"We can know everything we need to know about a society by taking a look inside its prisons."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hades was the god of death, and Persephone was the queen of rebirth. While the former had ash-pale skin and the complexion of a corpse, the latter shone with dark brown glory, the color of the most fertile soil and sun-kissed figs, with wreathes of flowers woven in her long, intricately braided hair.
While Demeter was the goddess of all plants and the harvest, she had never looked close enough to see that her dear child's hair was not adorned with sweet wildflowers as she'd always thought. Even after the woman returned for her first spring above ground, Demeter never noticed that the wreathes were swooping crowns of foxglove and belladonna, and the most potent poisons that had ever grown wild in the fields.
The two were well matched for each other, despite how much Demeter hated it.
So when Hades was condemned to the Isle for his part in releasing the Titans, Persephone went with him. She hadn't been a co-conspirator, hadn't been privy to that particular plan (or at least privy enough to need an alibi), but she loved him (and she loved the unborn child she didn't know she was carrying when she was banished). Thus, Evie was the only one of the four with two parents, but Hadie was the only on the entire Isle with two parents who loved her, and each other.
Her skin was like her parents', mingled. Black as soil, but ashen instead of rich brown. She had Hades' firey mane, but instead of burning like a hot blue coal, hers simmered in the color of fresh-spilled blood, not unlike the red tones of her mother's hair. Instead of standing straight up, it flowed down her back like molten iron, and waved gently, as if blown by an unseen wind.
Mal thought, on this of all nights, that she looked radiant.
It was Samhain, the autumn of her fourteenth year, and something was oddly stirring tonight, like the air before a thunder storm. Hadie was standing atop the roof of their hideout, keeping a close watch on the immediate area. This was always, without fail, the worst night of the year - because Beltane was the fairies' day and witch's night, but Samhain was for villains. It just seemed like everyone waited for Samhain to let all their crazy out at once, in one big revel.
On top of that, there was so much magic. It buzzed around Mal and through her and hummed in her ears like a gnat had crawled into her skull and taken up residence there. It wrapped around her fingers and tempted her, and called her, and sometimes she thought it would be better to just put a gun to her head and be done with it, than to live the rest of her life with the never ending drone of unused, unavailable magic.
Always so close, yet so out of reach. And Hadie radiated it.
"What?" The young goddess asked, tilting her head to take in Mal from a different angle. She'd noticed their leader staring, even though Mal looked away, flushed and glaring at nothing.
"It's just -" Mal stuttered, trying to figure out why this seemed so hard. She could have said any of the things on her mind, like how do you make it so look so easy? Or why are you so damn beautiful and distracting? Instead she schooled her features and said none of those the careful statements she'd thought up that night.
"You smell like brimstone. Your aura feels like the air before a storm." Mal whispered. She could sense things so much better on Samhain - no reliance on runes or chants or circles. She felt more in touch with her true magic on this night. "I feel like I could reach out and touch you, and only feel static."
Hadie simply raised an eyebrow, and held her gaze for a moment before turning away. "Like the ancient tv sets we get here?" She joked, and Mal remembered a young Carlos, who glared, transfixed, at the black and white screen that showed King Adam's Fireplace Hour, running his hands across the static-laden glass.
Mal was filled with several emotions as she nodded. She was always somewhat jealous of Hadie - for her power (the power of two gods combined), for her effortless beauty (Mal could never aspire to the standards of an immortal). She was jealous of how she could be so cavalier, as if she didn't care who used her secrets against her, here in this prison where no one spoke the truth, because it put them at risk. Now she was even more jealous, because of her secure relationship with Ginny. Mal wanted to have that with Evie, and she didn't know how to start. She was afraid of being weak. She was afraid of fucking up again.
The sun was setting out to the west, lowering itself, glimmering, into the sea towards Auradon. The moon was on the rise as well, looking smaller and paler by comparison, but it was no less important in magic. In fact, in ritual magic, the moon tended to be more important in several spells. As the untouched magic around them started to buzz higher, and tingle on her skin, she felt the start of that imperceptible rise to full power that would finally hit its peak at midnight, little good it would do her.
Samhain night had begun.
Mal had always had a tendency to overthink things when she got down to it. So she made sure not to think at all about what she did next - which, in hindsight, was probably a bad idea.
