The holy chamber was situated on top of one of the smaller spires carved out to become a temple used more multi purpose uses for a variety of the more common religions in the area, the outer stone walls were practically packed every foot with statues and reliefs of ornate religious scenes, the black rock itself was polished to a shine broken up by potted plants of both decorative floral arrangements and useful herbs that could be accessed through the tall windows.

"Ready?" Faybelle asked as the priest (who was also Faybelle's uncle) tied their hands together.

"As I'll ever be." Raven breathed as they were helped down to their knees.

A magic circle erupted around the two kneeling girls as the priest began chanting, levitating a special cup with two mouths on it for both Raven and Faybelle to take a sip out of.

As the chanting continued and the priest's gentle fingers placed a streak of moist red paste from Raven's forehead to the part of her hair that was accessibly peeking out from under her veil, Raven felt… something shifting deep inside of her, like one small part of her was being lifted up and given away and from the place where that small part used to be… a bigger, warmer feeling started to well up as if newly awakened.

XXX

Milton squinted at the permission slip paperwork he had found on his desk that morning, almost cheerily proclaiming that Raven Queen was to be getting a piercing and some form of permanent skin decoration for religious reasons.

Now officially the permission slips were supposed to be designed so that parental guardians had to wait for his approval/disapproval of any bodily piercings, tattoos, flesh sacrifices, etc., etc., to be adorned on one of his students.

However in his many years as Headmaster he had discovered that when the reasons for getting one of his student's a tattoo were based on religious reasons, and especially if that student was a witch or fairy… nobody cared about his input and if he made a fuss they'd just laugh at him and call him a silly human with no concept of culture.

In these instances the permission slips were more of a polite early warning that he'd get, telling him that come Monday that particular mentioned student would be coming back with a horn through the nose or tribal tattoos all over their face.

Normally this wouldn't bother him nearly as much because he ran a school with students who had come from a vast variety of cultures and he had learned long ago that if he wanted any semblance of respect from these people he had best shut up and pretend that he was the wise neutral party he was supposed to be.

But not all of those students were his newly discovered granddaughter!

Milton turned the paper over in the vain hope that there was more information written on the back because in the box provided to describe what cultural bodily expression was going to be used it just said; a nose piercing and as long as she wears long sleeves, gloves, covers her neck, and does not show the skin on her legs it shouldn't be obvious until the last part of the ritual is completed and the last of the required skin is all done up. But the rituals take a while to complete so the rest of the students should be able to get used to it by then.

With a sinking feeling Milton started to realize that they were planning on covering her whole body in… something permanent…

A hidden part of him, a latent paternal instinct he guessed… an instinct that he never knew he had even possessed, just… itched irritably at the thought of his granddaughter…

A granddaughter whose life he had no say in, whose mother he had terrorized as a girl driving her to try to conquer the worlds and was currently locked up in a mirror in his study, and whose grandmother he had taken pains to cut out of his life because she wasn't a human noble who could bring up his status and give him a title only worth just a little bit amongst a few of the human kingdoms in Ever After.

Before Milton could really start feeling sorry for himself (for the third dozen time that week) he felt… no, sensed a slight change in… something… it was very faint he couldn't quite-

Suddenly that faint thing he was sensing flared up a hundred fold nearly knocking him out of his chair as he felt not only the presence of the Book of Legends but also three strong connections the Book had to it's servants and to Milton's surprise there was already a fourth, weaker one clicking further into place, but it became far stronger than the others and far more integrated into the connection-

Milton fell against his desk when the phenomena suddenly stopped.

XXX

Giles sat up slowly on the school's lawn (he had wanted to be outside for a while before he went looking for his brother); he had fallen when he was suddenly hit with the familiar often-overwhelming sensation of a new servant being crowned by the Book.

Giles tilted his head to the side as he contemplated the two strangest things he had noticed while the Book's power had flared up, the first one being that… it seemed to feel like a fourth, previously unknown, servant of the Book, who must have previously had a weak connection, had just been granted a far more powerful bond…

And the second strange thing was the third servant's connection, Giles had always had the rare ability to be able to tell the difference between the different servant's connections, each had their own very distinct feeling to them as unique as the individual connected to the Book.

