Note: Finally, a new chapter! There's been some real life traels which celayed things, but I hope this will be worth the wait.

Disclaimer: Alas, the original story is still not mine.

Stone Walls

By the time Maleficent and Carsgrave had reached their temporary accord, it was early evening. The Steward saw to it that a Chamberlain was summoned to arrange accommodations for Lady Maleficent and her party. When the Chaberlain inquired as to their needs, he found that they were quite simple: a quiet place with room enough that they could remain together. Though it was doubtful that he realized "quiet" really meant "an isolated place where any intruder would be obvious," he was able to show them to a modest suite of rooms that were perfectly suitable. There was a central siting-room with four smaller rooms for sleeping off to the sides, all simply but comfortably furnished and swiftly but scrupulously made clean. Once he was assured that the quarters were acceptable to their guests, the Chamberlain promised to have a meal sent to them presently and took his leave.

Aurora once again found herself in an unusually contemplative mood, having to come to terms with the whirlwind of recent events. It was a bit overwhelming—seeing the Nobles, hearing their reactions, the reality of everything beginning to set in, though the most troubling of all at the moment was the desperate situation facing this country (her country, soon).

"Godmother," she began hesitantly. "We wouldn't…we couldn't really leave everyone to starve, could we? If they refuse?"

"There is no 'we,' Beastie," Maleficent told the girl gently, falling back on the old endearment. "It is none of it your fault. They believe I would leave them to starve, and that is sufficient. They will not refuse. I wouldn't wish to do it, if it came to that; there is enough Evil in this world without my adding any more to it, but you must remember that they do not see me as you do. They see only an enemy, and if they were not prepared to accept my help in spite of that, then I could do very little."

Maleficent found that she could not put into words how much she truly did want to help, how the invocation to bring forth living things stuck in her throat, aching to be spoken. Aurora's only response was a silent nod, and Maleficent saw the girl brace herself up in an act of will, making herself face the difficult truths of a world she had not been prepared for. Seeing it, Maleficent felt a welling of deep pride, witnessing in such hints as this glimpses of the redoubtable woman Aurora was capable of becoming. Let others be blind if they wished, but Maleficent would take her joy in watching Aurora grow.

"It was still cruel, the things they said about you," Aurora remarked, displaying a rare bit of indignation on behalf of her Godmother.

"It's quite alright, Beastie," Maleficent assured her. "They were supposed to tangle with me today instead of you." She put her forehead to her daughter's—the sort of affectionate gesture she reserved only for Aurora. "It was a long war—longer even than most of those men can likely fathom—and such things take time to heal. Just be patient."

Aurora sighed, and realized that a part of her unease probably came from being cooped up within the thick, stone walls of the Castle. Growing up in the sunny cottage, with the Glen and Forest for her playground, her earlier life had been free and full of light. This place was alien to her, and even a bit frightening. Unlike the much larger, more nebulous problems looming over them, however, she thought that this was one that was easily dealt with. She knew that her Godmother would deal with any such anxiety by tackling it head-on, and with that for her example, Aurora decided that she would go out from their chambers and explore her new home.

Maleficent was unsurprised when Phillip volunteered to accompany the Princess, but she did not object when they set off. She forced herself to acknowledge that Aurora needed space to begin making her own decisions, and this was a first step, however modest, so as they departed Maleficent adjured them only to be careful and not to stay away too long. The thought of Phillip-as-bodyguard was almost amusing, for though he was two years or so Aurora's senior and Maleficent assumed (correctly, as it happened) that he'd received at least rudimentary training-at-arms in the manner of all young, noble-born males, he would not have been a match for a more cunning nobleman, or a full-grown, veteran member of the Castle Guard. Then again, Maleficent knew that there would be no danger this night. The Nobles were too busy licking their wounds, and the Guard was conspicuously absent. If they had wanted to act, then the Guard would have done so long before now, and it was very evident that they wanted no part of a renewed skirmish with the rogue Faerie and her skin-changing familiar.

As soon as the younger pair had vanished through the main door, shutting it behind them, Maleficent released a long breath, letting a hidden weariness come to the surface. If gestures of affection were reserved only for Aurora, then moments where she allowed any other part of herself show through were reserved only for Diaval. She, like Aurora, felt unsettled within the walls of the Castle, although her disquiet came from knowing the Castle all too well. This, after all, was the place to which she'd had to come to confront the man who had—well, Maleficent didn't know if there was even a word for the violation she had suffered. She had known only that she'd had to make Stefan realize what he had done, to make him see that he could not do such a thing and then expect her to disappear for his convenience. So she had come here, and faced him at his infant daughter's christening, in this place. The place where so recently she and Diaval had fought for their lives. The place where they had almost lost Aurora.

