Love is a bitch. In this case, a bitch with a long black cape and an exceptional pair of horns on her head.

“Oh dear! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!” Prudence exclaimed as she began to surface from her trance.

“What is it Pru? What did the sight bring you? What did you see?” Juniper asked, excited as ever.

“Give her breathing room, you know she’s always skittish at the end of a trance.” Sybyl scolded.

“It can’t be right. It mustn’t be!” Prudence babbled, slowly regaining her bearings in the present. Returning from the future was always disorienting. Like having a Monday off from work, waking up on Tuesday and expecting it to be the day before for the rest of the week. But then, so much of sorcery was disorienting. All things topsy-turvy, you never quite got used to it. Or at least Prudence hadn’t. Sybyl, it didn’t seem to bother her. And their youngest sister, even as a child, she’d never been phased by it.

“Oh!” Prudence exclaimed again. Her senses touching ground as the image of her youngest sister jolted her conscious mind. “Sybyl, Juniper! It’s too awful!”

The two women stooped to comfort her as she struggled to sit up on the chaise longue where she always reclined during her trances. The three of them were in a candlelit chamber, well furnished, comfortable by any standard of it’s day.

“Did you see who it was Pru? Was it Prince Philip? Wouldn’t that be romantic? If the princess actually married the man she was to share true love with? Wouldn’t it be? Was it Philip?” Juniper urged.

“Stop prattling. Give her air, get her a glass of water.” Sybyl ordered.

“Wouldn’t it be romantic though?” Juniper sighed as she scurried off to fetch the pitcher. Sybyl could be so sharp tongued when she was anxious. Juniper felt that if she were to be less than charitable she might say that she was almost bossy. But then, eldest siblings often are.

“It’s not!” Prudence shook her head, near hysterical.

“Well, spit it out then!” Sybyl encouraged her. “It can’t be that bad and it’s nothing we can’t fix.”

“Oh, but Sybyl,” Prudence whined. “It is! The Princess Aurora’s true love, it’s Maleficent!”

A collective gasp escaped the two sisters standing nearby. A loud crash further punctuated their astonishment. Glass and water spilled across their feet and the stones of the floor as the pitcher shattered, unnoticed. The sisters stood frozen, eyes wide, ears unbelieving.

The first signs of movement were Sybyl’s eyes narrowing. She managed to speak through tight lips and gritted teeth.“What - did - you - say?”

“In the vision, the Princess Aurora’s true love...”

“Stop!” Sybyl exclaimed. “It’s wrong. You saw the wrong thing.”

“But that isn’t possible. You know it.” Prudence protested, indignant. “It was clear in the vision, I saw their hearts...”

“Stop now! Do you hear me?” Sybyl shouted. “We will bring this abomination no closer to reality. To speak of it only increases it’s material veracity. She may even sense it, the atrocious she-daemon. The last thing we need right now is her showing up in a puff of smoke.”

“But Maleficent prefers green protoplasm.” Juniper noted.

Sybyl turned and glared at her sister, once again irritated by her habit of noting the ludicrously obvious and irrelevant. The problem with younger siblings was that their minds, forever clouded by minutiae, were incapable of grasping the complexity of events and their place in the larger scheme of things. And then there was the added detail that Juniper was a half wit. It was fortunate that Sybyl grasped the extent of the crisis that faced them. She worried for the safety of the realm should anything happen to her, they’d never manage without her, of that she was certain. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Think, think, think... What can we do?” she thought aloud.

“Do?” Prudence asked. “There’s nothing we can do. Maleficent is a sorceress, as powerful as we are...” Prudence paused at the look of fire that burned at her from her elder sister’s eyes. Sybyl would never accept openly that the youngest of her sister’s powers had grown so strong. Too strong. It was bad enough that she was a walking abomination.

“Stronger than Juni and I... I, I mean... And in any case, none of us could cast a spell on her as we could on the princess or any prince.”

“True.” Sybyl begrudged. “Still, we have time.” And they did. One of the benefits of being a sorceress with an eye plugged into the future was that it gave you a jump on things. The Princess Aurora, the focus of their concern and magical attention, wouldn’t be born for another eight months.