And while Giles knew that there should be a third connection to the Book from the young man, Kline, he and his brother had initiated in years ago… there was something off… Kline's connection to the Book was… very weak when he was first initiated in; it wasn't until much later when both he and Milton felt a connection form. Kline must have been very far away because Giles had difficulties feeling the difference between Kline's specific connection and his and Milton's (if the fourth had been connected back then it was too weak for him to feel)… but then again at the time he had been stuck in bed with a terrible flu and that was about the same time the Evil Queen started acting… well evil…

But Giles was perfectly healthy now, and perfectly able to sense that third connection was not Kline, the man's initial connection may have been weak but at least Giles could sense enough of it to know that the current third connection was not Kline's.

Which brought Giles back to the first odd thing because the new fourth connection felt similar to the connection that Giles had sensed the day Kline had been initiated… but it had changed slightly, it was… different somehow… it could very well not be Kline at all.

But if the third servant wasn't Kline then who could it be…? And who was this new powerful servant if it turned out not to be Kline either?

XXX

Clawstorm jolted violently as she sat upright in her mirror prison, struggling with the full skirts of her Evil Queen dress and all the little decorative bits meant to make her look as scary as possible.

She cursed herself once again for putting fashion over function, what she wouldn't give for a pair of pants!

"What the fucking hell was that?" Clawstorm cursed. Whatever it was it had felt familiar… just like that time when she had been exhaustedly making a believable replica of the Book of Legends and she needed to connect her replica to the real Book of Legend's memories to mask the scent of the fake, and in order to do that she had to us her own power on the real Book of Legends to make that connection.

Back then she had felt the Book's power flow into her core the moment her magic had touched it (which was disheartening in of itself because she had tried so hard to be carful and not trip any of it's built in defenses), for a moment she had thought that the artifact had killed her but somehow, beyond all reason, she had survived, and she had created a replica so good that it had fooled the Grimm brothers for years (until recently)!

"It's not trying to kill me off now is it?" Clawstorm grumbled, she hoped not, she still had a lot of messes that needed to be cleaned up and a daughter to protect from that Kline-bastard.

She could not afford to be beaten or to take ill so suddenly, Clawstorm couldn't put her finger on it, but her intuition told her that soon, very soon, she would have to break out of here and assume the mask of the Evil Queen once again.

Which was ironic considering she had not signed her birth name in that blasted Book so that she could legally bail out on her duties to that moronic current Snow White and live a peaceful life as an enchantress or something in the freaking woods (she had planned to hide in that whiny princess's own kingdom because who would think to look for Clawstorm in her enemy's homeland?) where no one could find her.

But since when was life ever kind enough to her to let even that simple pipe dream come true?

XXX

Raven blinked as the nearly overwhelming feeling of… something passed.

"You ok?" Faybelle mouthed as her uncle continued to chant above them.

"Yes." Raven assured, because what she had felt just then wasn't a bad feeling at all… it was like being hugged by a loved one… and sunshine.

XXX

"Apple didn't feel up to coming to the game huh?" Briar asked Ashlynn as the princess sat down beside her in the bleachers. Ashlynn was wearing a pair of sunglasses and a shawl to hide her bandaged shoulder and black eye.

"Suffice to say that Apple wanted some time alone to quietly freak out in the privacy of her room." Ashlynn prodded her sore, bandaged shoulder gingerly. "And Hunter's worried about Raven's welfare and whether her living with Apple is a good idea or not." The princess sighed. "It's not the first time he or some other Rebels have worried about that but… this time he seemed half ready to break into the RA records and assign her to a new room, I had just spent the past fifteen minutes before he had to leave to get ready for the game trying to convince him not to be so hasty, I managed to talk him down from calling Sparrow and his band to help him. By the way, if things head south between Apple and Raven on Monday when Raven get's back we're going to have a new roommate."

"Why?" Briar asked confused.

"It was the only compromise that Hunter would agree to; if Apple isn't treating Raven right in the wake of he emotional freak out, us, being Apple's closest friends, have to help get Raven out of there." Ashlynn sighed again.

"That sounds pretty serious." Briar observed her brows flirting with her hairline. "Does he really distrust Apple that much?"

"Well… he's still kind of sore about the whole true hearts dance incident… and the fact that Apple refuses to call him by his name…" Ashlynn winced. "Along with several other instances that has given him some… measure of caution when it comes to trusting that Apple won't end up hurting Raven… he has always been protective of his friends and he's really worried about Raven, who has always been super supportive of us… and the whole thing about Apple giving me a black eye… that really set him off." Ashlynn gestured to her face.

"I think that a lot of that also has to do with the fact that Apple's disapproval of your life choices has hurt you in the past." Briar said while looking at Ashlynn pointedly. "Don't deny it, if I could tell that you were hurt by Apple's words towards you then your loving boyfriend would have no problems seeing it too."

