For three days, no one came to see him down in the dungeons. He quickly learned that someone left enough food for him in the darkness of the morning and it was to last him the whole day. He struggled through the tough bread and whatever the grey slop was, and quickly searched the cell and found a constant drip of water to stay hydrated. For three days, he stayed there, trapped with his thoughts and no one else around. For three days, he was sure he was hearing his own thoughts, the voice of the beast inside him.
You should have never become human again, weak and frail.
I could have protected you better than that frail human meat sack.
The forest is your true home and you'll never be king.
For three days, the voice of the beast chided him, and he fought it back. He met his darkness demons and found his brightest light by pushing them back. Still, three days alone was torture.
Then, finally, Anthony Tremaine appeared with one of the previous maids, her uniform torn and tattered, her eye black, but healing.
"Get up!" He shouted, pulling Ben from his silent reverie of an argument with himself. "Get dressed if you're not." He was already dressed. "The mistress of evil has requested your presence." He pushed the maid forward. "Yvonne has been chosen to prepare you for her."
Ben wasn't sure what that entailed, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know either.
He wondered if Tremaine would stay and watch whatever was to happen next.
For a moment, he stayed, watching as if to appraise him and what he looked like. As if he was watching for Maleficent.
Tremaine left as the maid, one of the maids that had been there since he was a teenager, stripped him down to nothing and shoved him into the scalding basin of water and herbs. If he didn't know any better, he would think he was being boiled for soup.
For a long while, the maid worked in silence. Then when she was sure there was no one else with them, she whispered as she shaved his face.
"You are bait, Boy King," she said, but he had a feeling that was already the case. "You are to be cleaned up and presented to the Queen of Darkness as a pet while you wait for la fille violette to return."
So Maleficent had to know Mal would be coming for him and she was setting a trap. Most likely to use her own magic against her, if anything Mal had told him in the last few weeks had been true.
The Thousand years of grief.
"What more do you know?" Ben asked carefully as the maid shaved his throat. "What can you tell me? Anything and everything you know." Then, with a second thought he added "please."
The maid shook her head. "I do not know much more," she admitted. "Maleficent has kept very few close to her who might be in allegiance to you. The ones she does have, she keeps in hibernation until we're needed, feeding us with the darkness and nightmares to make us restless."
Ben expected half as much.
For the rest of the preparations, the maid herself was silent. Ben himself was lost in thought. Maleficent was truly evil, he knew that, but he had never quite imagined what torment she could truly do.
He was sure he was about to see it if he was to be her pet, as the maid had claimed. Maybe she would let him hibernate too. No, she wouldn't. She would want him to suffer, the result of his parent's choices.
Or maybe, just maybe, he could get through to her somehow.
The maid was kind enough to let him dry himself off from the scalding bath. He turned toward the suit, which he had hoped to be clean and ready for him to wear, but only found a pile of dead cruchy leaves.
He missed Mal already.
For several days, Mal contemplated a plan. For several days, she thought about every small detail of how to best her mother and get Ben out safely. For several days, she couldn't help but wonder if she was good enough.
She almost missed the days when all she had to worry about was how to tease Evie on the isle. But it was Ben that was most at stake and she knew what she had to do.
"I still think you have the best chance if you go full Faerie," Meredith goaded as she looked through the market of junk for anything she could use against her mother. "You do that and you might just stand a chance against her and anyone else who crosses you."
Mal shot her a look that would have left any normal Auradonian wilting. Meredith didn't wilt in the least.
"As much as I like carnage, there was too much the last time I went full faerie," she said. "No one else deserves to get hurt that way again."
Meredith laughed, as if she didn't believe her. "That doesn't sound like a VK at all." She stopped then, as Mal looked over cutlery from one of the fancier provinces. "Wait," Meredith continued. "Now I understand! You're afraid Ben won't be able to resist faerie lust."
"No!" Mal answered, perhaps a little too quick.
She hated when Meredith saw right through her.
Meredith looked much too pleased. "I've been doing research and I think you can go full faerie but control it and how others react."
Mal froze. "What's in it for you?"
Meredith was a half villain, after all.
Then, in a complete change, Meredith softened. "I hope it takes you less time to learn this than it took me, but by the looks of things, it will take you longer." Mal stared at her. "Sometimes, you can do things for people simply because they are your friends."
Mal scoffed. "Friends?" She asked. "If you give someone an inch, they will always take a mile. Look at the villains and how they all took over Auradon." She scoffed again. "You can never teach compassion to a villain."