"Teach me to kiss." She said with a faint smirk, more an order than a request. Hadie looked at her oddly for a moment. She thought briefly about what Ginny would say if she knew, and then she remembered that Ginny was irreverant and hated anything that would make her look like a proper young lady in the eyes of society.
"Alright." The young goddess said, smirking, and resolved to tell Ginny as soon as possible. She'd probably get a kick out of it. As Mal started to smile wickedly, the other girl put up a hand, and gave a smirk of her own. "On one condition."
Mal scowled at that, although Hadie wondered exactly why she seemed surprised. Everything came with a price on the Isle, even from members of your own gang.
"Relax princess, it's not a big favor." The daughter of Hades laughed, throwing her head back in the rapidly darkening evening. The distant lights of Auradon glowed like a beacon just beyond the barrier, taunting them.
"I'm not a princess." Mal spat.
"Your mom is more or less the queen of the Isle. That makes you a princess." Hadie retorted, she always found it amusing to rile Mal up, and she was the only one who could get away with it.
"Whatever. Just tell me the conditions."
"Condition. Just one." Hadie held up a finger to punctuate her point. "Tell me who you're learning for. Who does our hot-blooded leader seek to impress?"
At that, Mal had smirked. The corner of her mouth quirked up, like it did when she felt she was in on a joke and wanted to lord it over the rest of the peasants.
"Everyone." Mal laughed. "I want to be able to seduce anyone at the drop of a hat."
(To be fair, the plan to love-spell Benjamin Florian had been in the works for a long, long time.)
Mal watched the way Evie flirted and stole, and took from men who only wanted to take from her. She saw how pretty didn't always equal sexy, and vice-versa, and she wanted a kind of power like that, the kind of power that could bring a kingdom to its knees.
"You'll need a lot more to be a seductress." Hadie replied. "But kissing, I can help with."
And then the young goddess leaned forward, and pressed her lips against Mal's in the most tender of unions. Her lips were soft as rose petals, and Mal reflected later, after her first kiss with Jay, that kissing boys was different, and she'd later admit that Jay and Ben were different, just like Hadie and Evie were different. Mal lay awake sometimes wondering about her odd desire to kiss everyone and see how they were alike and different. She wondered sometimes if that made her wrong somehow. Weird. A whore.
(Her mother told her once, when she was younger, that 'whore' was just a word for a woman who got what she wanted.)
Mal could smell the other girl's hair (the scent of brimstone mingled with burning apple wood), as she opened her lips, nibbling lightly on Mal's. She wasn't sure what to do, so she opened her mouth, tilting her head slightly so that their lips meshed together, like pieces of a puzzle.
What do I do with my tongue? She thought, not sure whether to keep it flat against the top of her mouth or the bottom, and not sure whether to keep it still or swirl it around. It was so embarrassing and awkward to be caught off guard like this. Sensing her distress, Hadie pulled back, and leaned into Mal's air, laughing a bit.
"Don't worry about your tongue. Just follow my lead."
And they met in the middle again, this time tilting more naturally, coming together more gracefully, uniting more perfectly than before. Hadie's tongue flicked out and caressed Mal's, stroking and pulling, like a parody of fucking with just their mouths, and the girl suddenly realized what the big deal was with kissing. It was like magic, and on this, of all nights, the apple-wood and dragonfire sparked against each other, filling Mal with a sense of power, like the time she and Evie had killed their attackers and made a circle of the blood.
Sex magick, her mind whispered, and as the moon burst above the horizon in slow motion, Carlos screamed (still audible through the walls of their hideout), and something awful across the Isle howled.
"Now then." Hadie laughed, pulling away. "You're starting to kiss less like a dead slug."
Isle compliments. Mal thought, and pounced at the young goddess, knocking her to the ground and pinning her hands to the side to kiss her again. It would be different with anyone else, but Hadie was part of Mal's gang, and on the Isle, you protected your own. If her voice became anything but playful, Mal would back off. Luckily for her, Hadie smirked against Mal's lips and let herself be held.
"You're a fast learner, Mal." Hadie had whispered when the other girl pulled away and tilted her head, grinning. Mal was about to make a snappy quip, but it died on her lips when she heard another scream, this time coming from outside the warehouse, and singing in conjunction with Carlos' seasonal agony. Something farther away gave off a howling moan, and was answered by a horrible chorus of the same, maybe ten at a time.