Ashlynn looked down. "Should we be worried too?" she asked. "I know that it's a terrible thing to say but… sometimes… it hurts to see the two of them ya know? I mean that it has always been obvious that Raven cares a great deal about Apple, and has done everything in her power while not succumbing to the Evil Queen role to not hurt Apple any more than she has already been with the whole Legacy Day thing but… but…"

"But Apple's inability to even try to see things from other's point of view really bugs you doesn't it?" Briar finished in a grumble. "Yeah, well I'm starting to agree with him. It hurts when you've got a destiny that will uproot everything you care about, never mind the fact that we've all been lied to in order for us to follow that destiny, but to have somebody constantly there to nag you about becoming the thing that you hate just because she don't want to believe that there is any alternatives in life… telling you to "not worry about it" and giving you more lies about how "you don't know how the future is going to be like" and that there "might be a chance" the keyword there being "might" since she don't really care about thinking past her own happy ending to consider anybody else or how much it hurts to hear her saying that we don't have to follow our parent's exact footsteps but then turn around and reprimand everybody for not following the script… it hurts! And some of us are tired of pretending that we're excited about our destinies that end badly or ask us to give up everything! It's like she has no concept of what's really going on in the world and when she is given the cold hard truth, instead of acting like a normal person and trying to figure out what actions they're supposed to take next and talking it out with the one person that loves her despite her constant whining, she goes and has a mental break trying to chase Raven down because the witch can't tell her whatever secret business her family is doing and when we try to talk some sense in her she kicks me in the face and she actually manages to bite you!"

"You done?" Ashlynn asks lifting up her glasses and watching as Briar breathes heavily after her little rant. "Is it just me or were you talking about yourself as well as Raven?"

Briar bites her lip as she looks away.

"My advice… stop holding yourself back, I know that you don't want to become Sleeping Beauty, and I know that you want to be official with Cerise." Ashlynn pointed her chin towards the field where the teams still had a few minutes before they had to come out and face off. "We won't disappear if we don't follow our stories, you can forge your own life, the first chance you get you should take your chance with her, whether it works out or not doesn't matter, what matters is that you do what you want to do and if that involves making Cerise your special non-platonic girlfriend then go for it."

Briar turned to Ashlynn in surprise, her wide eyes meeting Ashlynn's one good non-swollen-shut eye.

"I want to…" Briar swallowed. "I want to be with her, and I'm pretty sure she wants to be with me, but the future… it had always been so…"

"It doesn't have to be automatically uncertain or unfair anymore." Ashlynn said with a determined smile. "The fairytales are lies, we don't have to follow them anymore, we can be free of them if we want to be there is nothing holding us back from just walking away! You can be with her Briar. You can start your life on your own terms now."

"I can be with her…" Briar whispered almost afraid to believe it. "I don't have to give up everything and be put to sleep for a hundred years… I'm allowed to live my life and love whomever I want!" She laughed tears springing to her eyes.

"And who knows…" Ashlynn mused. "Maybe Apple will come around now that she knows that her perfect ending isn't so perfect anymore."

"Apple can do whatever she wants." Briar shook her head. "The only thing that I'm concerned about now is watching my girl win this bookball match and then taking her to the dance on a proper date!"

XXX

"…And Cerise Hood bites the giant's hand forcing Green Stalk to release her, and she's running, she's running, GOAL! Cerise Hood wins Ever After High their first bookball win of the season! And the crowed goes wild!" Apple's radio alarm clock announces.

Apple takes a deep breath as she snuggles further under the covers; Nevermore cooing lyrically as she flicks her tiny forked tongue at Apple's face consolingly.

"I envy you Nevermore." Apple pouted at Raven's chief familiar who was laying her tiny serpent-like body on top of Apple's covered chest. "You don't have to deal with everybody in your life lying to you or confusing feelings towards your supposed enemy, all you have to do is sit up cutely and purr when people can't resist petting you. You know exactly who you are, you know enough about yourself to be whom you truly are inside, and you are free to love anybody who feeds you. Would you mind switching places with me? Maybe?"

Nevermore tilted her head to the side inquisitively.

"I guessed not." Apple sighed, feeling the weight of everything in the past forty-eight hours or so press down on her uncomfortably. "Thanks anyway."

XXX

"She didn't say anything." Raven realized as she paused mid-buttoning up the new lightweight nightgown that she had found in the place of where her t-shirts and shorts used to be in her closet, she would rescue her old clothes when she came back, Apple always put them in the clothes donation bin in the dorm laundry and the very kind head maid (who was one of Raven's under the table clients, the witch made a special ointment to ease the pain of her arthritis), always fished the clothes out of the pile and set them aside for Raven to pick back up.

