Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Audrey had been blessed young.

Blessed in the classic ways, because her parents loved her. Blessed, because she had food and a roof over her head (and not just a roof—a castle) and running water and everything she needed. Blessed, because she’d always known who she’d end up with, who she’d love, because she’d met them when they were so young. Blessed, because someone had put magic in her veins and a princess’s crown on her head, and she hadn’t even had to do anything for it.

And she’d also been blessed in secret ways—in stolen moments, hidden and treasured and remembered forever (for comparison’s sake, so she could remember what was real)—because she’d had a friend that nobody knew about.

But she’d been blessed young.

And blessings fade.

Eleven Years Ago

They move to Auradon Palace when she’s five. 

The Roses have their own castle, of course—two, actually: Winter and Summer—but the reasons are political and beyond her comprehension. 

(Later, it’ll make sense to her, when she understands why her mother had given away their sovereignty to become the first state in the United States of Auradon. Later, she’ll understand the delicate balance of power between those who have no power at all. Later, she will learn about Louis XIV and why he kept his aristocrats so very, very close.

Later is not now.)

All she catches of the conflict are snippets: she is still a princess, and her grandmother is still a Queen, but those are the only constants. First they’re part of a different kingdom, then the same one as the King. First, they have power, then they’re the right hand to someone else’s. First, the politics and the people and the names are simple, but soon, everything changes. Soon, the foreign palace bustles around her, and all of her friends—the children of lesser nobles, the servants that she’d befriended, the cook’s niece—are all gone. The new children are those of the other nobles, and they’re kept entirely out of her sight ( every encounter between families is carefully plotted out and manipulated to maximize alliances, deals, power. But this goes over her head) , and worse of all, nobody speaks French.

It’s worth noting that she doesn’t speak English, not yet. The Beasts, their neighbors, also speak French, but as mentioned, she doesn’t see them. (She’s told she’d met Ben when they were babies. But she doesn’t remember it, and so it doesn’t count.)

So she is alone in the palace, and her English is faltering and broken, and there isn’t a soul to talk to. 

And worst of all, she can’t sleep.

To anyone who doesn’t know her, it makes sense vaguely: if a mother had slept for far too long, the daughter having chronic insomnia to make up the difference evened the scales, sort of. 

To anyone who does know her and her family, it makes even more sense: waking up after a century, with a country a forgotten ruin—all prestige gone, all connections and family dead—has its consequences. No one in her family sleeps well, because the last time they had, they’d lost everything. 

(No wonder her mother had married the man who’d kissed her awake without a second thought, no wonder she’d been so eager to merge their kingdoms together, and no wonder she’d been willing to merge with Auradon soon after that. They’d had to rebuild somehow.)

Her mother and father train themselves to go to sleep, but Audrey’s an insomniac. They teach her to lie in her bed and stare at the ceiling—“bore yourself to sleep,” her mother advises—but she’s always been a curious child, and that curiosity leads her out of her bed and into the night the moment that she can walk.

At first, the guards catch her. But she’s a small child in a massive palace filled with high-maintenance royals and constant revelry. The moment she figures out how to walk silently, how to creep through shadows, she stops bumping into them.

Which is really a problem for Auradon security.

Because Audrey isn’t the only child wandering the halls at night.

It is close to midnight when she makes her first friend, and she is in the garden, crouched beside a set of flowering bushes, right next to a rock wall. She’s holding a flower in her hands, pulling away the petals one by one when rustling nearby sends her ducking behind the bush.

“I see you,” a high-pitched voice pipes up, nearby.

Audrey remains silent, hoping they’ll go away. Instead, footsteps only come closer. One scuffed boot falls into her line of vision, then another, before green eyes meet her own.

“What are you doing?” the girl asks. Her words wash over Audrey, unintelligible.

“Vous parlez français ?” Audrey asks, desperately. Do you speak French?

And, shockingly, the girl nods. “ Ouai.” At Audrey’s frown, she formalizes: “oui.”

Immediately, Audrey sits up, words flowing out of her: “ah mon dieu, j’espérais qu’un autre personne qui parle français vivait à cet endroit, je commençais à penser que tout le monde ne parle que l’anglais— " Oh my god, I was hoping that another person who speaks French lived in this place, I was starting to think that everyone only speaks English—

“Je n’habite pas ici,” the girl interrupts. I don’t live here. “J’habite…”—and her eyes flick towards the rock wall— “sur une voisine île.” I live on a neighboring isle.

Audrey pauses, the little court training kicking into her brain, as she takes in the girl’s clothes. “Mais — est-ce que vous êtes dans la royauté ?” But are you a royal?

The girl considers. “Ma mère est la reine d’un pays oublié. ” My mother is the queen of a forgotten country. And here, she doesn’t really know which country she’s referring to: the Moors, the Isle of the Lost, some metaphorical elsewhere. But it still works.

And Audrey laughs. “C’est drôle—le mien aussi.” That’s funny—mine too .   “ Qu’est-ce que votre nom ?” What’s your name?

“Je m'appelle Mal,” the stranger girl says. My name is Mal .

At that, Audrey curtsies, just like she’s supposed to. “Je suis Audrey.”

And Mal, after a pause, gives her a very stiff bow. “Enchantée.” Charmed.

They linger for a little while, talking, before they part ways. The next day, Audrey looks for her at court, but Mal is absent—only to reappear again in the garden the next night. They speak in French, getting to know each other a little more, and Mal disappears again before the sun comes up. 

They meet again and again and again, Mal offering to teach her English, and Audrey, after a pause, accepting. She tells Mal all about herself—her days, her life, her family—in stammered phrases of English interspersed with the odd word or two of French. Mal never offers anything personal in return, and so Audrey begins to wonder if the insomnia is taking a toll, if Mal is an imaginary friend that her mind has created to ease the loneliness. 

But Mal’s hands are warm, and her English tips are helpful, and her clothes are strange enough that Audrey could never come up with them, and together these things convince her that the girl is real. 

It is only after Mal comes to one of their meetings with a string of bruises decorating her jaw that Audrey finally gets a piece of her story: an abusive mother, with impossibly high standards. That’s all she gets, though—everything else remains a mystery, and every time she tries to push, Mal just eludes her: again and again and again.

A few months in, Audrey begins to bring her gifts, baubles and bits of gold, which Mal always refuses, saying that it’ll get stolen if she takes it home. Still, the girl feels the need to reciprocate, and so she brings Audrey tidbits of her forgotten country: a crumpled-up poster, a stolen sign from a store, a piece of a beer bottle that the sea had smoothed into perfection with a little hole drilled into it to form a necklace. Mal presents them almost shame-facedly, but they are pieces of a world that Audrey is determined to learn more about, and so she treasures everything.

They grow closer. They wander down hallways, share secrets, count stars. When winter comes, they sneak into the kitchens and pack Mal bags of food to take to her friends and family (Audrey doesn’t question the need, is just glad to provide something that’s useful. And so she’s the reason that Mal and twenty other street urchins survive the winter) . On New Year’s Day, they give each other gifts. Audrey gives Mal a little necklace that she’d made herself—homemade jewelry is the only kind that Mal accepts, and Audrey loves jewelry. It’s a simple leather cord knotted carefully around a small, polished wishbone. Mal, in turn, whispers the name of her country into Audrey’s ear when asked: The Isle of the Lost . At this point, the name means nothing to Audrey, but she savors the gift anyway, tucking it away like every tidbit that she gets from Mal. 

Another year passes and soon there are hardly any secrets between them at all. Mal knows everything that happens to Audrey, and while most of Mal’s home life is blurry—for example, Audrey knows that Mal’s parents are royals of a sort, but she doesn’t know their names—Audrey collects more and more pieces of it. They trade and give each other secrets and stories constantly: when Audrey, at seven, feels the tiniest rush of power inside her, Mal is the first person she tells. And when Mal’s father gives her that vial of poison, she goes right to Audrey and together the two of them try and figure out what exactly it means for her: her life, her future. (Their future.)

“It’ll kill you,” Audrey says, looking at the black vial.

“But it won’t,” Mal says, thinking back to her father’s words. “Just the fae part.”

Audrey stares. “But you are fae—”

“If I took it, I’d be free.”

Audrey swallows. “Aren’t you free?” And when Mal shakes her head: “then just stay here. Don’t go back there.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because—” Mal blows out a breath. “When I was little, my mother made me Promise her things. That I would never leave her. That I’d serve her, eternally. And because I’m fae, Promises are binding.” She weighs the poison in her hand. “If I took this, it’d get rid of the fae part. I wouldn’t have to obey her.”

“But it would kill you,” Audrey says again.

“Just the mortal half.”

“But that’s—” Audrey stops. “That’s who you are .” She looks at Mal. “You’d be different, you’d be dead, everything that makes you you would be gone —” She stops again, unsure how to verbalize what she instinctively knows. “Just—please don’t die.”

Mal blows out a breath. 

But she puts the poison back into her pocket.

They turn eight and she meets Chad and it’s love at first sight, the kind of true, foolish, childish love that’s made out of them simply being in the same sitting room at the same time and him offering her a slightly melted chocolate from his pocket, one that he’d stolen from the kitchen, without a moment’s hesitation. (They weren’t supposed to meet yet. It was a scheduling mishap, a double-booking, an odd glitch in the system, and it changes Audrey’s life forever.)  

He’d been in there to build some sort of model airplane, and she’d brought her dolls, and when the servants politely try to separate them from each other (they’ve been told not to let her meet other people, wary of the Roses accidentally making bad alliances through children) , Audrey pulls the trump card she’d recently discovered and declares that she’ll fire both of them if they don’t let her and—and—this boy (“Chad,” he volunteers, from the other side of the room) meet properly.

And just like that, they’re left alone.

“Do you—do you want to play together?” she asks almost shyly, hoping that she’s pronouncing all of the words right. She’s fluent in English by now, but he’s the first Auradonian boy her age that she’s met—she doesn’t know who he is, not yet—and she wants to get this right. She’s relieved when he nods, but the relief dissipates when she holds up a doll and his nose wrinkles.

“Boys don’t play with dolls,” he tells her, before holding up his own kit. “Do you want to do this?”

“What is it?” Audrey asks.

He shrugs. “I don’t even know—my dad’s assistant got it for me.”

They try it out, but the pieces are weird and the instructions are complicated—and they’ve only just learned how to read—and one thing leads to another and they start playing house instead, building a fort out of couch cushions.

“I’m King!” Chad immediately shouts when they’re done, throwing himself atop a throne made of throw pillows. He only lies down for a moment before jumping up again, building a second throne. 

“Will you be my Queen?” he asks Audrey, extending a hand.

“I’m a princess,” she giggles.

“Well, marry me and you’ll be a Queen,” he declares, grabbing her hand and spinning her around in circles before abruptly sinking to one knee. From his pocket, he pulls out a foil chocolate wrapper and carefully knots it into a loop before thrusting it out to her, exuberant and slightly bossy and hopeful (just like she is) . He beams even more when she shouts yes , when she lets him slide the ring onto her finger.

“We’re married!” Chad declares, rising only for Audrey to stop him in place, because she knows her rights, and they’ve skipped over the best part:

“Chad,” she tells him, serious as the grave. “We’re having a wedding.”

They don’t have an aisle or a church, but they do the best they can, Chad eagerly following every direction she throws his way, having no clue what wedding planning entails and knowing—after she’d told him, three times—that this was something she’d been taught from birth to do.

They don’t have a cake, so he piles the mountains of chocolate from his pockets onto a little table. They don’t have an aisle or seating, but they push chairs together into little rows and fold up the carpet into a neat line for her to walk down. They don’t have a diamond ring, so Chad rips up the instructions more to make her a second one. They don’t have a wedding dress—hers is pink, not white—and she’s surprised when he matter-of-factly punctures one of the couch cushions with a pair of scissors and showers them over her head, sticking handfuls of them to her clothes with the wood glue in the airplane model kit after they begin to drift away.