They used their time wisely. In those eight months they crafted a series of spells in secret. One of the spells was unique, would be extremely powerful and difficult to implement. Sybyl was more pleased with this spell than with any of her previous work. There was nothing like it, had never been anything like it. And given the manner in which it would be cast, never would be again.

The three sister’s, fairy godmother’s all to the soon to be born Princess Aurora, stood in their secret airy in the highest tower of the castle, preparing to cast the spells that would safe guard Aurora and the realm.

“Could it be...,” Prudence began tentatively. “Is there a possibility, that what we’re doing is wrong?”

“Wrong?” Juniper asked. “We’re performing our duty. How can that be wrong? For generations our family has safeguarded the royal family.”

“Well, yes, yes, I know, but I mean, true love...”

“Are you saying that we ought to let this innocent girl fall into the hands of that deviant?” Sybyl was fully confident of her ability to manipulate Prudence’s over-cautious, ever-unsure character. She’d done it for years.

“Now Sybyl, she is still our sister.”

“Only by an accident of birth.”

“You don’t mean that!” Prudence scolded.

“I do. Look at her! She cavorts with the powers of darkness. Lures young women to that vile excuse of a castle. Uses them and casts them off. She wears horns on her head for heavens sake! What more proof do you need that she’s unfit for civil society? Do you want Aurora to be under her influence? Aurora will be queen one day. Do you want Maleficent to wield that kind of power?”

The other two sisters didn’t have to think the last question over. They shook their heads adamantly. They’d learned, as children, that Maleficent and power were a bad combination. Their youngest sister had always been willful and some might say spiteful as a girl. Juniper certainly would. When Maleficent had had the opportunity, she’d lashed out in creative and often cruel ways against her elder siblings. Juniper, being the slowest of the three, had often bore the brunt of Maleficent’s vindictive and foul turns of mind.

Still, there had been moments in their childhood when they’d gotten along. Rare moments, brief moments, but they had occurred. They usually ended with a fight, some small incident would spark the natural enmity that lurked just below the surface between the eldest and youngest sibling.

Sybyl had felt vindicated and justified in her loathing of her sister when Maleficent finally began to exhibit the deviant tendencies that Sybyl had anticipated from the start. Sybyl viewed her prescience in this matter as further proof of her superior powers of sight and the budding of her own awesome magical talent.

Adolescence is the age that separates the wheat from the chaff in the world of sorcery. A talent grows or fizzles on the vine there. One day a precocious sorceress, the next a simple peasant. Happened all of the time. Though it was less likely in a family like theirs. The sisters were heirs to a long line of ancient sorcery. It burned strong and ran deep in their veins.

In adolescence, Sybyl had far outstripped Prudence and Juniper's powers. She was fond of demonstrating this by levitating them and sometimes perpetrating less innocent displays, but they had only been in fun. The day Maleficent had levitated Sybyl, however, the fun had ended. It was Maleficent’s thirteenth birthday. Sybyl was in her early twenties at the time.

It wasn’t long after that that Maleficent began to pursue avenues of magic that the others hadn’t explored. Wouldn’t explore. Knew better than to explore. Decent young sorceress’ didn’t cavort with the powers of darkness. And if they did, they didn’t let anyone find out about it. Not if they expected to be received into wider society they didn’t. But Maleficent never showed an interest in society at all. Not what you’d call normal society.

Not long after Maleficent turned 15, she began to dress all in black. Their parents, who’d adopted a laid back approach in parenting their talented charges, finally stepped in. A young sorceress in all black was usually a bad sign. They’d taken the young Maleficent to a sorceress counselor, but their headstrong daughter had rebelled. This was when the signature horns had shown up. Two, dark, twisting, horns that she wore on a tight fitting headdress. These were to became a reviled and feared symbol throughout the kingdom.

Soon after her sixteenth birthday Maleficent announced that she would be moving into her own castle. Not long after the move, rumors began in the village of a figure, cloaked in darkness, seducing the young women off into the night.

