A/N: I'm obsessed with Disney's scrapped idea that Ursula was Triton's sister, and in this au, she was the older sibling. Also, in keeping with the symbology of the other chapters, the athame stands for the opening and closing of portals and protective circles, like how Uma protects Gil and Harry, and cuts ties with her mother and C.J. This chapter contains a use of the "R" slur by an idiot who doesn't get a literature reference. Uma and Gil do though.

"One could conceive him capable of monstrous deeds, for he would let no man, no prejudice of men, stand in his way."

- Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

King Triton never told his daughters that they had an aunt, because she'd been born as a siren instead of a mermaid, and cast out of the family to die, just as soon as they saw she had tentacles instead of a tail. That her voice was magic, in a way that mermaids were not. She could weave magic out of water and miracles from nothing but a soul.

(And it galled her that their parents gave her little brother the power of the trident, even though she was smarter, older, and a better leader than he was. Or at least, she thought she'd be if anyone ever gave her the chance.)

Ariel never knew that the sea witch she'd sold her voice to, was her father's sister, that when Eric stabbed her, tainting the water with blood, he'd stabbed her paternal aunt. And if she had known, it might not have ever made any difference.

Uma knew though. She was raised like a princess in exile, and knew everything there was to know about diplomacy and war, about magic and cunning, and suffering. Just like in the fairy tale, a mermaid (or siren) on land never felt at home. Her half-human blood sometimes eased it, but often, it felt like she was walking on thumbtacks, and her very blood itched with the need to be back at sea, to hear her voice curl around curses and deals, to spread the glorious curls of her tentacles in the water like her braided hair could only mimic.

When she was ten, the son of Captain Hook stumbled into her mother's shop, muttering like a lunatic, and bleeding from the head. Ursula told her to fix him up, because it was well known that despite how ruthless Hook was, he cared about his children in his own way, and she wanted to make an alliance like the Big Four, because she was cunning, and desperate to garner the kind of power she needed to challenge Maleficent.

(The alliance worked, but Ursula would never have the power to challenge Maleficent. Largely, it was because her daughter went behind her back and made her own alliances with Mal. They were all slaves to their parents and their parents' crimes, but no one told Uma what to do.)

Captain Hook might have cared about his kids in his own way, but he was rarely around. Usually he could be found getting drunker and drunker at all hours of the day, and bemoaning the fate that had left him stuck on an island he couldn't sail away from (or cursing the boy who drove him mad and stole his hand). So when Uma visited, she was often greeted by Smee and the rest of Hook's crew, who had partially raised Harry after his mother died giving birth to his sister. Her mother taught her how to be a princess, and the crew taught her how to be a pirate. She learned all the basics, from intimidation and swordplay, to finding her path by the movements of the stars. She became the best rapier wielder on the Isle, and surpassed Hook's own daughter in talent, magic, and anything that actually mattered, leaving young C.J. Hook with an enormous chip on her shoulder.

(It was one of the reasons why Mal insisted, years later, that Uma and her triad be the last to leave the Isle. As soon as they were gone, Carmen Jane Hook would swoop in and fill the power vacuum, enacting swift and brutal revenge on anyone who'd been even vaguely allied with Uma.)

Harry wasn't her lover at first, but they were always friends. Once she knew how to be a pirate, she asked him to join her crew.

"As long as I'm not the cap'n." Harry murmured in a quiet accent, more contemplative than Uma had ever seen him.

"Why not?" She smirked, even though she had no intention of making him captain of her ship. (She'd won it off his drunken father in a bet, yet another reason C.J. hated her.) "I bet you'd make a great captain."

He gave her the oddest look then, the sort of look that seemed to peer through her, the looks that made him seem the most lucid.

"Makes 'em crazy, I hear." He stated solemnly, punctuating his statement with a twirl of his finger around his temple. "Drove my father absolutely nutters."

Uma laughed then, and kept her reply simple. "You'd be mad as the hatter himself either way, Harry, and it has nothing to do with your father. I love you for it."

Not despite it, but because of it, and no one had ever said that to Harry before, not even his own mother. A feeling rose within his chest, blossoming like a morning glory in the dewy rays of morning.

It was like coming home, for the very first time.

