Chapter 4: Encounter

Aurora had no idea where Diaval could be, but he could not have betrayed her. Out of all those who had raised her, the pretty raven was the one she trusted most, even now. The recent revelation of being cursed by her own faerie godmother had been devastating, and while Maleficent obviously cared for her and had even defeated her own curse, the older female was volatile. Although she knew Maleficent loved her and was fiercely loyal to her, should Aurora ever do anything to anger the faerie, Aurora feared Maleficent's vengeance.

Diaval, though, had never been anything but true. Which was why it was so strange now that he had vanished. Aurora missed him even though he had only been gone a day. Just knowing he was missing gave her such anxiety that it felt as if he had been gone a month. She had believed her parents were dead all her life, her aunties the only parents she had known. But Maleficent's shadow had always been there, and the raven in it. Only when she had had the pleasure of meeting Diaval in his man form had Aurora learned the full extent of what he had done for her as she grew. Aurora would be forever grateful to Diaval and Maleficent, who had without doubt saved her young life.

Diaval had to be hiding somewhere. Perhaps Maleficent had unwittingly frightened him. Or perhaps he had gone on a secret mission to find something to prove his love for her. It had been obvious to Aurora that the two were in love from the moment she had first seen Diaval walking around with Maleficent as a man. The body language was all there. It wasn't until the teen had once tried to comment on it that she realized the two fey creatures were oblivious. Or at least Maleficent was. Aurora had seen that pining look Diaval would send habitually at Maleficent's back. If the faerie ever turned around, however, he would drop the expression instantly and become her little servant again. Aurora thought that was a mistake. But they had had more pressing problems to combat at the time.

He could not be dead. Aurora thought she would have sensed it. And the creatures of the mortal and fey worlds would have been showing how they were affected by his death, even if Maleficent hadn't known it immediately. Even a kidnapping would have sent ripples of emotion shuddering through the community. Not this—void, this weird emptiness of his absence. But then where had he gone?

Her faerie godmother may have doubts, but Aurora was blessed with eternal optimism. They would find him. She knew it.

The queen of the united realms sat now in her royal chambers in the human castle, brushing out and braiding her hair for the night. She had just completed a week staying in the Moors, and she had thought it only fair to split her time equally between the two capitals. It occurred now to her that she would like to build a new capital city, at the seam between the newly united kingdoms. She would have both humans and faeries plan and build it, and it would become a shining example of cooperation and tolerance for all to witness. A new city for the dawning of a new age. And while Aurora didn't really consider her ego very often, she could think of no better name than Dawn City.

Giddy with excitement, she jumped up from her seat at her ornate vanity, half-finished braid flying around her face as she twirled in the middle of the room, dancing with her idea. Clasping her hands together she looked up at the domed ceiling, grinning at the wood and stone that surrounded her. She would show everyone that hatred was a nightmare of the past and that the future was for love.

And once Diaval was back—

Aurora froze as a floorboard creaked behind her false wall. The king's chambers—now the queen's—had two emergency escape routes. None but the monarch and her personal guard were meant to know of them. The first was a frankly terrifying stair that led from her tower window, down the outside of the tower, to the inner courtyard of the castle, the stone steps cleverly carved to appear flat to anyone standing on ground level. The second, preferable escape was through a false panel in the wall that led to a windowless inner stair that wound down inside the tower wall. It was thence the creak had come.

No one had any reason to be in there, ever.

"Guard," Aurora called nervously, edging toward the window while staring at the panel. "Beatrice!"

Beatrice, a tall, strong fighting woman whom Aurora had hired as her night guard, stepped into the chamber from her position outside the main door, with her dog, Cheer. Cheer, a muscular yellow mastiff whose jaws drooled when she was happy and crushed when she was threatened, began immediately to bark warningly at the false panel that concealed the secret escape. Beatrice took her hand off Cheer's collar and readied the throwing knives that had gained her her dangerous reputation.

"Go, Your Majesty," Beatrice said, tilting her head toward the window without taking her brown eyes off the panel. Cheer continued to bark.

Aurora looked out at the vertiginous night and hesitated, one hand on the windowsill.