Maleficent was a deep disappointment and a perpetual embarrassment to her family through the years. Her exploits were the topic of many a courtly conversation. Her sisters, all respectable women who had worked hard in the service of their king and kingdom, found it difficult to bear the strain of such an accursed kinship.

Stories abounded of Maleficent’s lewd, debauched and outrageous behavior. The prim, often sheltered women of the court reached for their smelling salts at the mere mention of her name. No one doubted for a moment that Maleficent was the shadowy figure responsible for the twilight seductions of the young village women. And if they had, the tales of beguilement and necromancy the women told the next day erased the lingering uncertainty.

The sisters noted that these maids, who claimed all manner of spell binding and enchantment by the dark sorceress, had not exhibited signs of being influenced by anything more otherworldly than their own lust. This knowledge did nothing to diminish the sisters’ distaste and disgust. The villagers, not gifted with the sisters’ abilities to discern such things, believed Maleficent a truly powerful force of darkness capable of bending a person’s will to her whim. Which, as it turned out, was the truth. So the fact that the maids had gone willingly to the sorceress’ castle was practically irrelevant. It was to Maleficent in any case, who could have cared less what the lot of them put together thought about anything in general, and her in particular.

And if all of these things weren’t bad enough... if the insults had not been added, then multiplied to the sisters’ injuries, there was the matter of Maleficent’s all female personal guard. Her Sapphic Guard. Ten large, strapping women in matching leather and black enameled armor who escorted her everywhere. Needlessly, since by the age of twenty, Maleficent could have fried the entire village with a nasty look. The escort, Maleficent claimed, was an aesthetic statement. One more thing her family could have lived without.

Though Maleficent’s behavior was certainly beyond the pale, her presence menacing and her power awesome, she was not violent. In the main, she kept to herself and a small group of friends, made occasional forays into the villages of the kingdom, and interrupted the odd family function to remind them that they weren’t rid of her however much they would have liked to be.

When their parents passed away, together, as many sorcerized couples did, Maleficent attended the funeral. The three sisters, by then having taken over their parent’s roles as advisors to the royal family, with Sybyl as chief counsel, barely acknowledged their notorious sibling, who they were convinced had all but escorted their parents to an early grave.

In their secret castle aerie, the sisters’ prepared themselves for a long evening of vigorous spell work.

“Oh Sybyl,” Prudence whined as she stretched her arms. “I know Maleficent's always been... difficult. But she isn’t the only party involved here. What we’re doing has vast implications. What about Prince Philip? He’s destined to marry a peasant girl. We’ll be altering that course of events as well.”

“Prudence, you worry too much.” Sybyl said as she rolled her neck and shook her shoulders. “Besides, it’s hardly appropriate for Princes to go cavorting with the peasantry.”

“Oh, but how romantic!” Juniper exclaimed, hopping in place.

“Romance is rarely practical and is politically useless.” Sybyl replied. “Sisters!” She exclaimed, cutting off further debate. “The time is upon us, let the casting begin.”

With an excited hop forward, Juniper entered a chalk circle that had been drawn onto the flagstones of the sparse chamber. She placed her feet carefully to either side of one corner of the triangle drawn within. As she did, the chalk dust of the triangle began to glow near her feet, ever so gently. Sybyl followed her. As she placed her feet to either side of her triangle corner the chalk began to glow in earnest. A quiet, sizzling noise accompanied the growing light. Prudence hesitated, then sighed and joined her siblings.

A pulsing glow illuminated the room as the three sisters stood within the circle and held hands. They smiled at one another, taking a moment to enjoy the sensation of the powerful energy that flowed between them. It was always a pleasant interval, and never having had sex, they believed that this feeling was as good as it got. And perhaps on that night it was close. For it was the twelfth hour of the twelfth day of the twelfth month, twelve days before the birth of the Princess Aurora. A very powerful night indeed. Spells cast by three, joined by blood, in perfect unison, on such an auspicious night - nothing could break such spells.

