The Princeling starts an "initiative" that's supposed to bring all of the kids from the Isle of the Lost over to live in Auradon. She assumes he'll start with the babies, the kids who need it the most, who are the worst off while they're trapped with their psychotic parents.
Instead, he "randomly selects" her, Evie, Carlos and Jay, and Mal riots. The Isle is in her blood- for all means and purposes, it's her birthright, and he's ripping her away (and, by extension, the one thing that protecting Isle kids, and stopping all-out warfare from breaking out amongst the citizens of the Isle {she's got a mole, somewhere, and she calls all of her people together and threatens to burn the Isle down if they aren't found}.
She spends the rest of the single day she has before being shipped off to Auradon securing her magic. She binds it to every object of magical value, regardless of the fact that they're all worthless right now. She weaves a net across the Isle, and attunes herself to it so finely that she knows when someone steps outside their home (she doesn't know if the magic will hold when she's in Auradon, because it's part-fae {like her}, but she does it anyway, because the Isle is hers, and these people are hers, even if they don't know it) (even Uma, who fights with her on every available occasion and pushes her to the point that Mal would be well-justified to raze her to the ground, is hers).
Leaving the Isle is the hardest thing she's ever had to do. Her magic screams at her to stay in her place with her people {it's harder than when she had looked at Uma and told her to leave, because then her magic had screamed 'stay', too, but her pride had said 'go'}.
Before she leaves, her mother looks her in her eyes and says, "Promise me you'll steal the wand."
She doesn't have a choice.
They make it to Auardon, and between the sun beaming down like it's out to get them and the people whose smiles are stretches so wide it's almost grotesque, Mal loathes it. It's all she's never wanted.
They're in a land where magic is real and available, and yet she feels nothing. There are sparks when she's in the vicinity of Hesperos (who is a god), but mostly, she walks around with the desert-dryness clinging to her skin and feeling like absolute shit. People thank her for coming to Auradon (for nothing at all) and she grins through the weight of Promises that people don't know they're making.
They try to steal the wand that night. It's reckless, because they're going in with no plan, no background knowledge at all (it feels like years ago, before they'd developed a network of Isle kids who told them everything they could possibly need to know), but they just want to be gone from this place where it feels like magic should be, but isn't (at least on the Isle, the only magic was Mal's and her father's. Mal didn't expect any other magic to exist, there).
They fail, and Mal expects them to be sent back without even a trial (like their parents). But the museum must have the worst security in the world, because even though she waited up all night for the Auradonian Guard Force to come to break down the door to their dorm, it never comes (she lies on Evie's bed, holding her girlfriend tight- it might be the last night that she gets to)(she plans to say she coerced the others. They can't go back empty-handed, because Maleficent will kill them. Hades will keep her mother at bay for her, though. She thinks).
They end up in 'Goodness 101' the next day, staring blankly at the Fairy Godmother as she tries to drill them on the 'good' option (Mal sketches the wand and thinks about how morality isn't objective, how all of Auradon society is based on a logical fallacy). She parrots the answers the headmistress expects of her and ignores the consequences that would come with following through on these actions. Whatever the hell you want, her father had said, and sitting in 'Goodness 101' is not it.
She sends Evie off to Science with a smile and encouragement to keep her intelligence under wraps (Evie is brilliant, but underestimation is a handy tool and people like Evie-the-Ditz more than Evie-the-Genius because Evie-the-Ditz isn't a threat). She sends Jay and Carlos off to Tourney, with similar instructions- Carlos should look weak and intelligent, Jay should look strong and stupid. It's their tried-and-true method, and no one on the Isle really buys it anymore, but she'd bet her life that the people of Auradon will.
She corners the Fairy Godmother's daughter in the bathroom- and picks her apart before she even makes a move. Her name is Jane- plain Jane, Mal would bet. She thinks she's ugly because she doesn't know how to dress for herself. She wants to be like Audrey, looks up to the other princess (so far, every time that Mal has bumped into Audrey, she's thought the girl weak of spirit, and so far, she hasn't been proved wrong). It's so easy for Mal to hurt the girl- hell, she hardly has to try. She places a basic glamour over Jane, similar to the one she holds in place over her own looks, and Jane thanks her profusely. Mal doesn't let her lips curl into a smile, even though Jane now owes her a debt and Mal knows her name (her mother is the Fairy Godmother, Jane is a fairy. Shouldn't they know better?). She doesn't even have to lie- nothing she can do to Jane's looks will be permanent, but anything the wand does will be.
When she sees her in their dorm, Mal barely makes eye contact with Evie before she kisses her, hard, because there's something is Evie's eyes that Mal knows, and hates (it's the look of a girl who's been using her looks to get what she wants, it's the look Evie came home with every day on the Isle). Evie's doing two sets of homework and stitching a dress, and she's doing it all without any magic. She's a saint, Mal swears.
Furious steps echo outside their door, and they hardly manage to pull themselves apart before Jane storms in, already complaining about her mother.
They tune her out, providing some commentary if necessary but mostly just letting the girl talk herself hoarse while they banter in the background ("you've never had one"- no, she's had two, and a girlfriend). But their luck must be holding, or maybe Mal's magic is working for her because Li Lonnie steps through the door (inviting herself in, how Auradon of her. On the Isle, you'd get hurt for that).
Evie tries to save her, she really does, offering to do her hair so that she doesn't owe Mal anything, but Li Lonnie all but demands a spell, so Mal smirks and accepts the debt (on the Isle Mal didn't take debt from unsuspecting kids because they didn't have anything to give- here, the princes and princesses expect things to be given to them and hand out their full names, and Mal can't wait for the day when she calls it and asks for something and they have to give).
