As she trudged behind the others, Mal thought about what she’d said to Evie—how everything at the Forbidden Fortress had been a test.
Carlos had faced the gargoyles, and Jay, the Cave of Wonders. Evie had endured the Magic Mirror.
What about me?
What’s in store for me?
Was danger—in the form of a challenge all her own—waiting for her, just behind the next castle door?
Or would it be even more like my mother to ignore me altogether? To leave me alone, and think I wasn’t worthy of any kind of test at all?
She closed her eyes. She could almost hear her mother’s voice now.
What is there to test, Mal? You aren’t like me. You’re weak, like your father. You don’t even deserve your own name.
Mal opened her eyes.
Either way, nothing changed the place where they were standing.
Maleficent’s home. Her lair.
Mal was on her mother’s turf now, whether or not she was welcome there. And she knew that whatever happened next was about the two of them, test or not. Quest or not.
Even, Dragon’s Eye or not.
Mal couldn’t shake the feeling that something or someone was watching her; she’d felt it since she left home that morning, and the presence was even stronger in the fortress. But every time she looked over her shoulder there was nothing. Maybe she was just being paranoid.
Past the mirrored hallway, Mal and the others walked through a corridor hung with purple and gold pennants and great tapestries, depicting all the surrounding kingdoms. It was hard to tell one from the next, though, mostly because the dust was so thick. As they walked, they even made tracks across the dusty stones, as if they were instead trudging through hallways of snow.
But on they went.
The corridors bent and twisted, the floor sometimes seeming uneven, the walls angling one way or the other, making them all feel as if they were in a dream or a fun-house or someplace that didn’t really exist.
A fairy tale come to life.
A castle—only, the way castles looked in nightmares.
Every wall and every stone was rendered in shades of gray and black, a faint green glow sometimes seeping through a wedge here and there.
Mother’s home, Mal thought every time she noticed the green light.
The total effect was excruciating for all four of them—even for Mal.
Or, especially for Mal.
The cracked stained glass windows were the only other source of color. The old glass was mostly broken, and sections of the windows lay entirely in ruins, their shards dashed across the floor. Mal and the others had to step carefully to avoid slipping on one of pieces. The long, window-lined corridor gave way to an even taller and wider corridor, and before long, Mal knew they were approaching some place of significance, a great chamber, perhaps even the heart of the castle itself.
Mal walked toward her fate, as Evie had said. Her destiny, if that’s what it was.
Mal could feel it, the now familiar pull toward something unknown, something that perhaps belonged only to her.
It was there in front of her, buzzing and vibrating, just as it had been since the first moment she’d stepped inside the Thorn Forest. It pulled at her, beckoned her, even taunted her.
Come, it said.
Hurry.
This way.
Was it her really destiny calling to her, after all?
Or was it just another failure waiting for her in the throne room? More confirmation that she would never be her mother’s daughter, no matter how hard she tried?
She stopped at a pair of doors twice the height of a grown man.
“This is it. It’s here.”
She looked at Carlos, and he nodded, holding up the box. She saw that he had switched it off some time ago. “We didn’t need it anymore,” he said, looking right at Mal.
Jay nodded to her. Even Evie reached for her hand, squeezing it once before she let it go again.
Mal took a breath. She felt a chill up her spine, and goose bumps all over her arm. “This was Maleficent’s throne room. I’m sure of it now. I can feel it.” She looked up at them. “Does that sound crazy?”
They shook their heads, no.
She pushed open the doors, taking it all in.
The darkness and the power. The shadow and the light. Ceilings as high as the sky, and as black as smoke. Windows spanning whole walls, through which Maleficent could manipulate an entire world.
“Oh,” said Evie involuntarily.
Carlos looked like he wanted to bolt, but he didn’t.
Jay’s eyes flickered across the room as if he were casing the joint.
But Mal felt like she was all alone with the ghosts.
One ghost, in particular.