The first test of the spells came a year later when the baby Aurora, swaddled in an ornate gown, was christened. A holiday was declared and the princess was presented to the populace for the first time. It was a grand occasion. People came from near and far to pay their respects to their future queen. One guest in particular was watched with a wary eye. Well, several wary eyes.

Maleficent had materialized in the midst of the reception in a froth of green protoplasmic fire - understated, but with a hint of menace. She was quite pleased with the effect. So were many of the guests whose eyebrows and tapestries had been singed once too often by Maleficent's more fiery, theatrical entrances.

The sorceress glanced at the small, squirming bundle in King Stephen’s protective embrace, noted that it looked cheerful in its ignorance, deemed it sufficiently unthreatening, and left.

Many years passed in the kingdom. They were uneventful, save for two glaring exceptions.

King Stephen, noting Maleficent’s attendance of the christening and her inspection of his daughter, decided that the youngest of the sorceress sisters was a threat to his realm. He acted against the adamant counsel of the other sisters by sending troops to attack Maleficent in her castle. She sent them back to him, their bodies neatly packed into wagons drawn by the magically animated bodies of their own dead horses. The king, never the brightest ruler, tried other methods, periodically, all of them ending in a similarly ghastly manner.

The second exception pertained to the sorceress herself. Aside from her response to King Stephen’s unsuccessful attempts to evict her from her home and life in general, Maleficent was notably quiet. It was an unnerving quiet that enveloped the towering peaks and turrets of her forbidden estate. She did not appear at any family function and there were no sightings of her in any of the villages. King Stephen pronounced his campaign against her a victory. He’d had to lower his expectations from termination to containment, but he was satisfied nonetheless.

Despite the lack of activity on Maleficent’s part, there was no mistaking that she was still in the castle. A black, stormy atmosphere clung to the precipitous cliffs and spires of her lair. Clouds roiled and lightening flashed, but they made no sound. Nothing good could come of such a long and ominous stretch of silence.

At least, Maleficent was planning that nothing good would come of it. Her silence was the by product of an emotion. A difficult to pin down, swiftly changing, black, creeping emotion that had penetrated the sorceress’ heart and worked a spell of its own.

Maleficent had never been an easy going, laid back sort of person. She was a headstrong individual, determined first and foremost to live life on her own terms. No one else’s terms had suited her.

Since her youngest days she’d been adamantly opposed to submitting to anyone, to anything. This was the root of the problem she’d always had with her eldest sister, Sybyl. Just the thought of her self-righteous sibling made Maleficent sneer with disgust. She couldn’t fathom why it was so difficult for others to see what had been so clear to Maleficent from the first. Sybyl was one big, giant suck-up.

At seven, Maleficent could recite the entire Canterbury spell book from memory. Had that impressed her siblings and parents? No. Sybyl, who still probably couldn’t stumble through the more complex incantations with book in hand, had won the Miss Sorceress competition for the kingdom that year. Big whoopie fucking do. Maleficent could have transmogrified the entire contestant pool into a sticky mass of smelly goo. As a matter of fact, when she’d turned Miss Minnie, the pageant runner up from the Magic Kingdom of Dinsley’s hair into a blazing fire cone, Maleficent’s parents had spelled her out.

Maleficent spent a lot of her childhood spelled out. Being spelled out was challenging for a young sorceress who relied heavily on her powers for retaliatory purposes. Being spelled out meant that your powers were suspended for an indefinite period of time. It was a method used by some sorcerer parents to discipline their more unruly charges.

It taught Maleficent an important lesson, one she never forgot. It became her guiding principle. Never, ever, be weak enough to be overpowered. And while it remained her guiding principle it was hardly necessary because everything changed when Maleficent turned thirteen and hit her stride.

At thirteen Maleficent felt her body flood with a heady sensation. It didn’t take her long to figure out that that sensation was an ancient stream of magic that had sprung up from deep within her being. Bundled with this new power came an added benefit of sight. It was different from the sight that her sister Prudence was gifted with. This was insight and the young sorceress needed all of it she could get to help guide herself through what would have been a truly difficult transition for any young woman.

