you might come,” said Maleficent.  Her voice cracked.

“Yes, well,” said Kinsale uncertainly, “you could have been a bit clearer.”  She half-remembered that she had meant to scold Maleficent for the way she had behaved, but it seemed unimportant just now.

Maleficent lifted one shoulder tiredly.  She did not move.

“Why did you do it, Maleficent?” Kinsale wondered carefully as she approached.  “That poor girl practically idolizes you.”

Maleficent’s lip twitched.  “Foolish.”

Kinsale felt a mirthless smile upon her lips.  “Perhaps,” she said.  “But as always, you fail to realize how impressive you are.”

Maleficent met her gaze at last, and Kinsale rather wished that she hadn’t.  Her dark eyes, normally alight with sharp curiosity and a thousand unknowable thoughts racing all at once, were flat and lifeless.

“Haven’t you ever known that you would ruin something?  So you simply…”  She looked away, shrugged again.  “Ruin it.  So it’s done.  At least if she’s with you then—”

“Then, what?”

“Well, of course someone will come for me soon enough,” said Maleficent quietly.  “If the princess is with you, then perhaps they won’t take her back.”

‘To the Eastern Kingdom, you mean?”

Maleficent looked up.  She looked strangely young then, the way she had when Kinsale had first met her.  “She doesn’t want to go back.”

“All right,” Kinsale nodded, trying to sound encouraging.  She took the seat next to Maleficent’s and reached for her hand.  Maleficent allowed it, but didn’t seem to notice.  Her hands had always been so cold.

“Joy told me what the light fairies think,” said Maleficent after some time.  “I knew they’d come to that conclusion, of course, but now I see the scope of it.  As soon as someone like Mistress Sara gets wind of it, I’ll be as good as dead.”

“Don’t say that,” said Kinsale harshly, squeezing Maleficent’s hand between both of hers.

“It’s true,” said Maleficent, unaffected.  “Even if, by some miracle, I were to defeat the Mountainland Fae in combat, what then?”  Maleficent waved her free hand vaguely.  “War.  Widespread destruction.  And for what?  A handful of stolen days?”  Maleficent let out a mirthless huff of laughter.  “What have I to live for, really?”

Kinsale stood abruptly, unable to sit still when the full force of Maleficent’s words had hit her like a physical blow.  “What’s happened to you?” she demanded.  She knelt before Maleficent and took her by the shoulders.  “Do you hear yourself?  Resigned to just…just sit here and die?”

Maleficent’s brow furrowed subtly.  “Kinsale,” she said, as gently as she ever said anything, “I don’t see any alternative.”

Kinsale slapped her.  She stood again, the only time she had ever towered over Maleficent.  “Don’t be stupid!” she cried.  “You always find an alternative!  You always have some insane contingency plan!  Or two, or three!  You always find a way!  You convinced the human you cursed to free you from the Chains of Avasina, Maleficent!”

Maleficent stood, too, slowly, like it was difficult to move.  “And what have I to show for that, Kinsale?” Maleficent demanded, still barely above a whisper, even though Kinsale was all but shouting.  “What am I to do now, with the time I’ve borrowed?  Start anew only to have whatever I build torn asunder?  Wage war against someone or something simply because it’s all I have ever known?  Spend the rest of my pathetic life running and hiding like a hunted animal?”

Kinsale’s stomach twisted, and she felt cold all over.  She opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t have a good answer.  After a moment, Maleficent’s expression changed suddenly.  “Why are you crying?”

Kinsale inhaled shakily only to realize that she was, in fact, crying.  She shook her head, stunned, unable to explain what should have been obvious.

“You’ll be all right now,” Maleficent assured her with a firm nod.  “If I face the Mountainland Fae, someone will notice.  Sara won’t be permitted to antagonize another dark fairy without cause, at least not for a long while.”

Kinsale wanted to reach out to her, wanted to close that invisible space that always lingered between people who had once been close and now were little more than strangers.  She wanted to explain that she was crying because she didn’t want Maleficent to die, because she didn’t want Maleficent to be so complacent about dying, and perhaps just simply because she had missed Maleficent so terribly all these years, and it wasn’t fair that they should have to meet again like this, that the universe could never seem to afford them any time.

But Kinsale could not even begin to find the words for this.  Even if she sat down to write them, she thought, words might fall woefully short of all she needed to communicate, a century of regret and of longing for something that could never be truly mended. 

“I don’t understand why you’re giving up,” said Kinsale stiffly.  “But I won’t.”  She backed away slowly, willing herself to keep moving, forcing herself to hold her hands at her sides.  “I can’t.”

Maleficent watched her carefully as she turned away.  Just when she was sure she was safe to let her tears flow freely, Maleficent stopped her again.  “Kinsale?”

Kinsale did not turn around.  She did not trust her expression.

“Don’t tell the princess.  Please.  Not until it’s all over, at least.”

Kinsale brought her fist to her mouth to stifle a horrible sob.  She steeled herself and turned over her shoulder to look at Maleficent.  “I confess, I’m a little jealous of her,” she said.

“Why?” Maleficent frowned subtly.

Kinsale’s lips twitched into a sad smile.  “Because for some reason, you think this will hurt her more than it hurts me.”

Maleficent inhaled sharply, and she hesitated as though she meant to respond, but no words followed.  Kinsale didn’t give her much time.  She couldn’t bear to look at Maleficent a moment longer.

The Valley was beautiful at night.  The summer days here would be unbearable without a little help from Kinsale’s preferred afternoon rainstorms, but the nights were just divine, perfectly cool without being chilly, and the new moon left the sky dark enough to really appreciate the stars.

Admittedly, she was a bit surprised to find a light on in her own house, and the way things were going, she doubted any fairy would blame her for feeling a bit on edge when first she spotted someone sitting in her chair.

“Oh!” Kinsale cried, and struggled to restore some semblance of neutrality to her expression.  “I didn’t expect you to be awake, Aurora.”

“I’m sorry,” said Aurora.  “I’ll leave, if you want to—“

“No, no, I’d…” Kinsale hesitated, but when she continued, she found that the words were painfully true.  “I’d be glad of the company, actually.  What are you reading?”

“Trying to read about Mistress Joy,” Aurora held up the book, looking rather doleful.  “I was reading Mistress Acacia, but Joy started to feel very important to understanding that story, and…oh, I don’t know, I keep feeling like there’s something I’m missing about the whole thing.  Something important.”

“Such as?” Kinsale wondered, though she had the sense she already knew.

Aurora shrugged and flipped to a random page.  “Oh, how about this part?  ‘—because Joy was attending to her own personal tragedy at the time.’  What personal tragedy?”

“Oh.”  Kinsale averted her gaze.  A very large part of her wanted to brush it off, to say perhaps another time, for she was not feeling particularly up to explaining that bit of editing this evening.  Not that the book, itself, bothered her very much anymore, but telling Aurora about Joy and Terra could lead to other questions which Kinsale really did not want to answer.  Preferably ever.

“I’m sorry,” said Aurora again, after a moment’s silence.  “Have I upset you?”

“No, no,” Kinsale sighed and bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully for a moment.  She afforded the princess a sidelong glance--an obvious mistake, for natural beauty and wide, innocent eyes had never exactly been easy for Kinsale to deny—and sighed again.  “That bit was…heavily edited, shall we say,” she began, stiffly.  “Not my choice.  Closest I’ve ever come to being controversial, in fact.”

“Controversial?”  Aurora leaned in, instantly enraptured. 

Kinsale basked in the familiar glow of attention, even a little more than enough encouragement for her to continue.  “Joy was chief adviser to the Fairy Queen when I was writing about her.  It was very important that she was portrayed in a…positive light.”  The word, positive, felt wrong on her lips, but it was what Kinsale had been told, time and time again, by everyone aside from Joy, herself.

“And Joy’s personal tragedy was…too negative?” Aurora frowned.

“Joy had…” Kinsale struggled to find something to do with her hands, or somewhere to rest her eyes while she found the right words, “…a very complicated relationship with a Light Fairy called Terra.  Terra wasn’t particularly accomplished or influential in her own right; indeed, she only received a lot of public attention through Joy.  It…didn’t sit very well with her.”

“What?” Aurora pressed.  “The attention?”

“Another thing your escape from the Eastern Kingdom may have spared you, Highness,” said Kinsale with a little flourish of a bow.  She settled upon summoning herself some tea so that she had something to draw her focus while she talked.  “Some of us adore the spotlight, others learn to live with it, and others…well.  Terra was a very kind person in her private life, but she could be…reactive, in larger settings.  Joy took a lot of the blame for that.  I’m sure a part of her still believes it was her fault.”

“But why?  Just because she was a dark fairy?”

“Yes, exactly,” Kinsale nodded.  “The vast majority of people, both human and fae, assumed that Joy had been a bad influence on Terra, and did their level best to drive the two apart.  Unfortunately, it worked quite well.”

 “I see,” said Aurora slowly, staring at the book.  “And that’s why Joy was preoccupied?”

“Suppose…” Kinsale began, perhaps a bit reluctantly.  “Suppose you loved someone very much, but you knew, at least from your perspective, that you were bad for her.  What would you do?  Leave her in peace?”  Kinsale lifted a shoulder.  “Try to be better?”

Aurora sank back in her seat as she considered this.  “I suppose I see what you mean,” she said quietly.  “But—“

Kinsale met her eyes, waiting.

“Well, it’s just that I still feel there’s something I’m missing,” said Aurora with a sigh of frustration.  “Something I feel the words just…” she gestured vaguely to the book “…I don’t know, just expect me to know already.”

Kinsale hesitated.  The words caught in the back of her throat, weighty and dangerous.  Kind-hearted though she might be, Aurora was very young, and had been raised in near isolation by three light fairies whom Kinsale understood to be rather self-righteous.  There was no telling how she would react.

“What is it that seems off to you, Aurora,” she prompted, instead.

“It sounds…like a very intense sort of friendship,” Aurora frowned deeply, focusing very hard upon her hands folded in her lap.  “It’s almost like…I don’t mean to offend you, but it almost sounds like something you would say about…well, a man and a woman,” she paused, somehow frowned even more deeply, “who were in love,” she added.

“Almost,” Kinsale agreed grimly.  “But you see, it doesn’t matter how much I had to leave out.  I think I edited just that part something like six times before the Queen’s forces were satisfied.  Whole,” Kinsale gestured vaguely, “swathes of Joy’s life and legacy just…erased, and for what?  Everyone knew.”  Kinsale laughed mirthlessly and dared to look upon Aurora at last.  “Even someone centuries later, with absolutely no context and about a fraction of the story can see it.”

Unable to bear the inscrutability of Aurora’s face, Kinsale looked down at her tea.  Actually, she rather liked the idea.  “You know, I think I’ll tell that to Joy,” she said quietly.  “I think she’d like that it didn’t matter in the end.”

“They were lovers…” said Aurora quietly.  It didn’t sound like shock, at least, or disgust.  In fact, it sounded almost awed, even reverent.

Kinsale looked up hopefully.  Aurora was gazing past her, at some imagined thing upon the far wall.

“It’s a pity I wasn’t allowed to write what really happened,” she offered carefully.  “It was messy, to be certain, and not exactly happy.  They had very different ideas about…almost everything, really.  But what really…struck me about the whole thing was that…they never stopped trying to understand one another.  They never stopped trying to reach one another.”

Aurora picked up the book and thumbed the edges thoughtfully.  “What happened?” she asked after a moment.  “How did it end?”

“Well,” said Kinsale to her teacup, “Mistress Acacia’s trial is a bit of a long story.  In the end, nearly everyone who publically opposed the verdict was put to death.  That included Terra.  Another thing for which a great many people still blame Joy.”

“What?” Aurora looked up, shocked.  “But why?”

“Why was a wicked fairy spared when a good one was put to death?” Kinsale countered.  “Joy lost her position in the Sky Dominion, while Terra lost her life.”

“But Joy also lost Terra!” Aurora cried miserably.

“Yes,” said Kinsale quietly, not a little surprised.  “I imagine the Fairy Queen saw it that way, as well.  It’s often said that the dark fae are incapable of love, at least in the way that humans and light fairies understand it.”

Aurora held the book close to her chest, looking like she was trying very hard not to cry.  Were Kinsale not feeling so miserable, herself, she might have possessed the wherewithal to offer comfort.

“I don’t think that’s true,” she continued instead, more to herself than to her audience.  “I just think it takes us a little longer.  And we’re never really afforded the time.”

To Kinsale’s immense surprise, it was Aurora who reached out to comfort her.  She set the book down and came over to kneel at Kinsale’s side, then took Kinsale’s hand hesitantly between hers.  “Thank you for telling me,” she said.  “I wish…”

“What?” Kinsale looked down upon her, and felt herself beginning to smile at the curiousness of a human princess kneeling at the feet of a wicked fairy.

“I wish you could have written it the way it really happened,” she said.  “I think it would have been beautiful.”

Kinsale’s smile widened, and she let out a little huff of something that hung precariously between laughing and crying.  She leaned down and brought Aurora’s hand to her lips, and then they sat together in a rather comfortable kind of silence for a very long time.

Chapter Text

J,

Next Monday.  I’m bringing Kinsale.

Z

Joy folded the letter into a fun little shape, tossed it into the air, and zapped it into oblivion.  One could never be too careful in times such as these.  She didn’t send a response.  It wasn’t as though she had anything better to do, and Zenovia knew that all too well.  Anyway, a meeting that included both Zenovia and Kinsale was bound to be amusing.  These days it wasn’t unusual for a dark fairy to keep to herself, but a few hundred years ago their pointed avoidance of one another had been positively absurd.

Joy found herself wondering when it had all changed.  She, herself, had never been quite as sociable since the trial a few hundred years back, and Zenovia had changed monumentally after her sisters died, which was to be expected.  But when had Kinsale stopped throwing parties?  Why, there had been a time when it seemed there was a party every night, sometimes with Kinsale, sometimes with one of her countless friends, usually so fast-paced and so fun that the partygoers hardly had time to think about who was a light fairy and who was a dark fairy.

Zenovia had never liked that sort of thing, had never even bothered to understand it, and Joy supposed she could not blame her friend for that.

A knock at Joy’s door unsettled her from her reverie.  She took up her staff and held it surreptitiously at her side as she went to answer.  She had been receiving an awful lot of unexpected guests lately.

When she opened the door, something vague and heavy settled in the pit of her stomach.  “Well,” she said with a mirthless smile.  “We meet again, little fairy.”

“You remember me?” Fauna managed, all wide eyes and stammering tones.

“Do you think me senile?” Joy inclined her head in mockery.  “You and your charming associates visited me not a few months ago.”

“Well, yes, but I mean…before that.  It seemed like--”

Joy sighed and turned away, ushering Fauna inside with a vague wave of her hand.  Goading someone was only really fun if they’d fight back.  “Yes, little fairy, I remember you,” she said tiredly.  She hadn’t known Fauna’s name at the time, actually, or thought about it much over the last few centuries, but a fairy who would seriously consider leaving her sisters and her kingdom for the love of a human was perhaps even more scandalous at the time than it would be today.

“Even if I hadn’t,” she amended, in a vain attempt at levity, “you giving me guilty eyes throughout the entirety of our most recent meeting would certainly have given me pause.  So,” she turned to face Fauna once more.  “To what do I owe the pleasure, O Mistress of Secrecy?”

Fauna averted her eyes.  “I think there’s going to be a war,” she breathed.

Joy narrowly avoided laughing coldly.  “Do you now.”

Fauna looked up, wide-eyed and earnest.  “I do!” she insisted.  “You heard what Felicity said when we were here before, and oh, it is terrible what’s happened to Rosie, but she is very kind-hearted, you know, and I’m just worried that—“

“Rosie?” Joy stopped her.  Half-consciously, she summoned a tea set.

“I’m sorry,” Fauna stopped cold, like Joy had said something terrifying.  “The Lost Princess of our kingdom, Aurora—we called her by another name to hide her from Maleficent.”

“Rosie,” Joy murmured again, not a little amused.  She thought of what she’d said to Maleficent, about how curious it was for a fairy to care so deeply for a human.  The comment had been intended to tease her, but there was considerable truth in her jest.  Things had changed a great deal between the humans and the fae over the course of Joy’s lifetime, but the balance between them had seldom been peaceful, and it had never been equal.

“I’m worried,” Fauna continued after a long moment, “that she might have freed Maleficent on her own.  That Maleficent just talked her into it, I mean.  Maleficent is very cruel!  But…I just worry that she didn’t do what my sisters think she did.  And that could…  Well.”  Fauna averted her eyes.  “I don’t know what that could mean.”

Joy took in a long breath and let it out slowly.  She closed her eyes briefly.  There was a great deal she could say—even a great deal she wanted to say.  But what difference did it make?  Finally, she met Fauna’s wide, searching gaze, and she spoke, as plainly as possible. “And what do you expect me to do about that, Fauna?”

Fauna opened her mouth as though to speak, but of course she hadn’t thought of that.  Joy, to Fauna, represented a fairy who ought to have a wealth of untold wisdom on any number of matters, because Fauna had met Joy when she was very young, and Joy was slightly less young.  Of course she didn’t know why she had come here—indeed, if she’d thought about it, she would have realized that visiting a disgraced dark fairy in secret was a very risky thing to do.  But Fauna was desperate for an answer to her problem, and she had hoped, irrationally, that Joy might be able to provide one.

A knock at the door startled both of them.  Joy hopped to her feet, quickly bound Fauna’s hands and wings, and shoved her into the next room.  “Be quiet,” she commanded—indeed, she nearly pleaded, but judging from the look in Fauna’s eyes as she was rendered forcibly silent, Joy’s tone must have sounded very different to its victim.

Joy remembered when she cared about that sort of thing.  Tone.  Interpretation.  Perspective.  How things looked, as opposed to how they were.  There were certain advantages to being cast out from civil society.

When Joy opened the door, she was rather glad she had taken extra precautions.

“Sara,” she said, blankly.  There was something about seeing her that still felt a bit like twisting an old knife.  “To what do I owe the, uh…”

“Spare me the formalities,” said Sara.  “Do you know anything about what’s going on?  With Maleficent and the human princess?”

“Maleficent?” Joy echoed, as though surprised.  “Why, I haven’t heard anything about her in—“

“Save it,” said Sara darkly.  “Do you know anything or not?  I haven’t time for games.”

It was curious to think that if it were really just Sara, Joy would have told her what she knew.  Sara was not unreasonable, and Joy knew better than most that Sara was not really any of the things that either her loyal sycophants or her greatest critics believed her to be.  Joy would have trusted Sara, not necessarily to do the best possible thing, but to do what she genuinely felt needed to be done.

Joy would have trusted Sara, but Joy did not trust the company Sara kept.  It wasn’t so much that they manipulated her as it was that they used her influence, the idea of Sara rather than the reality of her, to further their own agendas.  Anything Joy said now might well be twisted and used as further ammunition against her own kind.

Joy sighed heavily.  She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe.  “I know about as much as you do, I’d assume,” she said.  “I’ve heard the rumours, a princess being kidnapped, a dark fairy defying the Chains.”

“But you haven’t spoken with Maleficent.”  The way Sara spoke almost never sounded like a question.  She turned to leave without so much as a thanks for your time.

“Sara,” Joy spoke without thinking, without meaning to, like the name had been ripped from her throat.

Sara stopped.  She waited.

“Have you considered,” Joy continued, painstakingly, “that this might just be a misunderstanding?”

“I have.” Sara turned to face her.  “Would you stake a young woman’s life on it?”

Joy felt like she was screaming on the inside, begging herself to shut up and let it be.  This was not her battle.  She was all done with battles like these.  But she had already said too much.  “What about Maleficent’s life?” she asked.

She didn’t expect this to have any effect.  Indeed, even if it had, she did not expect to notice.  If Sara possessed any great emotional depth, Joy had yet to witness it.  But something did change in Sara just then—Joy would almost swear to it.  It wasn’t a look or even a tone, just…a feeling, something intangible, indescribable.

When Sara spoke again, somehow, she was different.  “What would you have me do?” she asked.  “Wait until the damage is already done?”

The sincerity of the question needled at some ancient and aching thing inside of Joy, and her response was sharp around the edges.  “Would you really do it again, Sara?” she demanded.  “Condemn a young woman for an accident of birth?”

The sincerity left as soon and as subtly as it had arrived.  “Do you suddenly care so deeply?” Sara wondered with her usual indifference.  “Since the gravity of the situation seems to elude you, allow me to clarify: now that this matter has been brought to my attention, it is my responsibility.  If the princess dies at the hands of a dark fairy, many among my kind will consider it an act of war.”

“And what about you?” Joy asked her, and found she genuinely wondered at the answer.  “Is that how you see it?”

Sara was still for a moment.  “Honestly, Joy,” she said quietly, “I thought you were clever enough to know that what I think hardly matters.”

She left then, in a burst of flame like a dark fairy, and Joy was left with a terrible hollowness inside her as she considered the future that must surely lie ahead.  She closed her door and went to unbind Fauna, who had worked herself into a dreadful state in the time she’d been left to her own devices.

“Snap out of it, Fauna,” said Joy.  “What were you doing before you came here?”

Fauna struggled to catch her breath, though of course a silencing charm had not stolen it from her.  “I was with my sisters,” she breathed, wiping at her tear-streaked face, “and with Mistress Felicity’s people.”

“Are you going back?”

Fauna shook her head and wrapped her arms about herself.  “The Eastern King needs a fairy adviser.  I’m returning alone.”

“Good,” Joy nodded, more to herself than to Fauna.  “Go there.  Do that.”

“But I—“ Fauna stammered.  “Oh, please, what can I—“

Joy took Fauna by the shoulders.  “Take care of your people, Fauna,” she said gravely.  “This is going to get nasty.  Your little princess may need someone like you on her side very soon.”

“She’s all right?” Fauna looked up suddenly.

Joy hesitated.  “As far as I know, yes,” she said.  “As I understand it, your little princess saved Maleficent’s life.  That’s not something Maleficent is likely to forget, no matter the circumstances.”

“Then…” Fauna breathed.  “Then I was right.  Maleficent didn’t use any magic.”

Joy held up her hands.  “I don’t know.  But Maleficent isn’t your problem anymore.”

“But she—“

“Not your problem!” Joy reiterated with a gentle shove to Fauna’s back.  “Go,” she said again.  “Your people need you.”

“What about you?” Fauna asked her.  “Will you be all right?”

Joy knew, logically, that such concern, which was ostensibly quite genuine, should have touched her, or even consoled her.  But she could not bring herself to feel anything beyond irritation.  “I,” she said, as kindly as she could manage, “am also not your problem.”

Strange and delightful though Kinsale’s magical lessons had become, her vast knowledge of the magical world and its inhabitants was nothing short of a lifeline for Briar Rose, and Rose found she could hardly restrain herself from asking the kinds of questions she knew would get Kinsale talking.

Fortunately, Mistress Kinsale loved talking.  She didn’t care much for magical theory or breaking down the parts of spells the way Rose now realized Maleficent had done.  Her interest was in people, human and fae alike, and as a biographer she had met a great many.

“Not Mistress Sara, no,” said Kinsale with a sigh of amicable resignation that lowered her into the soft green grass of her courtyard.  “Poor timing, I suppose.  We’re not far off in age, but Sara achieved greatness when she was incredibly young and has been rather carefully guarded ever since.  I’ve met Hilda many times, though,” she amended, with a certain flatness.

“Hilda?”  The name sparked a memory of a memory, a shadow of one of the things Rose was doing her best not to give too much thought at the moment.  “Not the same Mistress Hilda who wrote the Big Book of Spells?”

“Precisely so,” said Kinsale.  “These days she fancies herself Sara’s chief adviser,” she continued, not without the slightest tinge of mockery in her voice.  “The story is that she took the young, innocent Sara under her wing and shielded her from the cruel hand of politics.”  She scoffed.  “Personally, I find it hard to believe even a Hilda of a few centuries prior would ever do anything purely out of the kindness of her heart.”

Rose was more than a little amused to witness Kinsale speaking so derisively of anyone.  “You think she befriended Mistress Sara for her own reasons?” she wondered.

Kinsale shot her a look of polite incredulity.  “Well, of course, darling; everyone’s got her own reasons for doing anything, hasn’t she?  I take issue with dressing it up like that, though.  Makes it seem like she’s got some sinister agenda to hide, and Mistress Sara comes out looking like a sort of…unwitting victim.”

Rose frowned.  “Victim of what?”

“Oh, anything, darling!” Kinsale made a broad, sweeping gesture.  “Lies and slander by humans, fairies, make up any story you like!  Paint Sara as an innocent and Hilda as her long-suffering, benevolent caretaker, and gently redirect the blame wherever it’s most convenient.”

“Like where?”

“The human royals?” Kinsale offered.  “A young wicked fairy?”

Rose leaned in, somewhere between horrified and mesmerized.  “Mistress Acacia?”

Kinsale tapped her finger to her nose, something like delight sparkling in her deep brown eyes.

“Is that really what happened?” 

“It is,” said Kinsale, far more seriously than Rose had ever heard her.  “You see, Mistress Sara’s fame stems chiefly from her defeat of Mistress Cordelia, and as I’m sure you’ll recall, it was a rather terrible battle.  Cordelia was very powerful, and Sara was very young at the time.  It’s quite remarkable Sara was any match for Cordelia at all.”

“The book said…she enchanted all the beasts in the forest to rise up against Cordelia,” said Rose.  “And then afterward there was a food shortage because of it.”

“There was a shortage of everything,” said Kinsale gravely.  “Cordelia didn’t just slaughter the animals Sara sent.  She set fire to the farms and the surrounding forest.  She enchanted the waves to crash upon the shore, thereby flooding more land and gutting the water of fish.  And that’s to say nothing of all the people she’d been running around terrorizing before that.”

“Why didn’t the book say all that?” Rose wondered, quite genuinely.

“Because that book was about Mistress Acacia,” said Kinsale with a shrug, “not about her mother.”

“But in the book you made it sound like the food shortage was entirely Sara’s fault,” Rose pressed.  “And it wasn’t, was it?”

A strange look came over Kinsale then, something vague and difficult to define.  She had the look of one almost amused, perhaps by a half-forgotten joke.  “Well,” she said with a little chuckle.  “A younger Mistress Kinsale may have had her biases.”

“You didn’t like Mistress Sara?”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Kinsale pointed at her as though she were onto something terribly important, though Rose felt more lost than ever.  “I don’t know if I like her or not.  All I know about Mistress Sara is what other people have told me.  Are we defined by that?  By what others see in us?”

It wasn’t something Briar Rose had ever considered.  She hadn’t even the faintest idea of how to respond.  Fortunately, the question turned out to be rhetorical.

“Do you know what Mistress Joy tells me?” Kinsale continued.  “She says that Mistress Sara is nothing like anyone says she is, that she’s a quiet, serious woman who places her trust in the wrong people.  Would you believe that?”

Rose tried to think of everything she had heard about Mistress Sara, which when she really laid it out, did not amount to very much.  And anyway, wasn’t that Kinsale’s point, that she oughtn’t to believe everything people told her?

Are we defined by what others see in us? Kinsale had asked her, with wide, dark eyes that seemed at once warm and threatening.  Kinsale did not define herself by anything that surrounded her.  Indeed, she imposed her will upon her surroundings, demanded that the universe provide her tea and her fireplace and her afternoon rainstorm.  Briar Rose felt acutely in that moment that even if she possessed the skill to influence her surroundings, she would not know what to do with it.  She felt that she wouldn’t even know what a person might say about her, and that if anyone at all were to tell her who she was and what she wanted with any certainty, she might just believe them.

“I wonder if Mistress Sara defines herself by what others see in her,” said Rose quietly.

Kinsale was silent a moment, but Briar Rose didn’t have the nerve to meet her searching gaze just now.  “Well,” said Kinsale after a moment, “let’s hope you never have to find out.”

A new angle to something Kinsale had said struck Rose just then, and she was more than a little eager to redirect Kinsale’s focus.  “You said you had your biases when you were younger,” Rose began, haltingly.  “I…hope you won’t think me rude, but I don’t have any idea how old you are.”

Kinsale laughed, her good humour instantly restored.  “Going on four hundred, darling, and looking quite good for it, I daresay.  I was…” she frowned subtly, and focused her attention upon a dandelion she had spotted just beyond the hem of her skirt.

“Well, it’s difficult to explain,” Kinsale continued thoughtfully, “and I feel a bit embarrassed by it, to be honest, but there was something to admire in Mistress Cordelia a few hundred years ago.  The power, the…utter disregard for everyone and everything that stood in her way.  That anger that drove her to commit such atrocities felt…righteous, at times, though I rather doubt it was.”

Kinsale tossed the dandelion aside and fixed her gaze somewhere beyond where it had landed.  “I was a child during a difficult time for the dark fae,” she continued, quiet as the breeze.  “Even now I can remember that feeling of dread, of terror, ready to come at me from all sides.  At times a dark fairy’s family is as much her enemy as anyone else.  I admired Cordelia for her freedom, understood the shape of her cruelty.”

“What was your family like?” Rose spoke before she had fully intended to.

“Oh,” Kinsale raised one shoulder in a failed attempt at indifference.  “I don’t think we had it nearly as bad as most of the wicked fairies I know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you in my letter, didn’t I, that the dark fae struggle with motherhood?”  Kinsale shot Briar Rose a half-hearted smile.  “Far more than the threat of facing a duel at a very young age, wicked fairy mothers are notorious for inflicting rather cruel and unusual punishments upon their children.  I once heard that Mistress Zenovia’s mother—she’s the one who wrote the spell that brought you here, by the way!--placed intricate curses upon her children, and left them to learn how to break the spells, themselves.  My mother could be a bit volatile, but she was generally much stricter with my brothers than with me.”

“And…your mother, when you came of age…?” Rose wasn’t certain exactly what she wanted to ask, or whether she wanted to ask it at all.