Chad waits patiently by their castle as she walks down the aisle to him, fake-bouquet (the rest of the airplane instructions) clasped in her hands. When she kisses him—because it’s required , she informs him—his lips taste like chocolate and normal human boy. She tosses her bouquet away without looking (it sails out the open castle window and hits the gardener on the head, but superstition sometimes works out, because he’s married within two weeks) , and then she lets Chad lead her inside their castle.  

It’s her first marriage, and it’s perfect. (Not her favorite, of course, but that would come later. Because there was no way in Hell that Evie wasn’t going to have a wedding.) Afterwards, they rule their fictional kingdom from inside the castle. The dolls become their children, and they do kingly and queenly stuff together—neither of them have any idea what such things entail, but they use their imaginations. When the castle walls begin to buckle, they add more pillows to the fort. Audrey trails feathers everywhere, and Chad draws their fictional family tree on the wall, and they eat chocolate until they’re sick. They make up imaginary games where they have to save the world, where they hunt for lost treasure and mythical creatures and undiscovered countries. Most often, they pretend that Audrey’s been kidnapped by a dragon. Chad rescues her again and again as she giggles, feigning helplessness while standing atop a teetering couch cushion. 

When one of Audrey’s governesses comes looking for her (Merriweather, this time) the fairy finds the two of them in a room that’s been utterly destroyed—couch cushions shredded or glued into place, scrabbly writing covering the walls, foil wrappers dotting the carpet—with her charge perched neatly atop the mess, looking like a deformed chicken next to a boy whose mouth is smeared in chocolate.

This is who will be running my country in eight years , Merriweather thinks. Fuck .

And then: Well, Aurora was just as bad.

The boy scrambles off the cushion fort and skids to a halt in front of her, giving her a short bow and presenting a hand smeared with chocolate and wood glue. “Hello, ma’am. Chad Charming. Prince.”

“He’s my husband,” Audrey adds for clarification, carefully sliding off the pillow fort.

I am screwed , Merriweather thinks. I am totally and utterly screwed .

But she shakes Chad’s hand anyway—“lovely to meet you, young man”—and turns back to Audrey, plastering a smile on her face as she wipes her hand clean behind her back.

“Well,” she says, “let’s clean all of this up, shall we?”

Her parents are astonished. Furious, even, that she’s started relations with a different house—a house lower than them, one that it’s not politically advantageous to associate with (Charmaine had only just joined the States, you see. It was powerful, but it was also so new ) . The Charmings are politely gleeful, sending over a massive box of local delicacies from their state with a handwritten note, saying that they were so very glad Audrey had enjoyed her time with Chad and would they like to see each other again soon?

“They did this on purpose,” hisses Audrey’s grandmother that night, over dinner. She sits at the head of the table—Audrey’s father on her right, Audrey’s mother on the left—her ebony eyes shadowed and furious. “I bet they knew the room was booked and just snuck him in. Horrible, scheming wretches.”

“It could be worse,” her father mumbles. “They’re very wealthy, and they’ve got close ties to the royal family.”

“Yes,” her grandmother hisses. “Through the king’s son . And then they did the same  thing to us .” She slices a piece of roasted elk in half, elegantly. “Audrey won’t be seeing him anymore. We’ll cut the connection off, politely.”

“The prince likes Charming's son quite a lot,” Fauna comments from the corner, where she stands behind Audrey. “They play together often.”

Audrey’s grandmother looks up. “But he’s such a new addition—wouldn’t the king prefer his son to friends with Aladdin’s boy, perhaps, or—”

“His mother is giving him free choice,” Aurora sniffs. “The prince has free reign of the castle. Something about creating unity .” She takes a sip of water. “The Charmings are also very wealthy. Which can’t hurt.”

Audrey’s grandmother considers. “Well, if that’s true—perhaps a meeting with the Charming brat wouldn’t hurt. If Ben happens to also attend it.” She hums, under her breath. “I know the betrothal to him is expected, but we need to get it settled now , before any other house becomes powerful enough to swoop in and take it from us.”

“They wouldn’t,” her son-in-law counters. “We were the first nation to willingly join the Beasts when they started on their crusade. Without us, there wouldn’t have been a war , much less a country made of an entire conquered continent, nobody would’ve joined them if we hadn’t—”

“Phillip,” interrupts his wife, gently. “We know. We were there.”

“Still,” he insists. “It’s set.”

“No,” Aurora counters. “It isn’t.” Her eyes go dreamy for a second as she tries to imagine it. “If I were the Beasts,” she muses, “perhaps I’d start seeking outside Auradon. To one of the holdout countries—Wonderland, perhaps? Do they have a daughter?”

Audrey’s grandmother shakes her head. “We lost against them in the war all of twelve years ago. Things are still too rocky.”

“That’s nothing that diplomatic relations can’t fix,” Audrey’s mother insists. “Diplomatic relations like marriage .”

Audrey’s grandmother purses her lips. “The Queen of Hearts is uninterested in diplomatic relations.”

“She may be in a few years, when she has a daughter to dispose of.”

“Have you heard none of Ella’s stories? She’s too stubborn to admit that she needs Auradon’s help.” Audrey’s grandmother shook her head. “No. It’ll be one of Auradon’s states, a noble House, that gets him. And he’s eight now—a lot can change by the time he’s eighteen and of marriageable age. Another House could one-up us. Which is why we need to get the betrothal done now , and get Audrey in his life as soon as possible.”

“They’re keeping the prince isolated,” Fauna volunteers again.

“Of course they are,” Aurora mutters. “Adam’s busy with statework, but Belle’s not dumb. She knows exactly what we’re up to.” She looks at her daughter almost fondly, as if Audrey is a prize mare that they’re raising to sell. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll get this little princess up and married before anyone can blink.”

“I got married today,” Audrey declares.

The room goes dead silent. 

“To Chad,” she adds.

Behind her, she hears Fauna gulp.

“I beg ,” her grandmother hisses, voice cold as a winter night, “ your pardon ?”

“I got married to Chad,” Audrey says again. “He gave me chocolate, and we played house, and he made me his queen and I told him we had to get married to do that, so we did. There were flowers and we made an aisle and a dress and he kissed me.”

“Good Lord,” Leah—her grandmother—mutters. “If they propose betrothing you to him , I swear—”

But next to her, Philip sets down his fork and knife, carefully. She hears the clink on china. 

“A kiss ,” he says, hoarsely. 

“My first,” Audrey adds, happily.

“Her first ,” Philip echoes, hoarsely. His eyes go to Aurora. “Does she know?”

Her mother’s eyes snap to her. “She’s eight . Why would I tell her?”

“And then she said,” Audrey recounts to Mal, later that night, “that I have a gift, because my mom has a gift, because she was asleep for a hundred years.”

They’re at Auradon’s Royal Beach, and Mal leans forward in the dark, green eyes glowing with interest. “What’s your gift?”

“You know the story, right?” Audrey asks. “Maleficent—she’s this evil fairy—”

“Fae,” Mal corrects, unable to hold herself back. “Fairy is a slur. Maleficent’s fae. A dark fae.”

Audrey turns. “You know about her? My mom won’t tell me anything, she says I have to wait ‘til I’m older.”

Mal pauses. “I mean. Only what I’ve heard other people say.”

Audrey deflates. “Oh. Never mind, then. Anyway, she cursed my mom to die, but then another fair— fae —was able to change that curse, by just putting her and all her kingdom to sleep instead, for eternity. Except that if someone gave my mom true love’s kiss, then my mom and all the kingdom would wake up.” 

Mal nods. “I remember.” (Of course she does; it’s the first story she was ever told. But she’ll never tell Audrey that).

Audrey looks vaguely flattered. She continues: “But magic, fae magic, doesn’t just work like that. To give something—like waking up—to a person, that something has to come from somewhere. So to wake my mom up, that being awake had to come from another source. And true love’s kiss was the connection that allowed my mom, subconsciously, to grab for that sense of being awake and take it from the person—her true love—while they were kissing. So anytime my mom kisses her true love, she either takes something from him or gives something to him through the kiss, anything she wants. And because I’m her daughter, they think I can do it, too.”

Mal stares at her, wide-eyed—both from the sheer comedy of a human telling her what fae magic is like (when she’s currently bound by it, and one of its more annoying facets) and from the news she’s just heard.

“But the boy you kissed today, Chad—did you do it to him?”

Audrey pauses. “I don’t know. I’ve never kissed anyone before.” She thinks. Evaluates herself, checks to see if she feels anything new, or different. “I didn’t take anything from him, I don’t think, but—but—besides, it’s not like he’s going to be my true love.”

“But did you give him anything?” Mal presses.

Audrey thinks back to the moment again. The kiss had felt sugar-sweet, he’d put his lips to hers, awkwardly, and she’d pressed back—

She’d pressed.

Not literally. Subconsciously, with something she hadn’t even known that she’d had, she’d given him something, what was it—

Joy.

She’d given him a haze of what she’d felt in the moment, the gleeful joy of playing pretend with another human being.

(She won’t realize now, the control that this gives her over people she cares about. Over people who care about her. But she’ll realize, later. No wonder he was so pliable.)

“True love,” she concludes. “He’s my true love.” And then, with a glance at Mal: “my parents don’t want me to marry him.”

“Who do they want you to marry?”

“The prince.”

“Which prince—”

“The prince of all Auradon , the Prince. Ben. Prince Ben.” 

Mal exhales, digesting that this is something that’s on the table for Audrey and her bright future—a future that’s so, so different from Mal’s. “Oh.” 

And then, matter-of-factly: “well, maybe he’s your true love, too.”

Audrey frowns. “You can’t have more than one true love.”

Mal laughs. “Yes, you can. If it’s fae magic, you definitely can, because the fae are poly as all fuck .” 

Audrey frowns. “What’s fuck ?”

Mal pauses. For a moment, she’s forgotten that swear words aren’t a part of Audrey’s world. “Just slang. Nevermind. Nothing—anyway, it’s possible to have more than one, trust me.”

Audrey purses her lips. “But how will I know Ben is or isn’t my true love if the only person I’ve kissed is ?” She thinks, lands on a solution, because girls only like boys: “can I kiss you?”

Mal freezes. “Um.”

(From Audrey’s eyes, there’s nothing visible except for a slight furrow in Mal’s brow. Inside Mal’s head though, her mind is whirring, desperately trying to figure out the difference between an Isle kiss and an Auradon one. Because on the Isle, if you didn’t have the money or influence to have a color or crest for people to recognize, you kissed people to claim them, to mark them as yours and your property . Mothers kissed their toddlers’ foreheads in public, glaring fiercely to warn away predators. Teenagers walked around with hickeys on their necks, marks that declared mine mine mine from whoever—a friend they could claim protection from, their crew’s leader, their employer—they were owned by. A kiss showed that you were already taken, deterring rapists or thugs by letting them know that you weren’t up for grabs to touch, that if they violated that rule someone else—someone worse —would come to hurt them. And it showed consent, too, because such marks could easily be hidden or wiped away. Displaying a kiss meant that you were willing to claim protection from someone. That you were willing to be owned or in a bargain or whatever the fuck it was. Mal was well-known enough to not need her mother to kiss her on the cheek in public—not that Maleficent would’ve done it, anyway, lazy bitch—but Mal had stolen lipstick for the first time to use for Carlos. The boy would walk around with a purple lipstick mark on his cheek for the next three years, until Mal had the influence to make her own crest to sew on his clothes.) 

Mal stares at Audrey, certain that Isle kisses are nothing like Auradon ones. Still, her body rebels at the idea of anyone claiming her in that way, even if Audrey wouldn’t do it with that intent. (She is Mal , and she will not let anyone lay claim to her and own her, not when she’s already her mother’s slave.)

The other way, though—the daughter of her enemy, intrinsically hers in some eternal, Isle way—is interesting.

So she nods, says, “sure,” in a steady, casual way, and makes sure she leans in first. Her lips brush the princess’s, and it’s done. The immortal part of her sings out mine mine mine , softly, and she has to remind herself that by Isle law, the kiss means nothing unless Audrey consents to be hers. Still, though: it’s done.

Only it isn’t. Because as her lips leave Audrey’s—as if they were ever really there, Auradon kisses are so modest—she gets a flash of something.

The girl in front of her and a blonde boy, giggling together in a pillow fort.