"Now!" the guard yelled, as the panel burst open and five men came rushing out. Cheer met the first head-on, charging him, clamping her teeth on his arm and barreling him over to the floor, where vicious shakes of her head wrang screams from his throat. Aurora was shocked to see he wore a uniform of the castle guard. Beatrice let fly two knives, which caught the second attacker in the arm and the third in the leg. The one with the knife in his thigh went down and stayed down, more concerned with blood loss now than the attack, but the fat one with the now useless right arm snarled and grabbed Aurora's own right arm with his meaty left hand. Aurora screamed and pulled back, but with no proper balance she couldn't escape out the window without simply falling to her death. The large man, clearly at least double the queen's weight, dragged her to the middle of the room, where a very tall, wiry man had managed to drop Beatrice to the floor with a few strategic punches, and another had kicked Cheer repeatedly until the dog had released her quarry and gone to cower in a corner.

"Majesty…" Beatrice wheezed, reaching reflexively out with the hand not wrapped protectively around her ribs.

"Shut up, bitch," snapped the tall man who had defeated her. He stomped on her hand and Beatrice shrieked as something cracked.

"Stop it!" Aurora cried, struggling again in the fat man's grip. She realized all the attackers were looking at the man who held her and she recognized him as their leader. She spun and pushed her left hand against where he held her right arm, leaning back with all her slight weight. "Let me go!"

He shook her and her teeth rattled, but she finally fisted her left hand and punched his right arm just below where Beatrice's knife still jutted from his bicep. He howled and released her, and she flew past the wiry man to Beatrice's side, wrapping an arm around the taller woman's shoulders. The two women glared at the fat man in the center of the room.

"Should...have run…" Beatrice gasped. One of the punches must have been to her windpipe.

"I know," Aurora said flatly. She was memorizing all the faces in the room. The castle guard Cheer had mauled had regained his feet and was leaning against the wall, but his arm was a dripping ruin. Even through the grimace and pallor of pain, Aurora recognized his face as one who had patrolled the corridors when King Stefan was alive. She didn't know his name. The one who had taken a blade in the thigh was moaning and white-faced. He was young, red-haired, and had the look of a farmer. No one moved to help him. Aurora had never seen him before. The one who had kicked Cheer was still glaring at the dog lest she decide to emerge from where she was curled, growling in the corner. This one was older, broad-shouldered and strong, with curling gray hair and a hooked nose. The tall, wiry man who stood over them now had narrow, dark brown eyes and black hair pulled back in a horsetail. And the leader, who had pulled the knife from his arm and was using it to slash Aurora's bed sheets into strips with his good hand and his teeth, was tall and fat, with blue eyes and a red nose. What was left of his balding hair had been pulled back in a horsetail as well.

"Jeremy," the fat man growled, "help me with this."

The gray-haired one took his eyes off Cheer and went to the leader. Once Jeremy took the knife, the fat man dropped the fabric and stalked over to crouch down in front of the women, clutching his freely bleeding arm. His blue eyes were watery and bloodshot, cold and cruel.

"Well," he sneered, "looks like I won't be having as much fun as I thought tonight. I was looking forward to fucking in a royal bed. But no matter. Once the faerie bitch is dead I'll have all the time in the world."

"Get out," Aurora commanded, her arm still around Beatrice. "Leave us now in peace and face no retribution. We give our oath as queen of the united realms."

The men snickered and the fat one spat on the floor. "The realms will never be united, you dumb cunt." He stood, knees creaking. "Take them."

"A brown raven?"

"Is it a mutant?"

"More like magical. Isn't it obvious?"

Being a bird was strange. Everything felt huge. Her body felt lighter than air, and she kept turning her head too sharply, anticipating the weight of her great horns, and missing them even in bird form. She would have to experiment with this shapeshifting ability. Next time she would probably just keep the horns.

Flying was also very different, not the least because she had now flown precisely once in seventeen years. Winds she barely would have noticed before her violation now picked up her raven body and rolled her. She had to pay attention to every slight air current now in order to stay level. However, she was enjoying her streamlined bird shape. While she might now be only one-fiftieth of her original weight, she had never realized how much drag her horns, shoulders, arms, and the rest of her body had created. Once she got the knack of it, the aerodynamic bird body sliced through the wind.

Inwardly she smirked. No wonder Diaval had been so pissed when she first transformed him.

The golden raven spell she had reinternalized guided her way with an instinct that felt like memory. Maleficent undoubtedly had not been this far south in many years, but all around her seemed familiar. The land was a bit different here, more hilly as it approached the mountains. The landscape undulated beneath her gaze as she flew.

And now she had come upon this raven flock. There were perhaps two dozen of them. They all seemed so...young. Silly, even—although now they were watching her every move closely. She had perched in a tree adjacent to where the flock was currently roosting, not wanting to barge right in and risk a fight. It was true that she could destroy them all on a whim, but what if Diaval were among them? And she had no intention of murdering wantonly.