A wave of uncountable emotions washed over her, and for a moment, her iron burns stung as if they were fresh injuries, not days old and nearly healed. Her wings tensed, lifting slightly, and their feathers splayed rigidly before at length they subsided and her wings once more folded calmly at her back. Few others besides Diaval would have realized that wings could be an outlet for self-expression as much as a means of flight, but now Maleficent was able to evince her feelings and find relief from them in a way that had been denied her for many, many years. Clearly, despite her words to Aurora, some of the Nobles' barbs had gouged through her defenses. Nevertheless, she had purposely drawn their ire onto herself in order to spare her adoptive daughter, and Diaval could only shake his head in wonder at such an act. He dared to approach a couple of steps closer.

"Mistress?" He purposely left his inquiry open-ended so that she could hear in it whatever she most needed.

"No need for concern, Daival—and you don't have to call me that. Not me," she said heavily. "Not anymore." He gave a short nod and she gave a pained expression that looked like a smile but wasn't. "It was never something I had a right to in the first place."

"If you say so, Mistress," came his response.

She wheeled on him with a ferocious glare before she caught the gleam of humor behind his strikingly black eyes. Her expression softened into a mildly chiding look, and she found that the worst of her troubled mood had suddenly passed. To help banish the rest of it, she turned her mind to more practical matters. Diaval seemed to grasp Maleficent's purpose, and accepted without protest when she changed the subject.

"What do you know about that Steward?" she asked him. The man—Ansgar?— had certainly not been brought up in their earlier discussions, and she disliked being faced with such an unknown quantity. She wondered if he wasn't the same Steward who had figured in Phillips's tale.

"I don't know him at all, I'm afraid," Diaval had to ruefully admit. He had not been so remiss in his years of spying as to ignore the Castle's common staff entirely—they were always the best source for gossip and overheard bits of information—but there were a great many of them and as a result very few had come to his attention as players in and of themselves, and those he did notice tended to be those who were obviously ambitious or incompetent. Thus, the Steward's going unremarked before the present suggested that he was neither of these things, a point which might be construed in his favor. "He seems to know what he's doing," Diaval remarked aloud. "Actually, I think he could be a big help. We'll need someone who can show Aurora the ropes, and he might be just who we're looking for."

Maleficent let out a skeptical huff. "That would be too easy. In my experience, the world is not in the habit of blithely providing for one's every wish." She eyed her companion, who looked down and shifted his weight from foot to foot. "You disagree?"

"Not exactly," he hedged. "I mean, that's not how things usually go, you're right about that, but I'm a Raven," he pointed out, as if this explained everything. With a glance, Maleficent silently bade him to enlighten her. "We're scavengers," he elucidated, "and we're not ashamed of that because we learn things living the way we do, and one of the things we learn is that sometimes the world does give you something right when you most need it. Not often, maybe, but sometimes. Could be it's our turn to catch a break."

"That'll be the day," Maleficent murmured, lips forming a wry twist, but the words lacked any bitterness. "Well, we shall see," she concluded more firmly. "If he proves trustworthy, then we may indeed make use of him."

That seemed the only logical response, though the thought of yet one more reason to 'wait and watch' was endlessly draining. At her core, Maleficent was a woman of action, meant for clean contests upon a battlefield, strength against strength, not this plotting and scheming. She felt everything beginning to close in on her again. Though she did not allow herself to look towards her chosen sleeping-chamber, where a window let out onto a balcony and the open air, something subtle must have given her away, because Diaval urged her to go ahead. It did not seem fair to contemplate flying while leaving him grounded, but they did not know when Phillip and Aurora would return, and the pair would worry if they came back and found the rooms left empty. Ever-patient, Diaval did not mind staying behind, and he told Maleficent as much.

Pausing only to offer a look of profound gratitude, she strode out to the balcony and took wing. Her first impulse was to soar as high as she could bear, find the strongest headwind in the whole sky, and strive against it until she could fly no more, but she resisted and instead, under the light of the lowering Sun, she flew low and broad, the habitual arc of her normal reconnaissance. The comforting familiarity made it soothing.

When she finally felt at peace again, she turned her course back to the Castle, and easily found the windows to their quarters. When she stepped through into the main room, she discovered that Aurora and Phillip were also just come back from their explorations, and there was food on the table. They all arranged themselves around it and shared out portions, and in the beginning Diaval carried the conversation, asking Phillip and Aurora about which parts of the Castle they had seen. This topic soon brought out Aurora's natural curiosity, and she asked Phillip about his home.