“That fort you made,” she asks, softly. “Was it in the shape of a castle?”

And Audrey freezes. “Did I—did I give you something?”

(The unspoken question beneath it: are you also my true love?)

And Mal answers: “I think so.” She thinks of the flash of movement again. “Was that Chad?”

“Earlier today, we were playing,” Audrey mumbles. Her eyes lift up to Mal’s. “I gave you a memory?”

“I think so.” Mal offers her lips again. “Do you want it back?”

A girl. A girl is offering to kiss me. A girl whom I’m supposed to love is offering to kiss me . 

“No!” Audrey blurts out. “Just—just keep it.” And then: “it was only a little thing. I have the rest.”

(She can be mine just a little bit, Mal decides. Not fully, not without consent. But just enough so I have a reason to protect her. If she’s my true love, I should do that.)

“Okay,” she says. 

Silence wafts around them: the quiet of two girls with endless questions, the hush that comes from being afraid to ask them.

Eventually, Audrey breaks it. “So that was what happened to me today. What about you?”

“Well…” Mal’s brain skims through the myriad of things that happened to her today, searching for one that’s bloodless enough to share with Audrey. The princess is more fragile than she seems, and Mal doesn’t want to give her nightmares.

There’s nothing, really. Plenty of things have happened, but most of it was sad, and even more of it was bloody, and all of it was ugly. And Auradon is such a beautiful place. She comes here to leave the Isle, however briefly she can. She doesn’t want to bring it with her.

“Nothing really happened,” she says. And when Audrey shoots her a look she amends, censoring events: “my friend Carlos and I went for a walk.” (They sprinted over a roof while Captain Hook chased after them, drunk and angry and convinced they’d stolen his wallet.)

“It had some great views,” Mal adds. “Really great.”

Audrey looks at her, trying to figure out what she’s hiding. When Mal gives her nothing, she lets it go: “that sounds nice.”

She scoops her hand through the sand, throwing it away from them as a gust of wind sweeps the beach. Together, she and Mal watch as the sand hits the ocean, disappearing completely. 

Then suddenly, Mal is unzipping her leather jacket, unlacing her boots, and running headlong at the ocean. She doesn’t dive in—she’s told Audrey before: she can’t swim—but she sprints through the shallows heedlessly, just daring the current to sweep her out to sea. 

“Come on!” she hollers at Audrey. “Come on!”

Audrey giggles. “Why?”

“Why not!” comes the answering shout. 

When Audrey still doesn’t move, Mal comes racing at her. Her hair is damp and sticking to her head, her ripped pants are dripping, and her smile is magnificent. She grabs Audrey’s hand and pulls her forward, smirking like a breathless maniac. This late (early?) at night, there’s no way she can really see the ocean, and so she’s getting high off the adrenaline of running face first into something completely unknown.

“Come on!” Mal shouts again, and this time Audrey beams and lets Mal drag her out to sea.

The water is warm, lapping at their waist and making her leggings damp and her dress cling to her, but it’s exhilarating , being out here where she’s not supposed to be, doing things she shouldn’t.

She giggles, and then it turns into a full laugh, belly-deep and not princessey at all, and then she doesn’t care anymore about etiquette, because Mal is laughing with her.

She watches Mal in awe, the night turning her into a million shades of black and white and grey, with eyes that flicker bright green every so often. Every shade, every fragment of the girl in this moment is open, carefree, unguarded, innocent in a way that she suspects Mal can’t be anywhere else. 

It’s beautiful.

That night, after forcing Mal to dry herself off a little with towels from their wing of the palace, she walks the girl back to the gardens, Mal zipping back up her jacket as the sun begins to rise. 

This time, the girl finally shows her the secret passageway she uses to get from wherever she lives—Audrey still doesn’t really know what The Isle of the Lost is, because adults keep dodging the question when she asks—to Auradon Palace.

She hugs Audrey goodbye before she goes, their usual ritual, then turns to leave. She pauses, just on the threshold, and turns back.

“I’m glad that I found you,” she says. “Here. In the garden. Years ago.”

(It’s the first time she ever says it. It’s also the last. For separate reasons.)

Audrey opens her mouth, about to reciprocate Mal’s rare sentimentality with her own, before she sees the look in Mal’s eyes: don’t make a big deal out of this . This moment is a gift, given to Audrey in the language that she most understands, and so it’s now Audrey’s turn to give her something, in the language that Mal prefers to use.

So Audrey smirks, forming her smile like Mal’s, piecing it together out of emotions that Mal will pretend she doesn’t notice, doesn’t feel. A pretty, vicious little mask. 

“I’m just glad you spoke French,” she says.

Mal snorts, loving and rueful, her hair still wet from the sea. “I’ll see you next time.”

And then she is turning and running away, towards the world that Audrey doesn’t know, not looking back once. She doesn’t have to. 

Audrey knows she’s coming back.

When she turns ten, she is taken to see the Looking Glass for the first time. (Most parents wait until their kids are at least twelve, prolonging innocence and the inevitable until their children can be trusted to handle it. The Roses, however, have never prized innocence. And hidden inside the world “inevitable” is the world able . As in, able , now .)  

“During the war, the Rose House acquired the small island of Neverland,” Audrey’s mother tells her. “In its aftermath, there were many prisoners. We saw the need, and we offered to have the prison built on our land, receiving tax payments from the Auradon crown to support the prison and regulate it as Auradon saw fit.”

“Thanks to our careful planning and regulation of the prison,” her father adds, “we are now the wealthiest House in Auradon’s nobility.” His tone goes soft with pride. “This is our family legacy.”

He waves a hand at the Looking Glass, and the mirror’s reflective surface goes cloudy, then clearing to reveal a small island floating in the middle of the ocean. The shot gets closer and closer, zooming through a magical barrier to reveal dirty streets and people—oh gods. The people.

The people are dirty and haggard and look starved to the bone. And their eyes. Some glitter with malice, but most are simply empty and drained.

“Light,” she whispers, and then looks to her mother. “Why—why are you showing me this?”

Her mother’s brow creases—a rare sight. “You’ve asked to see the Isle of the Lost for five years now.”

The Isle of the Lost . The name hits her like a brick. Mal’s forgotten kingdom—this sick place, this dirty, polluted prison.

Mal lives here?

Audrey’s father glances at her, mistaking her distress for something else. He squeezes her shoulder, gently. “You remember our enemy, right honey?”

“Maleficent,” Audrey murmurs, whispering the name like the curse that it is.

“Right.” He kneels next to her. “Well, your daddy caught Maleficent. For you. So she couldn’t hurt any more kids, ever again.” He indicates the mirror. “And he put her in there, so she could suffer for her crimes, forever. A proper punishment, for the harm she caused this family.”

“She’s on the Isle?” Audrey whispers. And she thinks. Mal is on the Isle . Mal lives in the same place as the evilest woman in the world .

“Ask the mirror,” her mother urges. “Say, show me …”

Audrey clears her throat. “Show me Maleficent.”

And the scene dissolves, morphing into a woman in a raggedy black cloak, hunched over a torn-up armchair in a grimy kitchen. The chair, judging from its tall back, is meant to be a throne, and the kitchen a sort of throne room. Two shifty-looking men, who Audrey assumes are guards, flank her, and the whole scene is clearly supposed to be majestic, given their circumstances. 

It doesn’t, though. It just looks sad. And Maleficent, picking at her nails on that chair, clearly knows it. She doesn’t look sad, though. She looks angry.

And then the door opens. And Audrey watches, heart thumping in her chest, as Mal steps into the room.

Maleficent reclines back in her armchair. “Did you get it?”

Mal, bleeding in at least six places, shakes her head, shame-faced. “Too many people on the barge.”

“Excuses,” Maleficent hisses.

“I’m small, if I had more people, then maybe—”

“ EXCUSES !” Maleficent picks up the nearest available object—a dented cup—and throws it at her daughter. Mal doesn’t dodge the blow, instead catching the cup after it hits her and setting it carefully on a nearby shelf. 

Maleficent stares at her expectantly. Mal says nothing.

“You are bound to obey me,” the fae snarls. “If I tell you to do something, you do it .”

“I can try to find out who had it, steal it from them—”

“If you are here , you failed doing that already.”

Mal is silent again. 

“No child of mine fails,” Maleficent tells her. “Failure is unacceptable.” Her eyes begin to glow green, and suddenly Mal is screaming, thrashing around on the ground. Her eyes roll back in her head, blood dripping from her nose. 

Maleficent simply drums her nails against the arm of her chair and waits for Mal to still.   “You know the punishment for failure,” Maleficent continues. “Since no child of mine fails, you’re no longer my daughter. You and your henchman are not welcome in my house, until you can prove to me that you are not a failure.”

And everything in Audrey freezes, her mind pausing on that one, singular word: 

Daughter .

This is the mother that Mal’s been trying to run from.

This is the mother that Audrey told her to stay with. And that mother is kicking Mal out, out into the streets.

It’s midwinter. Temperatures are below freezing.

On the Isle, Mal slowly picks herself up from the ground, wincing.

Maleficent eyes her, coldly. “Out.”

Audrey’s father waves a hand over the mirror, and the live recording pauses, freezing on Maleficent’s haggard face, Mal midway through slipping out the door.

“You see?” her father says. “Look at her face. Defeated.”

“I thought you said she wouldn’t hurt kids anymore,” Audrey whispers.

Her parents pauses, as if they don’t understand what she means. 

“Malificent is hurting M—the girl,” Audrey says. “The girl with the purple hair.”

“Oh.” Her mother’s face clears. “That’s not a girl, Audrey. That specific one isn’t even human, it’s half-fae, half-god.”

“It’s the out-of-wedlock offspring of two villain prisoners on the Isle,” her father clarifies. “No morals. No ethics, no sense of right and wrong, they just steal.”

“But—”

“There’s no childhood on the Isle, so there’s no children. They’re mistakes, honey, and they’ll grow up to be scum like their parents.” Her father squeezes her shoulder again. “But they’re trapped. So nothing to worry about.”

Audrey frowns, trying to digest this terrible wrongness. “Am I a kid?” she asks. Am I someone Maleficent would hurt?

“Of course not, sweetheart,” her mother tells her. “You’re a princess.”

That night, snow falls outside. Audrey gathers all the first-aid supplies she can find and waits to see if Mal will come tonight, hoping that she’ll arrive so Audrey can make sure that she has food, a bed, a safe place, medical attention. So Audrey can tell her—once everything else has been sorted—that she’s found out the secret life that Mal’s tried to keep from her. 

Audrey waits and waits and waits, but Mal doesn’t come.

“Please be okay,” she whispers softly under her breath, and blows a kiss out, hoping that her magic works this way too, and will somehow cross the distance between her bedroom and the Isle and protect Mal. 

She doesn’t think it’ll work.

She hopes anyway.

It is almost two weeks before Mal comes again, and in that time, Audrey haunts the Looking Glass like a ghost, trying to understand the life that her best friend had kept from her. 

Mal is, in a way, royalty, she realizes. That hadn’t been a lie. Hardly anything had been a lie, really—most of Audrey’s misperceptions about Mal were things that she’d simply believed, that Mal hadn’t corrected her on. Still, though—Mal’s identity wasn’t a small secret that could forgivably be kept from Audrey. She was the daughter of the fae who’d tried to end the Roses’ entire bloodline. An inheritor of that evil, that murder.

And that, Audrey realizes, was likely why Mal had kept it a secret. If the girl had told her before they were close, Audrey would’ve come to her senses. Called the guards, stopped their blossoming friendship in its tracks before any damage could be done, before the girl could have a chance to ruin her family like her mother had done.

But had there ever been any damage?

No, there hadn’t been, Audrey reminds herself. Mal had been in their house hundreds of times. If she’d wanted to, she could’ve killed the Roses right there, or put them back under a sleeping curse, or any other thing she’d wanted to do. And she’d never taken that chance. Instead, they’d laughed together. Played together. They’d been kids. (They’d been true loves.) They’d been friends. 

Her father’s words echo back to her: there is no childhood on the Isle . 