To her surprise, and no small amount of relief, Kinsale laughed.  “Nothing so dramatic as you’re implying!  I went running around the world with my older brother as soon as the idea of my reaching maturity even started to come up in conversation, just to be sure!  My mother died in some foolish human conflict when I was about a hundred.  A little sad at the time, but as I’ve mentioned, we wicked fairies have a nasty habit of finding trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” said Rose, even though Kinsale did not seem very troubled.  “What are your brothers like?” she wondered, instead.  She had a fleeting image of Mistress Kinsale arguing with some faceless siblings the way her aunties used to bicker amongst one another, something Rose, herself, had never understood.

“Oh, they’re all right, as far as brothers go,” said Kinsale, with a weary kind of fondness.  “Nicodemus is the elder, the other three younger.  All the same father, though, which is a bit unusual for my kind.”

“Maleficent said—“ Rose began without thinking about how bringing up Maleficent might bring up a bit more than she was ready to contend with.  “She spoke of her father like he didn’t matter to her at all.  Is that…is it the same, for you?”

“Well, I knew my father a bit better,” said Kinsale, “and he was pleasant enough, but it’s nothing like what you humans tend to feel for your fathers, I daresay.”

Rose focused her attention upon a loose thread in her skirt.  “And…Maleficent’s mother?”

It was lightning-fast, a blur of motion in Rose’s periphery as she looked up, but she could have sworn she’d seen Kinsale flinch.  “Mistress Adara was well known for being…a difficult woman,” she said carefully.  “I imagine she was a fair bit worse as a parent.”

“You imagine?” said Rose.  She guessed she wasn’t alone in hearing very little about Maleficent’s family.  “Didn’t Maleficent ever talk about her?”

Kinsale let out a little huff of mirthless laughter.  “Not if she could avoid it, quite understandably.  It seemed to me that what terrorized Adara’s children the most was that her punishments came, as far as they were concerned, without warning or cause.  Maleficent once speculated that Adara was punishing them for things they had done in some alternate branch of reality that she had allegedly foreseen.”

“You don’t think Mistress Adara could see the future?” Rose interjected.

Kinsale inclined her head thoughtfully, and she frowned.  “In some sense, perhaps she could; I wouldn’t know.  Never in a particularly useful way, as far as I could tell.  Did her miraculous foresight tell her it mightn’t be the best course of action to chain her youngest daughter to the walls of her bedroom for months on end?  Did it tell her all the ways she might come to a gruesome end, and did she choose the best one for herself?”

“How did she die?” Rose asked her, little more than a whisper.

Kinsale hesitated.

“I’m sorry for asking so many questions,” Rose began, all in a rush.  “It’s just that it felt like too much to ask of Maleficent, and I feel so—“

“No, no, it’s just…I don’t know, exactly,” said Kinsale.  “Indeed, the only person who knows exactly what happened is Maleficent, herself.”

“She said…” Rose tried to remember.  “She said…there was a conflict with her mother…when she and her sisters were very young.”

“And that’s all?” Kinsale pressed.

Rose nodded.

Kinsale inhaled, hesitated again, and then sighed heavily.  “Oh,” she began, with a shake of her head, “all right, I’ll tell you what I know, and I daresay it’s more than most.  Just…remember what I said, won’t you?  Just as we’re far more than what others see in us, neither can we be defined by what others take from the stories we tell.”

Maleficent sat cross-legged upon the floor in the corner of her childhood bedroom for what might well have been an eternity.  She hadn’t questioned the impulse to sit there, but now that she considered it, she wondered at her motivations.  She’d once spent several months chained to the wall in this very spot, magically silenced and forgotten.  She could see the marks she’d begun to scratch into the wall, but she’d had no way of knowing what stretches of time they measured.

She hardly remembered what had led to it, or even how she’d felt at the time.  Something to do with Seraphina, perhaps, and she’d been angry at first to be punished for something her older sister had started.  Desperate, a bit later, to be remembered and released.  Strangely hollow as time slipped by without her.  Eventually she stopped thinking or feeling much of anything.

“Are you ready to behave?” her mother had asked her one day, jarring her from a half-slumber.  Maleficent had nodded, uncomprehending.

As though in time with her hazy recollection, Maleficent stood in the present and dusted off her clothes.  She left her room with her arms wrapped loosely about herself as though she were cold.

Seraphina had been uncommonly kind to her that evening, Maleficent recalled now.  Her eldest sister had been cruel and contentious on her best days, but when she had caught sight of Maleficent, she had called Maleficent into her room and patted a spot on her bed.  She’d spent hours braiding Maleficent’s hair, combing it out, and braiding it over again. 

In the present, Maleficent sank onto the edge of Seraphina’s bed.  It had been profoundly overwhelming, she remembered now, to receive such care and attention when she had been locked away in her room for such a long time.  But she had no words for that, and neither did Seraphina.

Without thinking, Maleficent swept a hand across Seraphina’s vanity table, clearing it and all its little trinkets of dust.  The vanity was covered with little bottles and other strange containers.  Seraphina had liked to paint her lips and her nails bright red to match the dresses she wore.  Maleficent had thought of her eldest sister as impossibly beautiful, and she supposed she mustn’t have been alone in this opinion.  Seraphina was always sneaking out to meet some suitor or another, running off to human parties and coming back with a strange dance that she might be persuaded to teach her younger sisters, if she were feeling charitable.

A distant part of Maleficent wanted to smile at the memory of her, golden eyes alight like burning embers, cheeks flushed with the exertion of dancing.  Seraphina had looked so like their mother, and yet Maleficent could not imagine Mistress Adara ever looking anything like Seraphina in those moments.

Maleficent stood, hovering over Seraphina’s vanity table for some time, thinking of nothing in particular.  One of her bottles had been knocked over at some point, and the spilt liquid had dried into the wood of the table.  She could not seem to look away from it.  When had it spilled, she wondered?  Sometime before, and Seraphina had never bothered to clean it up?  Sometime after Seraphina was gone, upended by a gust of wind or an adventurous rodent?

Maleficent could not bear to look at it any longer.  She turned abruptly and left Seraphina’s room.

She held a moment in the hallway, eyes affixed to nothing in particular, acutely aware that the house was empty and yet still reluctant to disturb her middle sister’s room.  She passed it and stood before the door to her mother’s room, instead.

Maleficent had only dared to enter her mother’s room once before since she had returned here, after Briar Rose had mentioned seeing a scroll she could not decipher.  Maleficent had called it a child’s reluctance to disturb her mother’s things, but of course there was far more to it than that.  When Maleficent was a child, her mother had seemed little more than a most terrible force of nature, as destructive as she was unpredictable.  It was only in retrospect that Maleficent was able even to begin to understand the burden Mistress Adara had borne.

Adara’s scroll lay open upon her desk with each end resting upon the floor on either side, but it had not remained unchanged since Maleficent had first looked upon it.  Indeed, it seemed to have unrolled itself to a different series of branching lines with no outside influence, and Maleficent wondered whether this was dictated by happenstance or by something deeper.

Adara wrote in a language Maleficent only distantly understood.  She could read the words without knowing why, and knew without knowing that she would be unable to translate them to another person.  Her lines branched into random directions, and one line was always darker than all the others.  This, Maleficent had quickly realized, indicated the path that had been taken, the event that had transpired out of the many possibilities Adara had foreseen.

‘There will be a human party in the next village on Friday,’ Adara wrote.  From this point, her lines began to branch.  ‘Seraphina will go alone,’ she scrawled upwards.  ‘Seraphina will take her sisters with her’ branched downward.  ‘Seraphina will go with her suitor with the red hair’, ‘Seraphina will go with her suitor with the black hair’, ‘Seraphina will go with the two human girls she met at the last party.’

Maleficent’s eye was drawn to the way ‘Seraphina will take her sisters with her’ was underlined, but not dark with the weight of certainty.  She read on.

‘Something will happen at the party.  Dark fairies taken prisoner, killed, maimed.  Seraphina will escape, but Acacia and Maleficent will not.’  This branched into ‘lock them in – Seraphina will break them out’, ‘let them go – doesn’t matter anyway’, ‘let them fight before locking them in – Seraphina might still go, but she won’t take her sisters.’

The last line was dark with certainty.  If the scroll was to be believed, Seraphina had gone to the party with her two human friends.  Something had happened at the party, but she had escaped.  She’d never told Maleficent about that, and Maleficent assumed Seraphina must have thought their mother was never the wiser.

Maleficent pushed the scroll so that she could continue reading.  For some time, it seemed every strange, branching tree had to do with dark fairies being killed or maimed or captured by some unseeable force.  Vaguely, Maleficent remembered the time she had spent chained to her bedroom wall, magically silenced and forgotten.  She shoved the scroll rather roughly, meaning to knock it to the floor, but it merely unrolled itself to another section Maleficent did not care to decipher.

What must the scroll have said when Seraphina was nearing the age of seventeen, Maleficent wondered bitterly?  Suffocate her while she sleeps?  Poison her food?  Might as well have let her go to a party where she’d be killed or captured – doesn’t matter anyway?

Still feeling faintly violent, Maleficent threw open the door to Acacia’s room with perhaps a bit more force than was strictly necessary.  Unlike Adara’s scroll, the book she’d left open for Briar Rose lay exactly as she had seen it last, and for that she had cause to feel rather grateful.

Acacia had been a strange child.  She looked nothing like Seraphina and only a little like Maleficent, in that she was spindly in stature and shared a certain hardness about the features.  But her hair and eyes were the colour of seafoam, and Acacia herself had always looked a bit like a spectre of a person, ready to fade from existence at the slightest provocation.

She had horrible nightmares, Maleficent remembered often, for neither she nor Seraphina had taken them seriously.  ‘Mother is going to kill us,’ she would say, ‘we’re going to die and mother is going to kill us’.

Both Seraphina and Maleficent had told her not to be stupid.  Not because she was wrong, not because there was nothing to fear, but because what Acacia said was so obvious to them, so inextricably a part of their world, that Acacia might as well have been saying ‘the sky is blue’.

“Do you think it’s true?” she’d wondered once after Acacia had run crying from the room, almost idly, as though discussing the possibility of a storm.  “What Acacia says?”

Seraphina paused a moment, then continued to brush her hair.  “Why should you worry?  I’m the oldest.”

Maleficent didn’t have a good answer to that.  Even now with a century between them she wondered whether she would have the strength to say, ‘because you’re my sister, and I care whether you live or die.’  At the time, she had shrugged.

Seraphina finished brushing her hair and pulled it back with a red ribbon.  She stood and turned to face Maleficent, so different in that moment than she had been even a few months later.  “I’m not afraid of her, Maleficent,” she said, with a little smirk and a shake of her head.  “I’ve been fighting with her my whole life, haven’t I?  Anyway, she’s our mother.”

She said the word as though it were supposed to mean something.  To this day, Maleficent didn’t know what Seraphina had meant, or whether she’d meant anything at all.

Maleficent often wondered whether Acacia had foreseen what would transpire, in the same way that Adara had seen things before they happened, like vague, branching possibilities that seemed impossible to decipher even written out on paper.  What must it have been to hold such a thing in one’s own mind?  What must it have been for a child who was sensitive even at her very best?

Acacia’s desk, bedside table, and chest of drawers were all piled high with books, some undisturbed from a century prior, and others Briar Rose had been using for her magical study, difficult to tell apart.  The only thing that had been left obviously undisturbed was a necklace Maleficent recognized as her mother’s, gifted to Acacia in what had at the time been a baffling show of benevolence.

Maleficent had been angry, she remembered as she reached for the necklace’s deep blue pendant, but she had never been the sort to pick a fight unprovoked.  Seraphina had positively ranted for days on end, even after Adara had lashed out and struck her.  Fairies healed quickly, and their skin almost never scarred for very long unless they really put their minds to it, but Seraphina had held onto the vicious scars Adara’s magic left across her face and hands until the day she died.

As soon as Maleficent wrapped her fingers about the necklace’s pendant, a memory flashed before her eyes so violently that she felt as though she had been transported there against her will.  Suddenly she was not in Acacia’s room at all, but up on the roof of the house in a driving rainstorm.  She could almost feel the bite of the cold rain against her face, the rumble of thunder so strong it seemed to resonate within her.  Even through the storm, she could hear her mother and sister shouting below her, the conflict that had driven her out here in the first place.

Maleficent had never minded a good storm.  Looking back on the memory now, she could concede, distantly, that there were signs this storm had not been one of natural causes.  Something about the shape of the clouds, the way they all seemed to billow outward from their little house, and the way a particularly violent crash of thunder and lightning sometimes coincided rather unnervingly with the commotion coming from within.

When the storm began to die down, so did the shouting from inside.  Maleficent took this to mean it was safe to come in.  In the present as in the past, Maleficent ran a hand through her hair, but she felt only the rain-soaked, short hair she’d had as a child.  She climbed down from the roof and reentered the house to an unnerving stillness.

She remembered that feeling all too well, knowing somehow that she had made a grievous error, that she ought to have stayed away longer, but knowing, too, that there was no retreat for her now.  Her mother would have heard the front door, and would punish Maleficent anyway for attempting to avoid her.

She crept around the corner into the ballroom to face a terrible sight, one she recognized without fully knowing why.  Adara and Seraphina stood a few paces apart, motionless.  Acacia was sprawled upon the floor a short distance away, as though she had been magically thrown there.  Seraphina’s back was turned to Maleficent, but Adara’s face was one of haughty indifference.

“Well?” Adara’s voice rang out, unbearably loud in the horrible stillness.  “Go on, what are you waiting for?”

“I—I don’t…”

“You don’t what?” Adara inclined her head in a show of mockery.  “You’re quite right, after all, Seraphina.  You are very nearly an adult, and ought to be treated as such.  An adult must take her rightful place.”

Seraphina was trembling.  She didn’t respond.

“Well?”

The only sound in the room—indeed, in the whole world, was a quiet, choked sob.

“Do you refuse my challenge, Seraphina?”

Seraphina bowed her head.  “No,” she breathed.

Maleficent tried to remember the Seraphina of only a year or so prior, the one who was not afraid.  But when Adara struck the first blow, and even brash and brave Seraphina could not hold back a howl of pain, Maleficent could not think about much of anything.

There was a hollow terror in the silence that followed, in the way Seraphina reached up to touch her throat and drew away a hand glistening with blood, in the way Adara watched her impassively as if looking past her, forever lost to branching possibilities that might never come to be.

“What is it to be, my daughter?” Adara wondered quietly, as though she were talking to herself.  “So full of fire mere moments ago.  Where is it now?  Will you stand here and die a coward?”

“Please,” Seraphina rasped.  “Mother?”

Adara inclined her head thoughtfully, and her eyes seemed to refocus.  “I see.  So you shall die like a frightened child, begging for her mother?”

Seraphina swallowed hard, a horrible, gurgling sound.  “Don’t you care at all?” she wondered.

Again Adara’s golden eyes seemed to glaze over, and something in her cool expression seemed to soften strangely.  She moved toward Seraphina slowly, nearly lifting a hand at her side as though to reach out.  The softness of it was jarring, perhaps more frightening than her cold cruelty.  Adara took Seraphina’s face between her hands and looked at her a moment as though truly seeing her for the first time.  Maleficent had seen that look again, later, on a different face, and she had called it love.

“Quite right,” said Adara at long last.  A tear slipped down her cheek, and her lip twitched.  “It ought to be quick,” she said.

Seraphina inhaled sharply, the only sound in the horrible silence of the ballroom, and then Adara lowered her body slowly to the floor.  She pushed Seraphina’s hair away from her face and closed Seraphina’s wide, unseeing eyes, and she knelt over Seraphina’s body unmoving for some time.

The ballroom grew heavy with silence.  At some point Acacia had righted herself, but she’d stayed in place with a hand and her seafoam green hair covering her face.  Distantly, Maleficent thought she could hear the unevenness of Acacia’s breathing.  Or perhaps that was her own.  She’d been trying to hold her breath.

“Acacia,” Adara spoke at last, low and quiet.

“No!” the word was rent from Maleficent’s throat violently, like a secret she’d been forced to betray.  She could feel it across decades, dry and ragged and desperate upon her tongue.

Adara stood slowly and turned to face her.  “So,” she said lightly.  “My youngest daughter graces us with her presence at last.  How long have you been hiding there, Maleficent?  Was it a relief to watch your older sister die?  Did you enjoy it, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Oh, you needn’t lie,” said Adara pleasantly.  “It is joyous, isn’t it, to watch the overconfident stumble?  Why, it wasn’t so long ago that Seraphina started to boast that she wasn’t afraid of me, that I posed no real threat to her.”  Adara took a step forward, eyes shining with interest.  “But you knew that wasn’t true, didn’t you, Maleficent?”

“I suppose I did,” said Maleficent quietly.  She thought of how Seraphina had said mother as though it meant something.  She wondered if it ever had.

“I can see it,” Adara continued, nodding slowly.  “Your magic is nearly too much for you.  It threatens to tear you apart before my very eyes.  You are not merely gifted.  You have trained yourself.”

“Yes.”  Maleficent lifted her chin, though she could feel herself trembling.  It was true.  Where Seraphina had armed herself with a pretense of fearlessness and Acacia had succumbed to dreadful melancholy, Maleficent had done her best to prepare.

“Impressive, to be certain,” said Adara.  “But surely you must know the rules, Maleficent.”

“I do,” said Maleficent.  “Do you challenge Acacia?’

“Maleficent—“

“Don’t say anything!” Maleficent held up her hand sharply as Acacia spoke, her voice a broken sob that seemed to come from very far away.  If Acacia refused, Adara would not give her the chance to reconsider.

Adara inclined her head thoughtfully, and her golden eyes unfocused.  “How I wish you could see as I do,” she said quietly.  “There is no other way.”  She shook her head, and cast her eyes down to where Seraphina lay at her feet.  “It all ends the same.”

Something white-hot shot through Maleficent at that.  She felt dizzy with rage, speechless with disbelief.  Seraphina was gone, gone forever, and this—this woman, this creature who called herself their mother, dared to say there was no other way!  If Maleficent were anyone else, she might have lashed out, thrown herself at Adara, armed with nothing but her fists and her fury.  But Maleficent knew the rules, and she knew that the life of her remaining sister demanded that she follow them.

“Do you challenge Acacia?” she asked again, through gritted teeth.

Adara sighed heavily.  She looked up.  “I suppose I must, mustn’t I?”

“Please!” Acacia cried from behind her hands.  “I don’t want to die!”

Maleficent would have liked to say that this renewed her righteous fury, that Acacia’s cry of terror filled Maleficent with a wealth of determination she had never known before or since.

It did not.

Indeed, Maleficent’s anger fled her as quickly as it had come, and left her feeling cold and empty.  She looked away from Adara, just for an instant, to catch a glimpse of her elder sister, cowering on her knees with her hands held up in front of her face.  When she looked back to Adara, she did not see a mother, whatever that word was supposed to mean, but a fully-grown fairy and a powerful sorceress.  Maleficent had never felt so small, so helpless, so much like a child as she had in that instant.

Maleficent closed her eyes, just for a moment.

“I will act as her champion,” she heard herself say, words she had read over and over, whispered to herself across years, so that she would not forget, could not back down when the time came.  She had hoped Seraphina would at least try to fight.  She had always known Acacia would not.

Maleficent opened her eyes.  Adara’s face remained, as ever, impassive.

“Very well,” she said, and raised her staff.

Maleficent almost didn’t hear the first spell.  She wondered whether it was the one that had sliced Seraphina’s throat.  It whirred quietly, little more than a gentle night breeze.  Maleficent threw up a shield, and the spell just barely grazed her arms, instead.

Adara threw spell after spell, so fast it was all Maleficent could do to keep up her shields, or to move behind furniture or a stone pillar when her magic grew weary.  She wasn’t afforded much time to rest, either.  It was only a matter of seconds before Adara’s next spell blasted Maleficent’s cover to pieces, and only a matter of seconds after that for Maleficent to gather the wherewithal to throw up her shield once more.

For what seemed an eternity, Maleficent could only dodge and shield, and could not even think to return an attack of her own.  It wasn’t long before everything in the ballroom lay in shambles, and Maleficent had nowhere left to hide.  Seized by the foolish bravery of the desperate, Maleficent cast one of the few offensive spells she knew.  It came out slow and weak, and Adara flicked it aside with a look of disgust.  She made a great show of preparing to cast again, and Maleficent threw up a feeble shield.

“No, stop!” Acacia cried suddenly.  It surprised Maleficent so much that she lost her shield as she caught sight of her sister, still on her knees with one hand holding her up and one hand pressed over her eyes, as though she had a very bad headache.

“Don’t interfere, Acacia,” said Adara evenly.

Maleficent inhaled, felt the magic flow through her veins, and cast her shield once more.

Adara cast her spell, something red and crackling like lightning from her fingertips.  There was a flash of movement, and Acacia cried out as she fell at Maleficent’s feet.

“Foolish child!” Adara cried.

Her concentration was broken.  Maleficent did not have such a luxury.  She cast a spell she had never before been able to attempt, and Adara’s staff was rent from her hands.

Lightning-fast, Adara reacted.  As Maleficent reached out to catch the staff, Adara lashed out with a spell that sliced at her hands and nearly caused her to lose her grip.  The battle began afresh, but with the aid of the staff, Maleficent was not at such a tremendous disadvantage, and Adara began to show subtle signs that her magic was growing weary.

Though the staff allowed Maleficent to shield herself far more easily, the fact remained that there was nothing left in the ballroom that hadn’t been blasted apart, and Adara’s spells still threatened to tear her apart the moment her concentration wavered.  Adara advanced on her suddenly, frightening her, and the next spell hit Maleficent in the leg with such force that her knees buckled beneath her.  The staff clattered to the floor, but Adara did not bother to retrieve it.  She prepared to cast what Maleficent was certain would be the final spell of this battle.

Maleficent flailed her arms about desperately, seeking to grasp onto anything that might aid her, be it Adara’s staff or a bit of debris from what remained of the furniture.  She dragged something soft and heavy in front of her, and felt rather than heard herself scream when she realized what it was.

As it had with everything else in the ballroom, Adara’s spell tore Seraphina’s body apart, limb from limb.  Still-warm blood spattered across Maleficent’s face, and for a moment, Maleficent saw and heard nothing.

She dragged herself to her feet, unfettered by the blinding pain in her leg, and took up Adara’s staff once more.  At the time, she couldn’t see Adara’s face, and she was certain that Adara would strike her down before she had the chance to cast.  With the clarity afforded to her by the memory, Maleficent could see that Adara looked perhaps just as horrified as Maleficent had been.

Maleficent cast a binding spell, and it came out strong and violent.  Adara was forced to her knees, face still twisted in shock.

Maleficent raised the staff so that its orb pointed directly at her mother’s throat.  Adara looked up at her, golden eyes hazy, expression softening into something like resignation.

“Leave,” Maleficent rasped, and she found once more that when her fury fled her, it left only abject terror in its wake.  “Leave this land forever.  If I ever see you again,” she swallowed hard, “I will kill you.  I swear it.”

Maleficent only knew one transportation spell.  It would only get Adara as far as the next kingdom.  But Adara knew the rules.  She would not return soon, at the very least.

“Maleficent,” Acacia breathed, when Adara had at last faded from the room.

The sound sent a sickening jolt coursing through Maleficent’s body, and she collapsed beside her sister.

“Why did you interfere?” Maleficent demanded, for lack of anything better to say.  She had counted on Acacia not to fight.

Acacia was still crackling and red around the edges, and she could not hold her eyes open.  The hand she’d been pressing over her eyes now lay limp across her forehead.  “She would have killed you with the next spell.  This was…better.  The best I could do.”

“But…”  Maleficent searched for words she did not know, thoughts she could not voice.  “I did this…so you might live,” she said at last, shaking her head.

Acacia reached out for her, unseeing, and Maleficent allowed her hand to be taken.  ‘I couldn’t,” Acacia breathed, like a sigh.  She squeezed Maleficent’s hand.  “But you can.”

“Acacia?”

But Acacia’s hand had already gone slack, and the red, crackling spell faded away into a terrible stillness.

“Perhaps it sounds monstrous to you, a mother attacking her children, but it’s hardly a mindless slaughter,” said Kinsale.  “A magical duel has rules, and the rules cannot be broken.  This is not a matter of honour.  All jokes about the weather aside, the dark fae are deeply connected to the land when we fully inhabit our power.  Even if a fairy wanted to bequeath her land to her daughters, it would not be that simple.”

Usually Kinsale was so vibrant and expressive when she told a story.  Now she was not quite looking at Briar Rose, and her hands were folded carefully in her lap.

“As I understand it,” she continued, “Mistress Adara and Maleficent’s eldest sister, Seraphina, fought quite often.  The challenge Adara issued—that is, for ownership of the land—was unexpected, as Seraphina was somewhere around seventeen at the time.  Young for a human, even, but a dark fairy is not generally expected to leave home until she is at least twenty.  Seraphina did not put up much of a fight, and Acacia, the middle sister, was a very sensitive child  Maleficent was little more than thirteen years old at the time, but I’m given to understand that she would gladly have fought in her elder sisters’ stead.  She had prepared herself for this, you see, though I suppose it’s difficult to imagine a child preparing herself for such an atrocity.  Impossible though it may sound, even at thirteen, Maleficent was the only one among them who would have stood any chance at all against Mistress Adara, and I think on some level she must have known that.”

“What a terrible thing to know,” Rose murmured.

“Yes, I think it was,” Kinsale frowned subtly.  “As I’m sure you can imagine, it was a gruesome battle, and Maleficent was very lucky to survive it.”

“And Mistress Adara didn’t care at all?” Rose wondered.  “She couldn’t have spared any of them?”

“Once the challenge was issued to Seraphina, there was no backing down.  Once Seraphina was dead, what was left to do?  She could refuse to pass on the challenge to Acacia, but she could not simply allow the matter to fall out of her control completely.  Suppose one of her daughters attacked her in her sleep?  Suppose they found another way to have her killed?” Kinsale waved a hand as though to dismiss such a notion entirely.  “No, once the challenge was issued, Adara would have been compelled to see it through.”

“But…then, did Adara die?  Did Maleficent…oh,” Rose closed her eyes, horrified.  Had Maleficent been forced to kill her own mother to survive?  Briar Rose didn’t feel very much like an adult now, to be certain, but what had she been at thirteen?

“Maleficent banished her from the Dragon Country,” said Kinsale.  “She swore, as is customary under the terms of such a magical duel, that if ever she laid eyes upon Adara again, she would kill her.”  Kinsale looked up, something sad and distant in her expression.  “And so, to answer your original question,” she said, “I don’t exactly know what happened to Mistress Adara.  As far as I know, no one has seen or heard from her since that day.”

“Do people know?” Rose wondered.  “Do they think Maleficent killed her?”

“My kind are always getting ourselves into trouble,” said Kinsale, with a feeble attempt at her usual cheer.  “I don’t know that anyone kept well enough apprised of her situation to put that together, and Maleficent isn’t exactly forthcoming on the matter.”

“Do you…” Rose faltered.  The mere thought struck her cold with terror.  “Do you think she’s still alive?”

“Not really, no,” said Kinsale almost pleasantly.  “But I suppose stranger things have happened.  Which reminds me, I wanted you to know, I’m going to meet with some friends tomorrow.  I shouldn’t be long, but I am hoping they’ve got a better read on…well, on whatever seems to be brewing among the fae lately.”

Thought Rose felt she could ask Kinsale a thousand more questions, she found she was more than a little relieved for the change of topic.  “May I ask who you’re meeting?”

“Mistresses Joy and Zenovia, of the Desertlands and Mountainlands, respectively,” said Kinsale.

“Oh!” Rose cried, and she tried rather forcefully to push aside her inner turmoil.  “I meant to ask you more about Mistress Joy.  What is she like?”

“Oh, you’d adore her, I’m sure!” Kinsale began, perhaps a bit over-cheerful.  “She’s got all kinds of stories about all the places she’s been and the people she’s met.  Why, one time—“

Kinsale continued to tell her story, but Briar Rose found that she could not quite bring herself to listen.  She was thinking about how Maleficent had lashed out at her that first night, and how shocked and frightened she’d been, even though perhaps she ought not to have expected anything less from Maleficent.  She was thinking about what Maleficent had said of discovering that all the dragons in the land were gone, and how Rose had assumed that Maleficent had been alone since something had befallen her family.

But Maleficent had been alone even longer than that.  She had been alone all the days of her life.

How foolish must Briar Rose seem to Maleficent, who had known fear for as long as she was capable of reason?  How weak and pitiful, that Maleficent should issue her a simple challenge in the course of a magical lesson, certainly no more threatening than she ever had been, and Rose should unravel before her?

“Forgive me, Highness—are you quite all right?”

Rose realized distantly that she had begun to weep.  Hot tears streamed down her cheeks, and she struggled to catch her breath.  She shook her head, unable to put the feeling that had overtaken her into words, and covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a sob.

“Oh, dear, perhaps I shouldn’t have told you,” Kinsale uttered.

“No,” Rose managed, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve.  “I wanted to know.  It’s just…”

She felt Kinsale’s hand upon her shoulder, hesitant, but warm and steady.  “As you said yourself,” said Kinsale softly, “it’s a terrible thing to know.”

Rose looked up into Kinsale’s eyes, and Kinsale seemed strangely taken aback.  “Do you think I’ve misjudged her?” Rose wondered.

Kinsale averted her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.  “What, you mean about what happened before you came here?  Of course not, darling; she shouldn’t have frightened you like that.”

“But oh,” Rose shook her head, “I must seem frightfully stupid, falling apart like that after what she must have endured!”

Kinsale thought for a moment.  “What Maleficent has endured has certainly shaped how she behaves,” she said slowly, “but it’s only a part of her, of course.  Do you suppose she thought her sisters were stupid because they did not live through the tragedy that befell them?  Do you think she would have begrudged them their weakness, had they survived?”

Without thinking, Rose placed her hand atop Kinsale’s on her shoulder.  "I suppose not.”

A long moment passed, and the skies began to cloud over for the usual afternoon rain.  Rose took a deep breath, squeezed Kinsale’s hand, and then released it, and Kinsale withdrew her hand with marked deliberation.

“You know something?” she said, with a shadow of her usual cheer.  “Both you and Maleficent spent your formative years under the looming threat of an early grave; yet, one of you knew about it, and one of you didn’t.  Isn’t that funny?”