Gil came later, and Harry caught him sleeping in their boathouse because his father had kicked him out. He was the youngest of his brothers, and smallest too. The main rule at Gaston's house was survival of the fittest, and Gil was clever, not strong. He didn't have the muscle to fight off his brothers for food, but his innocent facade and pretended weakness made him able to provide for himself in other ways. He'd learned early on that he looked good enough, and he got better rates when he acted younger than he was, because people who wanted sex preferred a boy who wasn't yet broken by the despair of the Isle.

So when Harry grinned at the thought of a trespasser to torture, Gil did the only thing he could think of, and stood on his toes to kiss him, with the cheeky expression of someone who was ready to risk it all because that's what he'd done from as long as he could remember, living from one meal to another and only being allowed to sleep at home when he gave his father a huge cut of his nightly profits. The gamble held water, and Harry smirked, raising an eyebrow as he pulled away. Kissing on the Isle wasn't about love. It was about foreplay, and if Harry didn't take a more professional attitude, it would escalate very quickly (especially since Gil kept looking at him like that.)

No one looked at Harry Hook like that except Uma, because men and women alike were too afraid of him. He could take what he wanted, but he didn't need to, because he had his wonderful, beautiful captain. And maybe now...

"Well, I suppose we can find some use for you." He murmured, pulling the youngest son of Gaston from the shack with a gentler hand than before, and with a few prods and words here and there, he was easily folded into their group. He learned to fight as well as he could flirt, and slept under a roof every night with people who would watch his back instead of trying to stab it.

The captain of the pirate vessel Leviathan laughed at the concept of monogamy. A merman could take multiple wives and concubines (did the Auradonians honestly think all of Ariel's sisters all came from one woman?) So why might a siren not take multiple lovers or husbands? And besides the point, Uma was a pirate, and pirates did whatever the fuck they wanted in the lawless arena of international waters. So when Gil LeGume looked at her with big eyes and bigger shoulders, she wanted to cut him down where he stood. Then he opened his mouth and said;

"Wow, so this is a real pirate ship huh? Cool! I kinda love it. The interior is like the inside of the Nautilus."

"The seashell?" One of the guards asked no one in particular.

"Dude's a complete retard." Another answered, and Uma's eyes narrowed.

"Leave us." She said, and waved the guards away. They saluted and left without question, knowing that their captain and first mate could handle a lone boy who was sick in the head. Once they were gone, she smiled, every so faintly.

"And who, pray tell, is the captain of this 'Nautilus'?" Uma asked, recognizing the name as the fictional vessel from one of her favorite novels, Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea. She had a well-worn, coverless version of the novel on her bookshelf in the captain's cabin.

"Nemo, my captain." Gil replied courteously, before he smirked. "But you are far from it, aren't you, my lady?"

Uma smiled in earnest now, recalling the explanation from the book about how Nemo meant "no one", and Uma was far from no one. She aimed to have everyone one day know her name, and Gil acknowledged that without even knowing her.

"You are quite correct. And what is your name?" Uma paused. "Be aware, it had better not be Gaston Jr."

Gil had been born with that name, just as all his brothers had, but he, unlike they, had cast it aside a long time ago. He grinned.

They settled into a routine once Gil arrived. Uma woke up every morning, with the sunlight streaming through the window, tangled up in the arms of her first mate and curled around Gil protectively as he wore nothing whatsoever. They slept together in the captain's cabin of the Leviathan, which had a window made of melted green and clear glass bottles. It made the morning light that streamed through appear delightfully aquatic. The furniture was worn out trash, but it was all theirs, and no one else's, a world of their own, a world without end. A bookshelf by a desk in the corner held all of their favorite books, including Twenty-thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Gil drew climbing tentacles and glowing seaweed and obelisks and graveyards in the margins, while Harry practiced navigation and cartography on the maps that sprawled over the desk at all hours of the day and night, and Uma kept track of the loot in heavy ledgers that were half-written with Auradon jargon.

For the first time in her entire life, in all of her sixteen years, Uma could finally say she was happy.

She refused the thought of love, and anything that could make her weak, but she couldn't deny how she felt, how it made her knees weak when Harry tilted his head and smirked at her in that way that made her heart pound. When Gil grinned and said "Oh captain, my captain," with a salute that said more than words. They would follow her to the ends of the Earth, and across the ocean, and to the depths of hell if she asked them to.