Maybe that was all it is, Audrey thinks. Mal had wanted a temporary escape from the hell she’d been born into. She’d wanted to exchange it for a world where suffering and despair barely existed, for a friend who’d ply her with treats and stories, for a night where nothing bad would happen until she went back home.

Mal had wanted childhood.

The moment she thinks of it, she’s certain the answer she’s stumbled upon is the true one. She deliberates on whether or not she should tell Mal what she’s seen, but the moment Mal sneaks into the garden, two weeks after their last adventure, it simply slips out:

“I learned about you and the Isle of the Lost.”

Color drains from the girl’s face. Desperately trying to do damage control, Audrey sits her down and explains, guilt puddling through her with every word. This was supposed to be Mal’s escape. And she’d taken that from Mal, ruined it for the sake of alleviating her own feelings. Still though, she keeps talking, digging her hole a little deeper, and hates herself a little more with every word.

But she’s started. To turn back now would also be a disservice. 

When she’s finished explaining, Mal is silent, processing. Eventually, she knits her hands in her lap and looks up. 

“At least I don’t have to worry about telling you now,” she says. 

“Would you—” Audrey begins, then stops. No. She’s already gone too far. But Mal is looking at her carefully, waiting. She tries again: “would you—tell me more about the Isle? Please? If you want? It’s just that. I’ve seen it through the Looking Glass, but that’s only one view of things. I’d like to see it from your eyes.”

( Please , Mal thinks to herself, and if you want . Two very, very different things, two very different requests. But that’s always been Audrey—asking for something she knows will cause the other person pain, then sliding in a falsehood, a justification to eliminate her guilt. Basic manipulation, taught to her young. And she doesn’t even realize it.)

Mal considers, slowly. For one minute. Two. 

(As she decides, they feel her illusion of escapism shudder around them. When she finally looks up, it fragments, irrevocably broken. This world is still a safe place for her, but there is no longer any escape from her inheritance.)

Mal swallows, and looks at Audrey. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me.”

I want to tell you nothing , Mal almost says. I never did, that’s why I never bothered to. You were the one who brought this up .

But they are friends, and so she doesn’t say that. Instead she smiles—half-amused, half-sad—and thinks back, and decides to start at the beginning. Her mother and father. Carlos. What the vial of poison really, truly means. Her past, her present, and her future. 

She talks for a while, slowly, softly, and Audrey listens, never once interrupting. They spend the entire night like that, and Audrey worries that Mal won’t come again now that she knows. But Mal comes back the next night. They resume their normal activities, mixing in the fae’s stories with them.

(Once again, there is childhood. But it’s a broken childhood now, interspersed with stories of horrors that neither of them should know.) 

It’s different, but it satisfies both of them enough for it to become the new normal. Still, though, it isn’t normal, because Audrey will find herself thinking back to that vial of poison Mal has. That choice that Audrey encouraged her not to make, not understanding what it would do. What it would free her from.

She understands now. She understands the bond that Maleficent has over her daughter. The pain that staying fae and mortal forces Mal to ensure. Drinking that poison would save her from that. She’d never be a slave again. She’d never be bound to her mother. She’d be free . And all it would cost her would be her humanity. 

But to Audrey, this is problem enough. Because Mal without her humanity would not be Mal. Would not be her friend. And she is really the only friend that Audrey has—Chad doesn’t count, because they barely see each other.

She pretends that her reasons are different. That she cares for Mal’s feelings. That she wants her to live, and be human, and love life. 

But really, she just doesn’t want her friend to die. Because if Mal died, Audrey would be alone. No more friend. She isn’t ready for that.

(She refuses to acknowledge the selfishness of that choice. She refuses to acknowledge that this choice might have consequences.)

She never brings the poison up. Mal fidgets with it constantly, as she always does, and Audrey simply lets her eyes slide over it. 

She already convinced Mal not to use it when they were little. Mal agreed not to. She’d won, and if nothing changes, that decision will still stand. The rest of the world will not matter. Mal will come to her at night, and Mal will hide the bruises that they both know are there, and Mal will be her friend. It will not be real, but neither of them are here for reality. They are here for childhood. 

Nothing will change, Audrey decides. Life will be like this, forever. 

She is, of course, wrong, because they continue to grow up.

Months blur by, and Mal’s stories catch up to their present, until she’s telling Audrey about day-to-day life on the Isle. New names pop up frequently, and Audrey dutifully saves each one to her memory: Gil. Dizzy. Harry. Ginny.

And, more and more often: 

The pirate girl . The pirate captain .

Mal speaks of her with nothing less than complete idolization. The day that the girl gives Mal her true Name, Mal tries to say it to Audrey over and over again, clumsily pronouncing most of the  crashing syllables, but savoring the way that the sea-tongue seems to curl and wash against her tongue. 

“She trusted me with it. I want to be able to say it correctly,” she tells Audrey, trying again.

Audrey studies Mal.

Mal blushes, doggedly trying again to pronounce it, and Audrey realizes with a start, that Mal is attached to this girl. A few days later, after Mal can’t shut up about her, she realizes that it’s more than just attachment. 

Mal likes her.

When she gets the nerve to ask Mal about it, the fae grins. A real smile, one that Audrey hasn’t seen in a long time from Mal.

“She’s going to save us,” Mal tells Audrey one night. “Everyone.”

“What do you mean?”

Mal’s hands twist in her lap. She’s silent for a moment, then: “she’s going to save the Isle from my mother.”

Beneath Mal’s words, Audrey hears the unspoken subtext: she’s going to save me from my mother.

“She’s going to make a new Isle,” Mal says. “One where the pirates move in and take Mali—my mother’s throne. They’re going to tear down the old power structures, all the corruption and evil stuff.” She looks at Audrey, eyes shining with hope. “We’re going to have a chance to be good . Like everyone here. She told me that, after she kissed me.”

And what can Audrey say in response to that? Mal has found a new way to save herself, a way where she can still be Audrey’s friend, a way that they (Audrey) can still have everything that they’ve ever wanted.

So Audrey smiles and ignores her misgivings—that little, court-trained voice inside her that spots lies told to gullible, desperate people and whispers trap trap trap —and squeezes Mal’s hand.

“I’m happy for you,” she says, and decides that she means it.

But as Mal begins to spend more time on the Isle (more time in the pirate captain’s arms, Audrey tells herself, sure of it) , Audrey grows uneasy. If this is the price that she needs to pay to keep Mal with her, she’ll pay it—gladly—but that little voice still lingers inside her, telling her that something is wrong. Deprived of Mal and her stories, she makes a servant chaperone her to the Looking Glass, forcing them to wait outside as she approaches the mirror.

“Ursula’s daughter,” she says. “Earliest recording.” She watches as the mirror’s reflective surface dissolves, replacing the view of her face with scene after scene of the pirate captain, fast-forwarding through the moments until she finds important things: friends, parents, allies. She devours any memory that she spots Mal in.

She spends hours in that room. Watching. Listening. Learning. By the time she’s done, she’s certain that Mal is, in fact, in love with Ursula’s daughter.

And she is just as certain that the pirate captain doesn’t love her back. That the sea-witch is playing her, that this is part of an elaborate coup to destroy Maleficent and take over power on the Isle, spearheaded by Ursula. That it will happen in two days.

Audrey’s first thought is simple: I have to tell Mal .

But then she reconsiders. If Ursula manages to kill Maleficent, Mal will be free. Her promises will be null and void. She can stay with Audrey.

So when Mal comes to see her again, a few days later, Audrey says nothing of what she’s learned. 

Mal eyes her that night, sensing the tension. “Is something wrong?”

Audrey forces a smile, trying to make herself relax. “It’s just been a long day.” 

Childhood , she reminds herself. Childhood .

She tucks her hands behind her back. “Do you want to play checkers?”

Mal studies her, decides not to push it, and nods. “Okay.”

They stay up late that night, giggling and playing game after game, hands sticky with caramel popcorn as a movie plays in the background.

Later, Mal hugs her goodbye, not suspecting a thing. She pulls back, turns to her tunnel. “See you soon,” she says, grinning.

“You promise?” Audrey asks. She tries to keep the question casual, but her anxiety puts an edge into her voice, a tremble. 

Mal pauses at the doorway. Considers the question. Trying to gauge why Audrey’s asked it, her mouth opens—

“Sometimes I worry,” Audrey blurts out, avoiding the question that Mal’s clearly about to ask. “It’s just—the Isle’s so different.”

At that, Mal relaxes. Grins, cocky as ever. “It’s just an island, princess,” she says. And then, out of care for Audrey’s feelings: “I promise.”

The fae promise settles between them. Heavy. Weighted.

Audrey smiles. “Okay,” she says. “See you then.”

Mal smiles again, and ducks into the tunnel, closing it up firmly behind her.

Audrey exhales, shakily. Mal will come back now.

A promise is a promise.

Still, she worries, and so her steps take her back to the Looking Glass. She holes up there, locking the door, and decides to watch every corner of the Isle, until she knows Mal is okay.

Then, of course, the coup begins. Mal is immediately not okay—taken by surprise, weakened by love, beaten almost to death—and all Audrey can do is watch in horror as the carnage unfolds.

A better world , she thinks, reminded of Mal’s hopeful idolizing words. What a load of horseshit. This is not a better world. It’s not even a different one; it’s just bloodier.

She watches, silent with shock, as the pirates kill Isle-dwellers by the hundreds. Carlos, the boy that Mal had said was her closest Isle friend, is beaten within an inch of his life. Mal herself is beaten until she blacks out, then twice more after she wakes up. She watches as Mal pleads with Ursula’s daughter, then with Ursula herself. There’s no pity in their eyes, only mockery. Maleficent, the one that they are supposed to kill, is barely touched—only removed from power and locked within a cell. Still alive. Still keeping Mal enslaved. They’re too afraid to touch her.

Audrey’s gamble has failed. Badly.

She makes the mirror track Mal through every moment of the disaster, until finally, they throw her in a cell, next to her friend—both of them bloody, broken heaps. The boy immediately scrambles to help Mal, but she’s passed out. He whispers to her as she wakes up, tending to her cuts as best he can. She talks back to him, voice a low rasp—too low for the Looking Glass to pick up.

“What are we going to do, Mal?” Carlos finally asks, leaning back. The pain is clear on his face, but the expression on Mal’s is different. 

There’s pain, yes. Rage, certainly. But most of all, there’s despair. Defeat. Deep, and horrifying, and total.

Audrey looks at Mal’s expression, and feels something wet pool on her check. For a single, delirious moment, she imagines that it’s blood—that she is bleeding with Mal, a mirror to her hurt. She dabs at it, furiously. Her hand comes away wet and clear.

Tears. Just tears.

Mal sighs, hoisting herself up to a sitting position. Her eyes are glassy and still. Audrey knows that expression.

It’s what someone’s face looks like right before they break a promise.

So really, she knows what’s about to happen even before she notices that Mal’s hand, deep within her pocket, is frantically flipping over and over and over. Really, she knows what’s going to happen even before Mal brings the poison out.

Still, as it catches the light, she feels something break within her chest.

“You know what this is, don’t you,” Mal says to Carlos.

“No,” Audrey whispers.

“Mal.” She and Carlos say it at the same time. Hers is a haunted whisper, his a simple statement.

“ Mal .” This time it’s just her who whispers it, voice soft and pleading in the dark. Even though she knows there’s no way the girl can hear her, she whispers anyway: “please. Please don’t do this.”

She watches as Mal closes her eyes. Feels it in the back of her mind as Mal sends out a message across the ocean.

A goodbye. 

An apology.

Mal pauses, almost waiting, and Audrey knows that she’s hoping, desperately, for a reply.

But there’s only one type of magic that Audrey knows. So she smiles as best she can, and blows Mal a kiss through the mirror, trying to send a message back:

Don’t do this.

Please.

You made me a promise .

But her magic requires contact, and she knows that Mal will never hear her.

(This part of their story will lie forever unanswered.)

She sinks to her knees in the quiet of the Looking Glass hall. Stares at the mirror and Mal’s silent, broken face.

“I love you,” Audrey Rose whispers, to no one that can hear her. Her hand touches Mal’s face in the mirror. “Please.”