Briar Rose didn’t find it funny at all.  She felt that she still had quite a bit more thinking to do on this matter, but she hoped that someday soon, she might meet Maleficent again, a little stronger and a little braver.

Chapter Text

Outside the door, Hilda cleared her throat nervously.  “Mistress Sara?  We’ve brought, uh…”

There was some small measure of joy in hearing Mistress Hilda stumble over her words.  Sara considered whether it might perhaps be the most genuine thing Hilda had ever said to her.

“Enter.”

Even with her back bowed and her wrists chained, Mistress Adara was a striking woman.  Perhaps it was the eyes, alight like dying embers or flecks of gold.  Her lips twitched into a shadow of a smile.  “To what do I owe the honour?” she rasped.

“I have need of your penmanship,” said Sara, gesturing to the parchment she had laid out on her desk.

Adara did not move.  Sara plucked her quill from its ink well and held it out.

“I shall tell you what to write,” she said evenly.

Adara considered her carefully, golden eyes hazy and then clear again.  It was said that Adara could see what might come to pass in the future.  Sara wondered idly what she foresaw now.

“And if I refuse?” she asked, anyway.

Sara inclined her head thoughtfully, eyeing the shackles upon Adara’s wrists.  “It is well-known that the dark fae have an uncommon capacity for healing,” she said lightly.  “Suppose I were to cut off your hand.  Would it grow back?”

To her surprise, Adara’s lips hung open, stunned.

“You don’t know?” Sara wondered.

Adara huffed a shaky sort of laughter.  “How do you mean to chain me, then, without a hand to halt the shackle?”

“Do you expect you’ll be very dexterous when you’ve lost your hand?” Sara lifted a shoulder indifferently.  “Lose both, then, if it please you.”

“Sara—“

Sara turned on Hilda sharply.  “What, Mistress Hilda?” she snapped.  “Would you share something of such momentous import that it cannot wait?”

There was tremendous joy in the way Hilda’s jaw fell slack, the way her eyes scrunched up and her brow furrowed when she was truly surprised.  Behind her, Lady Ophira watched with wide eyes, sparkling not with fear, as Sara might have expected, but with a kind of morbid fascination.

Sara returned her attention to the prisoner.  “What is it to be, Mistress Adara?” she asked.  “Your words, or your hands?”

Adara’s tongue darted across her cracked lips.  She took in a shaky breath.  “Fine.”  She took the quill.

“Mistress Zenovia.”

Zenovia nodded courteously, and they made it about five blissfully silent steps before, evidently, reaching the limit of Mistress Kinsale’s self-restraint.

“I want to thank you for receiving my letter,’ she said, all in a rush.  “I know you’ve little time for such matters, and I swear I wouldn’t trouble you without due cause.”

Zenovia afforded her a sidelong glance.  “I thought as much,” she said simply.

“I—“ Kinsale stammered, hesitated.  “I hope you’ve been—how have you been?”

This was enough to warrant a full turn of the head, accompanied by a look of polite incredulity.  “How have I been?”

But Kinsale was not easily cowed by disparaging looks, which was more than Zenovia could say for the vast majority of fairies.  Indeed, her expression betrayed the slightest hint of amusement.  “Is it such an unusual question?” she wondered.  “Have you…read anything interesting lately?  Struck fear into the hearts of innocent passers-by?”

Zenovia didn’t mean to laugh.  She didn’t laugh.  Not really.  It was a breath of a laugh, a wisp of a thing, not to be mistaken for true enjoyment.  Derision, perhaps.  A noise meant to remind Kinsale that she was not half so charming as she seemed to think she was.  “Nothing that would interest you.”

She’d meant to sound cold, dismissive.  But the words came out…wrong.  Zenovia realized suddenly just how long it had been since she had spoken with anyone face to face, and she felt suddenly almost embarrassed.

“Are you quite certain?” Kinsale wondered, sounding dreadfully encouraged.  “I assure you, my interests are many and varied.”

“After all these years, is that still your idea of being alluring?” Zenovia fired back without thinking.

Kinsale laughed, a musical sound, undeniably sweet.  “No, but I can see it still gets a rise out of you, all the same.”

Mercifully, Joy’s door swung open then—though for whom it was a mercy was anyone’s guess.  Zenovia realized quite suddenly how long it had been since she had seen Joy, and wondered pointlessly whether perhaps she ought to have checked in a bit sooner.

“Good, come in,” said Joy curtly.  She seemed somehow so much smaller than she had always been, aided perhaps by the short crop of her hair and the way her clothes, which looked like the same clothes she had always worn, hung loose upon her slight frame.

Joy started talking as soon as the door was closed.  She made no pretense of social niceties, instead waving vaguely at a handful of haphazardly arranged chairs as she began to pace.

“Look, I swore off all this shit centuries ago, but there’s something off about the whole thing, and I just can’t--” she began as she walked.  “I’m worried Sara is going to make an example of Maleficent, something big, something--public, all for show.  She acts like this is what’s needed to keep the peace, but if she brings down the Queen’s forces upon the dark fae, it’s…”

Joy stopped cold.  She waved her hand vaguely and a tea set appeared, floating in the space between where Kinsale and Zenovia had seated themselves.

“You’ve spoken with Mistress Sara?” Kinsale supplied hesitantly.

“I’ve—yes.”  Joy took up pacing once more.  “She told me that if something happens to the princess now, her people will consider it an act of war, and she wants to prevent that, but if she—“

“If she proves that Maleficent is a danger to everyone, and cannot be contained by the Chains of Avasina, the dark fae won’t question it,” said Zenovia.  “It’s not as popular to idolize the likes of Mistress Cordelia as it once was,” she amended, with a pointed glance in the direction of Mistress Kinsale.

Joy hummed her assent.  “I suppose you’re right, but she—“

“Joy,” Kinsale began, with the air of one aiming to gently deliver difficult news, “I know you want to believe the best of Mistress Sara, but this isn’t exactly the first time she’s crusaded against one of us.”

Joy stopped cold again, affording Kinsale a look of utmost derision.  She opened her hands and inhaled as though to speak, shaking her head incredulously.  “That—yes.  I know that.  Thank you, Kinsale, for that---groundbreaking observation.  That’s not the—“

Joy turned sharply and resumed pacing.  In a moment accountable only by a moment of utter madness, Zenovia felt very nearly compelled to speak in Kinsale’s defense.

“Why now, is what I mean,” Joy continued.  “Why this?  And why in this manner?  Something doesn’t add up, is all I’m saying.  Think what you will, but this is not just—just typical, usual behaviour, from her.”  Joy threw up her hands, fairly shaking with barely-contained rage.

It occurred to Zenovia again, in a distant and useless manner, that perhaps she ought to have checked in on Joy a bit sooner.  What she could have done to help was anyone’s guess.  Failing that, what could she possibly do now?

“Joy?” Zenovia tried, as gently as she could manage.

Joy’s shoulders rose and fell.  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.  “The princess—the human girl.  Is she all right?”

“Yes, she’s quite all right,” said Kinsale cautiously.

“And Maleficent?” Joy pressed.  “Have you seen her?”

Kinsale hesitated.  Joy and Zenovia both turned to look at her.

Kinsale averted her eyes.  “Yes, I’ve seen her,” she said, with uncommon reserve.

The unvoiced question hung in the air between them for what seemed an eternity.

“Maleficent is of a similar opinion, Joy,” Kinsale began slowly.  “She thinks someone will want to make an example of her, one way or another.  She is…disinclined to resist.”

“What?” Zenovia demanded.  “What does that mean?”

Kinsale shook her head and covered her face with her hand.  Joy stood very still for a long moment.  “What,” she said quietly, “she’s just going to…let it happen?”

Zenovia was on her feet before she realized it, furious at Kinsale for a crime she could not rightly name.  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” she cried.  “She won’t fight, she won’t hide?  And what, she told you this?”

Kinsale looked up suddenly, face streaked with tears.  “Yes, she told me this!  What is that supposed to mean?”

“And you just, what, stood there and listened?”

Now Kinsale was on her feet.  “What was I meant to do, O Mistress of Tact and Reasoning?” she pointed an accusatory finger at Zenovia.  “It’s not as though I didn’t try to convince her otherwise!”

“Oh, well, then far be it from anyone else to try,” Zenovia raised her eyes to the ceiling.  “Difficult though this may be to believe, Mistress Kinsale, convincing young, vulnerable women to jump into bed with you doesn’t render you a master of negotiation!”

‘By all means, go and talk to her, yourself!” Kinsale threw up her hands.  “Be my guest!  Supposing you can tear yourself away from your busy schedule, ignoring your only friends for years on end and tearing up mail from anyone with the misfortune of caring for your well-being!”

“Ladies,” Joy held up her hands, sounding almost sad.  “Difficult though it may be for you to grasp, this meeting is not about you.  I propose we all speak with Maleficent on this matter.  It is…” she looked between them pointedly “…easy to forget that we have people who care about us, is it not?”

Kinsale returned to her seat slowly.  She wiped away her tears and busied herself stirring sugar into her tea.  “You’ll need a plan,” she said quietly.  “Something for Maleficent to do.  She might listen to that.”

A part of Zenovia flared up in irrational anger once more.  She had half a mind to tell Kinsale that the plan was just simply not to walk blind and stupid into whatever trap Sara or her kin laid out, that the plan was to do anything, anything at all, other than to give up.

But another part of Zenovia felt unaccountably sad for Kinsale in that moment.  If she were a different sort of fairy, she might have known what to do, what to say.  But she did not.  And so she, too, sat, and attended to her tea.

“There is something else,” said Joy.  “It’s…” she ran her hand through her hair, sounding almost anguished.  “I could…request an audience with the Queen.”

Both Kinsale and Zenovia looked up, stunned.

“Would she--?” Kinsale dared.

Joy sighed heavily.  “You know, I swore I wouldn’t go through this again.”

There was a moment of eerie silence, wherein none of them dared even to take a breath.

“But yes,” said Joy at last, barely more than a whisper.  “I think she would.  If I asked.”

Briar Rose awoke too early, too suddenly, and it set her nerves on edge.  Kinsale liked to stay up late into the night, and Rose had taken to staying up with her for as long as she could keep her eyes from closing, drinking in all the stories and the magic and the warmth Kinsale would bestow upon her.

She didn’t know exactly what she meant to do next, but Kinsale did not seem at all eager to be rid of her, and so Briar Rose was more than happy to remain.  Her magic was finally seeing some significant improvement—the sort she could observe for herself, the sort she could feel down to her bones—as was her reading, though she still vastly preferred to listen to stories told aloud.

Yes, she thought as she descended the stairs with eyes half-closed, even though she was just now overcome with that hollow, dreary feeling of not having enjoyed quite enough sleep, Briar Rose was beginning to feel that, perhaps, the tribulations she had faced of late might be a thing of the past, and that she might look to the vast expanse of the future with some measure of peace.

“Ah, there you are.”

Terror shot through her, cold and sharp like a blade, and Briar Rose lashed out with the first spell that came to mind.  “Stand back!”

The ballroom was dark in Kinsale’s absence, and the early morning light through the trees outside cast strange shadows across the figures she had knocked to the ground.

“It can’t be…” breathed one, achingly familiar.

A fresh wave of fear roiled within her.  “Aunt Flora?”

“Rose?”  But it was Merryweather who spoke next.

The third figure, the one who had spoken first, righted herself and stepped forward, wand raised.  “Please,” said Lady Ophira evenly.  “Let’s keep this civilized.”

“Why are you here?” Rose stammered, struggling against the impulse to back away.  “What do you want?”

There was a moment’s silence, heavy and tense, before Flora got to her feet and answered,  with a quiet incredulity.  “Why, we’ve come to take you home, Aurora.”

The name didn’t sting any longer.  Kinsale had referred to Rose as Aurora, and Rose had not bothered to correct her.  She’d realized, in fact, that it was never the name itself which had so upset her.

Home, though—there was a word that turned her stomach.  There were countless things she’d have liked to say, about how the castle of the Eastern Kingdom was not home, about how home was a cottage in the woods with three aunties who loved her.  She wanted to tell them that home was a concept forever lost to her, that the best way she knew how to describe home now was just simple a place where she lived, where she was allowed to stay, but also to go.

But these were not the sorts of thoughts she could easily put into words, and certainly not when trembling all over from a terror the likes of which she had never felt before.

You have trouble wanting things, Kinsale had told her, and Briar Rose had seen time and time again how true that was.  Magic is all about imposing your own will upon the world, she had said, and Briar Rose had found cause to admire that in Kinsale, that she did not allow anything around her to define her, that instead, she defined her surroundings based on what she wanted.

And perhaps Briar Rose didn’t know what she wanted, exactly--not in any grand, far-reaching sense, anyway.  But she knew, in this moment, what she did not want.  And she knew, sort of, in theory, how to achieve it.

Rose shook her head.  “I won’t go with you,” she said tremulously.

Ophira considered her a moment.  There was a strange look in her eyes, like she was thinking very hard about something.  At last, her eyes narrowed, and she lifted her chin ever so slightly.  “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” she said quietly.

Rose blocked her first spell, but it was close.  Ophira waved away her answering spell as though it were nothing.  She could feel the next one closing in around her like ropes meant to bind her, and though she railed against them, a human girl without a staff was no match for a fully-grown and fully-armed fairy.

It had all happened so fast.  Rose was too stunned to feel much of anything as she fell to the floor.  Ophira looked down on her with genuine pity.  “I am sorry about this,” she said.  “Really.  But it’s--” she shook her head.

“Is she—you haven’t hurt her?” Rose could hear Merryweather as though from very far away.

“Certainly not,” said Ophira, “but I…confess I hadn’t anticipated this.  We’ll have to…well.”  Ophira waved her wand, and Rose felt herself being lifted into the air as though she were nothing.  “I’ll tell you on the way.“

Rose felt as though she must be dreaming.  This could not be real.  After everything she had been through, after everything she had achieved—could this really be the end?

There was no telling how long Maleficent spent kneeling upon the floor of her middle sister’s bedroom, clutching her mother’s accursed amulet to her chest and reliving painful memories about which she could do nothing.  Indeed, when she did at last manage to get to her feet, she took to carrying the necklace around with her, always wrapped around her fingers, a weapon she wielded against herself.

Once she’d tired of old memories of people long-dead, she turned to events more recent.  She echoed Kinsale’s last words to her like a chant, still so full of that intangible warmth that had driven Maleficent to madness a hundred years prior.  She watched time and time again as Briar Rose trembled beneath her, begging her to relent in her twisted lesson, felt time and time again her own cold indifference, her own righteous certainty that what she was doing was for the best, that it was better to do something unforgivable now, on purpose, than later, by accident.

Better that she should run to Kinsale.  Kinsale loved humans.  Kinsale loved visitors.  She would be a good friend to Briar Rose.  She would tell Briar Rose exactly how cold, how unfeeling Maleficent could be.

One day, another memory caught in her mind, and because she was carrying her mother’s pendant, she could not even think to ignore it.  Warmth, a soft but strangely insistent something pressed against her, the darkness of a cave at sunset, the gentle breathing of a young dragon.  The princess Maleficent had been so eager to see dead was not what Maleficent had expected her to be.  Not at all, in fact.  She was like nothing and no one Maleficent had ever known.

She was kind.  Effortlessly so.  Dangerously so.  She was kind when she should be cold, to someone who had done nothing to earn her compassion.

Maleficent had dismissed it as foolishness.  Repeatedly.  And so it was.

But there was also a beauty in it, in the genuineness and the guilelessness of Briar Rose’s kind heart.  She could see it so clearly now.  Much as it pained her to speak well of the Three Good Fools, it was clear from Briar Rose’s disposition that they had loved her well all the days of her life.

All the day of her life, until recently.

Though Maleficent had given some thought to the circumstances which had led Briar Rose to accept her proposal, she had never truly considered what had come before.  Maleficent had never known love or devotion to be anything but desperate and difficult.  What must it have been like for her when her fairy guardians had suddenly rescinded the simplicity of their love for her?

If indeed her kindheartedness was genuine, Maleficent had thought, could feel herself thinking as though for the first time, she would soon learn that such was not the way of the world.  She would learn to hide her kindness away, to shield what little she retained from careless passers-by, to save up her meager supply for when she needed it most.  She would learn never to trust people like Maleficent, who would only use her kindness against her, who would frighten her and drive her away rather than bear the burden of her kindness upon them.

Maleficent cast the necklace aside and pressed her hand to her head, reeling.  She could not abide it.  Not by her own hand.  There was so much she had left unspoken and unfinished.  If she was to die, which seemed very likely, then she would make amends for this one act, at least.

As for Kinsale—well.  There was entirely too much, and too many years had passed.  That Kinsale cared for her still was a mistake, a sickness of the head.  Maleficent had said her farewell to Kinsale.  She waited until she knew Kinsale would be out, meeting with Joy and Zenovia for some reason which could not be contained in letters.

She was glad to have left her mother’s amulet at home.  It had been foolish to carry the thing around with her in the first place, but the memories she had left in this house were vivid enough—and painful enough—all on their own.

Kinsale’s home was eerily quiet without her in it, the midday sun unforgiving without her preference for afternoon rainstorms.  It seemed wrong that Maleficent should be allowed inside without resistance, as though a hundred years had not passed since she had called this place home.

As though Kinsale had never expected her to stay away for so long.

“Briar Rose?” Maleficent called as she entered.  Silence.  Stillness.  There was a piece of parchment at the foot of the stairs.  The handwriting was unmistakable.

Please inform Maleficent that if she wants her pretty plaything back, she'll have to ask Mother.
If she doesn't know where to find me, here's a clue.

The letter was signed Adara.  Maleficent looked down to note a seashell upon the floor where the letter had been.  She sank to her knees and allowed the letter to fall from her trembling fingers.

“Oh!”

Maleficent did not even possess the wherewithal to flinch.  She hadn’t heard Kinsale return.  She felt as though she could scarcely hear anything.

“It’s…good you’re here, actually,” Kinsale continued hesitantly.  “I’ve just been—what’s that?”

Perhaps Maleficent held out the note.  Perhaps Kinsale simply took it.

“Oh, no…” Kinsale breathed.

There was much Maleficent would have liked to say.  There was much she should have said, even, after all these years.  But none of it came to mind.  Memories, seared into her palm a hundred times over by her mother’s accursed amulet, twist and blur together, the young princess and her uncommon kindness, the mad sorceress and her frightened daughters, and suddenly it was Briar Rose rendered red and crackling and dying at her side.

“I have to go,” Maleficent said simply.

“What?” Kinsale cried.  “Maleficent, it’s obviously a trap!”

Maleficent stood slowly.  “And?”

“And, you’re just going to walk into a trap?” Kinsale waved her hands wildly.  “I mean, Maleficent, who knows what this is really about?  Who could be—“

Maleficent tapped the paper.  “The handwriting.  if it isn’t hers, it’s a very good approximation.”

Kinsale looked upon her as though she’d gone mad.  “And?” she shook her head, disbelieving.

Maleficent opened her arms in a show of defeat.  What was there to say, really?  “What else would you have me do, Kinsale?” she wondered lightly.  She turned to leave through the front door.  She was feeling far too scattered to teleport.

“So what,” Kinsale spoke again, suddenly, as though she hadn’t fully decided to before she’d begun, “you just—walk away from me, I don’t hear from you for a century, and now, this?  Now I’m supposed to believe you would go to the ends of the earth for this girl?”

“That isn’t—“

“Call it whatever you like, Maleficent,” Kinsale cut her off bitterly.  “That’s love.  It’s not some secret, mystical concept that our kind couldn’t hope to understand.”

“Oh?”  The familiarity of irritation brought Maleficent back to herself.  “Is it love, to see a person trembling in fear of you and to persist in frightening her away?  Is it love, to throw one’s life away when another spent the entirety of her pitiful existence trying to save it?  Is it love, to demand an answer out of someone who had known only this all her days, who couldn’t have begun to understand—“

“Oh, so I’m the villain now, very original,” Kinsale scoffed.  “You were young and innocent and I was cruel and calculating for wanting to know if you loved me back!”

“What I am saying,” Maleficent managed through gritted teeth, “is that your heady notions of love may not have been quite so noble and groundbreaking as you believed them to be.”

“You know what?” Kinsale snapped.  She thrust her hand towards the door.  “Go.  Go and get yourself killed, and see if I care.  Why,” she laughed coldly, “it’ll be just the same as it has been, won’t it, as far as I’m concerned?  You, alive or dead?  So.”

Kinsale’s fists clenched at her sides.  Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes shone with unshed tears.  But her voice betrayed no such weakness.  “Go,” she said again.

In a burst of flame and fury, Maleficent went.

Chapter Text

Though it was something of a relief when her contentious guests departed, Joy did not know peace for very long.  Perhaps she had an inkling as to what lay on the other side of her front door, or perhaps it was merely the general undercurrent of terror she had felt since Sara’s last visit which drove her, but Joy hurriedly finished her missive to the Queen, and then, on a whim, wrote another.

Joy favoured her modest home with a passing glance as she made her way to the door.  Perhaps, she thought distantly, if she made it through this wretched affair unscathed, she might consider decorating a little better.

“So,” said Sara simply.  The guards on either side of her were clad in bright blue.

“So,” Joy agreed, feeling strangely apart from herself.

“I do wonder,” Sara inclined her head curiously, “why lie?”

Joy felt her mouth twist into a mirthless smile.  “Do I owe you the truth?”

“Perhaps not,” Sara conceded without emotion.  “Even still, I’d thought you might owe it to yourself.”  She gestured to her guards.

The Chains were heavy and cold upon her wrists.

“You know,” said Joy quietly, unable to drown out the note of sorrow in her voice, “I really wanted to believe you were above this.  I told them it wasn’t like you, antagonizing one of us for no real reason.  They think I’ve lost it.  They don’t know what really happened with—“

“I suggest you hold your tongue, Mistress Joy,” said Sara coolly, but the set of her eyes betrayed that she was listening, that she had heard.

“I thought we were friends, of a sort, once,” said Joy, anyway.

Sara’s lips parted.  She inhaled, hesitated.  “You’ve forced my hand, Joy,” she said.  It was the nearest Joy had ever heard her to regretful.

It was agreed that the Chains of Avasina would be fastened at Briar Rose’s ankles, and that once she had been sufficiently subdued, her wrists would be unbound.  The chains sapped all the magic from her at once, painfully, as though all the air had been rent from her lungs.

“Are you sure this is necessary?” Flora wondered anxiously, eyeing Briar Rose as though she were a wild animal who had wandered too close.

“Absolutely certain, I’m afraid,” said Ophira with a frown.  “Human sorcerers are a rarity, for a blessing, but the danger they pose cannot be abided.  The magic must be suppressed; else, the sorcerer must be put to death.  It is a gruesome fate,” she amended more gently, perhaps because Flora and Merryweather had recoiled in shock, “but I assure you it is a mercy.  A human trying to wield that sort of power is like to bring the whole world to ruin in her wake.”

 “Rosie?”  Fauna spoke in a voice small and broken.  Briar Rose turned to look at her.  Surely Fauna would stop this?

“Fauna!” Mistress Merryweather exclaimed, somewhere between grief and exasperation.  “Oh, where have you been?  It’s just so awful!”

Fauna pressed a hand to her lips to stifle a quiet sob as she took in the sight of Briar Rose in chains.  She looked up at Ophira with wide, searching eyes.  “What is the meaning of this?” she pleaded.

But Ophira explained again, about how the wicked fairies had infected Briar Rose with their magic, how Rose had attacked them on sight, had refused to return with them, had nearly overwhelmed them with her terrible power.  Funny, Rose thought, she had never felt so powerless in all her days.

It was strange, being here, seeing all these familiar faces crowded around her, talking over her head like she wasn’t there.  She felt as though she had been gone a very long time.  She wondered what fairies must feel like when they left a place for centuries.

Somewhere deep within her chest, she could feel the dread and horror of her current circumstances beginning to take root and spread.  That she had torn herself apart to learn magic only to be overpowered so easily, only to be Chained by her own family and left to rot until the magic was drawn out of her.  That she had learned so much and come so far only to return here even more a prisoner than she’d been at the start.  That there was nowhere she could run, no one who would bother to come looking for her, and—

“Aurora.”

A visceral shudder coursed through her at the sound of that name upon Phillip’s lips.

The crowd parted to make way, and Phillip knelt before her.  His hands on hers were terrible.  Too warm, too heavy, too much.

“My Aurora,” Phillip breathed.  Briar Rose remembered when she had thought he had a pleasant sort of face.  Now she found she rather loathed the sight of it.  He could have been a lifeline for her when she’d been brought to the castle.  They could have sat up late at night together, and he could have told her all about the things that defined his world, the things he had grown up learning where she had not.

The way Mistress Kinsale had done.  The way Maleficent had sometimes done, too, in her way.

Instead—

Phillip brought Rose’s hands to his lips.  It was a horrible kiss, wet and warm.  Rose struggled not to show her revulsion outright.  “You have returned to me at last,” he whispered, low and reverent.

“Forgive me, Highness,” said Ophira cautiously.  “I don’t wish to alarm you, any of you, but…I do feel I ought to tell you that you may find your princess much changed in the days to come.  She has been under…very powerful influences—I know not exactly which, nor to what end.  Pray, treat her with kindness, even if she cannot return it just yet.  She will heal, in time.”

“If I may,” came the unmistakable voice of King Stefan, the man Briar Rose laboured to think of as her father, “exactly how much time?”

Ophira considered Briar Rose for a moment, tapping a finger against her chin.  “Oh, I’d say a year should do it,” she said, as though it were a kindness.

A year.  Something about the word shot through Rose’s body like lightning, and she began quite suddenly to weep.

A year!  Why, she must have been away about as long, and now they meant to erase the lot of it, to undo all that she had done, all that she had learned, even what little she had achieved?

“Don’t cry, my love,” said Phillip in what he must have thought was a kind tone.  He pressed a kiss to her forehead, just as wet and terrible as the first, and Rose felt as though she might vomit.  “Everything will be just as it once was, you’ll see.”

A wretched sob escaped her, and she doubled over with the sheer force of her grief.  Oh, Phillip, she thought miserably, that is exactly what I’m most afraid of.

It seemed fitting that Maleficent should return to the Sea Kingdom like this.  It was where she’d gone the first time she had parted ways with Kinsale.  Taking to the sea for a decade or so had calmed her significantly—there was something remarkably soothing about being somewhere she knew no one would even think to look for her—and the form she had taken, a sort of ocean-dragon, tended to numb more difficult emotions.

She imagined Kinsale would understand, if she tried, that Maleficent did not leave, did not deny her love to be cruel.  Truly, looking back, she doubted she would even have been capable of trying to return the depth of Kinsale’s feelings for her.  She had enjoyed Kinsale’s company very much, but there was a point past which she could not reach, a something in Kinsale’s eyes that was utterly foreign to her, and all the more terrifying for it.

And perhaps there was a part of her that still railed against the notion that Kinsale had loved her, true though it might be.  Perhaps a better version of herself might have been able to say something different, something kinder, in what might well have been their last conversation.  But Maleficent had always known there would be no real resolution there.  She had ruined the chance for that years ago, when she was a bit too young and too preoccupied to know any better.

She wished she could have found a way to explain to Kinsale that it mattered little what awaited her here.  If Briar Rose was in danger, Maleficent would come to her aid, no matter the risk—Maleficent owed her that much.  Whatever her reasons, defying the only family, the only life she had ever known to save Maleficent was no small matter.

Nevermind that Maleficent’s life would be forfeit, once the wrong person decided she was too powerful to be contained.  Nevermind that all she had done since the princess had risked everything to save her was to mope and brood, and render her saviour’s new life miserable and frightening to soothe her own ego.  If she could make just one thing right before she died, she would consider it a greater victory than she had ever anticipated.

Just as the green grass gave way to gleaming white sand, Maleficent sensed someone watching her.  “Show yourself,” she said, feeling surprisingly calm.

“A useful skill,” said a voice Maleficent did not recognize, bright and sharp as a blade.  The infamous Mistress Sara materialized a short distance away, unmistakable even though Maleficent had only ever seen her from a great distance.  She was clad all in white, and her dark golden hair caught the sun.  She seemed in every way to be surrounded by light, even to emanate it.  “Then again, there was a time when you were well-known for your paranoia.”

“Was there?” Maleficent wondered vaguely.

“It was to be expected, of course,” said Sara as she approached.  She was a tall and well-muscled woman.  In different clothes, Maleficent would have taken her for a warrior of the Mountainland Fae.  “The only surviving daughter of Mistress Adara.  Did I guess correctly, then?  Have you spent all these years wondering when she would show up to finish the job?”

Ah.

Well, this simplified matters.

“What eludes me,” said Maleficent thoughtfully, “is why my personal affairs, or indeed, my general demeanour, are of such an interest to you, Mistress Sara.”

“Ah,” said Sara, almost pleasantly, “but I’m afraid I’ve no choice but to take an interest.  Surely the rumours of your magical prowess do not come as a surprise to you.”

“They do not,” Maleficent began carefully, but she found she was at a loss for how to continue.  She had never anticipated that she might be permitted to speak with relative freedom on this matter.  Suppose she told the truth—would Sara believe her?  Would it make any difference?

Sara waited for her to say more, but when no words came, she continued, still with the air of one making conversation that could very nearly be described as pleasant.  “Then you’ll understand my position.  My people want answers.  If they do not receive them, I daresay you might like even less the answers they invent for themselves.  Not least regarding your human captive.”

Maleficent knew her expression betrayed her.  She could not help but to ask, “Where is she?”

Sara considered her curiously for a moment.  “The Princess Aurora has been collected from the home of your friend, Mistress Kinsale, and is being returned to the custody of the royal family of the Eastern Kingdom, of course.  But your reaction raises another question—what did you stand to gain from keeping her, Mistress Maleficent?”

Maleficent almost laughed.  Again she faltered, searching for words that would not come.  It sounded absurd even in the privacy of her own mind.  Still, if she was to be put to the sword, let someone hear the truth.

“The princess,” said Maleficent slowly, “bade me free her from the Eastern Kingdom.  It is a bit of a long story, Mistress Sara, but know that on this at least I speak true.  Your kind purport to care for the plight of mortals.  Surely you have seen why a young woman might wish for another sort of life.”