It had taken her a long time to build herself back up from the first loss of her childhood friendship. They used to be friends once, when Ursula shoved them together because she wanted to build an alliance with Maleficent (back when she still thought she had a chance.) Despite the fact that they met because their mothers wanted power or protection, or to keep up appearances, they actually got along... Swimmingly. They were both leaders, were both girls who knew what they wanted, and knew how to get it. They both had an aura that made people gravitate to them, and they were the kind of women who built a support system by breathing, and armies without trying (and an entire fully-manned navy just by being the daughter of a sea witch and the lover of a pirate and a fighter.)

But once Uma shook off the earliest betrayal of her childhood, she became the most ruthless, most powerful, and most loyal of the gang leaders on the Isle, save Mal herself. She relied on no one but her lovers, and fell back into the arms of Harry and Gil only when it was absolutely necessary - she relied on herself alone, and hated most of all to seem weak.

(Almost as much as she hated being called shrimpy.)

All of that fell to pieces on a dark afternoon in November, when there was a small mutiny aboard the Leviathan. It was easily dealt with, because Uma wasn't the best rapier wielder on the Isle for nothing, and she slit a lot of throats that day. But the damage was done, because Gil had been held underwater, and he wasn't waking up - Uma was hyperventilating, and there was nothing she could do, she felt helpless. She knew that with magic, she could help bring him past the brink of death, drag him into the land of the living, but she couldn't use her magic under the goddamn fucking thrice-damned barrier!

"We need to take him to the blue witch." Harry said, reading her mind as always. Of course. Mal's crew was the only way to access any kind of magic this side of the barrier, and they had to try. For Gil, who brought new meaning to their life they had to try.

Despite how much it would curdle her inside. Despite how much it would drag up all her insecurities and throw them in her face again, remind her just how weak she was, how insufficient she was.

(Especially when it came to protecting the ones she loved.)

Hook swung Gil over his shoulder and they ran towards up town, taking back-alleys so no one could take advantage of their weakened state. Of course, Mal noticed them as soon as they ran across the border of her territory, and stopped them before they could get too close to her hideout.

"Please Mal, I know Evie can help him, and I know she's the only one who can help him." Uma whispered, begging for the first and last time in her life. It felt like ashes on her tongue, like taking handfuls of her golden power, and tossing it into the ocean.

Mal looked positively sinful.

"Oh, I don't think so. After all the turf wars, after all the spilled blood, after everything you've done to us? Why should I help you?"

To me? She really meant, and the words went unsaid, hanging in the air between them, as the original sin, the original cause of the rift between she and Mal whispered like a ghost behind her eyelids.

"Because if you don't, I'm going to track down each and every goddamn one of your coven and slaughter them!" She screamed, and the restrained, bound, barriered magic pulsed with her intention. She'd do it too, Mal could tell. But she had to keep a straight face to maintain her upper hand.

"Alright. Say we do help you." Mal smirked then, in full villain mode as she scoffed at the peasant before her. "What do we get in return?"

"One favor." Uma replied, and she knew the general honor among theives rules applied without saying, but they'd work out a solid contract when they had the time. This would work, she thought. Gil could make it.

"No deal." Mal rolled her eyes. "This boy means way more to you than a favor or a sack of gold or your entire fleet, even. I have a better idea."

"Do tell." Uma asked through gritted teeth, biting back her rage for the sake of the light of her and Harry's life, the one thing that had been lacking, the missing piece to their happily ever after.

"An alliance. You join my coven, and get to exercise your magic." She narrowed her eyes. "We put aside our differences and work together to get off this rock. In return, I fix up your little boy toy, and as far as I can tell, it's a win-win."

Uma thought about that for a second, and glanced at Harry. Crazy as he might be, he was a very good judge of character, and he gave her a miniscule nod. The offer seemed to be genuine, and as totally weird as it felt, she had no reason to believe that Mal would backstab her later. She was the one who had caused the rift in their friendship after all.

"Alright." Uma nodded, breathing cautiously, as if the whole thing might be a dream, and offering her hand to shake. "It's a deal."

A/N: This chapter barely got done in time because real life hit me like a train! Please note that I hate hate hateto do this to you guys, but next chapter might be delayed, because it's actually a part-two of this chapter, and the climax of Act One, so I want it to be perfect. Expect that when chapter ten: The Cauldron comes out, you'll find out what exactly, in this au, caused the rift between Uma and Mal, and what happens before the four leave for Auradon. Thanks for reading!

P.S: The two/three paragraphs describing the seathree all happy and in love made me genuinely feel content, so I hope it makes you feel the same way.