Chapter Text
Leah shivered under the hand caressing the back of her neck, leaning into the touch, finding comfort where her sweat-dampened skin touched Maleficent’s cooler flesh along the other woman's side. She inhaled deeply, trying to memorise the scents that hung within the little stone-walled chamber. She knew she should not be there, knew she'd have to tell Maleficent goodbye soon, perhaps forever - to tell her that she was to be compelled to wed the man her father had chosen as his heir, that she had not managed to argue her way out of her unwanted marriage - and to leave her. She didn't want to go.
"What's on your mind, princess?"
The epithet brought a half-smile to Leah's lips, just for a moment. She was so used to hearing it as a title, a formality, the way servants and the other denizens of her castle home addressed her to keep their distance. She supposed they meant it respectfully, but ever since her girlhood it had chilled her heart to hear it, leaving her to feel as though she had no name of her own. Maleficent had been the first since her mother to use the term with any affection.
Leah propped herself up on one elbow, admiring, as always, the storm within those eyes, the mixture of colours captured there shifting in ways no human eye could ever approach. It was a beautiful sight, but Mal's heart was as troubled as her own. That was obvious, even in the dissipating afterglow of their coupling.
"You already know, don't you?" Leah sighed. She raised her free hand to caress the base of one of the tilted horns that grew from her lover's scalp, dragging her fingers downward to tangle through the blue-black strands of her hair, falling long and thick across her pale bare shoulder.
"I know of your father's plans," Mal answered, her voice deep and sombre. "I don't know whether you've found a way out." The last part was more than half a question. Leah dropped her eyes, focusing on the curve of collarbone and throat rather than look directly into Maleficent's face to admit her failure in something so important to them both.
"No," she confessed, pain flaring in her chest as she spoke the word. "I tried to talk him out of it, but, as ever, he fails to listen. The statutes forbid me from making an official challenge to his decisions, even ones that so deeply involve me, because as a mere woman I'm not considered his heir, even though I'm expected to birth one. It doesn't matter to him that my preferences don't lean in that direction, that I don't have any wish to allow this prince into my bed - all he wants is to see his bloodline continued, regardless of whether he's locking me into a marriage of convenience or whether I'm happy. He expects me to act to all the world as though I want all this, when the bare thought turns my stomach!"
Her anger and resentment had been audible to her own ears from her very first word, bitterness, betrayal and blasted-heath rage building ever further. She had no need to hold back her feelings when she was with Maleficent, the way that she did with everyone else. After all, Mal already knew, and understood her better than anyone she'd ever known.
She breathed deeply, sliding down to press her forehead against the coolness of the pillow, closing her eyes and trying not to voice the strength of her foreboding, of her unhappiness and frustration at the thought of being forced to live a life she'd never wanted, but always known she might have to endure.
She was broken from the darkness of her thoughts by her dearest, Maleficent's hand sliding gently down her shoulder, and Leah lifted her head to meet Mal's gaze. Her inhuman eyes were darkened with mystery, warm but serious.
"I can't get you out of the wedding without creating a greater mess, my love, and I know you prefer I leave other humans alive ... but perhaps there's something else I could try. I could give you something to hold onto, at least. Something to think about while you have to let him touch you. Would you care for that?" Mal ran her hand across her own body, shifting the soft black sheet away as she did so. Green sparks followed her fingertips, creating a vortex below her waist, and Leah gasped.
She hadn't thought about it -- but why not, after all? She’d seen Mal shift her shape in other ways, most memorably when becoming her draconic alter ego. To do that – to alter, only a little, the body in which she spent most of her days – might be even easier than changing her species.
Mal's eyes fluttered almost shut as her hand wound in circles, dropping closer and closer to her crotch as she worked her magic on herself, and Leah's mouth began to dry, her body beginning to warm once more.
"Yes," she whispered, and Maleficent touched the tip of her index finger to her own skin at the word, the sparks condensing into the change.
Leah reached out, desperate to touch her anew. Mal groaned, and drew her down.