And for a moment, suspended in time, blissful in its absurdity, Sara seemed to understand.  She looked upon Maleficent, in fact, with a depth of understanding unlike anything she had ever known.  Had anyone in the course of her miserable little existence ever truly understood Maleficent so well as Sara did in this instant?

“And in exchange, she freed you from your chains,” said Sara quietly, needlessly.  “But here is the tragedy of it, Mistress Maleficent.  It is a tragedy I have borne all the days of my life.”  She held her hand to her chest.  “It doesn’t matter what happened.  It matters what people see.  What they think.  The stories they tell.”

Something inside of Maleficent, something tiny and flickering, died out.  “And how does this story go, Mistress Sara?”

There was a sadness about Sara’s steely grey eyes, a hesitancy about the set of her lips that Maleficent never would have expected.  “I think you know already,” she said simply.  She turned and began to walk, and Maleficent could do nothing but to follow her.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a dozen or so of Sara’s bodyguards, all clad in bright blue, began to materialize behind them as they walked.  It was something of a curiosity, now that she thought of it—the Light Fae weren’t usually very good at concealing themselves from view altogether.  She wondered idly what other tricks Sara taught to the lucky few who served her.

Maleficent had been distantly aware of an enormous coliseum in the Sea Kingdom where the Mountainland Fae often visited to show off their skills, but she had never so much as ventured near it.  A faint cloud of colourful magic hung about the place, and as they drew nearer to the entrance, Maleficent could see that it was full to the brim, with what looked to be humans and Light Fae in equal measure.

She thought of her friends, and of what they had always said of Mistress Sara.  Strange, that Joy’s account, which had seemed to Maleficent the most bizarre, seemed closest to the truth.  Then again, by Sara’s own admission, the truth mattered little in the end.

It doesn’t matter what happened, Sara had told her.  It matters what people see.  What they think.  The stories they tell.

Perhaps she was right.  Perhaps, then, someone in this crowd might see the truth of what happened here, and might remember it.  Perhaps if someone saw, if someone understood even half as easily as Mistress Sara herself had done, then at the very least, this would not happen again.  That was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?

“Citizens of the Kingdom by the Sea!” cried a voice Maleficent did not recognize as they approached.  “Honoured guests of the Fairy Queen’s court!  And, of course—“  Maleficent could see now that the speaker was Mistress Hilda, nearly as unmistakable as Mistress Sara, though Maleficent had only ever seen her picture.  “—honoured guests of the Mountainlands!”

In the center of the coliseum stood a formation of Light Fae, clad all in dark tones.  They did not look much the same, and yet they seemed even to breathe as a single entity.

The Mountainland Fae were widely regarded as the most powerful light fairies on this earth.  It was their combined power which imbued the Chains of Avasina with its particular qualities.  Thus, if a dark fairy was said to defy the Chains of Avasina, of course it stood to reason that her strength would be tested against theirs.  Maleficent had known this, distantly, even afforded the idea of doing battle with the Mountainland Fae more than a passing thought.

If she had trained, if she had prepared, she might even have stood half a chance.

“Mistress Sara is well aware of the rumours which have circulated amongst her beloved people,” Hilda continued, her tremulous voice soaring over the cheering crowd.  “I tell you now, on this day, that you need no longer know fear!  For behold!”

She gestured wildly to Mistress Sara, and Maleficent felt the full force of the crowd’s attention upon them.  She stood taller, held her head higher.  She would not meet her fate with head bowed low.

“Your Mistress Sara brings before you the villain you dread!  Let her show her strength, if indeed it is so noteworthy, and let the Fairy Queen’s forces strike her down!  And if not?” Hilda’s tone took on a terrible, singsong quality that set Maleficent’s nerves all on edge.  “Then let this vile creature, who has hounded the human princess of the Eastern Kingdom all the days of her life, who has stricken fear into the hearts of human and fae alike wherever she has roamed, who has brought nothing into this world but pain and suffering—let her be put to the sword at long last, and let her legacy of terror die with her!”

The crowd roared.  Maleficent could see people jumping wildly, clawing and reaching and beating their fists against the railings.  Surely, she had thought, such an enormous crowd could not be of one mind.  Surely someone would see the truth of what was to befall her.  Perhaps she had miscalculated.

“This woman, this Maleficent, is a scourge upon the Earth!” cried Hilda, at least as frenzied as the crowd below her.  “If she cannot be contained by Earthly means, then let her be contained by any means necessary!”

“Am I to die in battle, then?” Maleficent wondered quietly.

Sara  turned over her shoulder.  She answered slowly and thoughtfully, though Maleficent imagined she’d known what she would say all along.  “No, I don’t think so,” she said.  She gestured to the Mountainland Fae standing in formation before them.  “Though you’re welcome to try.”

“Combatants!” Hilda cried far above them.  “Prepare yourselves!”

As the Mountainland Fae drew their wands and took a battle stance, all at once, in perfect harmony, Maleficent finally knew fear.  Not for the battle, exactly, but for what might follow if she survived.

It would be better, she thought as she drew her staff across her chest, if she fell in battle.  It was true what Hilda had said—Maleficent had wrought little more than pain and suffering in all the days of her life.  All of her plans, to save her sisters, to make the Eastern Kingdom pay for the way they looked down upon her, to spare Briar Rose, had come to naught in the end.

Rose could escape, if she wished it, Maleficent thought as the sound of a strange spell whirred in her ears.  She almost missed it, almost failed to comprehend the path it took, bouncing as it seemed to from one fairy to the next without rhyme or reason.  A dozen more attacks followed, lightning-fast, hard to predict.  Rose could escape, or Kinsale would—

Would she?  Something ice-cold and razor-sharp cut across Maleficent’s face, clawed at her hands and buckled her knees.  She staggered, and another spell hit like a blow to the stomach.  Maleficent hadn’t even had the wherewithal to fire back.  She was, just as she had been against her own mother, woefully outmatched.

Would Kinsale look after Rose in Maleficent’s absence?  She had seemed dismissive, perhaps even jealous in their last conversation, but surely this could not be the extent of her feelings.  Surely in the time they had spent together, Kinsale would have seen what Maleficent saw in Briar Rose, and with far greater ease?  Surely such guileless kindness would have moved her, too?

She finally managed to recover, after another spell very nearly rent her arm from her shoulder.  She tightened her grip on her staff and shook her head subtly.  It mattered not.  Briar Rose must surely have improved in her magical ability since last Maleficent had seen her.  It had been cruel and not a little cowardly to frighten her away as Maleficent had, but the lesson had been true enough.  Whatever Kinsale did or didn’t do, Briar Rose could escape on her own, if she wished it.

There was always the chance that she had changed her mind, that she had had enough of her mad adventure into the world of fairies and magic, and that she wished to return to the life set forth for her.  It seemed…unlikely, perhaps, but one could never truly know what lay in another’s heart.  Perhaps Maleficent had sorely misjudged the princess, made her out to be something more or different than she was.  It was not impossible.  Perhaps a part of Maleficent had wanted her to be good and kind in a way she had never before known.  Perhaps Maleficent had wanted to believe that such a person could exist at all.

There was a beauty to the way the Mountainland Fairies fought.  It was like a dance.  Maleficent had never trained as part of a group; indeed, she couldn’t imagine a dark fairy who would think to do so.  There were twelve Mountainland Fae in all, each a powerful combatant in her own right.  When Maleficent finally forced thoughts of Kinsale and Briar Rose to the back of her consciousness, she began to catch onto the way the spells moved between them, and to guess at patterns that allowed her to consider a counterattack.

She stood no chance of winning this fight, that much was certain.  She could already feel the drain upon her magic just simply from shielding herself thus far.  Even still, she would not lose easily.  She called down fire and lightning upon her opponents, searching them and their intricate formation for weaknesses to exploit.  If a spell stuttered around a fairy, Maleficent let her be.  Better to leave standing the ones for whom the intricate patterns were not second nature.  If a fairy favoured a leg or seemed unsteady with the hand that did not wield the wand, Maleficent focused her energies to set that fairy off balance.

She managed to incapacitate two of the twelve.  She hadn’t been paying attention to the noise of the crowd for some time now.  She wondered whether any of them could see that if Maleficent had truly been so powerful that she stood even a chance of resisting their precious Chains of Avasina, this battle would have been as nothing to her.

She wondered whether Avasina, herself, for whom the infamous artifact was named, could have bested them with ease.  She wondered whether Mistress Zenovia could.  She wondered what Zenovia would say to see Maleficent like this, barely holding her own against them.  Would she be disgusted?  Would she feel pity?

Which would be worse?

Maleficent missed a spell.  It hit her squarely across the knees, and Maleficent heard the terrible crunch of breaking bones.  She inhaled sharply, felt cold dread before even the pain.  The two fairies she had felled were rising to their feet, fully recovered.  Another spell coiled around her like ropes, meant to bind, meant to constrict.  The crowd was cheering.

There was one other trick Maleficent knew, one way she might yet escape this fate.  But what would become of the world, she wondered, even if she were to succeed in taking the form of a dragon just now?  Would the Fairy Queen’s forces raze the earth to the ground in search of her?  Would Sara or her crowd of bloodthirsty admirers demand that all the dark fae in the land be treated in the selfsame manner?

What would be the use in it?  What had Maleficent left to live for, even for a handful of stolen days?

Somewhere above her, Maleficent could see the blurry outline of a person.  One of the Mountainland Fairies, most likely.  “What kind of game are you playing at?” the fairy demanded, in a voice surprisingly grief-stricken.

Maleficent felt a horrible, wet sort of laughter escape her.  “Perhaps you should ask your fearless leaders,” she said, gesturing vaguely into the air, though whether she was referring to Sara, Hilda, or someone else entirely was anyone’s guess.

The dark figure above her shifted, and she felt something pressing into her chest.  “Go on,” she breathed.  “Kill me.  It would make things so much easier.”

“Enough,” said Mistress Sara quietly.  The weight was lifted from Maleficent’s chest.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Hilda cried, too close and too loud.  “Take her away, good heavens!”

And so it was that Maleficent felt herself being picked up and carried away.  To where, and to what end, she could not say.  Indeed, she could not bring herself to think about much of anything besides the agony radiating from her broken legs, and the way the crowd still roared like the ocean in her ears.

Briar Rose didn’t know how much time had passed since she had been Chained.  She drifted in and out of consciousness at random, never well-rested, always in pain.  Had Maleficent felt this way when she had worn these selfsame chains?  She considered that even if Maleficent had been unrepentant, had vowed to kill Briar Rose as soon as Rose set her free, Rose would still have been glad to free her from a fate such as this.

The door to her room was always locked, as was the door to the balcony.  Sometimes, if Rose asked very nicely, if she insisted that she only wished to catch a breath of fresh air or a glimpse of the sun, Fauna or Merryweather would open the door to the balcony for her.  Phillip and Flora would not.

Queen Leah had spoken to Briar Rose only once, when she had first been escorted back to her room.  She had been so much stronger then, she realized.  She could not remember the last time she’d been able to stand on her own.

“I prepared a present for you,” the Queen began carefully.  “I hope you’ll like it—Mistress Fauna suggested it.”

She kept her distance from Briar Rose and the guards who held her chains, but walked across Rose’s room to indicate a beautiful harpsichord placed in the corner, piled high with bound books full of music.

“The three Good Fairies tell me you are indeed blessed with the gift of song,” said the Queen, smiling in a way that seemed painful.  “I should so like to hear it sometime, if you’re of a mind.”

Briar Rose approached, fascinated.  She had never seen a real one before.  Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, to learn to play this lovely instrument while she figured out what in the world she was supposed to do from here.  “Thank you,” she breathed as she reached out to touch the keys.  But there was something strange about the sound they made.

She pressed a key, then another, but she could not make any sense of it.  She tried to call to mind songs she had known not so long ago, songs she had made up to sing to herself, and she tried to find the sound of the songs in her head on the keys of the harpsichord.  It should have been a simple thing, but she found that she could not do it, could not tell whether the notes she pressed matched the sounds in her head or not.

Briar Rose sat down on the seat before the harpsichord, something like panic taking root in her chest.  She didn’t mean to cry.  She didn’t want to cry in front of these people who expected her to be grateful that they were imprisoning her here.  But she hadn’t really thought of those songs she’d sung to herself as something magical. 

When she’d thought of losing her magic, she’d thought of the pitiful excuse for a struggle before Lady Ophira had taken her down with ease.  A tragedy, she’d thought, to lose something she’d worked so hard to gain, even if it hadn’t amounted to very much.  But this?

This was something so…simple.  Something so much a part of her that she’d never given it a passing thought.

“Aurora?  Are you all right?”

It was not unlike her name, in that way.  And just like her name, her gift of song was to be taken from her as though it meant nothing.

Queen Leah didn’t come back to visit her.  Briar Rose didn’t touch the harpsichord again.

How long ago was it, Rose wondered, when she had tried to stand from her bed and fallen immediately to her knees?  She’d stayed there kneeling on the hard stone floor for what felt like an eternity before Phillip had come by to see her.  He’d been horrified, of course, and had quickly gotten her back into bed, but after that, as though for lack of anything better to do, he had left, and Briar Rose had eventually drifted back to sleep.

Phillip had awoken her with a kiss sometime later.  Perhaps it was evening, for Briar Rose could not see any light streaming in from beneath the balcony door.  “Wake up, my Sleeping Beauty,” he’d said, in a voice that made her want to squirm away from him.

But she could not bring herself to move, and Phillip obviously had his own intentions.  Briar Rose felt stunned, and not a little horrified.  She hadn’t realized she’d be expected to return to this particular facet of their marriage so soon, and certainly not like this.  Phillip’s every touch felt like a physical blow.  She could not even think to ask him to stop, because she was just so shocked that he had begun at all.

But he had, and Briar Rose had not stopped him, and so she had endured the pain of it in relative silence.  Some time later, when Phillip was asleep at her side, Briar Rose came back to herself.

Strange, wasn’t it, how repulsive she found him now?  Had she always felt this way?  She closed her eyes and tried to think of the boy she’d met in the woods, before everything had gone so horribly wrong.  He’d been---interesting, in a way, she supposed, for Briar Rose had never been permitted to speak to anyone at all, and she’d never seen a man up close.  He’d been pushy.  Perhaps a bit arrogant.  She’d wanted to get away, but she’d also been utterly overwrought by curiosity.

And she supposed she’d come around to him well enough.  He’d danced with her, and she’d liked that.  He’d wanted to see her again, and she’d been sure her aunties would understand that she couldn’t just go on like this for the rest of her life.  She’d been—mad with excitement, now that she thought of it.  She’d felt positively dizzy with possibilities.  Full to bursting with ideas and observations she’d wanted to share, about what it was like to talk with another person, to dance, to break the rules.

But he hadn’t kissed her then.  He hadn’t kissed her until it had been too late, until she’d been robbed of any time she might have had to decide whether she wanted him to kiss her or not.

Ever since she had awoken, Briar Rose had tried very hard to recapture that feeling she’d had about Phillip, but she just couldn’t seem to catch onto it.  The more time she’d spent with him, in fact, the more she could not help but to think how ill-suited they were for one another.  This was meant to be her true love, the man who had broken her curse and rescued her from a hundred years of slumber?  They hardly spoke! 

Indeed, now that Rose thought of it, they hadn’t spoken much on that day in the woods, either.  Rose had expected they’d talk later, in the safety of her aunties’ company, but later had never come.  She’d imagined that Phillip would come and talk to her while she recovered from her sleeping curse, but he seldom did.  And now?

Now, even if he were suddenly overtaken by the spirit of conversation, it was much too late.  Briar Rose had been to other places, had met other people a thousand times more interesting at least.  Briar Rose had sat up late at night with Maleficent and with Mistress Kinsale talking about magic beyond her comprehension and fairies she had never met who had been alive for centuries.  She hadn’t been afforded nearly enough time for even a fraction of the conversations she’d have liked to have.

Something Maleficent had said once caught in Rose’s mind, eerily clear even filtered through memory.  What would I look like, she’d wanted to know, if Flora hadn’t given me the gift of beauty?

Oh, how Briar Rose missed hearing Maleficent’s voice.  Much the same, she’d said, curt and aloof,  but there was no denying the beauty and the resonance of her voice,  the way Rose could fairly feel every word down to her bones.

“What Flora gave you,” Maleficent had said, “was a magical quality about your beauty.  It draws people to you, a useful quality for a royal.  If you were of a mind, you could learn to use that magic to ensnare the heart of anyone you pleased.  I daresay Prince Philip has used his handsomeness to that effect."

 “Did he use it on me?” Rose had wondered.

“Most likely,” Maleficent had replied, as though it were nothing.  Then, almost gently, “It’s not all-powerful.  If indeed he did enchant you, it's doubtful you were under the influence for very long.  You share the same magic.  After a certain point, the trick would become useless on you."

In the present, Briar Rose shut her eyes tight and took in a shuddering breath.  Suppose she hadn’t met Phillip that day?  Suppose she’d even met some other handsome stranger possessed of no magical abilities?  Would she be enjoying a hundred years of cursed slumber now, simply because she hadn’t been afforded the opportunity to fall into a stranger’s thrall for the duration of a particularly momentous evening?

Time passed.  Briar Rose slept.  She hadn’t the strength to shed a tear for her fate.  Phillip came to her again, and this time, she had at least the wherewithal to speak.

“Phillip, it hurts,” she stammered, all in a rush.

He pulled away, stunned.  “Then I shall be gentler,” he swore.

The words felt like a wound all their own.  “It’s…not that.  These Chains, they make everything hurt.  Even the gentlest touch.”

Phillip gazed at her, brow knitted with a superficial sort of concern.  “Then I shall be even gentler than that,” he said.

She felt as though he would shatter her.  She felt as though he would break her apart, rend every bone in her body cleanly in two.  She hadn’t been clear enough, she thought.  She hadn’t wanted to upset him or to hurt his feelings.  It was expected, she reasoned.  This was what was expected, of him and of her.  She would just find a way to say it better next time.  Surely he didn’t want to hurt her.  Surely if he knew how she was feeling, he would leave her in peace.

Briar Rose lay awake long into the night after that, hardly thinking, hardly feeling.  Even if he would listen, even if he did stop, how long would it last?  Rose was to be kept in these chains for a year.

The thought was—unbearable.  Rose didn’t know how much time had passed since she had returned, but she knew it couldn’t have been very long at all.  A few days, a fortnight at most.  What would become of her in the course of a year?  Was she truly meant to continue living like this?

Some time later, perhaps the very next night, Phillip came to her bed once more.  She loathed the feel of his mouth on hers, shuddered when she recalled the way she was sure she could feel his hands lingering on her long after he had gone.  Perhaps it was sheer disgust that compelled her to speak at last.  “Phillip, stop,” she pleaded as the dull ache of his hands upon her breasts sent a wave of nausea coursing through her.

“What is it, my love?”

She looked up into his eyes and tried to remember finding him anything but repulsive.  “I know you’re trying to be gentle,” she said, with some difficulty, “but please, it hurts all the same.  It’s too much.”

Without so much as a feigned look of concern, Phillip brought Rose’s hand to his terrible lips.  “My deepest apologies, my Aurora,” he said, and Rose’s stomach roiled.  “I shall try even harder than that.”

Rose reclaimed her hand, shocked into anger.  “No!” she cried, but the sound came out as little more than a whisper.  “Is this…do you want to hurt me like this?”  She did not recognize her own voice.  It was as though her throat had been razed raw.

Phillip recoiled, but the look in his eyes was not one of hurt, not one of guilt, but of anger.  He inhaled as though to speak, then stopped himself.  He closed his eyes.

“My Aurora,” he said, but the tone rang out wrong, depth without warmth, words without meaning.  “My wife, my princess.  You--cut me to the core with your words.”

He looked into her eyes, and a pang of cold terror coursed through her.  “Have you any idea, my Aurora,” he said, “how long you have been away from me?  How dearly I have missed you?  How I have suffered, longing for your touch?  After all I went through, for you to be taken from me so soon, before we even had a chance to be happy together?”

After all I went through.

The words seemed to echo in her mind, louder and more insistent than what followed.  After all I went through, he said.  After all I went through.

Was it all for this, she wanted to ask?  All he went through?  Did he fight a dragon and brave a forest of briars, so that his prize must allow him to do as he pleased with her?

Briar Rose began to weep in earnest.  She wept for the happy childhood long lost to her.  She wept for the first stranger she had ever met, who had charmed her for an afternoon.  She wept for meager taste of freedom, for the magnificent dark fairies she had so admired and envied, and for the ways in which they had taught her what it was to want.

“Oh, my Aurora,” Phillip breathed into her ear, “there’s no need to cry anymore.”

But she could not stop, and Phillip was far from gentle in his ardour.  The agony of it, of knowing that Phillip did not care if he hurt her, that Phillip would take what he wanted from her and consider it right, was far greater than any physical pain.  She moved her hand to cover her mouth, to wipe away her tears, and he pushed her wrist back down onto the bed and held it there.

Rose let out a quiet whimper.  She heard a terrible crunch, felt white-hot pain shoot through her, and remembered nothing thereafter.

She woke alone, with sunlight streaming through the crack beneath the balcony door.  The pain radiating from her wrist sent a sickening shudder through her, but the events that had caused it seemed strangely distant and difficult to grasp onto.

Lying here in agony would drive her utterly mad, though, and so she forced herself to sit up, and then to stand.  She made her way over to the door, leaning heavily upon the wall and cradling her wrist close to her chest.  Locked, as ever.  She rang a bell she had never used before.

Not a few moments later, the lock clicked, and a middle-aged woman with blonde hair and bright green eyes entered.  “Yes, your Highness?”

“I need to speak to Mistress Fauna,” said Rose.

The servant nodded.  “At once, your Highness.”  She turned to leave.

“Wait!” Rose cried, not a little frantically.  “Can’t I just…go and see her?”

The servant curtseyed low and bowed her head.  “Deepest apologies, Highness.  Prince Phillip’s orders.  I shall send Mistress Fauna to you at once.”

The door closed.  The lock clicked.

Briar Rose returned to her bed.  She was already feeling sleepy again.  Perhaps she could sleep through the pain, after all.  Perhaps she would just lie down, and if—

There was a gentle knock at the door.  The lock clicked again.

“Oh, Rosie, what’s happened to you?”

Rose forced herself to sit up once more, and she tried to ignore the way the room seemed to spin.  She held out her hand gingerly.  “I think it’s broken,” she said, without much emotion.

“Oh, Rose…” Fauna breathed as she drew her wand.  She traced an intricate pattern in the air, something that looked like flowers blooming out of thin air.

Nothing happened.

Fauna froze.  Realization dawned on her, clear in the widening of her eyes, and the way they filled up with tears.  She pressed her hand to her lips.  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

With her uninjured hand, Rose reached out in an effort to comfort her, but before she could ask, and before Fauna could even think to tell her, Rose understood, and she withdrew her hand as though burned.

“The Chains,” she guessed.  “No magic.”

Fauna burst into tears.  She nodded miserably from behind her hands.

Briar Rose was all out of tears.  Indeed, she very nearly laughed from the absurdity of it.  “I don’t suppose you’d take them off?” she wondered, feeling half-mad.

Fauna shook her head, scrubbing at her face with her sleeves.  “I can’t,” she cried.

“Of course not,” Rose agreed, feeling nearer still to bitter laughter.

Fauna looked up suddenly.  “Rose,” she said, stunned.  “Did Phillip do this to you?”

Briar Rose averted her eyes.  The question felt--strange, like it was too much to bear even though the answer was simple.  She knew he had, she knew he must have, but the events which had led up to the moment she’d felt her wrist snap seemed distant, like a half-remembered dream.  “He didn’t mean to,” she said simply.  “Can we…talk about something else?”

Fauna hesitated.  “All right,” she agreed quietly, but she didn’t offer up any suggestions.  Instead, she conjured up a bandage and began to wrap Rose’s wrist.  Mercifully, this seemed acceptable by the standards of the Chains of Avasina.

“Did you…go anywhere exciting, when you were looking for me?” Rose tried.

Fauna looked up at her hesitantly.  Rose patted the bed next to her.

“We spent a lot of time in the Land of Hill and Valley,” said Fauna carefully as she sat.

“What is Mistress Felicity like?” Rose supplied.

“Oh,” Fauna sighed thoughtfully, “she’s certainly something.”

Rose felt laughter bubbling up within her, soft and difficult, but genuine.  “And,” she dared, “what about Mistress Kinsale?”

Fauna inhaled, hesitated.  “You know, Rosie,” she began, eyes trained upon the floor, “I do wonder how you came to be in her home at all.  We all thought—well, we thought Maleficent would be keeping you…locked up, somewhere.“

Rose’s fragile good humour was instantly shattered, and her heart sank.  “No,” she said sorrowfully.  “It wasn’t like that at all.”

Fauna bit her lip for a moment.  Her brow furrowed.  “I’ve got to tell you something,” she said unhappily.

“What is it?”  Under different circumstances, Rose might have found cause to feel embarrassed for how excited she felt to be receiving any sort of news at all.  Her mind raced with a thousand possibilities, some of them too horrible to consider, while others—

“Coming to rescue you—and Flora and Merryweather swear they didn’t know, but—it was meant as a sort of trap.  For Maleficent.”

All her racing thoughts, all her bubbling excitement fled her in an instant, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.  “What?”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you,” Fauna fretted.

“Did it work?” Rose demanded.  “Was Maleficent—“

Fauna nodded, still gazing resolutely downward.  “She’s been taken to the Sea Kingdom,” said Fauna.  “Mistress Ophira wasn’t pleased that she’d be missing the…well, there’s no need to—“

“The what?” Rose pleaded.  “Oh, Fauna, you’ve got to tell me!  Mistress Sara, she’s going to…”

Briar Rose did not know what Mistress Sara would do, exactly.  She knew only what she had been told, that Sara and her followers felt that the world would be better off without the dark fae, and that every so often, she got it into her head to try to make that notion a reality.

“Rose, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Fauna turned to her, not a little surprised.

“There is!” Rose cried, growing frantic.  “Of course there is!”

“And anyway, Rosie, I know this is difficult for you to believe right now, but Maleficent isn’t exactly deserving of your pity!” Fauna insisted, far more sternly than Rose had ever heard her.  She took Rose’s uninjured hand between both of hers.  “She used you, Rosie,” Fauna told her.  “She used you to escape, and then she took you away.  You were her prisoner!  Whatever you may think, however it may have seemed—“

“And how does this seem to you?” Rose fired back, holding up both her hands, one bandaged, the other bruised.  “It is funny, isn’t it, that I never sustained any such injuries whilst I was in Maleficent’s company?”

“That doesn’t mean that what she did to you was right!” Fauna cried, fresh tears welling in her eyes.

“What she did to me?”  The words struck her like a physical blow.  Rose felt as though she couldn’t breathe, as though all the air had gone out of the room.

Fauna looked away, shaking her head miserably.  “Oh, Rosie, you’re not making this easy,” she said quietly.

“Oh, I am sorry,” Briar Rose spat.  She could not breathe, could not gather her thoughts.  “I suppose I shouldn’t have called for you at all, should I?  Just laid here with a broken wrist and waited for my dashing prince to come and break the other?”

“Rose!” Fauna looked up, stunned.  “You said yourself he didn’t mean it!”

Fauna might as well have slapped her.  Rose turned away, feeling strangely as though she might begin to weep.  “So I did,” she said quietly.  So she had.  But was it true?  Did she believe it?

Fauna took Rose’s hand again.  “Please, Rosie,” she began tremulously, “for everyone’s sake, you’ve got to let go of this.  Of…of her.”

Rose felt a hot tear running down her cheek.  She didn’t bother to wipe it away.  “Why did you tell me, Fauna?  You must know that I care what becomes of her.  Perhaps it is foolish of me,” she conceded, “but I can’t help it.”

“Oh, dear,” Fauna sighed and squeezed Rose’s hand.  “Maybe it is better if Flora tells you.  But Rosie?”

Rose turned to look at her, utterly unable to reconcile the woman she saw before her with the auntie who had loved her all the days of her life.

Fauna smiled tearfully.  “It gets easier, with time,” she said, nodding.  “You’ll forget.  And you’ll learn to put all that love you have in your heart back where it belongs.”

Later on, Flora came to visit her, full of things she wanted to say, and utterly unwilling to listen to anything Rose might wish to say in return.  Rose lay sprawled despondently across her bed as Flora talked, thinking distantly about all the times Flora had gotten like this in the past, usually over much sillier things, like how Rose really needed to apply herself to her reading lessons, or how it really wasn’t proper for a young lady to go out climbing trees.

Today, Flora’s chosen topic of discussion was what she termed Briar Rose’s unnatural affection for the dangerous fairy who had cursed and kidnapped her, and how such feelings were unacceptable and must be expunged from her person as soon as possible.  Rose’s delicate condition notwithstanding, Flora asserted, Briar Rose must make a greater effort to move on from all of this, for the good of everyone involved.

Briar Rose spent the better part of her lecture wondering what it would be like to die.  Would it hurt?  Was there anything after?  Could any pain, any suffering be worse than this?  What kind of a life awaited her, where she was allowed to be broken and bruised and taken against her will whenever it struck her husband’s fancy, and the only family she had ever known looked the other way and told her that the best recourse--indeed, the only recourse, was just to feel differently, and as quickly as possible, if she would be so kind?

Perhaps a foolish part of her had thought Maleficent would come for her.  Surely she would know Rose didn’t want to come back here.  Whatever lay unspoken between them, whatever fear and mistrust there had been, Maleficent had understood her in a way, certainly far better than anyone else ever had, and Briar Rose had done her best to try to return the favour.

But Maleficent had been captured, and it was all her fault.  Maleficent had been taken to the Sea Kingdom, where Briar Rose didn’t know exactly what would happen, but she knew it would not end well.  Rose realized suddenly that even if she’d never seen Maleficent again, just knowing that she was alive and well would have been enough.  Perhaps in a year, when the last vestiges of her magical pittance had left her and her Chains were removed, Briar Rose could have escaped, could have tried to find Maleficent or Kinsale again, just to see that they were well, just to know that they still existed, just to remember that for a meager sum of days, Briar Rose had known what it was to live a life of her own choosing.