This was where her mother used to rage and command, where she had shot out of the ceiling as a green ball of fire to curse an entire kingdom. This was her seat of Darkness.
They pushed farther inside, Mal at the front. Carlos and Jay and Evie fell like a phalanx of soldiers behind her, almost in formation.
The black stones beneath their feet were shiny and slick, and the entire room was haunted by an aura of deep malevolence. Mal could feel it; they all could.
This had been a sad, angry, and unhappy home. Even now, the pain of that time burned its way through Mal, deep into her bones.
She shivered.
There was an empty place in the middle of the room where her mother’s throne used to be. It had sat upon a great dais, flanked by two curving sets of stairs. The room was round and ringed with columns.
A great arc cradled the place where the throne had once sat, guarding an empty spot. The tattered remains of purple tapestries moldered on the walls.
“There’s nothing left,” Mal said, kneeling on the one dark spot that no longer held a throne. “It’s all gone.”
“You all right?” asked Jay, who was nervously blowing on his hands to warm them.
She nodded. “It’s…” she faltered, unable to find the words to describe what she was feeling. She had listened to all her mother’s stories, but she didn’t think they were real.
Not until now.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He shrugged, and she realized he’d probably felt the same way when they were in the Cave of Wonders. Mal knew Jafar and Iago talked about it all the time, but it was hard to imagine, hard to picture a world beyond what they knew of the Isle.
It had been, anyway.
Now everything was different.
Jay sighed. “It’s all real, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Mal nodded. “Every last page of every last story.” Even the curse, she thought, for the first time in hours.
The curse.
Someone has to touch it.
Evie has to touch it, and sleep for a thousand years.
“So, where is it?” Carlos asked, looking around the cold stone room.
“It has to be here somewhere,” said Evie, turning to look behind her.
“Maybe we should split up,” Jay said, a glint in his eye.
“Think,” Mal said. “My mother was never without it. She held it even as she sat upon her throne.” Mal moved back to the spot where the throne no longer stood. “Here.”
“So where would it be now?” Carlos frowned.
“It wouldn’t be where anyone else could touch it,” Evie said. “Try asking my mother if she’ll let you touch any of her own Miss Fairest Everything memorabilia.”
Mal flinched at the word touch.
The curse was waiting for all of them—or at least, one of them—just as the Dragon’s Eye was.
“But she’d want to see it, of course. From her throne,” Jay said. Mal nodded; they’d all seen Jafar orient himself in his kitchen, directly behind his stack of coins.
“Which would be—” Mal spun slowly around. She could picture her mother sitting here, clutching the staff, feeling powerful and evil and well, like herself as she reigned over the kingdom.
She shook her head.
My mother would have no problem cursing any of the people in this room for ten thousand years, let alone one.
“There. Look!” cried Evie, spotting a tall black staff with a dim green globe at its top against the far wall.
It was, just as they had predicted, exactly in Mal’s line of vision from the missing throne, but raised by some sort of magical light a good twelve feet into the air. Far out of the hands of any interlopers—and yes, where it could not be touched.
Of course.
There it was.
It’s really here. The most powerful weapon of all Darkness.
Evil lives! indeed.
“It’s right here!” Evie was closest to it and reached for it eagerly.
She shot her hand up into the air, extending her fingers. The moment she did, the Dragon’s Eye began to shake, as if something about Mal herself was prying it loose from the very light and air that bound it.
Evie smiled. “I’ve got it—”
Mal saw Evie’s hand curl toward it, almost in slow motion. The scepter itself seemed to glow, as if it were beckoning Evie toward it.
Everything around Mal seemed to blur until she could only see Evie’s small, delicate fingers and the bewitched Dragon’s Eye, just beyond her grasp.
In a split second Mal had to make the decision: could she let Evie touch it and be cursed into a deep, death-like sleep for a thousand years?
Or would she save her?
Stop her?
Do something…good?
While betraying her own mother’s wishes, and giving up on her own dream of becoming something more than a disappointment?