"Who didn't say anything?" Faybelle yawned (jet lag was always a drag, which was why the Evil Fairy had sent them to bed soon after the first ritual was completed and Raven had a little bit more time to talk to her family) as she came up to the witch and batted Raven's hands away in order to unbutton the nightgown the witch was wearing. "And why did you pack this thing? It's way too hot to sleep with all that fabric on."

"Apple has declared war on all of my old leisure and non-formal clothes." Raven suppressed a snicker. "She has yet to successfully banish them from my closet, no matter how many times she throws them out."

"Hoy vey, I'm inheriting a troublemaker princess." Faybelle sighed in over the top mock-despair. "It's a good thing I'm a badass or else I'd actually be worried about her going through my clothes and dictating what I wear."

Raven rolled her eyes. "It's become a little game we play- well… more like a way for me to poke fun at her need to have everything in her life under control. And are you planning on just wearing your underwear to bed?" The witch eyed the fairy's dark blue bra and panty ensemble with suspicion.

"Seeing as how you will be accompanying me alone into my bed you're lucky I'm not going in naked." Faybelle told her seriously, Maddie and Kitty and all the other guests were given rooms of their own but Faybelle had grabbed Raven, before Moss could escort the witch to a separate room, and had pointedly whisked the witch away. "Though I hold no promises for keeping even these clothes on if I get warm in my sleep."

Raven hesitated. "As long as I'm not the only one…" The witch shrugged off the gown with a grateful sigh as slight wisps of cool air was able to meet her skin. "I may have been raised by humans but I'm not a complete prude." Raven told the fairy reproachfully as she stood unashamed in her white panties, the band she had worn across her chest for her wedding dress didn't exactly allow for a bra so she had two skin tone-colored pasties over her nipples.

"After meeting that family of yours it's pretty fair to say that I won't be categorizing you under the same level of prudishness as that blonde princess." Faybelle snorted because from what Faybelle had been able to glean off of the witch's family (which had been a lot because Lady Good King didn't seemed to get ashamed about anything) was that they were all lovably insane in their own right and very little seemed to phase them.

"Tell me who didn't say anything and what was it all about." Faybelle ordered gently.

"Apple… I just realized that I had forgotten to take a shawl with me when I snuck into our dorm… she had been awake and she turned on the lights and hugged me but… she never pointed out my scars." Raven furrowed her brows in confusion.

"Well the cloth covering your exposed mid-section wasn't that see-through, she could have missed it?" Faybelle offered.

Raven shook her head. "Apple is like a hawk when it comes to spying things like that, not in an OCD way like Blondie, but in a… highly intelligent sort of way… you get what I'm talking about?"

"Yes I do." Faybelle hummed thinking of how Apple was one of the smartest people at school. "But she is also very selective with the things she sees and the things she lets herself understand, you know with the way she's willing to like say… propose with the village council to install an animal crossing sign across a road for a mother duck who was too stubborn to stick to the usual animal trails and was willing to risk her young in the face of oncoming traffic in comparison to… pretty much all of her interactions with your Rebel faction and her inability to understand why people like you would want either a new destiny or no destiny at all."

"What are you saying?" Raven peered at Faybelle curiously.

Faybelle took the witch by the shoulders. "She's your roommate Raven, even if you have been super careful she has to have seen your scars before, but because it doesn't coincide to this perfect mental image she has about how you're supposed to be… she refuses to acknowledge it. Knowing her she's probably rationalized it all away into some strange little theory that fit's her inner narrative and has chosen not to ask you about it incase the truth varies widely to what she'd like to believe is the truth. C'mon it's not like she's never done that before."

Raven put her finger to her lips as she thought about that. Thinking back to the beginning of the year when Apple had cheerfully ignored all the terrible things the other students had been saying about the witch to the princess's face, how she didn't even try to defend Raven from the obvious slanderous talk and then went ahead and used her influence to reassign Raven's room assignment so that Raven had to become Apple's roommate… all the Evil Queen regalia the princess had bought just assuming that Raven would fit into the role that Apple had of her in her head…

Raven sighed pinching the bridge of her nose. "Yeah… Maddie and Kitty have pointed that character flaw out to me the other day… They've suggested that I try to distance myself from that instead of encouraging it by just trying to argue."

"I've overheard several others in your Rebel faction have expressed similar sentiments." Faybelle informed. "Lots of them actually, they're worried about you having to live in the same dorm with that treatment."