But now?  Now, as far as Rose knew, Maleficent would be the first of many to fall to Mistress Sara’s agenda against the Dark Fae.  By the time Rose’s shackles were removed, they might all be dead and gone, and she would surely be expected to pretend that they had never existed at all.

“Do you hear me, Aurora?” Flora demanded.  “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Briar Rose.  “I understand perfectly.”

Chapter Text

Mistress Kinsale spent the better part of the next seven days absolutely livid.  She went to bed angry and woke up in a rage.  She muttered into her teacup and ranted to her messenger birds.  She wrote letters to Maleficent and letters to the Princess Aurora and letters to Mistress Zenovia of the Mountainlands that she would never, ever dream of sending, and she considered, with varying degrees of seriousness, sending them, anyway, come what may.

What did it matter, anyway?  Maleficent was going to go and get herself killed, the little princess had gone and gotten herself captured, and where did that leave Kinsale?

Right back where she’d started.  Right back where she’d been for the past century or more, just floundering haplessly through each day, accomplishing nothing, trying not to think about how utterly inconsequential she was.

Sometime in the middle of the following week, Kinsale began to feel the tiniest inkling of regret.  It came to her in the late morning, turned her tea bitter and her stomach sour, and try though she might to ignore it, it kept her up long into the night.  Had Maleficent been killed or taken prisoner?  Was the little princess all right?  Would Kinsale truly be contented with whatever befell them if she just sat here and brooded over injustices long in the past?

Did it really matter how she’d felt a hundred years ago, when someone she’d once held dear might well be in mortal danger now?  Did it really matter if Maleficent could find it in her heart to love the little princess when she never could return Kinsale’s feelings?  Could Kinsale fault her for that to the point of letting them both suffer?

Kinsale sighed, loudly and forcefully enough that it startled her birds into flight.  “No,” she groaned, throwing her head back to gaze up into the darkening sky.  “I suppose I can’t, can I?”

Her first thought was to return to Joy.  This, unfortunately, only added to her worry: Joy was gone.  Her door wasn’t warded or locked at all, and it looked as though her tea set had been left untouched since Kinsale and Zenovia had been there nearly a fortnight prior.  Kinsale sank into one of the chairs to think, trying to ignore the way dread settled over her like a heavy blanket.

Kinsale was no strategist.  She didn’t understand the strange politics of the Sea Kingdom, and she couldn’t look at someone like Mistress Sara and wonder at her motives in any way that mattered, the way Joy could.   She would need help, if she were going to accomplish anything here, and though the best candidate was obvious, to say that Kinsale was loath to bother her would be a rather magnificent understatement.

Kinsale leaned her head back and closed her eyes against an ages-old anxiety beginning to take root in the pit of her stomach.  “Damn it all,” she whispered through gritted teeth.  She took up her staff and gave it an irritable wave.

By the stars, it was cold in the Mountainlands!  Kinsale conjured herself a coat, then a thicker coat, and then a scarf to go with it.  She was still shivering when she reached the outermost layer of Zenovia’s wards, but she was too preoccupied by nerves to pay her physical condition much mind.

An owl screeched and flew towards the fortress as Kinsale passed.  She could admit that the structure itself was impressive, in its way, stony and foreboding as the woman who had fashioned it.

Up ahead, the doors of Zenovia’s fortress swung open, and the lady herself appeared in all her glory, dressed in deep burgundy, with another little owl perched upon her shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded quietly, the hard lines of her face drawn in purest displeasure.

Instinctively, Kinsale held out her hands as though to stay Zenovia.  “Please,” she said.  “I need your help.”

Zenovia stared at her for a moment, unmoving, unyielding, but some of the fury seemed to go out of her eyes.  She seemed more surprised than anything.

“You know I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t important,” Kinsale amended, not a little desperately.

Another moment passed in agonizing stillness.  “Fine,” said Zenovia at last.  She turned and went inside, leaving the door open behind her.

Taken to Sea Kingdom.  Your interference would be most helpful.

J

Fauna fed the blackbird that carried Mistress Joy’s message a few bread crumbs.  The bird cawed happily and let her scratch him under his beak before he left.

She supposed she oughtn’t to be surprised.  What had she expected, after going to see Joy like she had, without even half an idea as to what she was doing there?

Something about the whole affair was off, that much was clear.  But what was someone like Fauna supposed to do about that?  She thought about the way she’d looked up to Mistress Sara and the light fairies in the Sea Kingdom when she’d been younger, about how she’d asked Joy whether it was really possible Sara could have done even half the things people said she had.

What was it Joy had said?

Natural skill is nice, of course, she’d said, but it’s hardly what separates someone like Sara from your average light fairy.  Truth be told, I'm not particularly magically gifted, myself, but that's never stopped me from reaching well beyond what ought to be my limits.

It’s dangerous, Fauna had told her without thinking, because that was what she had always been told, what she had always believed.  And Joy had said—

Definitely, she’d said, as though danger were something to delight in.  But a life ruled by fear is sure to be a very dull one, little fairy.

“Fauna?”  Somehow a voice in the present seemed so much more distant than the past.

Fauna turned, feeling a little guilty.  “Oh,” she uttered.  “Hello, Merryweather.”

Merryweather stood awkwardly at the threshold of Fauna’s room, wringing her hands in front of her.

“Did you…need something?” Fauna tried.

Merryweather bowed her head fretfully for a moment.  She looked up with eyes surprisingly full of hurt, even betrayal.  “Why did you leave, Fauna?”

Though the question seemed to twist a knife in her chest, Fauna answered simply.  “King Stephan sent for one of us, and I thought—“

“I know what your stupid note said,” Merryweather snapped, but her voice lacked its usual bite.  “Why did you really leave?”

“Merryweather,” Fauna approached, momentarily abandoning Joy’s letter.  “I wasn’t of any use to you or Mistress Felicity, surely you know that.”

“But Fauna!” Merryweather protested.  “You know how Flora gets!  I needed you!”

“Needed me,” Fauna echoed, deflating.  “Needed me to what?  Agree with you?”

Merryweather faltered.  “You know what I mean!  If it’s just me, Flora never listens.”

“And if it’s just Flora,” Fauna countered, feeling tired, “you’ll never listen.”

Merryweather recoiled as though stricken.  “I thought we were on the same side!” she cried.

“We’re all on the same side, Merryweather,” said Fauna, but her heart wasn’t in this anymore.  “You and me and Flora.”

“You know what I mean,” Merryweather muttered unhappily, averting her gaze.

She did, and yet it all seemed so trivial just now.  What good did it do for Flora and Merryweather to bicker when there might well be a war on the horizon?  What good did it do for Fauna to play peacekeeper for her sisters when someone might really need her?

Fauna didn’t know what she was supposed to do about Mistress Joy being taken to the Sea Kingdom, presumably as a prisoner, but she was going to go and she was going to find out.  And perhaps along the way, she might get some sense for what in the world she was supposed to do about--well, everything else.

“I’m sorry, Merryweather,” said Fauna at last.  She turned away.  “I think I’ve got to be on my own side for now.”

“What?” Merryweather startled.  “What does that—what’s that you’ve got there?”

“Oh,” Fauna sighed, taking up Joy’s letter again.  “A note.  From a friend.”

“You’re…you’re leaving again?”  Fauna had never heard Merryweather sounding so sad, so defeated.  It almost—almost made her change her mind.

“Just…running a few errands,” Fauna lied.  “I won’t be gone long.”

She folded the note and tucked it away, and then turned back to Merryweather with a resolute heart.  “If you’ve already left by the time I return, well, then,” she said, reaching out to squeeze Merryweather’s shoulders, “take care of yourself, baby sister.”

Not so long ago, Fauna thought as she set about packing, she had been looking forward to visiting the Sea Kingdom, retreading the bittersweet steps of her half-forgotten youth which she’d left scattered along the shoreline.  Now she had a sinking suspicion that any happy memories she had of the place might be long washed away, and whatever awaited her on her journey might be far worse than she could bear to imagine.

Fauna swirled her wand to make herself small before she set off on her journey, praying that she might avoid running into anyone else ere she departed.  Her mission wasn’t exactly a secret, not least because she hadn’t even the slightest idea what it would entail, but she did not relish the idea of attempting to explain why she absolutely must undertake it, anyway.

She made it out into the far reaches of the Eastern Kingdom without incident.  It was turning into a lovely evening, the setting sun giving way to a sky full of stars.  Something in the atmosphere seemed to…flicker, somehow, but Fauna scarcely had time to contemplate how such a thing could be possible before she found herself caught, scooped up in a person’s hand like a lightning bug, as a voice that sounded eerily familiar exclaimed, “Well!  That’s lucky!”

Fauna didn’t even have the wherewithal to scream.  She felt as though all the air had been rent from her lungs.  The atmosphere flickered around her again, and she found herself deposited in what appeared to be a very large jar, looking up at the unusually large and distorted face of Mistress Kinsale.

“Sorry about this,” she said with a garish grin, “but I’m afraid I haven’t the time for niceties, and you are sort of my prisoner.  Off we go!”

Off they went.  The sky full of stars disappeared and suddenly they seemed to be nowhere at all.  Fauna was overcome by a wave of dizzying terror, and she knew nothing more for some time after that.

“Ah,” came a voice from nothingness, unmistakable even after a century, “there you are.”

Maleficent’s tongue darted across her lips.  Her mouth was unbearably dry.  She must have been out cold for awhile.  “Mother,” she replied, hoarsely, feeling surprisingly little.

“Pretty plaything, she said,” Mistress Adara continued.  “What could that mean, I wonder?”

Maleficent scoffed.  “Can’t you look for yourself?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Adara replied, almost pleasantly.  “I can see what might be, not what was.  And I can’t see you at all, anymore.  Well, couldn’t.  Now, I can.”

Maleficent closed her eyes.  It mattered little.  The dungeon was dark but for a few sconces somewhere off in the distance.  How many people must there be in here?  How many of them dark fae?

“I don’t suppose you’d favour me with a clue?” Maleficent wondered idly.

Adara chuckled mirthlessly.  “It’s no blessing to know what lies ahead, Maleficent.”

“Yes,” Maleficent spoke without thinking, “it must have been a dreadful burden to know how you would put your own children to the sword.  However did you manage?”

“Still sore about that?” Adara wondered airily.  “Surely you must know by now that it was only a matter of time.  Better to get it over and done with, I say, and save us all a few years of misery in each other’s company.”

The words stung more than Maleficent would have liked to admit.  Not for herself, perhaps, but for her sisters, who were not here to grieve for themselves.  “Why stop there?” she wondered icily.  “Why let any of us trouble you past infancy?”

“Oh,” Adara sighed wistfully, “I did like the idea of leaving a legacy.  Pity the others turned out to be such messy disappointments.  I’d say you’ve done well for yourself, if you’re interesting enough to be captured by this lot, but then again—you’re here now, and so I suppose that’s the end of it.”

Perhaps it was a particular sort of tragedy, that hearing her own mother dismiss the sum of her existence in such a manner should imbue Maleficent with the will to continue on out of pure spite, now, when there was nothing to be done for her fate.  Though it was true enough that she did not know what awaited her from here, she doubted that Mistress Sara would suffer her to live after that monstrous display in the coliseum.

“You never did answer my question,” said Adara after a moment.

“An answer for an answer,” Maleficent replied.  “Where have you been all this time?  How did you come to be here?”

“Wracked by paranoia, were we?”

Adara’s mockery shot through her, but in a way, it was something of a relief to feel so angry.  She’d spent the past year since her magnificent failure feeling weak, vulnerable, sad.  Anger settled over her like a warm blanket, soothing in its familiarity.  “Merely curious,” she replied airily.

She realized when Adara spoke next that she hadn’t really expected an answer.  Hearing one after all this time was truly bizarre.  Kinsale had all but mocked her for the terror that had ruled over her all those years ago, and had reaffirmed her opinion that Adara was long dead not a few months prior.

“There was a settlement in the northern Desertlands without a fairy in sight,” said Adara quietly.  “I watched them, fashioned myself into one of them, and lived among them.  Then, not too long ago, another dark fairy showed up, and her magic went knocking up against mine, so it was only a matter of time after that.  Apparently it’s a crime to masquerade as a human, did you know?”

“A crime?” Maleficent echoed.  “Why?”

“Oh, something about misleading the dear things and seducing them with my innate wickedness.”

Maleficent turned to face her, though it mattered little in the darkness.  “Are you being serious?”

Adara laughed coolly.  “I am, unfortunately.  Surely you’ve seen how peculiar light fairies can be about their precious humans.”

Maleficent leaned her head back against the wall.  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said quietly.

“So?” Adara prompted.  “An answer for an answer.”

A strange and sickly part of Maleficent briefly considered telling Adara everything, the whole story, including the parts she’d never quite dared to admit, perhaps even to herself.  Strange, she thought, how mother, a meaningless word, could still hold some sway over her in this moment.  Strange how, like Seraphina before her, it was buried deep within her to hope against reason that the word held meaning, even now.

“I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing these Chains twice in as many years,” said Maleficent, instead.  “There was a girl, a human princess, who removed them.  She asked in return that she might leave with me.  As you can see, the matter has gotten well out of hand since then.”

“I’m sorry I asked,” Adara sneered.  “Pray spare me the details of your depravity.”

Yes, Maleficent thought, anger had been the way to go all along.  She settled back into it, comfortably enraged.  “Rest assured that if there were any details to speak of, I would inflict them upon you with aplomb.”

“Perhaps you were right all along—I should have put an end to—“

Adara stopped cold.

“No.  No, not—they can’t.  You can’t!” she shrieked suddenly.  The sound stirred the dungeon’s other unseen inhabitants, and the room came alive with a dull rumble of misery.

Before Maleficent could ask, a heavy metal door opened somewhere across the space, and sunlight streamed in.

“You can’t do this!” Adara screeched again.  “I did what you asked!  If I did what you asked you wouldn’t kill me, she said!  She promised!  She promised and you can’t do this!”

“Mistress Adara, formerly of the Dragon Country,” spoke one of the guards.  There was a certain youthfulness about her voice, and Adara’s shrieking seemed to rattle her further.

“No!  NO!”

“You’ve been—“ the guard began, stammering as Adara’s screams echoed through the dungeon.  “You’ve been sentenced to death,” she finished, needlessly.

As the other guard unlocked Adara’s cell, the screaming turned to pleading.  “Is it you who’ll do the deed, girl?” she wondered desperately.  “Is it you who’ll have my blood on her hands?  Such a bright young woman, such a kind heart—would you really take my life this way?”

“Enough,” said the other guard, unaffected.  The two guards began dragging Adara across the floor, but Adara did not relent.

“Just let me go, girl, you can do it, you know how!  I can see the future, you know.  Think of all the things I could tell you!  Think of what you’ll be losing if you kill me!  Come on, girl, think of—“

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” the younger guard wondered as they made their way to the door.

“Not with the Chains on,” said the other guard, still deeply disinterested.

The heavy metal door closed, plunging the room back into darkness.  Maleficent wondered whether the same fate awaited her, to be dragged from her cell screaming and begging, sentenced to a meaningless execution.  Perhaps Adara was right, and it was no blessing to know when the hour of her death approached, but at the moment she felt she would take any knowledge at all over the grim expanse of nothingness that stretched before her.

Somewhere nearby, there came a terrible gasp, followed by the faint clattering of chains.  “Oh, hell,” a familiar voice swore.

“Joy?” Maleficent breathed.

“By the stars!” Joy cried, suddenly sounding quite cheerful.  “I guess I shouldn’t be glad to see you, actually.  Sorry.  How did they get you?”

Maleficent sighed heavily.  “My mother.”

“Damn!” said Joy, sounding almost impressed.  “Thought she was dead.”

“Well, if she wasn’t then, she certainly is now,” said Maleficent simply.  The knowledge was still too absurd to fully comprehend.

“I sent for help,” Joy continued.  “I doubt it’ll come.”

“Help?”

“Came across a little fairy with a conscience not too long ago,” said Joy, as though that made her words any clearer.  “She was worried that her little princess might have freed you all by herself, would you believe?”

Maleficent considered this a moment, not a little surprised.  “Not Mistress Fauna?” she guessed.

“The very same,” said Joy pleasantly.

“And why, pray tell, was this revelation entrusted to you?” Maleficent wondered, with perhaps more vitriol than she had intended.

“I met her years ago, you knew that,” Joy replied easily.  “I know it will come as a surprise to you, Maleficent, but a great many people remember me as a kind and compassionate soul.”

“It must have been well before my time,” Maleficent snapped, but Joy only laughed.

“That it was,” she agreed.  “Anyway, don’t worry your pretty head.  I’m sure she’ll take good care of your little sweetheart.”

“Don’t start with that again.”

“You would deny me my fun at the hour of my imminent demise?” Joy wondered in mocking singsong.

The words sent a shudder through her.  “You’re awfully glib,” she muttered.

“You can’t deny the absurdity of this whole affair,” Joy replied by way of explanation.

That, at least, Maleficent could understand.  “One thing does escape me,” she said.  “How did Sara find her?  The princess, I mean.”

“I didn’t catch all the details, but I think it was her assistant,” Joy supplied.  “I forget her name—she would have been a child when I was all caught up on light fairy society.  Went to see Kinsale because she didn’t like the way Sara handled things with some prisoner, something about masquerading as a human?  I don’t know.”

“Not that it matters, I suppose,” Maleficent sighed.

“Oh, chin up,” said Joy, her voice downright mirthful.  “I don’t know how Kinsale and the Eastern Princess are so taken with you, depressing as you are.  I suppose you must be quite good in bed.”

“Enough.”  Maleficent had always found Joy’s particular sense of humour trifling, but in her present circumstances, she felt she might come apart at the seams for the way fury threatened to tear through her.

“I know Kinsale likes a lady who’ll take charge,” Joy continued, unaffected, “but what about the princess?”

“What I wouldn’t give to throttle you.”

“Not really my thing, but I’m sure I’m flattered,” Joy laughed airily.  “You know, if that’s the way you carry on with the princess, I’d say you’ve more than gotten your revenge, after all, wouldn’t you?”

“I said, enough.” Maleficent’s chains clattered with the force of her words, and Joy fell mercifully silent.  Maleficent inhaled deeply, reminded herself that it didn’t matter what Joy said, what anyone said.  Briar Rose might not wish to return to the Eastern Kingdom, but she would be safe there, not least from having such base aspersions cast upon her character.

“I’m sorry about the teasing, Maleficent,” said Joy after a long while, sounding quite genuine.  “Look, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I just want to say…if it were, I would understand, you know?”

Another silence followed, broken only by Maleficent’s ragged breathing.  All her fury had fled her in an instant, and it left only ice-cold dread in its wake.

“Because I know that when you fall for someone like that,” Joy continued quietly, “you’re always going to feel like this---unworthy monster who shouldn’t even be thinking that way about her.  That you should even—think to sully the perfection that is her with the—the blemish upon society that is you only serves as proof of your unworthiness.”

Maleficent closed her eyes.  She leaned her head back against the wall.  She felt vaguely as though she might weep, and railed inwardly against the idea of it.

“But it isn’t true,” said Joy, her voice little more than a whisper.  “It isn’t true,” she said again, more firmly.  “It’s taken my whole life to believe it.  It’s taken losing…everything.  Everything that ever mattered to me, anyway.  But we’re not monsters.  We’re not ugly, or evil, or incapable of love, no matter what anyone says.”

Maleficent opened her eyes.  She could only see the faintest outline of Joy in the darkness.  Her pale eyes caught the dim light from the sconces like dying embers.

“They’re wrong about us,” said Joy, and there was a smile in her voice.  “We are magnificent.”

The heavy metal door swung open once more, but no sunlight streamed through.  It must be night.  Maleficent wondered for the first time how long she had been here, and what might have transpired in her absence.

“Mistress Joy?” the young guard spoke once more, something hard and cold about her voice.

“Who wants to know?” Joy wondered lightly.

Joy must have been out cold while Adara screamed and ranted—surely her poor attempt at humour came as something of a relief by contrast.

“Mistress Sara wants to speak with you,” said the young guard as she unlocked Joy’s cell.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”  Joy did not put up a fight.  The guards did not drag her from her cell screaming and pleading for her life.  She walked to her death on her own two feet, chatting pleasantly with the guards as she went.

Chapter Text

Fauna awoke mid-air as Mistress Kinsale dropped her unceremoniously onto the ground, or what passed for it in the Sky Dominion.  She came to her senses slowly, returning herself to her proper size and dusting herself off as she steadied herself.  “Was that necessary?” she huffed.

But Mistress Kinsale was already moving down the path ahead of her.  “I dearly hope it wasn’t,” she replied.  “I have need of a light fairy, in the event that this meeting proves as fruitless as I imagine it shall.”

“Meeting?” Fauna echoed stupidly, hurrying to remain astride of Mistress Kinsale.

“You remember Mistress Joy?” Kinsale began.

“Of course!” Fauna cried eagerly.  “She sent me a letter, that’s why I was—“

“Good,” Kinsale cut her off, “then you understand why there’s no time to waste.”

“But—“ Fauna stammered.  “Please, Mistress Kinsale, what’s going to happen to her?  What’s so bad about being taken to the Sea Kingdom?”

Kinsale let out a huff of something like bitter laughter.  “I can see why you two were such good chums,” she spat.  “Suffice it to say, everyone’s favourite hero Mistress Sara is well known among my kind for having something of a lethal temper.  Do you know the story of Mistress Acacia?”

The name was familiar, but Fauna couldn’t say where she had heard it.  “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Hm,” said Kinsale haughtily, as though she’d expected this answer.  “How about Mistress Cordelia?”

“Well, yes,” said Fauna, “but you don’t expect me to think that Sara’s actions were—“

“Irrelevant,” said Kinsale, rounding a corner abruptly.  Fauna hadn’t been to the Sky Dominion since she was a very young girl, and she was completely missing the beauty of it, trying to keep up with Kinsale’s long, agitated strides.  “What matters, Mistress Fauna, is what came after.  Cordelia had a daughter still living in her home, you see, and your beloved Sara took it upon herself to hound the poor woman with the grievances Cordelia had left behind.”

“But—“ Fauna stammered.  “But why?”

“Why, indeed?” Kinsale agreed as the Fairy Queen’s castle came into view.  “If anyone still living knows the answer,” she continued darkly, “she is keeping it close to her chest.” 

Kinsale paused a moment and brushed idly at her hair with her fingers.  “But I’m afraid the time for stories of the distant past is at an end,” she said airily.  “Do you intend to cooperate, Mistress Fauna, or will it be the jar for you?”

Fauna didn’t know what to say.  Evidently her silence was answer enough.

As they walked, Fauna found cause to feel a certain measure of wonderment.  She had only been to the Sky Dominion once—her parents had loved to travel to distant lands, and this place was quite the journey for a light fairy to make.  How long had she been out?  Had Mistress Kinsale simply waved them here in an instant?

The lady in question was positively alight with a frightening sort of energy, and Fauna struggled to keep up with her pace.  It was a far cry from the way she had come off when they’d met before, outburst notwithstanding.  Fauna hadn’t blamed her for that at the time, frankly—she knew how Merryweather could be.

“Mistress Kinsale,” Fauna began, not a little breathlessly, “may I ask you something?”

Kinsale afforded her a sidelong glance.  “All right.”

“When my sisters and I visited you before--my, but it must have been awhile ago now—did you…” Fauna hesitated.  “Did you know where Rose was, even then?”

“Rose?”

Fauna looked up, stunned.  “I’m sorry, I—thought you’d have known.  The Princess Aurora, we—my sisters and I, we called her Briar Rose while she was growing up.  To hide her from—“

“Ah yes, I see,” Kinsale nodded.  “Yes, I knew where she was.”

“And…Maleficent, too?”

“Maleficent, too,” said Kinsale neutrally.  “They were both upstairs in my study.”

For a moment, Fauna ceased her fruitless attempt to keep pace with Mistress Kinsale.  Her feet touched the ground, and she took in a long, slow breath.  Merryweather had been right, after all.  They’d been there the whole time.  If only they could have handled matters differently, they might have had Rose back that very day, surely long before—

Kinsale stopped abruptly and turned over her shoulder.  “Mistress Fauna?  Have I not made the urgency of our situation clear enough for you?”

Fauna startled and sped to her side, but her head was still reeling.  “They were there the whole time,” she breathed, shaking her head miserably.  “What were they doing there?”

“What were they doing?” Kinsale echoed, nonplussed.  “Waiting for you to leave, of course.”

“At your house, I mean!” Fauna cried.  “Why were they there at all?  Were they staying with you?”

“Oh, no!” Kinsale chuckled mirthlessly.  “Maleficent had come by for a visit, and she thought your princess and I would get along.”

“Get along,” Fauna echoed listlessly.  She felt dizzy.  “And you really didn’t see anything wrong with it?  With Maleficent keeping Rose constantly in her company?”

“Certainly not,” said Kinsale, surprised.  “It’s not as though she was under any sort of duress, Mistress Fauna.  I’m not a monster, whatever you may believe.”

“You--!” Fauna shrieked, a terrible mixture of fear and anger welling up within her, threatening to spill over in a way it never had before.  “You can’t tell me you haven’t seen what she’s like!” Fauna cried.  “She lies in bed day in and day out, treats her own family, her own husband as strangers and villains!  The way she longs for Maleficent, it’s—it’s sick and wrong!”

Kinsale’s determined stride faltered, just for a moment.  Fauna was sure she had hit upon a part of Kinsale that could understand, that could feel sympathy and help her.

“And if only she would realize it isn’t right, if only she would come to her senses again,” Fauna continued, encouraged, “then I’m sure Lady Ophira would allow us to remove the Chains—“

“The what.”

Kinsale stopped cold.  Her body went unnervingly still.  Fauna could not even tell if she was still breathing.

“The—“ Fauna stammered.  “We had no other choice, you know!  She was bewitched, wielding unpracticed magic at the lot of us!  She’d have hurt someone, killed someone before she even realized—“

A strangled noise escaped Kinsale’s throat, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.  “Yes, well,” she said coldly.  “It’s a good thing that horrible human girl didn’t get the better of you.  What a relief that must be for you.”  She took in a slow, shuddering breath, and then she resumed walking.  “We haven’t the time to spare.  The girl will be—well, surely no greater ill shall befall her in the course of another hour.  Here we are—come along.”

Before Fauna could fully take in Kinsale’s words or the strangeness of her manner, she realized where exactly she had been led.  The Fairy Queen’s castle was magnificent enough from the distance, but up close like this, it was nigh overwhelming.

“WHO GOES THERE” bellowed a voice from everywhere and nowhere as they approached.

Kinsale announced them, amending, “We’re here on behalf of Mistress Joy of the Desertlands.” The gates swung open.

“Just like that?” Fauna breathed as they entered.

“Joy had already intended to request an audience with the Queen,” said Kinsale.  “That aside, she served as chief advisor to the Queen for many years, and is still held in high esteem, in spite of everything.”

“Everything?” Fauna echoed.

Kinsale afforded her a sidelong glance.  “A story for another time, Mistress Fauna,” she said wearily, and made a sweeping gesture to the castle before them.

The Fairy Queen sat upon a throne remarkably similar in design to the one Fauna remembered from Kinsale's home—topped with the head of a roaring lion whose mane seemed to flutter in a nonexistent breeze. She shone like the sun itself, from her golden hair to her glittering eyes, set sharply against the midnight sky that was her gown.  What could one do in the face of such majesty but curtsey low in deference?

“Mistress Kinsale of the Valley, and Mistress Fauna of the Eastern Kingdom,” said the Queen pleasantly.  “What unusual company, when I expected Mistress Joy.”

“Pray forgive the inconvenience, Majesty,” said Kinsale, her head still bowed low.

“Not at all,” said the Queen.  “Mistress Fauna, you look upon me with surprise.”

Fauna stammered a few unintelligible syllables.

“I know the name and face of every fairy in every known land, Mistress Fauna,” guessed the Queen.  She smiled, and the subtle shift in her expression felt monumental.  “One of those things you learn, after a millennium of practice.”  She returned her attention to Kinsale, and Fauna felt as though she might breathe again.  “And what has kept Mistress Joy from the meeting she herself requested?”

“A grave misunderstanding, I’m sure,” said Kinsale, with a sudden and strange affect, as though feigning patience.  “I spoke with her nearly a fortnight ago, when she mentioned her intent to meet with you, and have heard nothing since.  When I went to check on her, I found her home left just as it had been two weeks prior, no locks, no wards, dirty teacups still on the table.”

“Most unlike Mistress Joy,” said the Queen.  “I take it that is not all you have come to tell me?”

Kinsale’s brow furrowed subtly.  She bowed her head again.  “I believe Mistress Sara of the Sea Kingdom, or someone closely related to her, to be responsible.”

The Queen leaned back in her throne and folded her hands upon her knee.  “On what grounds?”

It was a small thing, easy to miss, difficult to understand, but Fauna was sure she heard Kinsale’s breath catch in her throat.  Kinsale raised her head, expression set with grim certainty.  “It has been my suspicion for many years that if Mistress Sara and her associates could be rid of every last one of my kind, they would do it without hesitation.  Attempts have been made in the past, but the circumstances have ever been mitigated before any—drastic measures were needed.  I believe this is an act meant to test.  If Sara can capture Joy without reprisal, then her efforts against the Dark Fae will escalate.”

It was madness.  The dark fae—the wicked fae—persecuted by the light and the good?  Fauna looked to the Queen with wide, searching eyes, sure that she would smile her world-altering smile, laugh so heartily that the ground shook beneath them, that all the air in the room bent to her breath, and send them on their way for daring to bring such a ridiculous notion before her.

Instead, the Queen nodded slowly.  “A heavy accusation.”

Kinsale averted her gaze.  Fauna could have sworn her lip trembled before she spoke next.  “It is,” she said quietly.  “But not without cause.”  She looked up, dark eyes shining, the moon reflecting the sun.  “And not without precedent.”

The Queen inclined her head thoughtfully.  “No,” she agreed.  “And I shall look into the matter of Mistress Joy’s disappearance forthwith.  Assuming you are correct, Joy will be released immediately.  One hopes for, as you say, a grave misunderstanding.  But Mistress Kinsale, I cannot broach the other matter on the basis of one fairy, however influential.”