Li Lonnie gives Mal an idea, though. Because people want things, and Mal can deliver those things, and it's all too easy to tell her to spread the word that Mal will do people's hair (she princess's debts and it's like taking candy from a baby).
But it's making people think she's nice (and it turns out to… not feel bad, having people think she's nice. It's also brilliantly useful for her strategy, which is falling apart around her. She encourages Jay, Evie and Carlos to open up to a couple of people, let everyone think they're softening).
She spends what little free time she has with the three of them, and they kiss softly in their dorms where no one can see. She drops her glamour in that free time, letting her hair fade back to blue and letting her wings spread out. But when they leave the dorm, she recolours her hair and hides her wings and eyes, and she and Evie walk with pinkies linked in corridors, and Jay and Carlos sling their arms around their girls' shoulders. Mal thinks about whatever the hell I want and imagines kissing them in broad daylight instead of behind closed doors (she doesn't, though. Her father's advice is all well and good, but it's not helpful, not in Auradon where everyone is expected to curb their desires).
So, as it turns out, Mal needs to seduce Ben. They consider doing it the old-fashioned way (Evie's way), but now they have access to magic and spells at their disposal, and nothing can be allowed to go wrong. So they use a love spell (in the spellbook, it warns of a time the spell was used to make a man fall in love with a horse- they laugh and say that it's a perfect choice).
Li Lonnie is their saving grace, barging in in the middle of the night and crying over their parents not loving them enough (Mal thinks of Hades roaring at Maleficent in fury, and wonders).
They spell Ben, and it all goes to hell.
"I would give my kingdom for just one kiss," he tells her, and Mal promises herself that she won't kiss him (she's not above collecting debt made by unknowing kids, but this- this is wrong, she tells herself. That's not a debt, that's a Promise that Ben;'s making, and her mother's words- 'take them at their word even when they don't mean it' ring in her head. Mal tries to shake off the Promise, but it seals itself into her bones and her lungs).
She goes on a date with him, a date which her girlfriend helps her prepare for and her boyfriends coach her through. They need to do this, even though they're them and Mal hates this plan.
But then he nearly dies and that would wreck every single plan she's made, so Mal dives in to try and save him (her Promise to her mother presses down on her lungs and she can't breathe until she sees Ben, alive and well).
He tries to introduce her to his parents not even a week later, and she rolls her eyes at Evie, Jay and Carlos but plays along, smiling prettily and pretending she understands having loving parents (her mother stutters when she says I miss you, because she's lying and it hurts the fae to lie).
Audrey's grandmother convinces her to go through with it. Because if her daughter grew up with fairies, she should know better than to antagonize one. Then Chad attacks Evie, and Mal wants to fucking kill him, but Ben and Carlos are holding her back (Jay gets a good punch in, though) (she undoes Jane's hair in a fit of pettiness. She feels like her mother, like a fairy when she does it. Afterwards, she feels worse than before. But still- whatever the hell she wants).
Mal doesn't know why she unspells Ben. Probably because she doesn't want him to be panting after her while she's ruling his kingdom with Evie, Jay and Carlos at her side (even her mother can't live forever. Eventually it will be Mal's turn- it's what she was born for). She doesn't love him, but her doesn't deserve to be in love with her (when he reveals that he's been free of her love spell since the enchanted lake, she freezes. Her plan never accounted for him actually wanting her. Eventually, she smiles and him and turns her face just in time, so that his lips meet her cheek instead of her lips).
Mal plans on going through with it, but only after Ben is king. It's a lot easier to take a kingdom from a week-old king than from the man who established it. Plain Jane beats her to it, though, threatening to "do it herself". Mal doesn't have to think about it, her mother's warnings- magic in the hands of the inexperienced can be more dangerous than magic in the hands of the experienced, Mal- ringing in her ears as she snatches the wand from Jane. Her lovers run down to meet her, and she wants to run because she's so close to fulfilling her Promise, to having the suffocating weight of it off her chest.
But Ben asks her if she wants to do it. The answer is no, but she doesn't have a choice.
She tells him as much, but can't find the words to explain that it's not her mother she's scared of, it's her own magic.
She doesn't have to, though, because her mother appears in the centre of the cathedral.
"Give me the wand, Mal. You promised."
She did. She Promised she'd steal the wand. And she has. But she never promised to give it to her mother.
What follows next is a blur. Years later, Mal won't be able to exactly place the series of events, but she knows that a couple of things happen: her mother turns into a dragon, Ben tells her he loves her, she gets the wand back, and her mother shrinks down to the size of a lizard (the Fairy Godmother tells her that it's the size of the love in her heart, but Mal thinks that it's not that deep. She'd wanted to make her mother feel as small as she had her whole life, and this was the result).
After the Coronation, Mal does something she doesn't want to. She breaks up with Evie, Carlos and Jay. She hates herself for doing it, hears Evie crying herself to sleep every night for a week. But Mal can't trust that it's not her status as the king's girlfriend keeping them safe and off the Isle. Mal has been using her status to keep herself and her people safe for years, and this is no different. She will be Ben's loving, dedicated girlfriend, his Lady of the Court, his anything and everything to keep her people safe.
This is what she tells herself now, but after months of collecting debts from people who introduce themselves and thank her for saving them from her mother, after feeling the people on the Isle rioting against her magic and protection, after seeing that Evie, Jay and Carlos are Auradonian enough that they won't be left to rot from the moment she leaves, Mal lets her glamour slip off and she goes back to reclaim her kingdom and her people. Because it's what she wants, and she tells herself that she's spent long enough denying her father's legacy.