"The fuck is going on?" The Fae girl mused aloud, and stood up again, watching the street from their lookout point.
"You wanna go check it out?" The goddess asked, and looked to the gang leader for guidance.
"It would just be you and me. Ginny and Carlos don't go out on the sabbats, and Jay and E are busy." Mal replied. Ginny had been somewhat wary of going out on the witch's holidays (solstices, equinox, the eight sabbats of the year) ever since her mother had tried to sacrifice her on Beltane. It was understandable, and any magic performed by the burgeoning coven was usually done within doors. Samhain was villain's night, and all the crazies came out to play - dangerous and unpredictable. They normally wouldn't have dreamed of leaving their safe, warded hideout on Samhain night, but this sound was... New. And on the Isle, new meant dangerous.
"Right then. Let's go." Hadie nodded sharply, and took off across the rooftops, swift and quiet as Peter Pan's shadow.
They followed the sounds of agony and distress to a part of town near Dragon Hall, the cemetery where their school (the only school on the Isle) was housed.
"I've got a real bad feeling about this. I hate Facilier's territory." The young goddess muttered. The Shadow Man ruled the graveyards and the school, the only places he could carve out of the Isle hierarchy when they were all first thrown there. It wasn't much, but it was better than others had (well, most others - the big four had their own estates practically, and Ursula and Hook dominated the wharf.) Mal had to agree this time - something very fishy was going on here.
Another scream rocked the night, and Mal leaned off her rooftop, to see nothing short of a horde - something was shambling along out there, and whatever they were, they had Freddie Facilier in their grasp. She shrieked, and kicked out at one of the creatures that held her. To Mal's surprise, its head flew back, and even with a broken neck, the thing kept moving.
"Let go of me!" Freddie screamed, flailing her limbs against the almost overwhelming forces that threatened to swarm her.
"What do you say? Are we getting involved?" Hadie asked under her breath, and Mal nodded. Freddie had magic, and Voodoo was serious stuff - if the girl was in her debt, she might contribute to the coven.
Without another word, they launched into action, with fists and baseball bats at the ready, lunging into battle.
"Aim for their heads!" Freddie screamed, and the girls barely heard her over the cacophony of moans and wails, but they did as she suggested, and heard the satisfying crunch of shattered bone when they attacked. They'd never seen the living dead before, but they knew what dead people looked like, and Hadie took great pleasure in sending each and every one of them back to hell.
When they finally stood alone, surrounded by bones and gore, Freddie gave a sigh of relief and Mal saw her knees tremble.
"What the fuck was that?" Hadie snarled, angry that someone had cheated death (her domain!) and pissed that she'd wasted an evening saving someone else's hide.
"My father calls them zombi." Freddie whispered. "He sent them after me when I ran away."
"You owe me big time, Freddie." Mal murmured, glancing around to see if anyone was trying to eavesdrop. Anyone who dared would soon be a dead man, but you never knew.
"I know." Freddie whispered, jutting up her chin with a glare. "What do you want?"
"An alliance." Mal explained. "Come join my gang, and you won't have to live with your father anymore."
Mal had never noticed it before, but she could bet that the shadow man had done more to his daughter than just sending a horde of zombies after her - the perfectly circular scars under her eyes nearly proved that. Her suspicions proved true when Freddie's eyes lit up, and she nodded, before turning jaded again, and glancing away.
"I can't do that. He'll just come for me." Freddie said then, still refusing to meet Mal's eyes.
"Can he get past three layers of warding, plus whatever you've got to bring?" Mal smirked. "Mother Gothel's been trying for years now, and she hasn't made it yet."
"You drive a hard bargain, Mal." Freddie smiled. "How can I refuse?"
"We don't have dating on the Isle." Mal would tell Ben one day, several years later, on the banks of an enchanted lake. She recalled her first kiss, on a rickety rooftop at the start of Samhain, and chuckled a bit, remembering how her second kiss had happened just minutes afterwards (and she'd been covered in gore and viscera, with Freddie making fake gagging noises from behind Hadie as Mal kissed like she wanted to possess her).
"It's more like... Gang activity."