“Of course not,” Kinsale nodded, and her next words came out quick and clumsy.  “But only a few days ago, Mistress Sara made a great spectacle of another fairy whom I love dearly, one who certainly did not deserve such a harsh punishment, whatever she may have done.”

The Queen considered this a moment.  “Mistress Maleficent was in violation of human law, was she not?”

“But was she?” Kinsale shook her head.  “Although she did place a curse upon a human, the curse never fully came to fruition, and if you’re referring to the business about defying the Chains, let me assure you that it was all a terrible misunderstanding for which she has already paid the ultimate price, and so—“

The Queen stood.  Kinsale fell silent.  She pressed her hand to her mouth, and a tear slipped down her cheek.

“I am truly sorry for your loss, Mistress Kinsale,” said the Queen, holding out a hand as though to stay her.  “As I’ve said, I will see to the matter of Mistress Joy’s disappearance, and I will speak to Sara on the matter of Mistress Maleficent, as well.”

Kinsale curtseyed low once more, and she bowed her head even lower still.  “Thank you, your Majesty.”

“However, it seems to me that you allow your grief to cloud your senses,” the Queen continued, not cruelly, but her voice was firm and without sympathy.  “There is nothing I can do for Maleficent now, and I shall not take any action against Mistress Sara at present.  Perhaps Sara acted rashly, but she acted, as she always has, out of concern for the safety of her people.”

Fauna looked from Kinsale to the Queen and back again, and her mind reeled even to begin to consider what this could mean.  Kinsale drew herself up to her full height slowly, her eyes dry and her shoulders squared.

“Of course,” she said, with a cordial nod.  “I understand, your Majesty.  Thank you for your time.”

The Queen sat.  She smiled.  Fauna thought of the way the sun could burn.

“It was a pleasure,” she said, as though it truly had been.

Queen Leah knocked upon Aurora’s door several times before she entered.  Horror coursed through her as she caught sight of Aurora, covered in noticeable bruises and splayed at odd angles upon her bed like a corpse.  Leah pressed a fist to her lips, certain she’d be sick.

“Aurora?” she breathed into the horrible stillness.

Cold terror clawed at her throat as she swallowed down a sob.  She rushed forward, thinking to rouse Aurora, or at least to ascertain that she was still breathing, and to settle her into a better position for sleeping.  There were dark circles under her eyes, and one of her wrists was set with a sloppy, makeshift bandage.  Without thinking, Leah reached out and touched it.

Aurora stirred.  Leah let out a shuddering sigh.

“No more,” she whispered as she woke.  “No more, no more…”

“Aurora?”

Aurora blinked dull, bleary eyes up at her.  She lifted her unbandaged hand to push her hair from her face, but seemed to tire halfway through and simply rested her hand there, as though shielding herself from the world into which she had woken.

“What’s become of you?” Leah murmured.

“So weak,” Aurora rasped.  “Are those fairies sure that magic is all the Chains take away?  I feel as though…as though my very life is being drained out of me.”

Leah didn’t know what to do with herself.  She clasped her hands together tightly to keep from fidgeting, could not help but to think that biting the inside of one’s cheek was a most unbecoming mannerism for a queen.  “Isn’t there anything I can do?” she asked, but she didn’t really expect an answer.

Aurora let out a terrible sound, something akin to a cough or a wheeze, but her lips curled into a hollow approximation of a smile.  “Do you know,” she said, looking up at Leah with dim, lifeless eyes, “I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t do to be freed of these dreadful Chains?  It all makes so much sense now, really.  If someone were to free me, anyone at all, I would do anything he asked of me!  Why, if Prince Phillip himself took these things off of me, I’d profess my undying love for him day in and day out if he wished it!”

She laughed again, for Leah had realized with no small amount of horror that the dreadful sound was meant to be a laugh.  “Oh, Aurora,” Leah breathed.

Abruptly, the terrible laughter ceased, and Aurora looked up at Leah again.  “Shall I tell you something else?” she wondered, sounding suddenly quite lucid.

“All right,” Leah stammered.

“All my life,” said Aurora, “the Good Fairies called me Briar Rose.  It was—“ she inhaled sharply.  “Oh, it almost pained me, to be called by another name so suddenly.  It was like…  It wasn’t just that everyone wanted me to be someone else, it was—they all wanted to pretend that Briar Rose, that everything I had ever known, everything I had ever been—had never existed at all.”

“I—“ Leah struggled for words, struggled even to wrap her mind around what Aurora was telling her.  “I had no idea,” she said, truthfully.  “I’m…”

Sorry?  Leah frowned.  She felt sorry.  Should she be sorry?

“I don’t mind it so much anymore,” said Aurora, again with that horrible, hollow echo of a smile.  “It’s only a name, after all.  You can take everything away from me, take away my name and my freedom and my magic and my strength and my health, and I’ll still be myself.  You can’t be rid of Briar Rose and keep Aurora.  You can’t just keep the parts of me that please you.”

Leah hadn’t the faintest idea of what she should say, what she should do, even what she should feel.  It left her feeling frustrated, almost angry.  “What happened to your arm?” she very nearly demanded.

“Phillip broke it,” Aurora replied airily, as easily as though she were discussing the weather.  “He didn’t mean to, I suppose, and that’s all that matters in the end, isn’t it?”

Leah’s eyes scanned Aurora’s body, littered with obvious bruises even in the dim light.  She thought of the way Aurora’s legs had been splayed at odd angles when she entered, remembered stories she had heard from women who had been less fortunate than she after they married.  But Phillip?  She’d never have believed it of him.  Surely this wasn’t as it seemed—she’d said she was weak, the Chains had made her so, and Leah had half a thought to tell Aurora just that, but there was no sense in arguing with someone in her condition.

“Why didn’t you send for a doctor?” she asked instead, still with a strange hardness about her voice that she struggled to place even as it came from her own lips.

“I can’t get out of bed,” said Aurora, all airy pleasantness.  “Fauna couldn’t help with her magic.  Flora came by, but it was only to give me one of her lectures.”

Leah’s frown deepened.  “Why did Flora lecture you?”

Aurora’s smile fell.  She turned her head away.

“Aurora?”

Her lower lip trembled.

“Aurora, what’s become of you?” Leah wondered, perhaps more to herself than to her daughter.

“May I ask you a question?” Aurora spoke after a moment.

“All right.”  For want of a better solution, Leah knelt by the bed.

“Are you in love with the king?”  She asked her question to the ceiling, or perhaps to the far wall, and her dull, bleary eyes seemed to focus on something even beyond that.

“Of course I am,” she replied, nonplussed.  Perhaps she ought to have reprimanded Aurora for referring to her father as ‘the king’, but she had been hoping to speak with Aurora for some time, and she was loath to turn her back upon the topic of conversation her daughter had offered her.

Aurora’s brow furrowed subtly.  “Were you always in love with him?” she asked.  “Did you love him from the moment you saw him?”

Leah hesitated a moment.  She decided to answer truthfully.  “No,” she said.  “I learned to love him, over time.  He was kind to me, much kinder than I deserved, sometimes.  He is a good man.”

“And that’s why you love him?” Aurora turned to look at her again.

There was something sharp about her gaze now, something piercing.  Leah nodded, taken aback.

“So,” Aurora narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, “do you mean to say that love feels different?  That you know when you’re in love from when you’re not?”

Leah’s mouth hung open for a moment.  “I…” she began haltingly.  “I don’t know, Aurora, I suppose it’s different for everyone.  Why do you ask?”

Aurora sighed.  The sharpness left her eyes, and once more it was as though she were looking off at some unknowable thing far beyond these walls.  “I’m sorry,” she said sadly.  “Just…trying to sort it out, that’s all.  Trying to understand.”

“We can’t all be quite so lucky as you, Aurora,” said Leah, poorly attempting a teasing tone.

Aurora startled visibly.  “What?”

“Well,” Leah faltered, choosing her words carefully.  Perhaps it would do Aurora some good to remember the ways in which she was fortunate, rather than the dreariness of her current circumstances. “not everyone meets her True Love at just the right time, the way you did.  Perhaps someday I’ll meet my magical True Love, or Stefan will meet his, but it won’t matter.  It will be little more than a curiosity.”

Somewhat reassuringly, Aurora turned her head with interest.  “Truly?” she wondered.  “You don’t think you’d feel any sadness?  Wonder at what might have been?”

But beneath that strange, piercing quality to her gaze, Leah could not bring herself to lie outright.  “Perhaps,” she conceded, averting her eyes.  “But what would it matter?  It does not good to dwell on what might have been when it never will be.”

Aurora’s lips parted.  She inhaled as though to speak, hesitated, then sighed, and the spark left her once more.  “Of course not,” she agreed quietly.

Leah made to stand.  Loath though she would be to admit it, she’d had more than enough of this for one day.  “You’re safe now, Aurora,” she assured her daughter, as kindly as she could, before she turned to take her leave.

“I don’t feel safe,” said Aurora.

Again that horrible frustration, that burning, nagging thing that felt almost like anger roiled within her, and it took everything she had to push it down, to keep it from her voice.  “But you are,” she insisted.  “And in a few short months, these dreadful Chains will come off, and you’ll be good as new.  Everything will be just as it was.”  She felt herself relax at the notion, and even managed a smile.  “As it should have been.”

She didn’t expect Aurora to respond.  She paused with a hand outstretched for the door when Aurora spoke next, like an echo or a half-remembered dream.  “I suppose that is what’s going to happen, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Leah assured her firmly.  “Yes, it is.”

Her hand found the door.  Aurora spoke again.  “Thank you,” she said, “for coming to see me.”

Leah’s heart leapt.  She turned around, nigh jubilant, only to be disheartened and sickened afresh by the terrible sight of Aurora splayed out upon her bed once more, still looking every bit the corpse.  Promises to visit more often died in her throat.  “Of course,” she said simply, and she left without another word, without another thought.

“My, but you’ve fixed this place up,” said Joy conversationally.  “Or was it Hilda?  Truthfully I never took you for the type to enjoy all this pomp and pageantry.”

“It serves my purposes,” said Sara simply.  She was facing away from where she had Joy strung up on what she could only assume had once been a human’s crucifix, looking out over the empty field and rows of what could only be called her coliseum.

“And what exactly are your purposes these days?” Joy wondered.  “Why am I here, exactly?”

Sara turned on her sharply.  “You,” she said, “lied to me, and concealed a gathering of multiple dark fae known to be dangerous.  For a start, I would know what your meeting entailed.”

“If you must know,” Joy inclined her head, “some of my friends were a little worried about the state of your temper.”

Sara’s expression, one of stony neutrality, did not change. “Does this seem like the place for glibness, Mistress Joy?”

Joy flashed her a mirthless grin.  “It doesn’t, but that’s never stopped me.”

“I’ll only ask you once more,” said Sara.  “What exactly was discussed in your recent meeting with Mistresses Kinsale and Zenovia?”

“And if I say I’ve told you all there is to tell?” Joy wondered, quite genuinely.

But the thing about Sara was that she didn’t bluster, didn’t fly into a rage or brandish her weapon.  Indeed, there was a certain softness about her suddenly, and this, more than anything else she could have done, struck real terror into Joy’s heart at long last.

In a way, it was a relief to know she could still feel something so deeply.

Sara closed her eyes for a moment, and then the softness was gone.  With one swift wave of her hand, Joy felt white-hot flame beneath her feet, close enough to scald.  She hissed and squirmed away from it, but of course her feet were bound.

As quickly as the fire had sprung to life, it dissipated, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke in its wake.  Joy turned wide, searching eyes upon Sara, reluctant to believe it even as the evidence lay quite literally at her feet.  “Really, Sara?  Is this the way it ends?  After everything?”

Sara inclined her head, unmoving and unmoved.  “It doesn’t have to be.”

“I told you the truth, you paranoid fool!” Joy spat.  “My friends were concerned for Mistress Maleficent after they got wind of a nasty rumour about her.  Can you believe they thought you might overreact?”

“Overreact?” Sara echoed icily.  “To a rumour that a dark fairy defied the Chains of Avasina?  Yes, how silly of me.”

“By the stars, Sara!” Joy cried.  “It’s been half a damned millennium!”

“And still this land bears the scars of her reign!” Sara snapped.

Joy fell silent and slack as she considered Sara.  “Maleficent is no Cordelia,” she said after a moment.  “Surely you’ve realized that.”

Sara’s brow furrowed.  “Have I?  Maleficent is no Cordelia to you or me, perhaps.  Maleficent is no Cordelia to her friends.  But can you tell me with certainty that Maleficent is no Cordelia to the human princess she abducted?  That she is no Cordelia to the young and the vulnerable, those who have not had the time to swaddle themselves in power or esteem?”

Perhaps, if things had been different, Joy might have been able to understand how Sara felt.  She knew a fair bit more about Sara’s history than the average fairy, after all, and it had long been her business to exercise diplomacy in difficult circumstances, to extend the olive branch even when she was offered the sword in return.

But Sara’s words prodded needlessly at an old wound, that ancient and aching thing that would only lfall silent when at last the flames consumed her, and the doorstep of death was no place to keep one’s peace.  “So what does that make you, Mistress Sara?” she wondered coldly.  “What did that make you to Mistress Acacia, do you suppose?”

“You dare speak to me of her?” Sara’s eyes were alight, as though the flame she wielded danced within them.

“Oh, I dare,” Joy felt a terrible grin spreading across her features.  “Why don’t you tell me, Sara, how you were looking out for the young and the vulnerable then!”

“That was entirely different.”

“Was it?  I spoke to her, you know, before she was executed.”

Sara’s hand, the one that wielded the flame, clenched into a fist at her side.  “Don’t make me do this, Joy.”

“Do you know what she said to me?” Joy continued, her growing rage burning incandescent within her, blinding her to reason.

“Enough.”  Sara was trembling.  Her voice was deadly quiet.

“She said she didn’t have any regrets,” Joy told her with a mocking sweetness.  “No regrets, she said, save for one.”

She met Sara’s steely eyes for a heavy moment before she spoke again.  She needn’t say it aloud, to be certain.  Sara trembled before her, fury and terror in equal measure, knowing what Joy would say, knowing what she would do in response, and silently daring Joy to make it so.

“Oh,” Joy sighed dramatically, “how she rued the day she first met you.”

“Enough!’ Sara shrieked, agonizing and inhuman, and Joy heard herself scream as though from far away when the flames took her once more.

Bizarrely, impossibly, the world came back into focus.  Joy breathed in and tasted ash.  “Get on with it,” she rasped.  Every word was as a dagger in her chest.

“Just answer my question,” Sara bit out, “and this will end.”  Her head was held high as ever, but her eyes were closed.

“I’ve told you the truth,” Joy choked out.  “Not my fault you can’t bear to hear it.”

“You insist even now that this is the heart of the matter?  That you met with the most influential dark fairies in all the land out of concern for Maleficent?”

“Yes!” Joy cried, and she was left gasping for air for her trouble.  “What did you expect, a plot to overthrow you?  A crusade against all light fairy-kind?  That’s more your style than ours, Sara.”

Sara opened her eyes, but there was no fire left in them.  “I truly didn’t expect to have to spell it out for you, Joy,” she said, quietly.  “You jest, inexplicably, but that is exactly what my people fear.  Maleficent’s true power matters little—it is the story, the appearance of the thing that sways the will of the masses.  I’ve told you this already—if something becomes of the human princess—“

“Act of war, right,” Joy spat.  “And what is this, do you suppose?”

Sara inclined her head, and there was an edge to her voice when she spoke.  “Will your people rise up in support of their martyr, Mistress Joy?  Or do you suppose you still hold enough sway with the Fairy Queen for your death to matter?  Is this your intention?  To die with purpose?”

A certain…emptiness overtook Joy then.  She sighed heavily and hung her head low.  “No,” she said simply.  Joy was neither young enough nor fool enough even to entertain such heady notions.  What she was instead was tired, and miserable, and terribly, terribly alone.  Nothing Joy had ever done had mattered very much in the end.  Why should her own demise be any different?

But Sara hesitated still, and so Joy reached down deep within herself and caught onto the only thing she had left in her heart: resentment.  She looked up at Sara with purest loathing in her eyes.

“Go on and kill me,” she said airily.  “Grant me my pointless, pitiful end.  I’ve said my piece, after all, and I shall go to my final rest happy.”  She smiled bitterly.  “Even when I am gone, even when I am nothing more than smoke and ash, I’ll know you can never forget what I’ve said to you.  All the rest of your days, you’ll know that of all the miserable things that befell your beloved Acacia all those years ago, you were the worst of all!”

The world went white around the edges, and Joy laughed until she screamed, and screamed herself hoarse as she burned.

How did one go about ending a life?

Briar Rose had seldom wondered about such things before, but now the idea of it permeated her every thought, seeped into the corners of her fractured dreams.  How did someone like Maleficent, for example, set about crafting a curse that would end a life when the time was right?

Perhaps more pressingly, could such a thing be enacted when its time had long since passed?  Was Briar Rose consigned to the world of the living by virtue of not having died on the eve of her sixteenth birthday?

Something she had overheard once stood out in her mind, something she’d hardly thought upon at the time, returned to her in a rush, like an overeager ghost.  ‘Cut her wrists, the poor thing,’ said a woman’s voice she did not recognize.  Where had she heard it?  Somewhere in the castle, she thought, but it seemed so long ago now.

‘Cut her wrists, poor thing, and you wouldn’t believe all that blood—‘

Was that the way one went about ending a life?  Was Briar Rose’s wrist not already broken?  Surely a blade could be no worse, and then—

Oh, then, all of this would be over, and she would be free.

No more of Aunt Fauna’s worried looks, no more of Aunt Flora’s thinly-veiled disdain, no more of her estranged mother’s bizarre visits, no more, no more—

Perhaps best of all, no more Phillip.

The truth of her circumstances became clearer with each passing day.  Even supposing the Chains were at last removed, she wouldn’t be permitted to come and go as she pleased.  She would be under the very same expectations that had driven her from this place in the beginning, only without any means of escape.  She wouldn’t be permitted to see or even write to Mistress Kinsale.  She wouldn’t be permitted to—

But it hardly mattered.  Maleficent was dead.  Surely she must be, by now, and everyone thought it was for the best.  As it should have been from the start, only this way they didn’t have to be the ones to wield the sword.

Maleficent was dead.  Not merely lost to her forever, but gone.  The words felt cold and hollow, and they turned her stomach, and yet she could not be rid of them.  Had it all come to naught in the end?  Briar Rose was back here, more trapped, more a prisoner than she had ever been, and Maleficent was dead, anyway.

The idea of remaining here, of days stretching out before her, each the same as the last, was intolerable.  She thought to beat her head against a wall or sink down low into her bath until water filled up her lungs.  She thought to pull a pillow over her face until she could not draw another breath or ask to be taken for a walk so that she could find a place to take a terrible fall.

One afternoon, the answer came to her, and it was the first sliver of genuine excitement she had felt in what seemed an age.  Phillip came in to visit her, mercifully accompanied by a servant bearing a tea tray, and he brought a rather large stack of letters with him.  He chattered on about what they contained, something to do with the unity of their two kingdoms under their marriage—Briar Rose did not listen, and Phillip did not notice.

Her eyes were trained upon her quarry—the letter opener Phillip had left carelessly out upon the table between them.

As soon as she spied her chance, Rose snatched the blade and hid it in the folds of her skirt.  It mattered little whether she ignored Phillip or tried to nod and laugh along with him.  He did not notice either way.  Indeed, Briar Rose thought as they made to leave her in peace, perhaps another person might have found it odd that Rose had been able to remain upright for such a long time.

She was very tired now, after all, and there was something oddly soothing about having a way out at long last.  She tucked the letter opener into the drawer of her bedside table and lay down to rest awhile.

She was awoken by a visit from the Queen, which, well.

And in a few short months, she had said, thinking to comfort, these dreadful Chains will come off, and you’ll be good as new.  Everything will be just as it was.  As it should have been.

Rose pushed herself up against the headboard of her bed.  Oh, but she felt so dizzy, and still so tired.  She reached for her bedside table and took out the letter opener, leaning heavily upon the elbow of her injured hand.  The pain was as nothing to her just now.  The pain in her heart seemed somehow far worse.

She eyed the exposed blade curiously, and with surprisingly little fear.  The worst thing that could happen was that she could fail, that she should survive, and that her life might somehow manage reach new heights of misery.  Best do a proper job of it then, she thought to herself, but looking at the state of her injured wrist, she rather doubted she’d have much trouble.  Only helping to usher in the inevitable, to save herself from another day of this torment.

Was it not customary, on one’s deathbed, to think back on the happier moments in the life one had led?  Perhaps the beautiful lie of her childhood, she thought bitterly, when she hadn’t known that the shackles of her wretched destiny were already steadfastly clamped about her ankles.  Perhaps that joyous day when she had learned the truth, when she’d wept and wept until an accursed slumber had at last offered her a moment’s respite.

But she was being uncharitable.  There had been happy times.  Maleficent had taught her magic, had shown her a young dragon hidden away in a cave, and beyond all else, Maleficent had treated her perhaps not always kindly, but always with decency.  Kinsale had told her stories and sat with her late into the night and told her what it was to want a rainstorm and to will it into being.  If Briar Rose was to die, she would die with these memories foremost in her mind.  She would not die an ailing and fragile thing stripped of her very humanity.  She would die an aspiring sorceress, curled up in front of a roaring fire with the world at her fingertips.

As she had predicted, her skin gave way to the blade with ease.  It stung, but no more than a cruel word.  Cut her wrists, the poor thing, and you wouldn’t believe all that blood, the words echoed in her mind as blood spilled forth from her arm, bright and fast and dizzying.

“Aurora?” Phillip called from some distant place, perhaps in a half-faded memory where she thought upon him with fondness.  “I’d thought to—by God!”

There was movement, somewhere.  Doors slamming and feet rushing, and the whole room was spinning as Briar Rose felt suddenly that she could no longer support the weight of her own head upon her shoulders.  But before the blur that must be Phillip could reach her, and before the world got too dark around the edges, a most peculiar thing occurred.

The barricaded door that had once led to this room’s balcony burst apart with a terrible sound, and the brilliance of daylight flooded the room as though it were a tangible thing.

Briar Rose blinked away tears, struggling to make sense of the sound, of the light, and of the shadow that now passed before her bleary eyes.

“Well,” said a voice, a wonderful, beautiful, familiar voice, “this is unfortunate.”

Briar Rose felt herself smiling, even as the last vestiges of consciousness threatened to leave her.  It did not seem unfortunate to her.  In fact, to Briar Rose, it seemed that her rather terrible fortune had at last begun to change.

Chapter Text

Kinsale was still talking, Briar Rose thought dimly, and she ought to listen.

“—sound like a question?” she spoke sharply.

Then, suddenly—purest bliss.  Magic crept into her veins like a tangible thing, sweet and bright and singing.  The world came back into focus.

“My, but you’ve done a number on yourself, haven’t you?” Kinsale was holding her injured hand, frowning subtly.  She traced a finger along the fresh wound Briar Rose had just inflicted upon herself.  It sent an uncomfortable shudder coursing through her, feeling the way her skin seemed to knit itself back together under Kinsale’s touch.  “That’ll have to do for now.”

“Thank you,” Rose breathed, disbelieving.  It all felt too good to be true.  Was she dreaming?  Rose felt herself smiling as Kinsale met her eyes, looking very, very tired.

Kinsale hesitated a moment, and her lips twisted into a ghost of a smile in return.  “Don’t thank me just yet,” she said, somewhat grimly.  “Do you think you can stand?”

Rose nodded, and Kinsale helped her to her feet.  She felt dizzy and weak, but so, so much better than she had not a moment prior.  It was only then, leaning heavily upon Kinsale for support, that she noticed the room’s other occupants.

Prince Phillip stood frozen in the doorway, encased in magic like a statue made of shining stone.  Aunt Fauna knelt at Rose’s bedside with hands and feet bound, weeping silently.

“Sorry about your little fairy,” said Kinsale airily.  “She was being awfully difficult, but I suppose you’d have to be, to put a human girl through that torture.”

Rose struggled to make any sense of the scene laid out before her.  “What happened?” she managed, faltering, still leaning heavily upon Kinsale for support.

“That’s a bit of a long story, I’m afraid, and one best recounted elsewhere,” said Kinsale.  “That is—well, I mean, I’m assuming you wouldn’t prefer to remain here?”

“No,” Rose very nearly shouted, grasping tightly onto Kinsale’s arm.  “No, please, anything but that,” she amended, all in a rush.

“Right then,” said Kinsale crisply.  “Off we go?”

Rose glanced between Fauna and Phillip, feeling strangely distant from them.  “What about them?”

Kinsale shrugged.  “Up to you, Highness.  I daresay you’ve been at their mercy long enough.”

Indeed she had.  Oh, and Mistress Kinsale didn’t know the half of it.  Rose crept closer to Phillip, staring wide-eyed back at her, caught in the midst of sprinting toward her.  He was still aware of his surroundings—Rose could see it in the way his eyes glittered with what she was stunned to recognize as fear.

She felt something for him, then.  It welled up within her, filled her to bursting, set her heart pounding and her head spinning.

‘Doesn’t feel very nice, does it?” she asked him coldly.  “Not knowing.  Not knowing what I’ll do, knowing I could do…anything, and you’d be powerless to stop me.”

Perhaps she understood a little, then, that terrible darkness that could drive a dark fairy to curse a baby princess.  She could almost see it in her mind’s eye, a ballroom filled with frightened faces, the same faces that had judged her, looked down upon her, reviled her, now twisted up in terror of what she could do to them if it struck her fancy.

She could kill him, she realized suddenly, with a cold kind of shock.  She could cut his throat or she could cut his wrists as she’d intended to do to herself, and she could watch him bleed out at her feet.  Kinsale wouldn’t care.  Kinsale wouldn’t stop her.  Kinsale wouldn’t stand over her on what was to be her deathbed, lecturing her about how her feelings were unnatural and wrong.

She could kill him, and a part of her even wanted to, but that wasn’t what frightened her.  What frightened her was the part of her that whispered back, that said death would be too great a mercy to bestow on such a wretched man as he.

She turned her gaze instead to his outstretched hands, hands which had wrought horrors upon her she could scarcely bear to recall.  She took one between both of hers, the magical barrier yielding easily to her.  She tried to call forth some tenderness, some fond memory of a time now irrevocably lost to them.  She tried to remember the boy she’d met in the woods, the one who had frightened and fascinated her, who had caught onto her hands when she had tried to run away and who had sung and danced with her late into the golden afternoon, and she tried to feel something, anything that would ease this dreadful anger that welled within her.

Nothing came.

Briar Rose looked up into Phillip’s eyes, wide with terror.  She held his hand in one of hers and his arm in the other, and she tried to remember all that she had learned.  She felt the magic coursing through her veins and she called upon it silently, beckoned it to bend the universe to her will.

The crunch of Phillip’s broken wrist did not sicken or frighten her.  Tears rolled down his cheeks, shining like the rest of him, as though they’d been sculpted into the statue of him.  “Would you believe me,” she wondered quietly, “if I told you this is but a fraction of the pain you have wrought upon me?  No,” she inclined her head thoughtfully, “perhaps not.  You’ve always treated me as though I couldn’t possibly understand the way the world worked, but I see things far more clearly now.  It is you who will never understand.”

She turned away from him.  Kinsale gazed upon her with wide eyes and barely-concealed amusement.  “Right then,” she said, breathless and cheerful, and offered Rose her arm.  “Shall we?”

Rose reached out.  “Oh,” she hesitated.  “Would you mind terribly just—“ she gestured vaguely at Fauna, still bound and, ostensibly, crying.

“Are you sure?” Kinsale wondered airily.  “I’d say leaving her tied up awhile is barely even her just deserts for what you must have suffered.”

Rose looked down upon Fauna, but she could bring herself to feel no anger there.  “I’m sure,” she said after a moment.

“Very well,” Kinsale waved a hand idly.

Together they spun away into nothingness, followed into the void by the echoes of Fauna’s tormented weeping.

When the world came back into focus, Briar Rose found herself in starkly different surroundings, all sharp angles and dark, muted colours, from the stone walls that surrounded them to the furniture situated around a rather severe fireplace.

“Now,” said Kinsale, offering her a hand up, for she had fallen to her knees upon their arrival.  “I must apologize for my delay.  If I’d known you were to be Chained—“

But Kinsale was not afforded the opportunity to continue.  Briar Rose took the hand she was offered and stood on shaking legs, but the moment she looked up into Kinsale’s eyes, she could not help but to throw her arms about Kinsale’s waist, positively overwhelmed by terror and gratitude in equal measure.

Kinsale fell into a stunned silence, returning Rose’s embrace somewhat awkwardly.  “There now,” she said uncertainly.

“I’m sorry,” Rose very nearly sobbed into the soft fabric of her dress.  “I thought I’d never see you again.  I thought I’d never—oh, stars, I’m so sorry—“

“Oh, there’s no need to apologize,” Kinsale’s grip upon her tightened subtly.  “The Chains are a cruel enough punishment for one of my kind, let alone a human sorceress.  I can’t imagine what—well.  It’s all right now.  Wlell, it’s not all right, exactly, but you’re—well, you’re not there, anymore, and that’s something, right?”

“it’s—everything,” Rose breathed.

When at last she pulled away, she looked up at Kinsale to find her looking more than a little unsettled.  She had half a mind to apologize again, but turned her attention instead to her myriad other questions.  “What’s happened?” she nearly pleaded.  “Tell me…anything.  Everything.”

“Well, let’s see,” said Kinsale with a strange sort of half-smile, leading her over to the sitting area with a gentle hand at her back.  “After my meeting, I came home to find that Maleficent had come looking for you, and found only a cryptic note in your stead.  Unsurprisingly, the note was something of a trap, which led Maleficent into what I understand to be a very unfortunate demonstration of her magical prowess.”