"What's the castle like where you live?" she asked him.

"Not so large as this," he admitted, "but more open. Ulstead, where I'm from, it's mostly hill-country, so the Castle sits at the highest point and on the right sort of day you can see clear to the coast at Theranvale. As Kingdoms go, we're pretty small, which I guess is why I was sent up here in the first place. We'd been hearing rumors from passing merchants that the King of Aldersthame was buying all the iron he could get his hands on, and digging for more." Though Diaval had at least heard of it in passing, it took a moment for the other two to realize that Phillip was referring to Aurora's land by its given name. For her, it had simply been "the Kingdom," being the extent of her world, and to Maleficent it had always been "the Borderlands," its main quality being that it was not the Moors.

"Why would Ulstead be worried about iron?" Aurora wondered. She knew the Fae had good reason to fear the metal, but a land of Men…?

"We assumed the King was building an army—a conventional one, I mean. We didn't know about the Moors—we have tales of Fae or creatures like them, but those were just stories, pure fancy as far as we knew—so our best guess was that the King either planned to invade one of his human neighbors, or else he feared one of them was planning to do the same to him. What really worried us, though, was the possibility that he was planning something bigger, a serious campaign, and if that turned our direction…." He shrugged. "We couldn't hope to put up a fight on our own, so our best chance was to send someone to the Aldersthame Court and see what we could findout. If we could learn enough, at least that might give us a chance to muster some allies."

"Ah, well," he shrugged. "The good news is, now we know we don't have to worry about any of that."

"But the bad news?" Aurora asked, brow furrowing slightly as she caught a leading hint in his tone.

He merely grinned, the genuine humor in it somewhat reassuring. "The bad news is that now I'm going to have to write home, and they are never going to believe a word I say. Just picture it: 'Dearest Mother and Father,''' he recited with exaggerated seriousness, imagining how his letter might unfold. "'I can say with great confidence that our fears of invasion have been unfounded. On a related note, did you know that Faeries are quite real? I had a very nice conversation with one just the other day and now we are all staying at the Palace. Also, there was a Dragon.'"

He laughed at his own predicament, and Aurora and Diaval joined in, envisioning how such a missive would be received; Even Maleficent bore a small expression of amusement. When the merriment finally subsided, Aurora asked, more seriously, "What will you do?"

"Tell the truth," he answered simply. "They probably won't believe it at first, but the worst they can do is to send someone else after me. Once he starts telling the exact same story, whoever the poor man may be, then Mother and Father will have to listen. I suppose I could ride back in person to try to convince them, but…." He drew a deep breath. "Princess Aurora, Lady Maleficent, I…I know I haven't been a part of this, not from the beginning, the way you have, and I know I may not have much to offer but…I would very much like help however I can. May I have your permission to stay with you?"

Maleficent considered carefully. She was justifiably wary of human beings and their intentions, but this boy did seem to have a certain honesty to him, and he had stood by them quite admirably in the Great Hall. There was no knowing for sure whether he could really be trusted, but the life of a Protector was lived by a series of simple rules: keep close to what you must protect. Watch your enemies. Identify threats and do whatever is required to stop them. And, above all, never turn aside from any tool or ally that might aid you in your task.

"I do not forbid it," Maleficent pronounced, and looked to Aurora, for her consent was the most important.

"Of course!" Aurora beamed, glad to have a friend to add to their improbable but close-knit family.

"Thank you," Phillip said, honored to have their acceptance.

The rest of the meal passed with only the occasional bit of light chatter, and by the time they had finished and stacked their dishes neatly aside, it had grown quite late. Phillip and Aurora said their goodnights and retired, she to her room safely surrounded by all the others, Phillip to his just next to Aurora's. The room on the other side, of course, was Maleficent's domain, and Diaval's was just beyond hers. Before she left to seek her own rest, Maleficent first turned to Diaval.

"Would you like me to change you?" she asked.

He considered whether he would be most comfortable sleeping as Raven or Man, but decided that in a place of Men, his human form would be wisest. "I think I would like to stay as I am," he told her, barely managing not to slip and call her "Mistress".

"Very well," she replied. As she watched him make his way to his chamber, Maleficent reflected that he deserved more—true control over his form, even, if such a thing were possible—but at least for now she could continue to give him a choice. She promised herself that she would look into it when their present obligations were more tractable.

In the starless dark of this unfriendly, iron-smelling place, it should have been a night of poor rest and ill dreams. Somehow, it was not.