"It's not as bad as it used to be… I enjoy her company the most when she isn't talking about destiny." Raven looked down closing her eyes and breathed out her nose. "If only I could tell for sure that… she at least cares about me… for me… and not my bloodline."

"You're about to find out." Faybelle whispered coming closer, gently leaning her head on Raven's. "The question is; will you be able to ask her the difficult questions that need to be said to her face and will she turn out to be the kind of princess that truly has all the good qualities that you fell in love with, or will her real self shine through and every thing you one thought you knew about her turn out to be just as big of a lie as her story."

"You really know how to hit it over the head." Raven swallowed thickly.

"I'm fae, it's kind of our job to be all blunt and insightful and crap." Faybelle smirked.

The two looked up when Raven's phone chimed from her bag.

"Wow… that a lot of people asking about what happened in the girl's dorms this morning…" Raven's eyes widened at all of her friends and some people she didn't know who even had her number had sent her hexts that… all looked like they were asking about what she knew about Apple's psychotic break and if the witch was all right.

Faybelle rested her chin on Raven's shoulder, hugging the witch around the waist as she peered at the hexts. "Looks like the Rebels are worried that their fearless leader has finally been chased away by that hot mess of a Royal princess- wait. Go back up a bit…" Faybelle read over a certain hext and hissed hatefully, putting her hands on Raven's hips possessively. "Lizzie Hearts… that little…"

"You know…" Raven began as she stared at Lizzie's (only half serious and mostly joking) offer to take Raven as her harem wife. "If I hadn't already made this deal with you I'd probably be seriously considering that right about now."

"I know." Faybelle growled giving Raven's hips a squeeze. "And she would have taken all the benefits of marrying you with her if she had gotten to you first… Trying to take away my ally, the nerve…."

"This means that you're going to integrate yourself even further into my life so that she get's the hint that I'm yours… isn't it." Raven guessed with a resigned sigh.

Faybelle batted her eyes innocently. "Actually I was thinking about having you wear a sign-"

"Not gonna happen." Raven cut her off. "Do you seriously want to tip Apple or anyone else off about this before we're ready for it?"

"I can find a subtle way for you to wear something that both screams that you are mine and not to be poached, and it be completely subtle at the same time." Faybelle sniffed, it's what fairies are good at.

"Oh really?" Raven said skeptically. "And what might that be?"

Faybelle smiled wickedly. "Well you did say that all those Evil Queen dresses aren't your style…"

XXX

Milton sighed as he stared at his suspicious smelling cup of punch that Professor Baba Yaga had put into his hand as he had came through the Gym doors for his required presence at the thronecoming dance, he had no plans of drinking it, he had seen the woman give some to Professor Rumplestiltskin and had seen the old coot run for the bathrooms right after one sip, obviously the crone was either up to her old tricks again or she was protesting the fact that someone had thought that it would be a good idea of giving a villain the job of guarding the snacks table… or both, honestly Milton wouldn't put it past her to have put someone's dirty sock into the bowl when she had thought no one was looking.

So here he was in the well lit curtained off area filled with vanity desks and mirrors for the students to use to freshen up, sitting glumly down on the spiral staircase that led up to the second story bleachers, holding a cup of fowl punch, and contemplating about his life choices and how it had all led him to this moment in time where he was sitting down all by himself, no one he could call a friend or lover to cheer him up, and having nothing better to do other than counting all of the regrets in his life.

"You look glum brother." A voice spoke from behind; a voice that Milton hadn't heard in years startled him out of his thoughts.

The head master whipped his head around to see Giles standing several steps above him on the stairs. "Giles?" Milton gaped eyes as wide as saucers. "How…? Why?"

"A little bird and her hatter friend told me that you needed help. So I came out to both help you… and forgive you." Giles told Milton in a kind tone reaching into his vest pocket and handing Milton a photograph of the two of them when they were young before sitting down next to Milton on the stairs.

"Oh Giles…" Milton covered his mouth as tears welled in his eyes. "I am so sorry… I missed you so much, and I should never have-"

"I'm here now brother." Giles rested a hand on Milton's shoulder. "And we both know that I could have walked out of the archives years ago if I wanted to. Why don't you tell me what troubles have been going on that has got both Raven and Madeline so worried?"

Milton sniffed, handing back the photograph and giving Giles a hug. "This is going to take some time." Milton sighed into Giles's shoulder. "And I'm exhausted, do you mind if we talk about it back in the office?"

Giles smiled understandingly. "Let's get going."