Kinsale directed Rose to sit, but she continued to pace before the fire.  “Once I was finished brooding unnecessarily—for which, again, I cannot begin to apologize—I went to check on Mistress Joy only to find her gone under very mysterious circumstances.  Now, a planner and a schemer I am not, and so my next course of action was to enlist the help of—well, she’ll be along in a moment.”  She glanced over her shoulder, held a moment, and then took up pacing again.

“She suggested that I keep Mistress Joy’s intended appointment with the Fairy Queen in an effort to see her released, should the worst have come to pass—that is to say, that Mistress Sara had fabricated some flimsy reason to imprison her.  She also suggested I enlist the help of a light fairy, in the event that such a meeting proved fruitless and I found myself in need of someone who could remove the Chains of Avasina.  As it so happened, I did, and twice over!” She gestured to Briar Rose, but it was only an echo of her usual enthusiasm.

But her forced smile quickly fell.  “As it happened, I…wasn’t able to find Mistress Joy.  I don’t know what’s become of her, but…well.  No matter, for now.  Oh, did I tell you about—“

“Ever the harbinger of unnecessary chatter,” came an unfamiliar voice, low, rich, and sharp.  Rose startled and looked up to see a dark fairy half-cast in shadow.

“It may surprise you to know that many find me a delightful conversationalist,” Kinsale sniffed.

“Yes, well,” the mysterious fairy replied, “if the approval of the unwashed masses is something you covet, then far be it from me to criticize your delivery.”

She stepped into the light of the fire, and it rendered her no less dramatic.  She was as tall and as striking as any dark fairy Rose had seen, with short hair that drew attention to her pronounced cheekbones and eyes like the night sky.  Her frame was slender, her shoulders obviously well-muscled even beneath a black dress that covered her from neck to toe.  She had the look of a severe schoolteacher out of a story book, someone who held the key to vast stores of knowledge, but who was not to be trifled with.

The mysterious dark fairy curtseyed regally to Briar Rose, her head bowed low and one hand held to her heart.  “The infamous Princess Aurora, I presume,” she said, by way of greeting.

Rose opened her mouth to speak, but she could not begin to form a single word.

“I am Mistress Zenovia of the Mountainlands,” she clarified, drawing herself up to her full height.  “You find yourself in my home, or more precisely, my very small and very crowded hidden fortress.”  She glanced derisively in Kinsale’s direction.

“Don’t pay her any mind,” said Kinsale, but she did not take her eyes off of Zenovia.  “Mistress Zenovia has so graciously offered to share her home for the time being, whatever she may suggest to the contrary.”

“I’ve suggested nothing of the sort,” Zenovia sniffed.  “It will be crowded, and I did offer—both statements are true.”

“Endless font of charity that she is,” Kinsale continued coolly, “Mistress Zenovia has also offered to continue your magical instruction, if you should wish it.”

Zenovia returned her attention to Briar Rose, and it was all Rose could do not to cower beneath the intensity of her gaze.

“Specifically, I can teach you to heal, and if you should wish it, to duel,” Zenovia clarified.  “Healing magic does not come naturally to the dark fae—you’re unlikely to meet one of our kind who could repair so much as a scratch upon another person, with notable exceptions being myself and Mistress Kinsale.”

“Oh, but I am rather miserable at it,” Kinsale interjected.  “Which reminds me—the princess sustained some injuries while she was Chained.  They’ll heal themselves in time, of course, but she’s been through so much already.  I wonder if you wouldn’t mind—?”

As she spoke, Zenovia approached and sat next to Rose on the sofa.  She took Rose’s injured hand in hers with surprising gentleness.  “Pray forgive Mistress Kinsale,” she said, with a surprising touch of mirth.  “She speaks a dozen words where one would suffice, and all the while your wrist is still broken.  There.”

There was a rush of magic, then a soft crack, and Rose winced, but then—nothing.  Her wrist felt the way it always had.  She smiled up at Mistress Zenovia, who merely nodded curtly before inspecting her handiwork.

“Well forgive me for attempting politeness,” Kinsale was saying, but the words felt far away.  The scar upon Rose’s wrist, the one Kinsale had hastily knitted back together, had caught Zenovia’s eye, and she frowned subtly, tracing a finger over it.

Rose felt colour flood her cheeks.  How pathetic must she seem to someone like Mistress Zenovia?  Someone who had defied the natural limits of her own magic to learn to heal, who had written books and fought duels?

But Zenovia simply squeezed Rose’s hand gently between both of hers, and when she looked up into Rose’s eyes, Rose did not feel pathetic, or frightened, or even weak.  “I’ve only ever taken one student,” she said quietly.  “Patience, I fear, is not among my virtues.  But there is much I can teach you, provided you’re prepared to learn it.”

Rose nodded, awestruck.  “I would gladly learn…anything you’re willing to teach me.  I mean, I’ll try.  I promise I’ll try.”

Zenovia nodded curtly once more, giving Rose’s hand another squeeze before she stood.  “I heard a rumour that you gave Lady Ophira some difficulty before she captured you,” she said.  “She is no warrior, to be sure, but Mistress Sara does not surround herself with the hapless and untalented.  For a human sorceress who’s studied for, what was it, a year?  That’s not bad.  Then again, Maleficent always did favour reckless force over a solid technique.  The stars only know what she’s been teaching you.”

The mere invocation of Maleficent’s name brought sudden, hot tears to Briar Rose’s eyes.  She inhaled sharply as they flowed down her cheeks.  She had kept the horror of Maleficent’s fate far from her mind, a distant, creeping thing she’d hoped to approach with caution, brought down upon her with the force of a physical blow.

“Oh, dear,” Kinsale uttered miserably.  She and Zenovia shared an unreadable glance between them, and Briar Rose felt all the more embarrassed for how she could not even begin to calm herself.

“Perhaps…you’d benefit from a bit of rest,” Zenovia suggested, offering Rose a hand.

Rose took it, and Zenovia pulled her to her feet as though she were nothing.  She steered Rose in the direction of the narrow hallway whence she’d appeared.  “As I mentioned, it’s rather crowded.  I hope you don’t mind sharing.”

She pushed open a door to reveal a room only big enough for the two very small beds packed into it.  The far bed was occupied by another unfamiliar dark fairy, impossibly tall and almost skeletal, with short, dark hair that looked as though it had been burnt off at the ends.  She looked up from the book she was reading when the door opened, and Rose took in a horrible gasp.

“It’s you,” she breathed.

“I’ll…leave you to it,” said Zenovia stiffly.  “Come and find me when you’ve settled in.”

Maleficent—if indeed it was she—gazed upon her with lips parted, as though intending to speak.  If Briar Rose had thought to feel relieved to see Maleficent alive and well, the state of her was more than enough to give pause to the solace she so craved.  Maleficent looked to be at the very doorstep of death, her dark eyes glassy and sunken against skin gone almost grey.  What had become of her?

“There was…” Maleficent began, her voice a mere echo of its usual glory, “…much I wished to say, if ever I saw you again.”

A strangled sound escaped Rose’s lips, not quite a sob, but certainly not a laugh.  “I’m sure I felt the same,” she said.  Felt, she said, because there had been a time before she’d been captured when she’d been full to bursting with things she’d like to say to Maleficent, and there had been a time before she’d thought Maleficent to be dead or dying, and then there had been the time after, when Rose felt as though a vital piece of herself had gone missing, never to be retrieved.

“You could…sit,” Maleficent gestured vaguely to the bed next to hers.  “Pray forgive the close quarters.  I am well aware it isn’t ideal.”

Rose sat.  The truth of it evaded her.  She felt suddenly very cold.  “When I heard you’d been taken to the Sea Kingdom, I thought…”  But the words would not come.  They caught in her throat and fresh tears welled in her eyes.  “I’m sorry,” she said, instead.  “I’m so sorry.”

Maleficent reached out hesitantly, her hand hovering just shy of Rose’s shoulder.  “Please, don’t apologize,” she said quietly.  “It is I who owe you the apology.”

Rose looked up, but the sight of her was very nearly too much to take in.  “What happened to you?” she pleaded. 

Maleficent withdrew her hand, and Rose just barely restrained herself from reaching out in turn.  “I…ran afoul of the light fairies of the Sea Kingdom.  There was to be a demonstration of sorts, though I daresay its true purpose remains a mystery to me.”

“Fauna told me…” Rose began haltingly.  “Well, she said that their coming to capture me was meant as a sort of…trap, for you.”

Maleficent nodded, her glassy gaze trained upon the far wall.  “So it was,” she agreed.  “But I was never the sort to flee from a fight,” she inclined her head thoughtfully, and her next words carried just the barest hint of mirth, “whether or not I should have.”

“What happened then?” Rose pressed.

“I fear my memory of the events that followed is a bit hazy,” said Maleficent.  “I was Chained for a time.  I had an unfortunate encounter with Mistress Hilda, of all things, and then I awoke here.”

“Mistress Hilda?” Rose echoed.  “Not Mistress Sara?”

“Mistress Sara is an enigma,” Maleficent frowned subtly, “but it was never she who rendered me thus.  It would seem that, of late, she prefers that others wield the sword.  Not what I would have expected.”

“And what of Mistress Hilda?  Is she the one who—“ Rose averted her gaze, focused her attention upon Maleficent’s hands folded upon her knee.  “Did she…do this to you?”

“That she did,” said Maleficent, lightly, as though she were discussing the weather.  “I’d never have expected the author of the Big Book of Spells to have such a vicious streak.  Curious, isn’t it?”

A fresh onslaught of tears drew ever nearer to the surface.  Rose swallowed hard against the feeling.  “You act as though it’s nothing,” she managed, but a hot tear trailed down her cheek, nonetheless, and before she could reach up to swipe it away, Maleficent did it for her.  The touch stunned her into looking up.

Maleficent watched her curiously.  “There’s no need to cry,” she said, as though the mere notion of crying was a mystery to her.  “It’ll heal in time.”  She looked down suddenly and reached for Rose’s injured wrist, still bruised and bandaged.  “Perhaps you ought to worry for yourself, instead.  What’s become of you?”

Rose cradled her wrist to her chest instinctively.  She didn’t want to think about this.  She didn’t want to tell Maleficent what had happened, didn’t want to explain to someone who had spent her life clawing and scraping at survival just how weak she had been.

“It was an accident,” she said.  “When I was Chained—“

“What?”

There was no softness, no gentle mirth about her tone now.  Indeed, Rose had only just realized how gently Maleficent so often spoke to her by contrast.  Rose looked up, searching for some sort of explanation, for how she ought to proceed, only to find Maleficent’s dramatic features contorted in purest rage.  This, Briar Rose realized with cold certainty, was the powerful sorceress who struck terror into the hearts of grown men, and Rose had never before borne witness to her so clearly.

“You were Chained,” Maleficent repeated, not quite a question.  “Who?” she demanded, so darkly that it sent a terrible shudder coursing through Rose’s veins.

“It was my own fault,” Rose tried to deflect.  “I should have—“

With frightening speed, Maleficent was upon her, too close all at once, grasping her by the shoulders.  “Who did this to you?” she demanded again, and though her voice was low and soft, her words resonated in Rose’s very bones.

“It was…Lady Ophira ordered it, when I was captured,” Rose held up her hands in surrender, her voice high-pitched and frightened.  “My...my family, the good fairies, they were afraid of me, and in fairness—“

Maleficent released her hold on Rose’s shoulders, and Rose felt as though she might faint from the shock of it.  “Good,” Maleficent fairly growled.  “All the more reason to put the lot of them to the sword.  I shall enjoy it, in fact.”

“I don’t think it was very good at all,” said Rose quietly.  Absently, she rubbed at her arm.  At least she knew her bones wouldn’t break at the slightest provocation anymore.

Strangely, all the fire seemed to leave Maleficent at once.  When next she looked upon Briar Rose, it was with that same curious softness from before.  “No,” she agreed.  “No, it wasn’t.  Forgive me.”

“And as I was saying,” Rose continued, heartened significantly by the change in her, “I can’t exactly blame them for what they did.  Especially not now.”

“And why is that?” Maleficent wondered, not a little flatly.

“They were afraid of me,” said Rose, and even as she spoke, she could remember hearing their words, trying to understand them.  They were afraid of her, even as she was bound and chained at their feet.  They were afraid of her, even as they held all the cards.  But then—oh, then…

“They were afraid of me, and I didn’t understand it,” Rose tried again.  “But after everything, when Kinsale set me free, I was so angry.“

She didn’t want to think about this.  Even as she spoke, she could feel the faintest echo of that horrible, tremulous rage settling itself in the pit of her stomach.  “Phillip did this to me,” she said, holding her wrist tighter, tucking it beneath her chin.  “He did this to me, and I told him to stop, but he never did, and he never would, and so when Kinsale freed me and he was there, I just—“

She held out her hand, searching for words, gasping for air.  “I wanted to kill him,” she confessed.  “I wanted to kill him, for what he did to me, for what—for what they stood back and allowed to—to happen to me, but it wasn’t enough!  Death would have been—” she swallowed hard.  Distantly, she realized she was crying.  “Death would have been a kindness,” she rasped.

Rose touched a hand to her face, feeling the path her tears had taken, uncomprehending.  “So instead I broke his wrist,” she told Maleficent quietly.  “I just…reached out and—“  She shook her head.  “So I suppose I can’t blame them really,” she finished, “for being afraid.”

I’m a little afraid of myself, she did not quite add.

Maleficent reached out, gentle and unhurried.   Again she wiped the tears from Rose’s cheeks, and she held Rose’s face between her hands.  There was a hardness in her gaze, an intensity about her that made Rose want at once to look away and never, ever to look away for all the rest of her days.

“You’ve said yourself it was but a fraction of what he deserved,” said Maleficent.  “And you may rest assured,” she amended, not quite smiling, but with a touch of that strange mirth about her, “that if ever your dashing prince should cross paths with me again, he will find cause to wish for a broken wrist.”

In spite of everything, Briar Rose laughed.  It was not a hearty or a happy sound.  It was breathless, almost painful, as though she’d forgotten how.  “You’re alive,” she said, disbelieving, terrified to let herself believe.

Maleficent’s brow furrowed subtly.  Before she withdrew, she placed her hands on Rose’s shoulders, gentle and grounding.  “Better not keep Mistress Zenovia waiting,” she said.

Rose hesitated, lips half-parted with words she was too afraid to speak.

“I shall be here,” said Maleficent simply, moving away to retrieve her book.

But before she did, Rose stopped her with a hand on her arm.  She’d just barely meant to do it, a fragment of a thought she’d have smothered if circumstances had been any less dire.  But Maleficent did not lash out, and she did not pull away, and so Rose leaned forward to wrap her arms around Maleficent.

Maleficent stiffened beneath her, but she made no move to free herself, and so Rose settled her head beneath Maleficent’s chin, just for a moment.  After a long moment, Maleficent’s spindly arms settled somewhat awkwardly around her, and she relaxed into the embrace, if only by a fraction.  She seemed somehow even thinner than before—there was hardly anything to her but skin and bone—but she drew slow, steady breaths, and her heart beat resolutely in Briar Rose’s ear, and Rose hovered ever closer to the precipice of relief, of allowing herself to believe that Maleficent was still alive.

It was this, in the end, the fear of believing, that drove Briar Rose to retreat.

She did not look at Maleficent when she turned to leave, and so she did not see the way Maleficent watched her go, forsaking her reading entirely for the remainder of the evening.

“Mistress Sara?”

It occurred to Ophira that she had never see Mistress Sara kneeling.  Even when she sat at her desk, she seemed somehow to tower over everyone else in the room.  To see her like this felt wrong, almost profane, an untouchable symbol of righteousness brought to her knees.

No one had seen Sara for the better part of a day.  She’d left meaning to speak with Mistress Joy, and when she hadn’t returned, Hilda had gone to find her.

Hilda had then returned late into the night without her, something strange and dark about her features, meaning only to tell Ophira to go home and get some rest.  And though Ophira usually didn’t pay much mind when Hilda talked down to her, something about this particular instance felt uniquely infuriating.  Hilda wouldn’t tell her where Mistress Sara was.  Hilda wouldn’t tell her anything.

And so, as night bled into a grey and miserable morning, Ophira had gone to look for Mistress Sara, herself.  She’d found her on hands and knees in the middle of an empty coliseum, her hair a ragged mess about her shoulders, and her lovely white dress covered in blood and ash and dirt.

“What is it?” Sara asked her flatly, almost as though this were an ordinary interaction.

“Are you all right?” Ophira asked her, though the words sounded all wrong, and she wished immediately that she’d rethought them.  “I mean, are you…we’ve been looking for you.”

“Well,” said Sara.  She did not move.  ”You’ve found me.  What do you need?”

“Nothing, I just…” Ophira held out her hands vaguely, grasping for something that couldn’t be held onto.  “I was worried.”

“Worried,” Sara repeated.

But perhaps that wasn’t the sort of thing you were supposed to say to Mistress Sara.  Perhaps she wasn’t the sort of person you should worry for.  Ophira tried again.  There was a certain freedom in this, in the all-powerful Mistress Sara kneeling and unresponsive.  She could speak freely now, now that she wasn’t afraid.  “I’ve been…wanting to speak with you, since I returned from the Eastern Kingdom,” she began.

“Oh?”  Sara still did not move.  There was barely even a hint of a question in her tone, but Ophira accepted it as progress of a sort.

“I was afraid, at first,” Ophira continued.  Indeed, she doubted she would ever forget the look on the human princess’s face.  There was horror in it, a genuine fear that struck her to the core, even as she wielded dark magic against her family, against those trying to rescue her.  “Strange thing, the way the dark fairies kept the girl like that, taught her magic, armed her with a staff.  I felt badly for her, really, but…”

Ophira dared a step forward.  Sara still hadn’t moved.  There was a stench of sickness about her, now that Ophira got closer.  She had half a mind to ask if Sara was all right again, but what would be the use?  She would simply—say what she wanted to say, and then perhaps offer once more to help Sara before she let her be.  Surely if Mistress Sara truly needed the help, she would say so.

“But I thought of how you always do what needs to be done, when everyone else is frightened,” Ophira continued hopefully.  “It’s an inspiration, really.  And it helped me to do what I needed to do, for the human sorceress and her family.  I just…wanted you to know that.  I wish I were—I mean, I aspire to be more like you, Mistress Sara.”

Sara looked up then, and the sight of her struck Ophira with a cold sort of terror.  Even on her knees, covered in blood and ash and dirt, dried vomit at the corner of her lips, there was something about Sara that demanded attention, that made one feel like she ought to be bowing her head low and begging forgiveness for some unknowable transgression.

“More like me?” Sara echoed her words after a moment, her brow furrowing subtly.

Ophira didn’t know what to do.  She had half a mind to turn and run away without so much as another word.  “Yes,” she stammered.

Sara shook her head slowly, steely grey eyes glinting in a way that seemed somehow dangerous, even despite the state of her.  “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, Lady Ophira,” she said quietly.

“Do you—“ Ophira tried, but the thought of getting near her, of touching her even to help her up, was terrifying.  “Well.  If you need anything, I—“

She backed away.  Sara watched her go like a wounded animal, anguished and feral, a wretched thing that would gnaw off its own leg to survive, that would most assuredly bite the hand of anyone who tried to help it.

In spite of what she had said, Briar Rose would not precisely describe Mistress Zenovia as impatient.  Zenovia taught her a spell, and as soon as she had cast it successfully, Zenovia taught her another.  She moved quickly and she expected much, and Briar Rose, having spent the last fortnight lying about in anguish and indolence, found herself eager to rise to the challenge.

Rose counted as many as twenty different incantations, each with a long list of specifications for which sorts of injuries it healed best, before Mistress Zenovia gave her two small books, both written by her, and suggested they move onto the art of dueling.

”Shall we begin with a test?” Zenovia offered.  Her voice always carried a note of sternness, but Rose got the sense that this was her version of friendliness.

“All right,” Rose managed, raising her hands to defend herself on instinct.

Zenovia’s attacks were lightning-fast, and they came without any warning, one after another.  Rose managed to block one or two before she fell flat on her back halfway across the room.

“Heal your wounds,” said Zenovia simply.  “We’ll go again when you’re ready.”

Rose lay still for a long moment before she could summon the will to move, more stunned than anything.  It felt good to move, to use her body and her magic, and even to try to call upon the myriad healing spells she had just learned in order to heal the handful of scrapes she had sustained.  In the end, she favoured the spells she’d had the best luck in casting over remembering precisely which spell went with which injury.

When she’d done the best she could, she pushed herself off of the floor and readied herself once more.

“Try to listen for the sounds the spells make as they’re cast,” said Zenovia.  “The more skilled your opponent, the less likely it is that you’ll see her magic before it’s upon you.”

“All right,” Rose agreed, though she privately doubted she’d be able to make sense of what Zenovia was asking of her.  What kind of sound was a spell supposed to make?  And anyway, Zenovia was casting spells far too quickly for Rose to listen for much of anything.

“Ready?”

But somehow, impossibly, and now that it had been pointed out to here, Rose could hear it—the faint whir, the change in the way the air moved between each rapid-fire spell.

She blocked each one in turn, muscles and magic straining with the effort, until at last she just simply could not hold a spell, and Zenovia’s next cast flung her across the room once more.

“Better,” said Zenovia.  “Once more?”

“Once more,” Rose agreed, staring dazedly up at the ceiling.

“Mistress Kinsale has offered you the use of her staff,” said Zenovia, “but you’ll need to fashion your own tomorrow.”

Her own staff?  Rose considered this as she pushed herself up and set about healing her handful of scratches.  Before she could put too much thought into it, however, Kinsale appeared above her, holding out her hand and her staff both.  She helped Briar Rose to her feet and then placed the staff in her hands with care.

“Now, it’s proper dueling form to begin with your staff at your side, like this,” Kinsale demonstrated with a dramatic sweep of her arm, “and then to draw it up like this,” another sharp movement, and Kinsale held her empty hand in a fist in front of her chest.

Rose tried it, clumsy under the unfamiliar weight of the staff.  Across the room, Zenovia mirrored her with empty hands, even such a simple movement swift and terrifying.

Unfamiliar and unwieldy as it was, Rose could feel the advantage the staff granted her, and she was able to fend off Zenovia’s attacks for what seemed a much longer time than before.  When at last her defenses failed her, it was because her magic was tired, and not because her concentration had faltered.

This time, Zenovia came across the room and offered her a hand up.  “A staff of your own will help immensely, I think,” she said as Rose got to her feet.  “But defensive magic alone doesn’t seem to suit you.  If you’re not too tired, there are a few more things I’d like to try, to see if we can determine where you might excel.”

Rose was still leaning rather heavily upon Zenovia’s proffered arm.  “What if I don’t excel at anything?”

“There’s no need for melodrama,” Zenovia replied.  Perhaps surprisingly, despite her words, her voice bore no hint of mockery.  “Magic encompasses a near-infinite array of disparate skills and inclinations, and you have thus far attempted two.”

When Rose had righted herself, and when she had somehow called upon stores of magic heretofore unknown to her to heal herself, Zenovia moved on.

“Elementally aspected magics are a sort of baseline from which more complex spells are drawn.  What I’m going to ask you to do isn’t strictly practical for our purposes—namely, to grant you as broad an understanding of how to fend for yourself in the short amount of time that may well be allotted to us—but is more a means of learning a proper technique over a lifetime of study.  It’s the sort of thing a fairy child might play around with, not useful in itself but for the structure that can be applied to the spells that follow.”

Zenovia taught her what she termed an earth-aspected spell, something to do with rooting herself to the ground below her feet, feeling her connection to the earth and drawing power from it.  Rose didn’t fully understand it, but after a long while, she managed to create some sort of…shaking sensation beneath her feet, which proved good enough for Zenovia’s lesson.

Next, Zenovia taught her an air-aspected spell, which made a bit more sense, as what she seemed to be attempting was just to move the air around her in a particular fashion.  The water-aspected spell was a bit trickier—it required her to create a sort of cloud out of nothingness, and all she managed by the time her magic felt well and truly drained was a tragic haze.

“Good,” Zenovia said, anyway, and on she went.  “Now, fire-aspected magic can be devastating, when wielded by the right sorceress.  Fire is, after all, one of few ways a fairy might meet her end, and our kind is thus understandably fascinated by the stuff.”

Zenovia held out her hand and conjured a flame.  “But the inclination is fickle, to say the least.  It requires a certain amount of…anger, for lack of a better word, but nothing so commonplace.  Bluster and blind fury will only go so far.  The aspect of fire requires that we repurpose our rage, that we let it burn only bright enough to serve us, and not so bright as to consume us.  For now,” Zenovia closed her hand into a fist, and her flame went out, “something simple.”

How long had it been, Rose wondered, since Maleficent had taught her to catch those strange spheres of magical energy as though they were tangible things?  Would she be able to learn how to do the same?  To hold out her hand and to will a flame into existence upon it?  How she wished she’d known how to do that when Lady Ophira had come to collect her, she thought darkly.  How she wished she had asked Kinsale to teach her.

Similar to creating a cloud out of nonexistent water, Zenovia showed Rose how to form her magic into a ball of energy as though it were a physical thing, and then, at least in theory, how to set it aflame.  Outside, the sky turned dark but for the light of the brilliant moon, but Briar Rose hardly noticed the passage of time.  Her first few attempts were mostly fruitless, her magic dissipating before she could even think to move onto the fire aspect, and the few attempts after that left her with burns on her hands which she had to stop and heal.  An injury to the hands, Zenovia informed her, could be grievously detrimental to the casting of magic, and must be dealt with before all else.

Rose tried again, and though she succeeded in forming her magic into a ball of something, it was certainly not fire-aspected.  Zenovia hummed thoughtfully.  “Try this, instead.”  She taught Rose another incantation and demonstrated how to enact it—by holding her hand up to her lips and, essentially, blowing a kiss.

On her first try, a stream of colourful magic burst forth from her lips, and her ball of magical energy caught fire without burning her.  The spell did not stop there, however.  Rose watched in awe and not a little delight as the spell snaked around the room, stoking the fire and lighting a few candles she hadn’t even known were there.

Zenovia surveyed Rose’s handiwork with little more than a quirked brow by way of a reaction.  “Well done,” she said, sounding just the slightest bit surprised.  “Now,” she returned her attention to Rose, hands raised, “throw it.  Hard.”

Rose obeyed, and Zenovia caught it easily.  Before she threw it back, though, she held out her free hand in a warning.  “Careful,” she said.  “Remember, you made it.  As long as you own your creation, it cannot harm you.”

She threw Rose’s fireball back to her, and Rose caught it.  To her immense surprise, the fire did not burn her.  She felt herself smiling.

“I’d say that’s more than enough for one day,” said Mistress Zenovia.  She gave Rose a small bow, no less regal for its subtlety.  “Get some rest, Highness.  We’ll begin in earnest when you wake.”  She strode over to the sitting area before the fire, arms folded across her chest.  “Are you going to retrieve your staff?” she wondered sharply.

Mistress Kinsale, who had fallen asleep with her head resting atop her arm, startled into semi-consciousness.  “Hm, staff,” she replied, helpfully.  “Just leave it—“ she waved a hand vaguely, “—over there, somewhere.”

“And do you intend to sleep the whole night through like this?” Zenovia wondered coolly.

“S’fine,” Kinsale replied pleasantly, resting her head on her arm once more.  “Crowded house.  Dreadful intrusion.”

Zenovia sighed heavily, casting her gaze upon the ceiling for a long moment.  At last, shaking her head and with another small noise of deepest disapproval, she came around to the front of the sofa and set about pulling Kinsale to her feet.

Kinsale complied, but when she spoke again, her voice lacked the dreamy pleasantry of half-slumber.  “Really, Zenovia,” she said, “I don’t want to impose upon you any more than I already have.  I can sleep out here just fine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll strain your neck,” Zenovia replied crisply, all but carrying Kinsale towards the hallway.

“Oh,” Kinsale sighed dramatically, sounding much more her usual self, “that the great Mistress Zenovia should care for the state of my neck!”

“That’s quite enough,” Zenovia replied flatly as they disappeared from Rose’s sight.  She was still talking, but all Rose could make out was “—sleep outside in the snow, for all I care.”

Utterly at a loss for how to proceed, Rose propped Kinsale’s staff up against the wall and collected the books Zenovia had given her before she returned to the room she was to share with Maleficent.  She knocked lightly upon the door before she entered, but heard no response.

Maleficent must be asleep, she realized as she pushed open the door.  She was curled up on the cot against the far wall, her bony shoulder just barely grazed by the light of the moon.  Rose had never been awake when Maleficent was asleep before.  Indeed, a part of her had begun to believe that Maleficent didn’t sleep at all.  She couldn’t imagine Maleficent falling asleep on her arm like Kinsale had done, or even yawning to show that she was tired.  There was something strange and remarkable about seeing her at rest like this.

The little bed next to Maleficent’s was much more comfortable than it looked.  The blanket was heavy and sturdy, and the pillow was firm, and Briar Rose considered that she would happily sleep in it every night for the rest of her life rather than the bed that had served as her prison in the Eastern Kingdom’s castle.

As the excitement and the terror of the day left her, Rose found that she was well and truly exhausted, but in a way that felt good, right, and natural.  Sleep felt imminent, and she did not find cause to fear it.

“Sweet dreams, Briar Rose,” said Maleficent quietly.  Her voice felt like part of a distant dream.

“Maleficent,” Rose breathed without thinking, closing her eyes with a sigh of contentment.

“Yes?”

“Nothing, I’m just…” Rose yawned and pulled the blanket tighter around her, “…glad you’re here.”

Briar Rose was already fast asleep by the time Maleficent responded.

“Not as glad as I am.”

Chapter Text

The following day, Briar Rose entered the world of the waking with tremendous reluctance.

She felt so happy, so peaceful that surely if she held onto this impossible dream hard enough, then she might be able to avoid waking up at all.  In her dreams, she was not in pain.  She was not weak and trembling, stripped of her magic and her dignity.  Indeed, in her dreams, she could swear she almost felt her magic there, tingling in the tips of her fingers, not powerful or frightening, but reassuring.

It felt so real.  In the end it was a terrible sadness that woke her, tugging at her heart and forcing her to face the truth, and yet still she felt no pain, nor did she feel that dreadful haziness, that sickening weakness that kept her so often in her bed.  Had she succeeded in taking her life?  Was this the sweet release of death?

