As the fire blazed, the purple smoke rose and poured out over the land. Wind whipped at her hair; the air filled with the smell of burnt hair and burnt flesh and the darkest magic.

The darkest venom of her soul poured into this curse. Her mother was gone, the king was gone, Rumplestiltskin was left powerless, and now everything else would be under her control. She would finally, finally have her revenge, and how sweet it would be! That little princess, with her forgiveness and her oh-so-innocent eyes and her "Prince Charming", would live forever the way Regina had lived these past twenty years, knowing that same pain.

And everyone else…those undeserving, simpering wretches who thought they were so high and mighty and righteous. Stupid Cinderella's happy ending destroyed. Maleficent trapped in that hideous form she used to be so fond of. Those little blue-eyed children separated forever from their beloved father. The proud rich man and his bright wife would be kept apart, hating each other, forever incomplete, with no happy ending to their boring romance.

The infuriating cricket, too, and the pathetic old woodcarver with his fake son; the sparkly, happy fairies who never would learn that all magic, all magic, comes at a price, and that the only real difference between "good" and "bad" was how far you were willing to go; that doctor who failed so miserably; the hat-jumper so desperately devoted to that little snip of a girl.

She had triumphed over all of them.

The dwarfs on the turrets of the castle saw the distant smoke and sounded the alarm. Cinderella, who sat in her husband's chair, trying to deal with problems the way he would have, saw it rolling over the hills and rose to her feet. Rumplestiltskin, his eyes enormous and his teeth gnashing together, glared at the diagram he'd drawn. Elizabeth smelled it before she saw it, but then it came through the trees. She parted her lips to call for D…