Audrey watches as Mal’s eyes open again. As she gives Carlos a feral smile—one she has never worn before, one that she will use for the rest of her eternal life—and uncorks the poison, tipping it into her throat without hesitation.

Her last words echo through the Looking Glass’s hall: we’re going to win .

And Audrey thinks, with certainty: I’ve lost you .

In the end, she holds a funeral. She doesn’t own a scrap of black clothing—it’s not fitting for princesses—but she borrows one of Chad’s suit jackets for a week, wearing it on the nights she can’t sleep. (Every night. Every single night.) It droops over her shoulders, too big and almost smothering. Mourning, she reminds herself, is not supposed to be comfortable. She’s grieving. She lost a friend. That’s why she can’t sleep at night. That’s why she can’t stop thinking about Mal. It’s grief; that’s all. 

She goes to the Looking Glass hall once, twice, four times, rewatching the scene where Mal breaks her promise, committing every detail to memory. Each time, she pauses it right before Mal drinks the poison, freezing it on the final human expression on her face. She never checks to see what Mal is doing now on the Isle. She tells herself she doesn’t want to see it.

 She shouldn’t want to see it—whoever doing it is not her friend, is someone inhuman and different. Mal the fae, Mal who had wanted to be a child, is gone.

Gone . No. More than that. Dead . 

And to convince herself of that, she holds the funeral.

She can’t do it anywhere in the open, so she waits until night and sneaks out to the garden. The one where they met. The one where everything started. She kneels by the bush that she first found her best friend, a basket in one hand and a shovel in the other.

Mal is not here, and so she cannot be buried. But Audrey still has everything that Mal has given her, and she will bury that instead. She will bury the memories. She will bury the past. And no one will ever dig it up because no one will ever, ever know (wishful, naive thinking at best) and then there will be nothing left to correct the rewritten fictions that she is pretending she isn’t making in her head.

She takes the shovel and starts to dig—a small hole, almost invisible, under a bush. When the grave is empty, she takes the basket of mementos and drops it inside, carefully. Tries to remember what happens at funerals. She’s been taught, but she’s never attended one.

She is the officiant, she decides. From the back of her memory, she dredges up the correct protocol.

“Would anyone like to say a few words?” she asks the air.

Silence. She considers saying something, reminiscing, but doesn’t. Being the officiant is enough; she doesn’t want to play another character—or worse, herself. She doesn’t want to be herself tonight.

“Then,” she declares to the wind, “please join me in prayer.”

Auradon has prayers for the dead, she knows, but neither her nor Mal are really from Auradon, and so the prayer would mean nothing. She doesn’t know what they say on the Isle, though, and so she settles on one of the prayers for the dead that they say in her kingdom. The one she was taught first. The one they said for all the people from her mother’s kingdom who passed away, starving after being locked inside the borders of a kingdom with a sleeping nobility. A prayer to save people from pain, from cyclic harm, from the suffering Mal’s family inflicts on hers, generation after generation.

The French feels clumsy on her lips, stiff, almost foreign with disuse. “Il essuiera toute larme de leurs yeux. Il n'y aura plus de mort, ni de deuil, ni de pleurs, ni de douleur.” Here she stumbles, pushing through, giving the last words their own weight: “Car l'ancien ordre de choses est passé.” 

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. For the old order of things has passed away.

And behind her, a far too familiar voice: “ Qu’il en soit ainsi .” 

So be it .

Audrey whirls.

Mal stands less than a foot away from her, smirking like the Devil incarnate. (She is, Audrey reminds herself hastily. She is the Devil incarnate.)

Mal exhales, softly. Her breath, a gust of heat, frosts in the midwinter air as it leaves her lips. It hovers momentarily in front of them, hanging suspended with the remnants of the prayer.

“Amen,” the god murmurs. They’re back to English.

“I don’t remember inviting you,” Audrey says.

“Mmm. Just like your grandmother, always forgetting the most important guests.”

“Just like your mother, being resentful about it.” Audrey pauses. “Are you going to curse me?”

“That would certainly be her move. Very fae.” Mal chuckles. “Lucky for you that I decided not to take after her.”

The Devil’s words linger in the cold. Audrey feels something break inside her, surge to the surface.

“ Lucky ?” she asks. Her voice cracks on the second syllable. “Fuck you. Really. Fuck you.”

“I see you finally learned what that meant.”

Audrey lets her lips curl back into a bitter smile. “I’ve learned so much from you.” 

Mal glances at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you want to know, read between the lines,” Audrey mutters. Mal has magic. She must know that there’s a scrying spell over the whole of the Isle. And she knows that Audrey is the daughter of people with a security clearance. She turns to stare at the god, trying to make her gaze burn the same way that Mal’s does. “Figure it out, if you want to know. Your choice. Because it’s all about your choice, isn’t it?”

That earns her a smirk—unfeeling, malicious, cold. “Did I hurt your feelings?” 

The words, casually cruel, cut Audrey to the bone—then past it, through it, as something fragments within her.

“We agreed you wouldn’t do this,” she whispers.

“You decided for me.” Mal’s voice has lost its casualness, cracking instead like a whip. “You decided my life, and I let you, because I trusted you, and you made me scared of the one thing that would free me and make me happy .”

“ I didn’t make you happy?” Audrey takes a step forwards, rage making her forget how dangerous Mal is now. “I gave you everything I could in my kingdom, anything you asked for, we played and I made sure that it was like a dream , heaven every single night—”

“And then the night would end.” Mal’s voice is flat where Audrey’s is passionate, ice-cold where she rages. They used to be alike and now they’re opposites. Positive. Negative. (Drawn to each other. Magnets.)  

“The night would end,” Mal repeats. “And I would leave the heaven you made, and I would wake back up in Hell. Enslaved. And when you found out where I was from, you made me relive every memory that I was trying to repress and tell it to you for the sake of honesty , and never lifted a finger to try and help me.” She steps closer, copying Audrey. “And when I was done talking each storytime, trying not to have a panic attack , you would just move on to the next thing and ask me if I wanted to play checkers .”

Audrey can feel the heat radiating off of Mal. She refuses the urge to back off and says the only thing that pops into her head:

“But you wanted to play checkers.”

“I wanted to escape .”

“That’s what we did.”

“ Temporarily .” Mal’s grin is wide and bitter. “You never had anything to run from. You wanted to stay exactly where you were. And you didn’t want me to leave you behind. You were terrified I would leave, abandon you, so you kept me trapped. Like my mother. Fucking sad .”

Audrey stiffens. “You don’t know what my life’s like.”

“Yes, I do. Because you told me.” Mal’s eyes cut into her. “It must be so awfully hard, being the daughter of the second-most powerful family in the world. What a burden, to have to learn etiquette for tea parties. Your life must be a fucking Hell.” Acid sarcasm drips off her voice. Audrey imagines that she can almost feel it landing on her skin, burrowing painfully inside her.

“Mal—” she begins.

“Everything the best that Auradon can buy. So sad.” Mal’s eyes gleam in the dark. “There’s only one thing that I can think of that we do better on the Isle, and that’s suffering, but I can make sure you get that, too.”

“Mal, stop .”

“Really, it’s going to be my pleasure to make your life Hell.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would, now.”

She would , Audrey realizes. She really would . And so, because she has to stop this, she says: “And you’re shocked at why I didn’t want you to die.”

For a moment, Mal is silent, stunned at Audrey’s transparency. The princess leaps into the space, digging at the moment with tooth and claw (if she’s feeling emotions right now, she’ll use them) : “we’ve been close since we were five , we laughed together, we loved each other, we’ve shared everything.” Rage starts to bubble in her again, overwhelming tact: “ this is how you come back?”

Mal raises an eyebrow.“Do you think I owe you good behavior?”

“I haven’t hurt you,” Audrey hisses. “You want to hurt me? I gave you everything—I haven’t done anything wrong.” Frantically, she searches for a reason, a cause. “Are you pissed that you died? That you’re worse off now? I told you that you would be. I tried to help.” She nods, certain of this. “I don’t deserve this.”

Mal laughs hollowly. “Sometimes I forget that you’re even better at deluding yourself than I am.” She examines Audrey. “Do you really believe that? They’ve been training you so well these past few years, with the lying and manipulating to get what you want—have you gotten to the point where you fall for your own tricks?”

And for a moment she doubts. But this is the Devil, and she’s trying to screw with Audrey’s head. So she leans back. Forces a smile. 

“It’s cute of you to accuse me of being a bad person. While I’m holding a funeral for my best friend. Who I loved. Who died. How very sensitive of you, Mal.”

A smirk that borders on violent curls across Mal’s face. “Am I disturbing you, Audrey?”

“I mean. You did kill her.”

“Sweetheart, I am her.” That smile curls tighter. “Just without the weak, fragile, controllable parts.” Mal glances at her, sidelong. “Those were the parts you liked, right?”

“I liked you !” The declaration is almost explosive. Immediately, Audrey pulls back, corrects. “Her. That’s why I put her first. Over everything else.”

(The lie hangs between them—Mal, trying not to laugh at the delusion, Audrey refusing to acknowledge it.)

“Over everything, huh?” Mal asks, voice wry.

“Yes.”

“How sad for you, then. That I picked freedom over you. Must’ve hurt, if that’s what was going on.” Mal’s lips thin with amusement. “It’s almost like we’re missing an essential part of the story.”

Audrey huffs a breath. “I’m not going to let you make me into the monster here.”

Mal chuckles. “How fortunate for you, then, that I already filled that position with my new freedom.” Her eyes finally leave Audrey, roaming the horizon greedily. “And now that I’m free, I’m going to go wherever the hell I want, and do whatever the hell I want. And I’m going to hurt you.”

And this is when Audrey truly realizes that Mal is serious. And that, no matter what—for the safety of her people, the safety of Auradon—she cannot be allowed to roam the country. She has to stay in the prison.

But there’s another thing that’s also stopping her.

“You could go anywhere in the world,” she says, slowly. “And all you want to do is stay here with me.” She turns to Mal, one eyebrow raised. “You want to hurt me?”

“ Yes .”

The emphasis—messy, confused, angry, suffering—is its own denial. But Audrey leaps onto the moment anyway, desperately trying to save herself: “you’re lying.”

“You trapped me as fae for six years. I want revenge.”

“I thought you were done taking after your mother.”

Mal stares at her, nose flaring. “Fuck you.”

You can care , Audrey almost says. It’s okay to care . I’d care about me too

But in the split second before the words leave her mouth, she realizes:

Gods don’t care . 

Immortals weren’t supposed to care about mortals. She’d learned about it in class. A self-preservation method, to help them navigate eternity. Anger, though, was fine. Gods were always angry. Petty. Anger was safe. Anger never made them care enough that they wanted to feel guilt or hurt themself—only other people.

This was how the poison had dealt with Mal’s humanity.

Which meant that, before she’d died, Mal had cared.

In which case, as the good person here, it’s her job to give it back. Before Mal gets a chance to hurt her.And she thinks: magic . 

If Mal won’t listen, she’ll make the girl realize that she wants to. So she doesn’t hesitate. Instead, she grabs the god by the face and kisses her. Holds her with everything she has as Mal stiffens in surprise. Slams them backwards—one step, two, three, driving forward with everything she has, unable to let go.

She feels the power—her power, her magic—well within her. She consolidates it and shoves it out, slamming every trace of emotion she has for Mal, good and bad into the god. (She can’t lie about her emotions when she gives them to others, and so there’s apology, understanding, pleas for forgiveness, and so, so much guilt.) A message far too convoluted to ever (be willing to) verbalize. A silent ending to their friendship and what it could’ve blossomed into if Mal wasn’t trapped, if Audrey wasn’t a princess. (If. If, if, if, if.) A silent recognition of the emptiness in Mal’s eyes, the curse of godhood, paired against her own desire to fill it with something, to give her hope and something to live for, survive for. 

(It is harder for gods to survive than one might think.)

After all of the hurt and violence and suffering that Mal had experienced, she should have something to reach for. Something other than revenge. 

(Survival is a human instinct. And in the back of her mind, underneath all of this puffed-up selflessness, Audrey might very well just want to save herself.)