Rose’s eyes shot open, and she inhaled sharply, frightened into consciousness by the stray thought.  She looked wildly about the room, struggling to make sense of her surroundings.  She was in a small room, big enough to hold only the cot on which she lay and another one right next to it.  There was a little window on the far wall with a simple, dark curtain which gave way to the faint grey light of a cloudy day.

She wasn’t in the castle anymore.  No.  No, she was here because Kinsale had come to free her.  She was here because Kinsale had come, and Mistress Zenovia of the Mountainlands had offered up her home, and—

And Maleficent was alive.

Maleficent was alive, and Briar Rose was free.

Rose sat up, feeling almost dizzy with the realization.  She examined her body curiously.  She was sore from yesterday’s exertions, and still bore a few stray bruises here and there, but her wrist was not broken, and the angry red scar upon her wrist did not seem in need of any further attention, desite its frightful appearance.

“Oh, good morning,” Kinsale greeted her from the sitting area when she crept into the main room.  She was flipping through the pages of a book, but she didn’t seem to be focusing much on what they contained.  “I was going to ask—your little fairy said she called you Briar Rose, and now I think of it, Maleficent has done the same, in passing.  Is that how you’d prefer to be called?”

“Oh,” Rose managed, taken aback.  “Yes, that’s…yes.”

Kinsale looked up.  “Well, whyever didn’t you tell me before?” she wondered with a curious tilt of her head.

Rose looked down self-consciously.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I used to hate it when…when my family tried to call me Aurora, but I didn’t mind it when you did.  I suppose I wanted to know why.”

Inexplicably, this seemed to interest Kinsale.  She forsook her attempt at reading and leaned in as Rose approached.  “Oh?  And what did you find?”

Encouraged by her inviting demeanour, Rose crept ever closer.  “Well,” she began, “when you called me Aurora, it was just…a name.  Something that meant you were talking to me.  When they did, my aunties especially, it…it was like they were trying to erase me, make me something I wasn’t.  It was more than a name, because they’d given me another, and then they just…didn’t want me to have that one anymore.”

“Oh, that is good,” Kinsale effused.  “And do you suppose you liked being known by another name in my company, trying it on, like being another person for awhile?”

Rose eyed her dubiously, but the words rang surprisingly true.  “Well…yes, I suppose so, but how could you—?”

Kinsale waved a hand dismissively.  “Oh, forgive me, darling, years of shameless speculation on the nature of the mind have made me, occasionally, good at guessing.  Speaking of which, would you like to see something positively horrifying?”

“What?” Rose stammered, still struggling to wrap her mind on the last thing Kinsale had said.  Did she really want to know what someone like Mistress Kinsale found horrifying?

But Kinsale stood and moved over to the door that led outside, and Rose followed her.  It really was beautiful, now that Rose took a moment to look—Zenovia’s fortress was surrounded by snow-topped mountains on all sides, but there was a bit of green grass just beyond the door, and there, on the grass there were—

“By the stars,” Rose remarked, horrified indeed.  She squinted against the grey glare of day, trying to make out what was happening.  Two dark fairies stood a short distance apart wielding staves, colourful magic flying back and forth between them, accumulating above their heads in a cloud that grew ever darker.

“Who are they?” Rose asked Kinsale, little more than a terrified whisper.

“Why, Zenovia and Maleficent, of course!” Kinsale laughed.  “Mistress Zenovia is already entertaining far more guests than she has in the course of her lifetime.”

Rose squinted at them again, shielding her eyes to get a better look, but still it was hard to believe.  Spell after spell flew across the sky between them.  Sometimes one of them would falter or fly into the air, but scarcely did her feet touch the ground before she fired back in retaliation.  Was this the art of dueling that Briar Rose was to learn?  “Did something happen?” Rose wondered, awestruck.

“Happen?  Oh!  No, no, they’re only practicing.”

“This is practicing?” Rose looked up at Kinsale, wide-eyed, but Kinsale merely shrugged amiably in response.

“I’d bet on Maleficent,” Kinsale continued as Rose returned her attention to the spectacle before them.  “Zenovia is older and stronger by far, and Maleficent is badly injured still, but injury has only ever augmented her ruthlessness.  Both of them learned to duel long before their time, and it’s as much a part of them as breathing, but Maleficent?  Well, I’d say she’d do anything to win.”

The words settled uncomfortably in the pit of Rose’s stomach.  Though she knew them to be true, she could not remember the last time she’d really considered this aspect of Maleficent.  Now that she really looked, she started to notice that more often than not, when Zenovia was hit, she would kneel a moment to recuperate, while Maleficent seemed to purposefully launch herself into the air, firing back with another spell before she’d even regained her footing.

Then, once, when Zenovia fell to one knee, Maleficent bore down upon her with another rapid-fire spell.  Zenovia’s body seized up, and her hands swung behind her back.  Maleficent swept her staff over her head to aim it at Zenovia’s throat.  And even though Rose knew it was only practice, that this must be the way a duel was ended, the sight was so frightening it almost sickened her.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t bet against me,” Kinsale quipped, turning away from the door.  “I’d pretend I didn’t see, if I were you.  Unless of course you’d like to have the battle agonizingly broken down piece by piece for the sake of your education.”  Kinsale drawled these words as though she could not think of anything less interesting, and she returned to flipping idly through her book.

For lack of anything better to do, Rose followed Kinsale over to Zenovia’s small sitting area and settled herself in one of the empty chairs, trying very hard not to stare at the door.  She wondered what Maleficent had been like when she’d been Zenovia’s student, and how long ago that had been.  How long had it taken for Maleficent to learn all that Zenovia had to teach her, well enough that she could best her in combat like that?

“Ah,” said Maleficent cordially as she entered.  “Good morning.”  She nodded to Briar Rose.  Kinsale, strangely, ignored her.

“Good morning,” Rose greeted her.  She already looked so much better than she had the day before.  Her skin was more or less its usual colour, and she’d cut the burnt ends away from her hair, leaving it almost as short as Zenovia’s, and fixed neatly despite her recent exertions.

Zenovia followed her in, preoccupied with a series of nasty cuts across the exposed skin of her arm.  She wore trousers today, and though her shirt still covered her up to her neck, her muscular shoulders were bare.

“Bit cold for that outfit, don’t you think?” Kinsale remarked crisply, eyes trained on the book she was pretending to read.

“Not that you were looking,” Zenovia replied, unaffected.

“Certainly not,” said Kinsale.  “If I were, I’d have seen your humiliating defeat.”

Surprisingly, Zenovia chuckled, a quiet, breathy sound.  “Hardly.  Maleficent fights well, and I am many years out of practice.  A bit of humility might do you some good, Mistress Kinsale.”

“This from you!” Kinsale’s head shot up from her book, eyes alight.  “If you’d like to test your skill in something other than needless spell-slinging, do be sure to let me know.”

Zenovia looked up to meet Kinsale’s gaze, a curious smirk about her striking features.  “Out of respect for our young guest,” she replied richly, “I shan’t counter your offer with that for which you are best known.  Highness,” her demeanour changed abruptly, and she afforded Briar Rose a courteous bow.  “I’ll finish healing up, and then I’ll be ready to begin.  It looks like it’s about to rain, so go out and gather some wood.  Big or small branches, doesn’t matter much.”

Rose hopped to her feet, not a little eager for a task to occupy her time.  And oh, how good it felt to be outside!  She had half a mind to take off her shoes just to feel the grass between her toes, but it was rather cold, and she didn’t want to keep Zenovia waiting.

When she’d gathered what Zenovia deemed to be an appropriate amount of fallen branches, the the wind outside began to howl, and the rain began to fall in earnest.  Rose learned how to meld the wood together to create the body of her staff, a beautiful, winding thing that reminded her very much of the forest in which she’d grown up.  Sometime in the late afternoon, after they’d sat awkwardly around Zenovia’s very small table to eat, Rose learned (with considerable aid from Zenovia) how to conjure an aquamarine orb which would serve as her staff’s focal point.

Then, as if she were not already exhausted, the real work began.

The rain outside came down in sheets as day faded into night.  Zenovia called for Maleficent to join them, while Kinsale, who had disappeared for the better part of the afternoon, returned to her spot by the fire and set about conjuring and lighting more candles.

“Most fairies don’t forge staves for themselves until they’re well into adulthood,” Zenovia told her.  “You’ll be a bit ahead of the curve in this aspect, but conversely, it will be all the more arduous a task for you.  Essentially you’re going to pour all of your magic into the staff,” she gestured to the aquamarine orb she had helped Rose to conjure, “and then you’re going to make a sort of copy of it.”

Zenovia demonstrated how Rose should hold her hands to cast the spell.  “As you’ve been a victim of the Chains of Avasina,” Zenovia continued, “I expect you’ll know how it will feel if you’ve done it correctly.  I’d thought Kinsale the best candidate to aid you, as you’ve wielded her staff with no difficulty, but Kinsale pointed out to me that you share magic with Maleficent.”

It was something she had heard before, something she felt she should know, and yet the words felt strange and distant.  It was because of a deal her mother had made with Maleficent, a deal she had not honoured, that Briar Rose had almost been sentenced to an early grave.  But did that mean…?  “I do?” Rose glanced over at Maleficent, who was watching Zenovia with a vague sort of disinterest.

Zenovia, in turn, looked rather sharply upon Maleficent.  Maleficent positively glared back, which did not seem to affect Zenovia in the slightest.  She raised her eyes to the ceiling with a long-suffering sigh.  “You do,” she said at last, returning her attention to Briar Rose.  “I don’t know how much of this you know already, but it’s my understanding that Queen Leah of the East was unable to conceive for many years.  She turned to Maleficent for help, and it was Maleficent’s magic working upon her womb which allowed you to be conceived and carried to term.  As such, while nearly all children of royal blood are gifted with some fairy magic at their christenings, and while there are a surprising number of human-fairy hybrids running about unnoticed, your natural proclivity for magic is significantly higher than the average human, and, of course, it tends towards the magic of the dark fae specifically.”  She turned sharply to Maleficent once more.  “Was that so hard?” she demanded.

Maleficent didn’t respond.  She turned her attention idly to the far wall, and Zenovia sighed again.  “Right then.  Shall we begin?”

Seized by something hot and terrible that clawed at the inside of her chest, Rose spoke again, more to Maleficent than to Zenovia.  “If Maleficent was the reason I was born,” she wondered, “why did she curse me to die?”

But before Maleficent could even begin to answer, Zenovia did.  “The queen struck a deal with Maleficent, and she didn’t honour her end of the bargain, nor did she ever acknowledge her debt again,” she said this easily and without much emotion, as though it were not only a simple matter, but one that was taking up far too much of her time.  “I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, Highness.  Whatever Maleficent’s shortcomings, I assure you she no longer wishes you any harm.”

Maleficent’s face had gone momentarily slack, lips parted as though she intended to speak, but just as quickly, she schooled her expression into her usual stony neutrality, and when Zenovia asked again, “Shall we?”, Maleficent merely nodded her assent.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Zenovia nodded to Rose.

But with two pairs of eyes upon her, Briar Rose could not begin to concentrate.  All she could think about was how Zenovia had spoken of such a difficult matter with such ease, how Rose had asked meaning to upset Maleficent and what that said about her, whether she really wanted the matter resolved between them or whether she just wanted to lash out because she could, what Maleficent must have been like when she was younger, and the ways in which she and Zenovia were similar and the ways in which they differed, and—

To her immense surprise, Maleficent broke the silence.  “It’s all right,” she said softly.  “Forget about everything else for now.  Focus on the task before you.”

Rose looked up, stunned, overwhelmed by the intensity of her gaze and the kindness of her words.  She nodded slowly, then returned her attention to the aquamarine orb between her hands.

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.  And once she’d done that, pouring her magic into something tangible proved much simpler than pouring it into empty air.  She struggled, when she felt her magic depleting, and cold dread crept through her veins as she began to feel ever closer to the way she’d felt in Chains.

Dark and dreadful thoughts came rushing back to the forefront of her mind.  Suppose Lady Ophira had been right to Chain her, after all.  Suppose she was a danger to herself and others, a monster who would snap a man’s wrist with her bare hands if it pleased her.  Suppose instead she simply wasn’t strong enough to do this, and the Chains had already robbed her of what little magic she possessed?  What if she failed?  Would Zenovia and Kinsale and Maleficent lose interest in her?  Would they cast her out into the world on her own?

Just as Rose became aware of tears streaming down her cheeks, so, too, did she become aware of Maleficent’s hands covering hers.  Far more than the steadiness of her touch, Rose felt a rush of magic, familiar but far more powerful than her own, rushing through her veins.  Rose looked up, alight with the strangeness of it, to find Maleficent watching her curiously.  Rose could hear herself panting, gasping for breath, and yet she did not feel the strain.

On the contrary, she had never felt so alive.

She began to feel giddy, tingly all over, and her heart fluttered with excitement.  Was this the way magic was supposed to feel?  Was this the way Maleficent felt when she used magic?  Was this how she and Zenovia had felt, casting spells back and forth outside, even though to her it had looked nothing short of terrifying?

A painful jolt shot through Rose’s arms, and she fell in a heap upon the floor, still gasping for air, feeling hot and cold all at once.  She couldn’t move, couldn’t even begin to stand, and all she could think about were Maleficent’s dark eyes, alight with a spark she was sure she’d never seen before, gazing into her very soul.

Rose let out a heavy sigh as she rolled onto her back, pushing her hair out of her face and struggling to steady her breathing.  It was pitch-black outside and the rain had stopped, but the sky yet rumbled with the promise of another storm to come.

“I’m sorry,” Rose breathed as she pushed herself up.  “Did I ruin it?”

“Not at all,” said Zenovia.  “Just another moment.”

“Another moment,” Rose echoed with another sigh.  “Good.”  She lay back down, exhausted.

Idly, she thought of the time she’d spent studying magic by herself, reluctant even to ask Maleficent for assistance.  How much more could Maleficent have taught her, she wondered now, if she hadn’t been so afraid to ask?

But Maleficent had seemed so—impossibly unreachable to her, and in spite of that, Rose had longed to approach her as something like an equal, as someone who could understand her in some way, or at least as someone who wanted to try.  It was equal parts funny and embarrassing to imagine Mistress Zenovia explaining the very foolish trail of thought which had kept her from seeking Maleficent’s tutelage in the same way she had explained the difficult situation which had led them here.  Perhaps, Rose considered fancifully, things were sometimes far less complicated than people made them out to be.

Maleficent appeared above her, wielding her staff in one hand and offering her the other.  Rose took it and pulled herself to her feet, and then Maleficent presented the staff to her with a sort of…reverent formality that set her heart all aflutter.

As soon as the staff settled into her hands, the orb glowed brightly, and magic coursed through her just as it had when Maleficent had lent Rose her magic.  “Oh,” Rose breathed as a delightful shiver coursed through her.

“Shall we give it a test run?” Zenovia wondered, but of course it wasn’t really a question.

As Rose swept her newly-formed staff across her chest, Maleficent disappeared into the hallway without another word.

Rose’s attention was quickly preoccupied by other matters, however.  Zenovia’s spells gave no visual indication at first, but Rose remembered to listen for the sounds they made, and she blocked them with ease, one after another.  One spell made no sound, but there was a wisp of a something about it, a tinge to the air upon which it traveled, and not only did Rose block the spell, she fired back one of her own.  It was nothing special—nothing more than a faint gust of wind—but to Briar Rose, the mere idea that she could cast a spell of her own felt monumental.

Outside the storm raged on, and Rose felt as though the lightning in the air was dancing all across her skin.  Magic coursed through her veins and rolled off of her in waves, strong and powerful and intoxicating, and she could not rightly say whether she was burning or freezing.

Feeling particularly brave, Rose used her staff to form her magic into a ball of energy, and she thrust it in Zenovia’s direction as she had been taught.  Zenovia caught it and threw it back at her, and Rose, in an instant that felt like a brush with insanity, caught her glowing ball of energy and blew on it, setting it aflame before she threw it back.

Their battle lasted much longer than the ones that came before.  The rain outside ebbed and flowed, and powerful gusts of wind came in through the cracks in the doors and windows, putting out all the candles in the room and casting them in near-darkness.  Zenovia began to move, casting spells from different angles, her position only revealed to Rose through the sounds her spells made and the occasional flash of lightning.

Panic crawled up her spine, cold and cloying, and Rose began to wonder what Maleficent had been like at her age, or whenever Zenovia had taken her on as a student.  Had Maleficent always been so unshakable, so unreachable?  Or had she felt fear then, too, and this desperation to impress, to prove herself worthy?

Rose’s concentration wavered, and one of Zenovia’s spells grazed her arm.

“Put up  a shield and heal yourself,” Zenovia barked, but she did not relent.  Her next spell hit Rose squarely in the knee, and she fell to the floor, crying out more from surprise than pain.

Still, Rose did her best to comply.  Grasping onto her staff to keep herself upright, Rose put up a very weak shield while she tried to heal her arm.  She only just managed to stop the bleeding when she could feel the way Zenovia blasted her shield to pieces, as though it had been a tangible thing.

But Rose would not relent, not just yet.  She scrambled to her feet, wincing when she put too much pressure on her injured leg, and managed to block a few more of Zenovia’s spells before one hit her in the stomach, launching her across the room and onto the floor.

“That’s enough for today,” said Zenovia simply.  “Fetch me tomorrow, when you’re ready.”

Rose lay flat on the floor for a long while, listening to the low rumble of the storm outside and, for a mercy, unable to think about much of anything.  At long last, she pushed herself up onto her hands and set about healing the scrape on her arm properly.  She wasn’t sure what to do about her leg—she’d have to check in Zenovia’s book back in her room—but it didn’t feel very serious.

Eventually, Rose dragged herself to her feet, leaning heavily upon her staff for support.  Her staff, she marveled, tracing her fingers idly over its aquamarine orb before she propped it up against the wall and made her way to her room.

She collapsed onto her small bed without so much as a thought, without so much as looking where she was going, and so when Maleficent spoke, her voice far closer than Rose would have expected, she could not help but to startle at the sound.

“Not tired, are you?” Maleficent wondered lightly.

Rose sighed heavily.  “Got to find what to do about my leg,” she murmured, by way of response, turning over to reach blindly for the pile of books beside her bed.

“Better review the whole thing,” said Maleficent wryly.  “I’m sure you can imagine how kindly Mistress Zenovia takes to negligence in her students.”

Rose pushed herself up into a sitting position as she began thumbing through Zenovia’s book.  “I was wondering when you studied with her,” she said, trying not to sound quite as interested as she was.

“The first time I sought her out,” said Maleficent, “I was thirteen.  The second time was about a decade after that.”

Rose looked up, surprised.  “What happened after the first time?”

Maleficent lifted a shoulder.  “She sent me away after about a year.  I was ‘too anxious and paranoid to be teachable.’”

“I can’t imagine,” Rose frowned.

“I’d say that was putting it kindly, actually.”

Maleficent was engrossed in her own book, but her dark eyes still had that glassy quality about them that made her look unfocused and sad.

“When did you grow out of that?” Rose wondered.

To her immense surprise, Maleficent chuckled lightly.  “Truthfully, I think I merely learned to hide it better.”

“Oh,” Rose uttered unhelpfully, returning her attention to her injured leg, or trying to.  She’d heard so much about Maleficent since last they’d spoken, and she’d spent a stretch of time fearing they never would again.  Shooting pain in her knee notwithstanding, all Rose could think about were the countless questions she longed to ask Maleficent, now that she was here, safe and alive.

“May I ask you something?” Rose wondered at last.

“You may.”

“Is it true,” Rose began haltingly, pretending to focus very hard on the page in front of her, “that your mother sometimes kept you chained to the wall of your bedroom for months?”

Maleficent was silent for a moment.  “Yes,” she said at last, quietly.

“Is it true,” Rose continued, barely more than a whisper, “that she murdered your sisters?”

“Yes,” Maleficent breathed.

Rose looked up.  Maleficent’s eyes were closed, her head leaned back against the wall.

“What happened to her?” Rose asked her.  “Did you…?”

“No,” said Maleficent.  “When I won the duel, I sent her away.  I swore I would kill her, if I ever saw her again.”

“But you never did?” Rose pressed.

Maleficent let out a little huff, something like amusement.  “Not until very recently,” she said.  She opened her eyes, a rueful smile tugging at the corners of her lips.  “Does it trouble you, Briar Rose?  That I might have killed my own mother?”

Rose averted her gaze, ashamed.  “No.  I mean, not…I don’t know.  Yes.”  She looked up again, searching for words that would carry her meaning.  “I can’t imagine what it must have been like,” she said.  She reached out, her hand hovering just shy of Maleficent’s arm.  “I’m so sorry.”

Maleficent’s smile fell, and she waved Rose’s arm away dismissively.  “Don’t trouble yourself over nothing, Briar Rose,” she said coolly.  “If Mistress Adara wasn’t dead before, she certainly is now.”

“Oh,” Rose uttered again, uselessly.  Again, she endeavoured to focus her energies on easing the pain in her leg, but the words seemed to blur together, and her head began to ache from the strain of it.

“Are you…looking for something in particular?” Maleficent asked her after a moment.

“Zenovia hit me somewhere around the knee.  It’s not a scratch or a bruise, though—something else, something…internal?” Rose sighed heavily.  “I don’t know.”

“Try a summoning spell,” Maleficent suggested easily, “emphasizing an important word.  Internal, perhaps.”

Rose looked at Maleficent a moment, stunned by the simplicity of her answer, perhaps, before she tried it.  Sure enough, the book’s pages turned of their own accord until they landed upon the spell Rose needed.  Now that she saw it written out, she remembered learning it.  She ran her hand over the spot where it hurt most, chanting the incantation under her breath, and slowly, the pain ebbed.

With that taken care of, Rose’s mind drifted to the way Zenovia had spoken of Maleficent’s curse earlier, a difficult subject between them, but one that had evidently seemed so commonplace as to be aggravating to Zenovia.  With this in mind, Briar Rose confessed to the thoughts she’d been entertaining earlier.  “I am very grateful for your magical instruction,” she began.  “I find myself wishing I’d asked you for help more often.”

Maleficent hummed thoughtfully.  “In some ways, I think it was better that you learned on your own, at first,” she said.

“Really?” Rose wondered.  “How?”

Maleficent’s brow furrowed subtly while she thought.  “You had your convictions, your reservations.  You feared studying any form of magic at all, for how you felt its influence upon your life had been largely destructive.  If you’d been under my tutelage in a more consistent capacity, I think you’d have found yourself persuaded to see things quite differently.”  That small, wry smile made a reappearance.  “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, given the direness of my recent circumstances, but ordinarily I have quite a knack for bending others to my will.”

There was more Rose had intended to say, but Maleficent’s response left her at a loss.  It was strange to think of her that way, as someone who would have manipulated her into viewing magic the way she did.  It was just like seeing her battle with Zenovia earlier, and the way Kinsale’s words had twisted her stomach up into knots.  Rose had a hard time seeing Maleficent as ruthless, as someone who would do anything to win, even when a part of her knew it to be true.

“What Zenovia said earlier, about the curse,” Rose continued.  “Why didn’t you tell me any of that before?”

Maleficent didn’t respond.  She inhaled, hesitated, but no words came.  Rose looked over at her, overcome by a strange kind of calm.  I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, Zenovia had told her. Whatever Maleficent’s shortcomings, I assure you she no longer wishes you any harm. 

“You don’t want me to die anymore,” said Rose, simply.

Maleficent returned her steely gaze.  “I never did,” she replied.

Rose frowned.  “That isn’t true at all!”

“It is,” Maleficent held up a hand to stop her.  “I’ve never wished any harm upon you, Briar Rose, I would swear to that.  It was the—the infant, the baby princess, the idea of it that—“

“And that’s not worse?” Rose wondered, horrified.

Maleficent chuckled mirthlessly.  “How is that worse?”

“What did an infant, a baby, pure and—and uncorrupted by the world, ever do to you?”

Maleficent quirked a brow at her.  “Is it the purity you value above all else?” she wondered sharply.  “Above a person who, for example, has experienced more than her fair share of the world’s horrors, yet retains her uncommonly kind heart?  Is that your argument?”

Rose averted her eyes, her cheeks flushed.  “That’s an awfully lenient assessment of my character.”  There was much she was trying not to think about, trying not to remember, but all of it seemed just now to lurk just beyond the scope of her vision, a dull undercurrent of terror ever threatening to well over.

“And how would you assess your character?” Maleficent wondered.

Rose frowned.  “I don’t know,” she said quietly.  But the memory she’d been avoiding came flooding to the forefront of her mind, the blinding anger she’d felt and that horrible thought she’d had—that death would have been too great a mercy to bestow on Prince Phillip of the North.  This from someone who’d been ready to take her own life not a few moments prior, who had suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of those who felt it was their right to wield their power over her.

“I was so…angry,” Rose breathed, surprised to feel tears welling at the corners of her eyes.  “It frightened me.  I’ve never felt that way before.  I could have—I mean, I couldn’t, I can’t even—“  She closed her eyes and drew her knees up to her chest.  “I could have killed him,” she confessed.  “I could have killed him, but I wanted to do something worse.  I wanted him to suffer the way I had suffered.”  She looked to Maleficent, pleading.  “Is that the sort of person who’s worth protecting?  Who’s worth wanting alive?”

And the truth of the matter was that she did not know which answer she feared the most.  She didn’t know whether she wanted Maleficent to tell her no, or yes.

She felt the ghost of fingertips upon her shoulder, so light that the touch startled her.  Maleficent took Rose into her arms with agonizing slowness, as though giving her every opportunity to back away, and Rose did her level best not to throw herself at Maleficent with full force.

When at last she’d settled into Maleficent’s arms, she felt herself beginning to weep in earnest, her shoulders shaking from the effort.  Maleficent stroked her hair gently, and for a very long time, they sat together in near-silence.

Then, so quiet it was very nearly covered by the howling wind outside, Maleficent spoke.  “I could…hide you away from all this, if you wished it,” she began.  “I could place you under a proper sleeping spell, until whatever is to come between the light and the dark fae passes.  You would be safe, and blameless, and you would be free to forge your own future.  Free of your aunts, your kingdom, your wretched husband, free of me and my kind…”

Rose pulled away, only enough to meet Maleficent’s eyes, more than a little stunned by the suggestion.

“Wasn’t that what you wanted?” Maleficent asked her.  “Why you set me free?  To pursue your own freedom?”

Rose looked away, swallowed hard.  “And,” she amended, “you would have died.  I couldn’t—“

“You couldn’t have allowed that?” Maleficent wondered, not unkindly.  “You never once wanted me to suffer the way you had suffered?”

Rose shook her head.  She didn’t know how to tell Maleficent that it wasn’t the same, not at all, that whatever she had suffered by Maleficent’s hand paled in comparison with what she had suffered at the hands of those who were meant to love her.  “Never,” she said simply.

But something else had caught Maleficent’s eye, and before Rose was done wrapping her head around what Maleficent had asked of her, and what she had offered, Maleficent was holding Rose’s wrist up to the light.  Though it was no longer injured, and even the last of the lingering bruises had mostly faded away, the angry red scar she had inflicted upon herself still burned brighter than ever.

“Forgive me,” Maleficent breathed, her voice a small and broken thing.  “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” Rose echoed.  “For what?”

Maleficent’s grip upon her wrist tightened.  “I thought you would be safe, in the Eastern Kingdom.  Not happy, not free, but I thought…  There is much I should have told you,  before.  I shouldn’t have frightened you away like that.  Perhaps, if I hadn’t…“

“It’s not your fault,” said Rose.

But Maleficent’s dark eyes flashed like the storm around them.  “Perhaps,” she said, pulling away from Rose, “you ought to consider placing some blame upon my shoulders, rather than your own.  Perhaps you ought to consider why you insist upon trusting in me so easily, why you insist upon seeing me as so much better than I am.  Am I truly so much better than the people who would keep you in Chains?  Am I so much more worthy of your forgiveness?”

“Yes!” Rose cried, and it was very nearly a sob.  “Yes, and I don’t know how to make you understand that!  We had our difficulties, certainly, but you always treated me like--well, like a person!”

This, miraculously, seemed to take all the fire out of Maleficent’s eyes.  Her face fell slack, and she gazed back at Rose, as though stunned by her words.

“And I missed you terribly!” Rose continued.  “You and Kinsale.  I wanted nothing more than to see you again, and I thought I never would!  I feared you were dead!  And yes, I wanted to die, because I couldn’t find any reason to go on living like that.  It was—I can’t even bear to think of it!  So yes, of course I wanted my freedom, but…but that wasn’t all.  Or at least, it’s not.  Not anymore.”

Maleficent was still looking at her with wide, searching eyes, at a loss in a way Rose had seen her only once before.  “I can’t—“ she began, haltingly.  “I can’t give you anything that you need.  Friendship, kindness, comfort…” she averted her eyes.  “Affection.  I know a great deal about a great many things, but I know nothing of these.”

Rose felt a strange sort of laughter upon her lips, world-weary and disbelieving.  “That isn’t true at all,” she said, reaching out to take Maleficent’s hand.

Maleficent allowed it, but only for a brief and fleeting moment, all the more beautiful for its rarity.  “But on the subject of knowledge,” she continued, far more akin to her usual manner, “I’d suggest looking over that book once more before you go to sleep.”  She pulled away gently and retrieved the book she’d been reading when Rose came in.  “I should hate to see Mistress Zenovia give you a broken leg on the morrow.”

“How very sweet of you,” Rose laughed again, bizarrely touched.  She thought of the way Kinsale had sighed dramatically as she teased Zenovia for caring whether she strained her neck, and she found quite suddenly that she understood.

“Let me rephrase,” Maleficent replied crisply, turning a page in her book rather violently as punctuation.  “Given the proximity of your bed to mine, your screaming in agony would be most detrimental to my slumber.”

“Right,” Rose agreed, feeling almost cheerful as she retrieved Zenovia’s book and settled herself up against the wall.  “Heaven forbid I should disrupt your beauty sleep, princess.”

For an instant, just before Maleficent raised her eyes to the ceiling with a devastating huff of indignation, Briar Rose could have sworn she saw Maleficent smiling.