"I have come for one among you," she cawed, the first thing she had ever attempted to say in the raven language. She hoped she was intelligible—she was still acclimating to this shape.

The ravens all looked at each other, so they must have at least partially understood her.

"Whom?" That must have been one of the youngest ones. The older ones were looking shifty; they obviously knew whom she meant.

"Me."

To her ears in raven form, his voice seemed even more familiar. Maleficent felt her miniaturized heart race and her feathers bristle as she sought him out among the crowd.

They actually had to part for him. He had been lurking at the very back, hiding amongst the depths of the tree, as was his way. She should have known. He flew forward to the front of the group and perched there, staring at her across the space between the two trees. There was utter silence among the birds as the wind blew through the branches, rocking them all in time together.

He was unmistakable, even among all these black birds. He was bigger than them all. Had it always been so? His age showed around his eyes, more piercing and intelligent than the rest of the flock put together. His presence was commanding, powerful and intimidating. How could he ever believe he could belong with them? He belonged with her, deep in the intrigues of the Moors and the intricacies of thought, not with these chattering fools.

He looked wan, somehow. Stressed, tense in a way she had never seen directed at her. The look he gave her was wild, more wild than in the seventeen years he had bound himself to her. And in the back of her mind, Maleficent began to understand.

"You," he said. And it was shocking, for he had never allowed himself such disrespect before.

"You," she replied, and the tension thickened the air.

The flock flew off as one, leaving the two of them to their quarrel.

"You," he all but growled, "You, who have taken everything from me."

"Taken?" she countered. "I saved your life. It was owed."

"No longer." He cocked his head and regarded her with one brilliant eye, exquisitely birdlike. "You have your wings."

Maleficent blinked, shocked again. It was true. From the beginning, that was what she had said. "And so, after so long, you have left me? What is there for you here but oblivion?"

"You no longer need me." He looked down, and his voice was bitter pain.

Maleficent swallowed, feeling like she was standing at the edge of precipice, with no wings. "Aurora needs you."

Diaval cawed harshly. "Aurora! Aurora has you," and the emphasis he laid on encompassed Maleficent as a godmother and as Protector of the Moors.

Maleficent flapped impatiently. "She needs you as well. You are a good and loyal servant."

Diaval screamed at her, his neck stretched out straight, feathers bristling, beak open, sharp, and menacing, his eyes bugging desperately out of his head. She had never heard the like before and fear coursed through her.

Silence, and the cold wind blew between them again, the branches in which they perched swaying so that they looked to Maleficent like two boats at sea in a gale.

Diaval seemed to crumple into himself. "I can no longer serve," he intoned. "I am unfit."

"Never!" Maleficent argued. "Why?" He did not answer, staring at the void below them.

"Why!" she insisted.

The silence stretched. Leaves rustled.

"I can't be near you," he admitted. This made no sense, as he had been nearer to her than anyone ever had been.

"Nonsense," she said flatly. "I did not release you."

He looked up at her finally with a glare. "I bound myself. I release myself."

She opened her beak, but shut it with a clack. It was true. "Diaval," she managed finally. Part of her appreciated that it was the first time she had spoken his name in his own tongue. It sounded-right. "Why?"

He looked at her helplessly, wings drooping at his sides in defeat. He seemed to be wordlessly asking her for something. Pleading with her. To let him go? To force him to stay? She could do neither.

"Are you enchanted?" she asked suddenly, scrutinizing his appearance.

Diaval began to laugh his raven laugh, which she had enjoyed many times before. But desperation now leaked into his laugh and turned it sour. He stilled, skewered her with his gaze and said, "Oh yes." Fear leapt in her throat until he continued, "I have been enchanted for years."

Someone had dared to touch her Diaval? She would kill them. "By whom?"

He started to laugh again, sounding more amused this time. "By the strongest faerie in all the Moors, the great and terrible Maleficent!" And as he spread his wings wide to encompass her reputation, she spotted a strange brown feather in his left wing.

Or maybe not so strange. It was her feather, from her great wings.

He was still chuckling darkly to himself, and beginning to turn away from her.

"Diaval—"

HELP!

It was Aurora's voice. In Maleficent's head. One startled glance at Diaval, who had frozen in place, confirmed he had heard it too.

HELP! the mental voice repeated, panicking.

Maleficent and Diaval exchanged one wordless look, and flew off as one toward the north.

Thank you to everyone who is following this story! Your support pushes me to keep writing. I mostly write this on the train to and from work, so I greatly appreciate your patience as I write it.

Reviews are encouraged! Thank you!