So she reaches within herself, takes the idealism that every Auradon kid was born with—the hope for a better future, the understanding that they would build that better future—and shoves that into Mal, too.

She steps away, drained. She’s given Mal everything she could. 

“Take it back,” Mal orders.

“No.”

“Take it back,” Mal yells, and lunges forward, out of the Isle tunnel that Audrey’s shoved her into—

—and bounces back. Against something hard. Transparent. Mal puts a hand up, pushes—

A barrier.

“Right,” Audrey says. “I also did that.”

“You’re not a witch,” Mal growls. 

“I don’t have to be.”

Mal hits the barrier again, this time with more force, enough to send rocks crashing down around them. But the barrier still holds. 

“I kiss you, I can take or give whatever I want,” Audrey reminds her. “What I wanted—what I took —was your freedom. The only reason you’re here in Auradon is because you found someone who loved you who let you into the castle. I took that. Nobody will ever be able to walk through this, from Auradon, unless they love you. And you won’t be able to walk through it until they do, and until you love them back. And you know what that means? You’re never getting out. Because nobody sane could ever love this monster that you’ve turned into.”

There’s a hint of a smirk. “I’m still the monster, am I?”

“Yes,” Audrey says flatly. “You are.” These are the shots, she’ll call them like she sees them. As a good, just person, it’s her duty. “I’m not dumb enough to let you out,” she continues. “And you can’t get to me, anymore.”

Mal stares at her. Snorts, once, then twice, then full-on laughing. “You think—no. You really think that you’re safe ? Darling. I sent you a message from the Isle when I was dying . Do you know how easy it is, at full power, for me to get inside your head? I can invade your dreams. I can send you thoughts.” Her smirk is sick, victorious. “I’m going to make your life a living hell. Just like I promised. And then you’ll let me out.”

“I won’t.”

“Saying nobody sane could love me was an interesting choice of words.” Mal cocks her head. “You might change your tune after I make you stark raving mad.” Her smile, if anything, grows worse. “What do you think about that? Want to let me out before we get started?”

The girl you care about is dead , Audrey tells herself. This is not her. That’s all fine. It’s easier to digest now that she’s shoved everything into Mal. She forces herself to suppress her emotions, survey the scene. The rock wall entrance to the tunnel, which had already been crumbling, is now, as a result of Mal’s blows, a hairbreath away from cracking and burying itself completely. It doesn’t matter if it falls. Audrey’s barrier will hold regardless. 

Audrey grabs a fallen rock from the ground and aims it at the nearest fracture. 

 She lets her eyes drift to Mal, forces her mouth to smirk in a confidence she doesn’t feel.  “The girl I care about is dead,” she says, again. I failed . “I can deal with her annoying ghost.”

She hurls the stone, burying Mal under a cascade of broken rocks. 

_______________________________

Four Years and Six Months Ago

She’s a week into Mal trying to break her and she’s losing. Badly. 

In every dream, Mal is terrifying, torturous, relentless in her goal to make Audrey break and open back up the door. Some nights are filled with wheedling, others with brutal, biting comments, and still more with soft words as Mal comes closer, speaks gently, imitates the ghost that she’s supposed to be.

Those are the worst nights, Audrey decides. But then the next night Mal simply looks at her, eyes flashing green, and Audrey falls to the ground. There’s pain, and it mounts and mounts and mounts until she’s on the ground, screaming until her throat is raw and she loses her voice. The next day, she wakes up and it’s as if nothing’s happened.

The next night, back to hell.

She tries not to sleep, hoping that it’ll save her from Mal since the Devil only comes when she’s dreaming. She tells her parents. They, of course, don’t believe her. Instead, they make her see a psychiatrist, who declares that seeing the Devil is a result of her hallucinating after redeveloping insomnia. He recommends sleeping pills, but her parents, wary of medication, opt to give her “tea” before bed instead—tea, she learns, steeped with hoss and valerian plants, natural herbal sedatives. Nothing addictive, of course. But the drugs only sort of help—while they pull her under, they just turn her dreams into strange and distorted versions of themselves. Her memory turns hazy, Mal evolving before her eyes, growing horns and bat wings and fangs that almost jut out of her mouth as Audrey’s subconscious turns her into even more and more of a monster. Mal seems to know that something’s off, but she keeps visiting anyway. When she does, she is always crueler than before, eyes burning, voice scathing.

Drugging yourself to hide from me. How fucking pathetic . 

That line, at least, breaks through the fog.

And this is when, of course—when she’s at her most sleepless and distracted—that her parents manage to arrange a meeting with Prince Ben.

She’s grilled on what to do and not to do the entire week before, until it goes to her head and she’s so nervous (she sees him and her grandmother voice wipers to her: our future, our future, our future) that she close to disassociates for the entire encounter, standing meek and stiff and formal, eyes pinned to the ground. She looks at Ben’s face only once, in the beginning, and she slowly watches the excitement on his face leech away as she sticks only to the court pleasantries and formalities. She wonders, distantly, if he’d been misinformed coming into the meeting—if someone had led him to believe that this was anything other than a test. But no. He’s been trained better than that—she’s sure of it.

After their meeting is over, she’s led away by her grandmother, who begins praising her on her performance as soon as they’re out of earshot. 

“Lovely job,” she murmurs, nails digging into Audrey’s shoulder. “Just lovely—what a model princess. A model girl.”

“I did okay?” Audrey asks, wanting to double check.

“You were perfect, honey. Quiet, attentive, polite, sweet—a model princess.”

Audrey frowns. “But I barely said anything.”

Her grandmother beams. “Exactly. That’s the secret.” Her eyes twinkle. “Meek and quiet, it’s the name of the game.” Abruptly, she stops and hugs Audrey in the middle of the hallway. When she pulls back, warm pride gleams in her eyes. “Eleven and you already understand so well. Keep going like this and we might just be saved.” She stands again. Takes Audrey’s hand. 

“Together,” her grandmother continues, “we’ll get you a prince and a crown, and the legacy of the Rose house will be cemented. For good.” 

“But I didn’t even do anything.”

“You did enough.” Queen Leah squeezes Audrey’s hand. “You did plenty, honey, you’re exactly what we needed.”

And then Ben comes, that night, hides in the wall (she doesn’t recognize that it’s him at the time, but she realizes, later) and asks her about her ghost. She’s surprised but grateful when he immediately believes her. And surprising herself, she tells him. He promises, with idealism she doesn’t feel anymore, that he’ll fix it. She doesn’t even bother pretending to believe it.

But a week later, the room is different when she wakes up in dreamworld.

She’s only drunk half a mug of tea—she’s been drinking less and less when her parents aren’t watching as closely, because if she’s got to be punished every night, she’d prefer to be at least coherent for it—and so this is likely responsible for the change in some part. She feels calmer, more lucid. But the room itself feels lighter, breezier. Mal hasn’t even done anything yet. Usually, if she wants to hurt Audrey, she never waits. But there’s nothing.

And there’s music, she realizes. There’s music. 

Weep for yourself, my man

You'll never be what is in your heart

Weep, little lion man

You're not as brave as you were at the start

She glances around for the Devil. Usually, Mal barges into the room. But this time, Audrey finds her sitting in an armchair by a fireplace that doesn’t exist in real life, a book in hand.

“Why is there music?” Audrey asks, flatly.

Mal turns to look at her. Closes the book and sets it down. Audrey eyes the title. It’s one of her books. The Little Princess .

“If it bothers you, then it’s to annoy you,” Mal says. And then, lightly: “if it doesn’t, then it’s for ambiance.”

Rate yourself and rake yourself

Take all the courage you have left

And waste it on fixing all the problems

That you made in your own head

“It doesn’t bother me,” Audrey says. Sniffing the lie, Mal turns up the volume.

It’s small. Petty. (But they too are small and petty, not even teenagers but already dead and already haunted. The gesture works better than either of them would like to admit.) The sting is so slight that comparatively, it doesn’t even hurt. Even though playing music reminds Audrey that this is was a friend. She fractures just a bit more. 

But it was not your fault but mine

And it was your heart on the line

I really fucked it up this time

Didn't I, my dear?

Didn't I, my—

“Tonight’s the last night, isn’t it?” she asks, suddenly. The music snaps off. 

In the quiet, Mal exhales. “You should thank the Prince of Auradon for that.”

Audrey feels shock strike her, sudden and quick. “What did you do to him?”

Mal just tips her head back and smiles. “Did you know that I can see souls?”

“Mal.”

“It’s true. I can see them, which is helpful, because then I can make deals for the ones I want.” Her eyes light up, reflecting the fire. “You wouldn’t believe how many souls are asleep. Not aware of what they really are. Not going after what they want. Incubating, waiting to be birthed.” 

“I don’t care about souls.”

“Would you rather I go back to hitting you, like old times?” Mal raises an eyebrow, waiting. Letting Audrey pretend to consider it, that choice where there is no choice. Waits until Audrey shakes her head and then smiles. “Good. Your soul, if you can imagine, was asleep for all six years I’ve known you. And when I met you again, two weeks ago, it woke up. Isn’t that interesting?”

“No.”

“Liar. Your heart’s beating faster.” 

“You hear my heart?”

“Gods hear everything, Audrey. Now ask me why I’m telling you this.”

Audrey presses her lips together. Mal waits, unbothered. Eventually, her curiosity gets to her.

Audrey grits her teeth. “Why are you telling me this?”

Mal grins. “How thoughtful of you to ask. It’s because Ben’s soul is asleep. And the thing about asleep souls is that they’re so much more impressionable, since they don’t know what they really want. They’re like babies. You can drop one on its head, so to speak, and it’s never the same again. Permanently damaged.”

“You wouldn’t,” Audrey says. Another lie they both knew was untrue.

Mal’s grin borders on deranged. “He offered.”

“He didn’t know what he was offering.”

“ To make a deal with the Devil is to be duped by the Devil ,” Mal quotes. “Fact of life.” Her smile turns sardonic. “Who said that? Someone must have.”

“Change it,” Audrey orders. She wouldn’t wish Mal on anyone, she really wouldn’t. “Change it back.”

Mal cocks her head. “Will you walk through that tunnel for me instead?”

“You’re crazy,” Audrey whispers.

(Nobody sane could ever love this monster that you’ve turned into.)

“And are you sane, Audrey?” the Devil asks.

Audrey blinks away tears. “I will see you in Hell.” 

“Yes,” Mal tells her. “You will.” 

The certainty in the Devil’s voice makes Audrey wince. She shuts her eyes. “If you’re not here to hurt me, I want you gone by the time I open my eyes.”

She hears Mal stand. Cross the room. Cup her cheek.

“Deal,” the Devil whispers, even though there wasn’t one, and leans in and kisses Audrey softly on the mouth.

She gives Audrey nothing in the kiss. And Audrey takes nothing from her.

It is an empty, hollow goodbye.

She tries to keep an eye on Ben, after that. They’re kept separate from each other, but she has access to all of the security footage in the palace, so she can still watch him. For the first two years, he never shows any sign of sleep deprivation, of being haunted and tortured. She tries to convince herself that, for reasons unbeknownst, Mal may have just backed off. She knows it’s a lie, but the thought comforts her anyway: Mal acting with some degree of compassion, Mal using the idealism that Audrey has (forced into) given her. 

She and Ben meet again, when they’re almost thirteen, and she tries to evaluate him properly for any sign of mental damage. His eyes don’t have dark circles, but he’s holding his hands gingerly. They’re enveloped in thick white gloves, and she wonders, tentatively, what Mal’s done to him beneath them.

How do you wake up a soul? she wonders.

(Which is really a silly question. A better one would be: how do you wake up a soul without hurting it? The answer is simple: you don’t.)

She looks at his posture carefully, notes the rigidity, and realizes how much pain he must be in right now. How he refuses to show it, instead directing his full attention at her.

(Forever after, to Audrey, Ben will be the boy who pretended to be a wall.

And to Ben, Audrey will always be the girl who was haunted.)

 “How are you, Your Highness?” he asks. Through the distance and formality, she hears the real question. Are you okay?

“I’m doing well, Your Highness,” she replies, and smiles back as best she can. “How are you?”