Was she content to remain only a Mal her entire life?
Never a Maleficent?
She froze, unable to decide.
“No!” cried Mal finally, running toward Evie. “Don’t!”
What just happened? What was she doing? Why couldn’t she stop herself?
“What?” asked Evie, shocked, just as a familiar voice boomed from the Dragon’s Eye.
“WHOEVER AWAKENS THE DRAGON WILL BE CURSED TO SLEEP FOR A THOUSAND YEARS!”
Maleficent’s voice was coming from the staff even now, echoing and reverberating around the room.
Her mother really had left an impression behind her. What remained of her power and her energy crackled off the walls of the room, sparked to life by one accidental moment and latent until now, when it had victims to torture.
Evie’s fingers brushed the air next to the staff.
While Mal’s hand closed upon it, and when it did…
She fell to the floor, asleep.
Mal blinked her eyes. She could see herself lying on the floor of the throne room, purple hair spilling out like a stain beneath her head.
Her three companions huddled nervously around her.
So I’m sleeping, then? Or am I awake? Or maybe I’m dreaming?
Because Mal knew she was seeing something else as well.
She wasn’t in the Forbidden Fortress anymore.
She was in a palace, and there was good King Stefan and his queen and a baby in a cradle.
They were happy. She could see by the light in their faces, and by the way their eyes never left the child.
Almost like a magnet, Mal thought. I know how that pull feels.
A huge, gaily-dressed crowd of courtiers and servants and guests assembled in a beautiful throne room around them. There were two good fairies hovering above the cradle, their wands making beautiful sparkles in the air. It was all so sweet, it was sickening.
Mal had never seen anything like it, not up close like this. Not in some kind of insipid storybook.
What is this?
Why am I seeing this?
Then a green ball of fire appeared in the middle of the room, and when it dispersed, Mal saw a familiar face.
Her mother.
Tall, haughty, beautiful, and scorned. Maleficent was angry. Mal could feel the cold heat rising from her very being. She stared at her mother.
Maleficent addressed the crowd gathered around the royal family.
“Ah, I see everyone has been invited. The royalty, nobility, the gentry, and the rabble. I must say, I really felt quite distressed at not receiving an invitation.”
What was her mother talking about? Then Mal realized. Maleficent had not been invited to Aurora’s christening. Mal had never known this was the reason her mother hated parties and celebrations of all kinds.
But she knew exactly how her mother felt.
The hurt.
The shame.
The anger.
The desire for revenge.
Mal had felt exactly the same thing, hadn’t she? When Evil Queen had thrown her party for Evie, all those years ago and kept her out?
Mal watched as her mother cursed the baby Princess Aurora to sleep a hundred years if she pricked her finger even once on a spindle. It was some fine spellcraft, and Mal was proud of her mother’s efficiency, her power, her simple rendering. One prick of one finger could bring an entire royal house crashing down. It was a beautiful, terrible destiny. Well-woven. Deeply felt.
Mal was proud of Maleficent. She always had been, and she always would be. Maleficent had raised her daughter alone, and gotten by as best she could. If only because there was no one else to do it.
But her mother was made for Evil; she was good at it.
And in that very moment, and for the very first time, Mal finally understood that it wasn’t just pride that she felt. It was pity. Maybe even compassion.
She was sad for her mother—and that was something new.
The crowd saw a monster, a terror, a devil, a witch, cursing a beautiful princess. But Mal saw only a hurt little girl, acting out of spite and anger and insecurity.
She wanted to reach out and tell Maleficent it would be all right. She wasn’t sure it was true, but they’d somehow gotten along this far, hadn’t they?
It’ll be all right, Mother.
She had to tell her.
But she woke up before she could.
Mal blinked her eyes open. She was in the throne room at the Forbidden Fortress. Jay, Carlos, and Evie were standing around her nervously.
When she had fallen asleep she had been holding the Dragon’s Eye scepter in her hand. But when she woke up, it was nowhere to be seen.