He flew at her face, bristling his feathers against her warm cheeks. The raven could only hover there for a moment before he had to withdraw, flapping away to regain some height before trying again.

Diaval's wings touched her face, provoking a frown from the fairy.

"Stop doing that!" She waved him away gently. He was all a blur of feather and charcoal as though he'd been rolling in the ashes of a fire. What ravens got up to in their free time she would never understand. Still, irritating her into changing his form was Diaval's new trick. "Into a man!" she muttered. Maleficent flicked a puff of green mist from her fingers as he came toward her, causing him to fall from the air and land on his knees at her feet.

Diaval stood up, finding himself nose to nose with his mistress. He blinked in surprise, brown eyes meeting green.

"What is it that you want, Diaval?" she broke the silence for him.

He'd completely forgotten – stupid, feathery brain of his! "It's ah..."

"Aurora?" she offered helpfully, when he struggled. He was always fussing about that infant. She could have sworn it was his rather than the king's beastly offspring.

"No, she's fine. The fairies are playing cards while she sleeps." He always knew what was going on in that house. If someone didn't watch over that little girl she wasn't going to make it anywhere near her sixteenth birthday. He was beginning to think that the hard part was getting her that far, breaking the curse would be a breeze. "Oh – I remember now." And he wished that he didn't remember. "It's the king."

The king. A man who Diaval only had to mention to see his mistress turn a dark shade of green. He wasn't there to see him tear her heart out but he had seen what that beast did to her beautiful wings. Diaval wasn't sure what he hated more, the withered soul on the throne or the truth that his mistress still loved him...

"Is he advancing on the Moors?" she asked, tight lipped.

"No, mistress. He has – requested that all the iron workers in the land report to his castle. He is buying every store of the raw material and having it stowed away underneath the palace. Mistress, what do you suppose he's doing with all of that armour?"

"Melting it into swords, I imagine," she wrapped her fingers so tightly around the stone embedded in the top of her staff that she expected it to shatter.

Diaval was surprised that the mad king had not covered the walls of his precious palace in the hideous metal. If he was so afraid of the fairy, why did it feel like he was inviting her – expecting her to come to his door? What did he hope to gain from his mistress's wrath – one last chance at a victory over her or was he hoping that she'd end his suffering with a flick of her fingers and puff of green smoke?

Confiscating every spinning wheel in the kingdom was more problematic than the king had expected. Without them, no new cloth could be made locally and the cost of importing it drained the city's finances, plunging the world around the king into abject poverty. Ironically, the house with his daughter and three hopeless fairies still contained a spinning wheel, half-hidden under straw in the shed where the animals slept.

The villages around the castle began to crumble and soon so too did the granite lumps holding the palace in place. As Diaval flew over one of the turrets he noticed his usual perch had taken a tumble far below to the world outside the palace walls. He picked a different stone to perch on, folding his wings back as he settled. It was nice in the sun and the stone was warm under his feet. He did this every morning after his flight over the Moors. Sometimes he felt like he was the watcher of both kingdoms, that of men and magic.

She didn't like to look at it.

The mass of twisted thorn and vine encased the magical world like a disease. Maleficent told herself the same thing that she whispered to the creatures of the Moors, that it was a necessary evil to keep out the human king and his armies. The truth was that it was a visual reflection of her tortured heart and the walls she'd built to stop anything from ever again laying a claw on it.

Diaval, her faithful bird, was the only creature that paid no heed whatsoever to the vicious limbs. Her perched on a thorn-spike that was longer than his whole body and casually preened.

"What did your wings find?"

He glanced up and then put his beak back among his feathers. If she was going to ask him questions, she'd have to turn him for the answers.

Maleficent rolled her eyes and turned him.

Diaval hastily gripped at the branch, suddenly finding himself sitting awkwardly on a sharp branch. Men weren't made to climb trees. Their ill-balanced bodies were clumsy off the ground. "More of the same, mistress. The castle is a dark stain on the land. The people are starving and the queen, who no one has seen for months, is ill."

Though she'd lost count of the ill thoughts she'd had towards the queen she barely knew, Maleficent felt a moment of sympathy. If the king's dark thoughts could poison the land, what did it do to those closest to him? Surely he was surrounded by pale, deformed shadows.

"Are you just going to leave me up here, then?" Diaval asked. How far could humans fall without breaking anything?

Maleficent hadn't realised she was walking away. She turned casually and eyed the man aloft in the vine wall.

"What's it like from up there?"

"Not so bad, I guess," he shrugged. "I can see the top of the palace – bits and pieces of the farms. A windmill over there." That was the farm where she'd rescued him.

It wasn't the wall's fault that people were afraid of the thorns. It was strong and tough – neither trait meant that it was cursed. Maybe that's all her heart was – protected by strength and just like the wall, there were creatures that could sneak straight through it.

"I thought you didn't like children..." Diaval couldn't stop grinning, arms folded across his chest as he watched the dark fairy. Maleficent was carrying Aurora back to the cottage, trying to ignore the happy sounds that the infant was making.

"I don't but that doesn't mean I want it to spend the night alone in the forest." Honestly, the king could not have picked a more irresponsible pack of fairies to take care of his child. He was bloody lucky that his nemesis wanted the child to live long enough to be cursed!

"I hate you, Beastie."

His mistress kept saying that but Diaval didn't believe a word of it. He fell into step beside her.

"Stop smiling," she instructed.

"Is that an official request, mistress?"

"Yes, Diaval, that is an official request!"

He lips stopped smiling but his eyes didn't.