He tucks a hand behind his back. Audrey can see him stifling a wince.

“Never better,” he tells her, and they both pretend he means it.

A week later, they’re betrothed together. Audrey tries to figure out whether or not she can learn like him. He has a lot going for him—he’s sweet, charming, selfless. He’d saved her from a demon, which meant a lot. 

And she was going to have to marry him whether she wanted to or not, she reminds herself. Like her grandmother said: it was about crowns and power, not love. Love was irrelevant. And true love—the sweet kind she’d stumbled with Chad, the biting toxicity that hummed between her and Mal when Mal had died and come back—was even less important. 

Love was dangerous. Love clouded judgement. If you loved someone, you might put them over your kingdom, and then your people might rise up and attack you, and she’d been putting too much work in maintaining her appearance to have someone stab her in the gut and ruin it. 

So when the ceremony wraps to a close and she and Ben have to kiss to seal the bond, she is relieved when their lips meet and she tastes only ash. Feels nothing at all. She tries to hide her relief when they pull away and she sees the sadness in his eyes.

“My princess,” he says, bowing before her. She knows it’s ceremonial, but the my still stings at her. They have met twice before, for less than an hour in total. It’s not enough time for anyone to belong to anyone else. 

(It took less than an hour for him to decide to save her.)

But still. She owes him a debt.

She makes herself blush. Curties. “Your Highness.”

He is everywhere in her life after that, the brisk movements of parents trying to get their kids to fall for each other—organized dates, picnics. Her grandmother coaches her through every moment, unstoppable in her desire to make everything, everything perfect. She tells Audrey when to hold his hand for the first time, what things to say.

“ Court him,” she hisses, over and over again. “We have him now, but if he doesn’t like you, it’s over .”

I don’t like him , Audrey wants to say. And it’s true—every second that she spends with him, she thinks about Mal, and what Mal must be doing to Ben, and how it must hurt. It lights a fire under her skin, a sick fog of rage and sadness (jealousy, she thinks deep within herself, but refuses to admit because that would be crazy why would she be jealous ) at the unfairness of it all, because she didn’t ask for him to save her—that was her fight and he’d stolen it (stolen Mal) from her.

She reminds herself she should be grateful.

She reminds herself that Mal is a sadistic monster. 

Neither thought really sticks. 

Audrey’s grandmother looks at her. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“I don’t like him,” Audrey whispers. 

Audrey’s grandmother examines her. Nods. “Good,” she says. “That’ll make your job easier for you.” A pause. “You’ll grow to like him. Even if you don’t think it, you will.”

Audrey thinks of Ben and the choice that he’d made for her. She can’t imagine wanting to hold his hand—let alone kiss him, marry him, bear his children. 

A tactical decision, she decides. If he’d made a deal with the Devil, he was already crazy. And that was before Mal had even gotten her claws into him.

“I won’t like him,” she declares. “Ever.”

Her grandmother stares down at her, almost uncomprehending. “I do beg your pardon.”

“I won’t like him,” Audrey says again, stoutly.

Her grandmother takes a careful peek around them. They’re standing in a hallway. No one to be seen. Abruptly, she grabs Audrey’s wrist and hauls her through the nearest doorway—a sitting room—slamming the door behind her.

“Sit,” her grandmother barks. Audrey sinks to an armchair, and Queen Leah towers over her, blazing with fury.

“The nerve of you,” her grandmother hisses. “First, to say that in public . Do you know how many families have security teams? That hallway might very well have been bugged by someone’s secretary, hoping to score information. Imagine what they’d do if they got that on record. Imagine the favor they would gain—the harm they could cause to us—if they retained that information and shared that with the Beasts.” She sits down, rings a servant for tea, and turns back to Audrey without losing a bit of anger. “You’ve been taught better than this.”

“Grammy—” Audrey begins.

“Darling, do not interrupt a superior royal when they’re talking. Your governess will have you write lines.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s ten more lines. Second , to say that at all . Anywhere. Do you realize how ungrateful you are? We’re handing you the keys to the kingdom. You’re going to be a Queen , do you realize how lucky that makes you? Most of the royals in this palace would kill to be where you are right now. Kill . And all you have to do is keep your mouth shut, look pretty, and smile.”

Audrey opens her mouth to speak and her grandmother raises an eyebrow: “I said keep your mouth shut, look pretty, and smile.” She kneels down in front of Audrey. “Our family needs this. Our family needs you. We’re all depending on you. Don’t disappoint us.”

Audrey feels a lump well in her throat. When her grandmother indicates that she can speak, her voice comes out thick: “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, honey. I know you’ll make it up to us.” Her grandmother sits next to her, squeezes her hand. “You don’t have to like him to get him to fall for you. Don’t think about him. Think about the kingdom. Think about how you’re going to secure it into Rose hands for centuries to come. Think about protecting your family.”

Audrey is silent.

Her grandmother smooths her hair away from her face, careful not to touch her makeup. “Repeat after me: love is not important.”

“Love is not important,” Audrey says. They’ve done this so many times before that the process is almost comforting with its familiarity. Still, though, the phrase feels stiff and hollow on her tongue, the way a lie feels.

“But—”

Her grandmother stops her with a finger. “Listen to me. If someone in the world gives you everything you could ever want, you’ll fall in love with them, given enough time. Ten years. Twenty.” She smiles thinly. “It’s the beauty of marriage.” 

She leans in and dabs at the tears rolling down Audrey’s cheeks, Audrey hadn’t even realized she was crying.

“Marriage,” she says, trying the word out for size.

Her grandmother laughs. “That’s a long way off.” She folds her hands together, neatly. “For now, smile, and shut up, and look cute, and hold his hand. Don’t kiss him until you’re both fourteen, we don’t need the Beasts to think you’re a slut. Alright?”

Audrey nods. 

“Good.” Her grandmother examines her ruined face. “There’s a bathroom connecting to this room. Go fix yourself before anyone sees, and find him, and be nice. Are we understood?”

Audrey nods again, walks to the bathroom, fixes her makeup, and practices facial expressions in the mirror: diminutive, cute, pathetic, happy.

Shut up. Look pretty. Smile.

Her eyes burn again. She looks her reflection squarely in the eyes. “Princesses don’t cry,” she tells herself. “Princesses have nothing to cry about.”

She smiles again and again, until it looks real. Then holds it in place like armor, and heads out the door.

The relationship between her and Ben evolves, to the point where she thinks he might even like her a little bit. When they turn fourteen, he starts initiating—taking her out on dates, smiling at her, slinging an arm around her shoulder. She tries to reciprocate as best she can, clinging to him the way that a magnet clings to a refrigerator—holding on as best it can to where it was placed, stripped of the choice of existing anywhere else. Chad hangs nearby, eyes sad and distant, and Audrey mourns for the days when they were younger, when they played together endlessly. They still meet up, but she makes him understand that they have to hide now, that no one can see them together. And maybe dusty ballrooms and disused sitting rooms breed romance, because their closeness shifts almost imperceptibly from friendship to something more, from laughing and chasing each other around to holding hands, to cuddling, to, suddenly, his lips on hers.

“We can’t do this.” It’s the first thing Audrey says when they pull away.

Chad, faithful and understanding as ever, nods. “Okay.”

“Friends?” Audrey offers, instead, and Chad nods again.

Pretend , a little voice inside Audrey’s head reminds her. Love isn’t important, shut up and look pretty and smile, shut up —

A week later, she kisses him again.

By the time high school hits, they’ve mastered the basics of secret relationships, to the point where they’re sure nobody knows. (They’re only mostly right; both their Houses figure it out the second that their children come home with hickeys, but say nothing hoping it’ll resolve itself before anyone else finds out.)

“He still hasn’t asked you out, has he?” Chad asks, halfway through freshman year. 

Audrey shakes her head. “I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”

“If he doesn’t do it soon, I’m going to.”

Audrey laughs. “You can’t, I’m betrothed to him.”

A heavy silence falls over them, at the mention of that.

“Maybe he’s gay,” Chad says finally. “I wish he was. That would explain everything.” 

Audrey snorts. “A gay prince. Can you imagine?”

Impectually, Chad stiffens. “That would be crazy, wouldn’t it? A gay royal?”

Audrey’s mind instantly produces an image of her kissing Mal. She shoves it away. Forces a smile. (Smile and look pretty.) “Crazy.” And then: “they might hurt him.”

Chad blows out a breath. “Honestly, I wish they would.”

Audrey turns to him, eyes widening. “That’s—that’s treason.”

“I don’t care. He has you, and you’re the most gorgeous, wonderful girl ever, and he can’t even appreciate you! If I could date you, I’d appreciate every second of it, and he doesn’t, he’s awful.” And then again: “I hate him.”

Audrey leans her head against Chad’s shoulder. “I hate him, too.”

Not long after that, her grandmother takes the time to corner her: “what you’re doing with the Charming boy—you need to stop it.”

Audrey looks at her grandmother, shock coursing through her. “What are you talking about?”

“There are eyes everywhere in this palace, Audrey. People will notice. Some already have.” 

Smile. Look pretty. Shut up .

Audrey pins her eyes to the ground and says nothing. She feels her grandmother’s eyes boring into the back of her head. When it’s clear she won’t talk, her grandmother begins again:

“Roses are faithful to their princes, do you understand me? We don’t entertain low-level nobles. Think about your family, child. Think about the dishonor your actions would bring to us.” Audrey looks up and sees fury, real fury, in Queen Leah’s eyes. “We would lose the crown. Our position. Everything .”

And staring into her grandmother’s eyes, Audrey feels something kindle inside her. Defiance. Rage.

She has never asked for this crown. And once she has it, she knows the power won’t even be hers—it will funnel back to her house, to her mother, to her grandmother. Leah will be Queen of Auradon, really. Audrey, on the other hand, will be a figurehead—a pretty face and a breeding mare for her bloodline, so the Roses will continue to have a claim to the throne. 

This relationship, this opportunity to ruin everything , is the one thing that Audrey can hold over her grandmother. The only scrap of power that she has. She will do anything to preserve it. 

And besides. She really likes him. 

“Promise me you’ll be faithful to him, Audrey.”

“I promise that I’ll be faithful to my prince.” And then she smiles. “The prince who I love.”

“ Audrey .”

“Love is important to me, Grandmother.”

“Your family loves you.” And when Audrey says nothing: “repeat after me. My future is more important than finding love.”

Audrey sees the panic in her grandmother’s eyes. Digs the knife in more. “I want Chad to be my future.”

“If you continue this, there will be consequences , Audrey.”

“Does my mother have another daughter I don’t know about?”

Her grandmother stares at her. “We’ll discuss this another time.”

Audrey watches her walk away and thinks, for the first time— I’ve won .

And maybe it’s the panic in the old woman’s eyes that’s driving this, but when she thinks of Chad, all she can is picture is freedom .

He is her freedom, she realizes, one night as they lie together in his room. He’s her release from her task to claim this innocent, probably gay boy she hates (fears, too, because she doesn’t know what Mal’s done to him) , from her crown, from her obligations, from everything . And for that (for what he symbolizes, just as much as who he really is) , she loves him.

“You know that I’d do anything for you, right?” Chad whispers.

And Audrey nods.

Even if he’s not the future king of Auradon, Chad can take her places—and unlike Ben, all of those places are far, far away from her family.

(She can use him against her grandmother. Attack, with him as her weapon, leverage for power before the woman can strategize. At this point, she’s too trained to not be calculated.)

She puts a hand on his chest. “Would you run away with me?”

He doesn’t even hesitate. “Anytime.”

And the idea sprouts in her chest, flowering into an actual plan. “Are you serious?”

“Just tell me when we go so I can pack.”

Audrey considers. “Two weeks?”

Chad wraps his arms around her. “Where are we going?”

Audrey giggles. Smile. Look pretty. “As far away as we can.”

And she turns and kisses him, giving him as much certainty and adoration for her as she can, so she knows he won’t back out.

A week later, after making actual preparations, she slips out of Chad’s room just before dawn and sneaks out of the Charming’s suite. When she realizes that a man is following her, she doesn’t think much of it—at this hour, while most people are asleep, some servants are still on duty. 