Meredith didn't harden in the least. "I hope for you sake and your sanity you learn soon enough." She pat her shoulder before she brushed past. "I still think full Faerie is your best bet. Magic against Magic with no barriers to hold you back."
Mal thought about it for quite a long time, even after Meredith left.
Ben found himself surprised as he looked in the mirror. He had expected rags from Maleficent, but she had somehow found a suit that was nearly perfectly tailored for him. He looked nearly regal in front of the old cracked mirror.
Maleficent did always know how to make a statement, or rather a shout into the void to get a response. At first glance, his suit reminded him of his time at Auradon Prep, with the perfect blue and gold, the mixture of his parents, and who they had wanted him to be too. Then, as he marveled in the mirror, dirty and cracked as it was, the suit changed with the light, picking up darker shades of blues and purples and making it look absolutely magical, absolute dark, like the kings of old in the medieval times.
Maleficent definitely knew how to make a statement. Still, it all felt wrong to be there, as her prisoner, but no longer caged behind the magical barrier under the castle.
The maid knocked on the door. She had graciously given him time to change and had let him dress himself. He had considered the open window, but hadn't had the guts to fall several hundred feet down into the mud.
"It's time," She said, coming up to meet him and tousling his hair with her hands. "The best advice I can give is do your best to fit in and don't go against her."
The maid led him down the halls and toward the ballroom. It seemed even Maleficent didn't seem comfortable in the official throne room, but then again neither had his parents, or he himself for that matter. There was something too formal about it, too distanced from the normal people, those who weren't royal. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the last royals who used it all the time had lost their heads in a revolt that rang through history like a warning.
The rest of the castle had fallen into ruin, the halls filled with debris and detritus, the windows caked with mud and dust, suspicious stains on the fancy carpet and none of the fixtures were polished. It had been his home at one point, but now it was nothing but foreign.
He couldn't help but wonder what the ballroom looked like, now that Maleficent had taken over, as the double doors opened and he was presented to her.
The ballroom was worse than the night Mal had gone full faerie. The once beautiful tiles across the floor, supposedly laid by Marie herself, were now cracked and uneven. Dust covered everything in a film. The once beautiful mirrors were cracked, distorting his very human reflection at every turn. Cobwebs lined the chandeliers.
In the middle of it all, Maleficent.
She looked older, there was no doubt about it. The lines on her face were deeper, her eyes were further set in her head, even her posture was more bent over. Still, Ben said nothing. He knew better than to bring up a woman's appearance.
"You're looking well, Pup," She said, raising a goblet of what suspiciously looked like blood as he entered. "I'm pleased to see your old clothes still fit. I had wondered after your jaunt through the forest if you would still be man enough to wear them."
Ben chose his next words carefully.
"Thank you, Maleficent," he said. There would be no titles there. He knew how much words held power and he refused to give it to her. "Thank you for your hospitality." It was a small gesture of gratitude and judging by her reaction, something she had never received before. "Now that you have me," Ben continued, "Whether beast or man, what is it that you plan to do with me?"
Maleficent's face broke into a wicked slash of a smile. "What a skilled orator!" She said with a laugh. "I have long missed that being trapped on the isle." The way she eyed him made him feel like a slab of meat rather than a man. "I suppose we can skip the theatrics now that you know the truth about Mal."
She waved her hand and a glass casket he hadn't even realized was there shattered, raining glass and metal across the already damaged floor. He steeled his face to show no fear.
"You are, after all, smarter than that Tremaine boy," Maleficent continued on. "You know that Mal is alive and awake and I have no doubt that by now you know how similar the line of kings and the magic of faeries is."
Ben nodded along. "I had a hunch," He answered, doing his best to keep the advantage his. "But the power of faeries is not sequential. If you were to kill Mal, all your magic would return, would it not?"
Maleficent smiled again. "Top of your class and a handsome man too!" She clapped her hands together. "Gold star for you!"
"So where do I fit into all of this, then?" Ben asked next. He held what information he already knew from Mal and the others close to his chest, not quite ready to reveal what he knew.
He was hoping Maleficent would first.
"Why," She said, seemingly surprised that he would even have to ask. "Did no one tell you the true reason I'm doing all of this?" She asked. "Has your time in the forest as the beast made you forget your history?"
Ben didn't answer.
"You're the only true thing standing in the way of the crown," She said. "I'm going to have to kill you."