“Diablo swears he saw it, didn’t you, my sweet?” Maleficent purred. The raven cawed.
“So where is it?” asked Mal.
“Well, I don’t speak Raven, do I? It’s on this blasted piece of rock somewhere!” Maleficent fumed, tossing her cape back.
“Okay, then. But so what?”
“So what?! The Dragon’s Eye is back! Evil lives! It means I can have my powers back!”
“Not with the dome still up,” Mal pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter. I thought those three despicably good fairies had destroyed it, but they had only frozen it, like they had Diablo. It is alive, it is out there somewhere, and best of all—you—my dear—will get it for me!” Maleficent announced with a flourish.
“Me?”
“Yes. Don’t you want to prove yourself to me? Prove that you are worthy of being my daughter?” her mother asked quietly.
Mal didn’t answer.
“You know how much you are a disappointment to me, how when I was your age, I had armies of goblins under my control, but you…what do you do—put your little drawings all over town? You need to do MORE!” she seethed, standing up from her chair. Diablo flapped his wings and cawed in agreement.
Mal tried not to show her feelings. She’d thought those tags were pretty cool. “Fine! Fine! I’ll go get your scepter!” she agreed, if only to stop her mother from raging.
“Wonderful.” Maleficent touched her heart, or the hole in her chest where it should have been. “When that sword pierced my dragon hide, and I fell off that cliff twenty years ago, I was sure I had died. But they brought me back to suffer a fate worse than death, much worse. But one day, I will have my revenge!”
Mal nodded. She’d heard the spiel so many times, she could chant it in her sleep. Maleficent took her hand, and they chorused, “Revenge on the fools who imprisoned us on this cursed island!”
Maleficent urged Mal closer so that she could whisper a warning in her ear.
“Yes, Mother,” said Mal, to show she understood.
Maleficent grinned. “Now, get out of here and bring it back, so we can be free of this floating prison once and for all!”
Mal trudged up to her room. She’d forgotten to tell her mother about the mean trick she’d pulled on Evie at the party, not that it would have been evil enough for the great Maleficent, either. Nothing was. Why did she even bother?
She climbed out her window and onto the balcony where could see across the entire island and the shining spires of Auradon glimmered in the distance.
A few minutes later, she heard the sound of jiggling trinkets, which meant Jay had dropped by to annoy her or to steal a late-night snack.
“I’m out here,” she called.
“You left before the fun really began,” he said, meaning the party. “We turned the ballroom into a mosh pit and crowd-surfed.” He joined her on the balcony, a bag of smelly cheese curls in his hand.
She shrugged.
“What’s with the rude raven?” he asked, chomping noisily on the snack, his fingers turning a fluorescent shade of orange.
“That’s Diablo. You know, my mom’s old familiar. He’s back.”
Jay stopped chewing. “He’s what?”
“He’s back. He got unfrozen. So now Mom thinks the spell over the island might be unraveling, somehow.”
Jay’s eyes grew wide.
Mal looked away and continued, “That’s not all. Diablo swears the Dragon’s Eye is back too. That he saw it glow back to life. You know, her scepter, her greatest weapon, the one that controls all the forces of evil and darkness, blah blah blah. She wants me to find it, and use it to break the curse over the island.”
Jay let out a loud laugh. “Well, she’s really gone off the cliff into the deep end to take a swim with the killer alligators, then, hasn’t she? That thing is hidden forever and ever, and ever and ever and—”