But he keeps following her. Turn after turn. Hallway after hallway. Room after room. 

Worried that she’s paranoid, she goes in circles, twice, just to check. And he follows her. Every single step she makes, he follows it.

And step by step, he’s getting closer. Throwing caution to the winds, she sprints, but he chases her, grabs her wrist, and slams her against the wall.

Blood rushes to her head at the crack and she slumps backwards, dizzy. He grabs her roughly and pulls her through a door into the servants quarters, then down two more hallways, each dirtier than the last, before throwing open the door to a squat, smelly supply closet.

“What—” she begins. He slaps her across the face and she staggers. She’s never been physically hit in her life and the pain stuns her, makes her sluggish. 

She opens her mouth to scream for help and he covers it with his hand. She bites down as hard as she can and tastes blood and he yanks it away, slaps her again. 

She falls back and now he’s on top of her, shoving a rag into her mouth when she tries to scream again.

“Always wanted to fuck a princess,” he grunts, and reaches for her skirt.

Afterwards, she just feels hollow. Empty. Listless. She’ll go about her day, and then someone will do something that reminds her, somehow of him , and suddenly, she’ll be back in that closet. The randomest things trigger it, but she goes from normal to crying in the flash of an eye, and she’s so fucking grateful for all of her court training, because princesses can’t cry or have panic attacks, especially not in public.

Shamefaced, she tells her mother and grandmother, fully expecting a reprimand for letting a man touch her, spoil her for Ben, and can’t hide her relief when her mother never even brings Ben up.

“It’s not your fault,” she’s told instead. “I still love you. Don’t worry.”

“You do?” Audrey asks, half babbling.

“Of course,” her grandmother says, kneeling beside her. She takes Audrey’s hand and squeezes it, gently. “Unconditional love. That’s what families are for.”

And I were planning to leave , she thinks. They love her, and she was going to abandon them—she was their heir, their only hope for the future and she was going to leave .

“We can’t tell anyone,” her mother tells her. “It’s a security risk. It would make us look weak. We can deal with it subtly.”

Her grandmother looks at her. “What were you even doing out of bed that early?” Just by looking at her, Audrey can tell that she already knows the answer.

Roses are faithful to their princes . And she hadn’t been. And if not for Chad, Audrey realizes, she would never have been in this hallway. This had happened to you because you picked love over your family , a little voice in her head tells her. The universe was teaching you a lesson. This is your fault . 

You should stop .

She doesn’t want to tell Chad, but he spots that something’s wrong the second he sees her and asks before she can dodge the question. He’s stricken silent when she tells him, frozen with horror. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says. 

She eyes him. “It’s not your fault.” It’s mine .

“I don’t know what else to say,” he mumbles. 

“We can’t do this anymore.”

He looks at her, shocked. “Audrey—”

“We can’t.”

“Audrey, I want to be supportive of whatever you’re going through right now, really, I do, but I can’t lose you—”

“Chad.”

The softness of her voice silences him. The last thing she wants right now is human contact, but she makes herself reach out, cup his cheek. 

“I made a commitment,” she whispers. “I need to start upholding it.”

He recoils. “But—”

“And I can’t even start to pretend to love him if I’m busy loving you.”

Chad pauses. “You—you love me?”

Fuck . 

Audrey opens her mouth. “I mean—”

“I love you, too.” The way he says it almost breaks her. He pronounces the word love like it’s fragile, like he knows how precious it is to her. “I was waiting for you to say it first. I—I didn’t want to pressure you.”

She blushes. “For Light’s sake. You’re the sweetest boy I’ve ever met.”

He cracks a smile, but she’s not done: “that’s what makes this so hard.”

“Audrey—”

“I can’t screw up my future, Chad. My family’s counting on me.” She exhales. Looks at him. “Friends?”

That smile’s still on his face. A little wistful, now. “Last time we tried that, you ended up in my arms anyway.”

“Well, practice makes perfect.” Her voice rings out sharp. Too sharp. She softens the blow: “it’s going to be hard for me, too.”

He just looks at her. “I wish I could kiss you. One last time, for the road.”

“Chad.” Her voice is sharp again. “I can’t. Not now.”

He stands. “I know. That’s why I didn’t ask.” 

She can see the hurt in his eyes. Hurt and love for her, warring, as he steps a respectful distance away and tucks his hands in his pockets.

“I’m going to hate him more now,” he tells her.

Audrey laughs. “Feel free. I’d count myself lucky if you didn’t hate me, too.”

“Audrey.” He looks almost taken aback. “I could never.” He scuffs his foot, searching for something to say before stepping back. Bowing, stiff as a court-trained board. “Goodnight, princess.”

Shut up. Look pretty. Smile. The mantra runs in repeat in Audrey’s head, her only barrier against crying.

“Goodnight, sir,” she says, and thanks Light that her voice doesn’t crack.

Chad looks behind twice, memorizing her face as he makes himself walk away.

The rest of freshman year fades by in a blur as she recedes from society, saying less and less and less. Sophomore year starts eventually, and she smiles, makes sure her makeup looks perfect, and says yes to Ben when he finally asks her out. (He asks Mal what he should do. The god laughs and gives permission.) She tries to keep an eye on him, watching his comings and goings like a hawk, continuing to review every security tape she can get her hands on. His daytime activities aren’t that interesting, but what he does at night is a completely different story. For one specific reason.

He’s found the tunnel. 

And when she wasn’t paying attention, he’d walked through it. 

Which meant that Mal could now walk out. And that she’d somehow convinced him to be on her side.

So Audrey collects everything she can on him, combining his nighttime movements into a file she labels NIGHT_BEN —points for creativity—in the hopes that she’ll spot Mal on the footage. But she never does. Out of paranoia, she searches the security tapes in the Roses’ wing for any trace that Mal had come back—because if she was going to come back, she was going to visit Audrey. There was no way she wouldn’t.

And this is when she finds something that changes her life forever.

It’s not Mal. Instead, it’s her mother and grandmother, sitting poised in one of the family conference rooms at one in the morning. She hadn’t even known her grandmother stayed up that late.

Intrigued, Audrey thumbs the audio button.

“—gone too far,” her grandmother declares. “Did you hear what she said to me this morning? She’s rebelling.”

“Something like this , though, Mother,” Aurora replies. “It just seems— extreme.”

“You didn’t hear her. All our progress. Our family’s future. Hanging in the balance, the plaything of a teenager trying to upend power dynamics. The situation is extreme. The solution simply matches it.”

“She’s my daughter.”

“And she’ll never be anything else unless we fix this.”

Her mother is silent, for a moment, considering. “It’ll ruin her for Ben, for one thing.”

“The Charming boy might have already done that.”

“Lord almighty. She wouldn’t. His mother’s a commoner.”

“Children are much more forward these days. I wouldn’t count against it. We did teach her about sex. She knows everything she’d need to.”

“Doing that with him—it’d jeopardize her shot at the crown.”

Queen Leah glares. “Don’t you get it? She’s already doing that. Risking that. That’s the point. Because she’s in love with him.”

“We taught her not to do that. We taught her to prioritize us.”

“And she isn’t listening. That’s why this is necessary.”

Aurora drums her fingers on the table. Glances at her mother. “You really think it is?”

“My spies caught her conversation with the Charming boy last week. She wants to run away with him. She’s turned her back on us completely. If they leave, we’re ruined . Imagine the optics, trying to spin that. Impossible. We have to get ahead of this, now.”

“And this is your solution.”

“She won’t listen to us. And trauma always takes the wind out of people’s sails. Something like this—she’ll blame herself, think that it’s her fault. That’s the culture around sexual assault here in Auradon, she’s learned it. We can encourage that. Support her. Make her feel guilty. She’ll turn to us, and we can push her to Ben. She’ll forget all about the Charming boy.”

Aurora exhales. Stands. “Fine. Hire a guard. Someone who won’t say anything. Pay him well.”

“I will. And sweetheart?”

Audrey’s mother turns back. “Yes?”

“If you want to tell Phillip, you can. But wait until it’s too late. He’ll want to stop it.”

“Any sane parent would want to protect their child—” 

“She’s not a child. She’s a princess.”

Aurora huffs a laugh. “But we’re still her parents and we’re letting this happen. What does that make us?”

Queen Leah smiles. In the grainy camera footage, it’s an ugly thing. “Rulers. It’s necessary.”

“Future before love,” Audrey’s mother whispers. She grabs for the door. “Good night.”

Audrey leans back, heart thumping rapidly in her ears. Her family. Her own family had paid a guard to rape her. Because they thought she was a threat to them. To their plans, their future, their throne. 

Their throne. 

So much for family first, she thinks. Distantly, she realizes that tears are spilling down her cheeks. She grabs for the nearest soft thing—a blanket—and thrusts it over her mouth. 

And then she screams.

As loud as she possibly can, voice muffled by the fabric. She screams, and she cries, and she screams and cries, the world a haze of betrayal and hurt and rage and sadness. 

She doesn’t know how to process something like this. Doesn’t even know where to begin, or end. A week, then two slips by, her mind unable to focus on anything else. 

She doesn’t tell her family she knows. She tells no one, and lets the rage and hate congeal inside her until it morphs from all-consuming and inescapable into something ice-cold and toxic. She’s still messy. Still fragmented. But at least she can handle herself again now to do things, make decisions.

Even if they’re bad ones.

She shows up at Chad’s room just past midnight, knocks the way she always does, and is secretly charmed at the fact that he doesn’t even hesitate to open the door, even though, at this hour, he definitely knows what this is.

“I waited longer than a week,” she tells him, and that’s all the warning he gets before her lips are on his and she’s going inside, shutting the door behind them.

“Audrey,” he begins—

“Something really bad happened,” she interrupts. “I need you to make me forget about it.”

And Chad, always obedient, does exactly what he’s told.

The next morning, she finds that her feelings, messy the night before, have been reforged overnight, transformed by Chad—by the fact that there’s someone out there who actually does care about her—into something diamond hard and magnificent. A weapon. Sharp enough to—meant to—overthrow a kingdom.

Just like her.

She leans into the light of the mirror, putting on her face with the makeup products she’s left in Chad’s room. She knows what she’s going to do now, and the certainty makes her calm.

She was raised to play a long game. She can certainly play two at once.

Chad stumbles into the bathroom, blinking sleep from his eyes. “Audrey—last night was amazing, but are you—”

“I’m fine now,” she interrupts, and places a kiss on his lips. “Don’t worry. You fixed it.”

In her mind, she imagines breaking off just a little bit of that hatred that lives inside her now. She reaches for Chad again, kisses him deeply, and gives him that little shard, planting it deep inside his heart like a seed, ready to sprout into a gorgeous, treasonous flower. If she wants to complete her plan, she’s going to need a helper, and it’s going to break him.

My beautiful, perfect, sensitive boy. You’re about to turn into such an asshole.

But oh well. Future before love. 

She gets it now, the need to prioritize. But she’s a greedy bitch and still wants both. Can still have both. When she’s done wreaking havoc, she’ll turn him back. They can live happily-ever-after together. 

“I’m going to need a favor soon,” she says, stepping away. 

Chad stares at her, gaping, and she can’t help but feel a twinge of pity for him. They love in different ways. Love makes her vicious, but it turns him soft. Helpless.

“Anything,” he says. “Just let me know.”

She smiles. Kisses him on the cheek and turns back to the counter. 

As she applies foundation, she thinks of her family, their faces mixing in with the mantra that runs through her head on repeat. Her father, who hadn’t known her grandmother’s plan until it was too late. Who had been told, after, and still pretended that he didn’t even know that it had happened.

Shut up.

Her mother, who’d been persuaded to turn on her daughter in less than two minutes. Whose first priority had been no one knowing. 

Look pretty.

Her grandmother, who’d wanted a pawn, raised a lovesick girl instead, and tried to kill it when she’d realized the mistake. Who’d succeeded in killing it (because she always fucking succeeded, didn't she), and created a monster instead.

Smile.

In the mirror, her grin is perfect. Carefully, she applies lip gloss. 

And thinks, with certainty:

I’m going to kill them all.