Maleficent’s parents and siblings couldn’t understand this transformation, and in any case, she hadn’t felt the need to explain it. She already knew they wouldn’t care. They were too preoccupied with Sybyl, who was being prepared to assume the position of King’s Chief Counsel. Heaven forbid Maleficent interfere with such a bothersome revelation as having felt the fiber of existence move across the sensitive pads of her finger tips or having seen the subtle colors of life’s energy as they whizzed and crackled through the atmosphere.

She held her tongue. She withdrew. She moved away from her family and lived apart. She found several people, some living, some not, whom she felt she could talk to and share something worthwhile. But mainly she kept to herself and was satisfied.

From time to time she appeared among her family. Perhaps for no other reason than to remind Sybyl that she was not the most powerful. To see her sisters cowed by Sybyl, watching them supplicate themselves to her false prowess made Maleficent want to regurgitate her last meal. Which was why she never ate before or during a family visit. The final and most egregious insult in Maleficent’s eyes was to watch her sisters, all of them competent sorceresses in their own rights, bow to the puny, impotent King Stephen when they could easily take the realm for themselves. As Maleficent soon would.

This urge for conquest was inextricably linked to a creeping, inky darkness that had seeped within the walls of her heart. Not long after Maleficent had first set eyes on the Princess Aurora, whispery tendrils of this darkness had begun to embrace that oft neglected, yet still responsive organ.

By the time King Stephen sent his first offensive strike against the sorceress she had already sequestered herself in the vast catacombs of her castle library. There, she’d begun to study in earnest.

Maleficent’s powers grew yet again as she absorbed information from the vast holdings of her magical library. With the exception of one or two breaks to enjoy one of the realm’s classic authors, the years were a marathon absorption of knowledge.

Her scholarly efforts paid off. Maleficent barely had to lift her head from a text to snuff any assault King Stephen made on her domain. Knowledge, in her case, was certainly a deadly form of power.

A day arrived that could have been like so many others, but wasn’t. On that day, Princess Aurora, now grown, would be engaged to Prince Philip. Maleficent stood, stretched her back, gave an elegant roll to her shoulders, smiled a self-satisfied and indulgent smile and let out a rich peel of laughter. It reverberated against the bookcases that reached high into the vaulted chamber. Before the sound had fully played out, she’d dematerialized into her signature froth of green protoplasmic fire.

In the brightly lit, pleasantly cheerful reception hall of King Stephen’s palace, a celebration was under way. There were many guests enjoying fine food and wine to the accompaniment of a lively musical ensemble. King Stephen introduced his daughter who, until that day, had lived a quiet, somewhat secluded life within the palace walls.

Aurora was a bright-eyed and intelligent young woman, fair-skinned and fair-haired. She greeted her guests, her future subjects, with poise and grace. She stood at her father’s side, awaiting the arrival of their most anticipated guest, her soon to be husband, Prince Philip. He was a man who was handsome, valiant and true, or so she’d been told.

As the reception continued on, the gathering was infused with a genial, light energy. Aurora took her first independent steps, trying out her newfound mingling skills. Her parents watched with pride from their thrones as their daughter charmed her way into the hearts of the realm. They acknowledged that even though the young woman would one day be the absolute ruler of the realm, it never hurt to be liked. The three sorceress sisters looked on with pride as well. They had spent the years preparing Aurora for this moment and the rest of her life. They’d been surrogate parents to the young woman - giving her the guidance and training she’d need to be an affective ruler. They sighed, watching the promising beginning of what would surely be a brilliant reign.

A quiet crackling noise began to filter through the cheerful voices that filled the space of the hall. It seemed to move about, racing through the gathering until all were aware of its prickling, insistent presence. It concentrated itself in the center of the room and spiralled into a pillar of flame. Green flame.

“Oh no!” Juniper gasped. “Not now.”

Maleficent stood tall in the center of the room facing the thrones. King Stephen and Queen Penelope sat stunned. Maleficent smiled upon hearing the rush of air as two hundred people remembered to breathe.

A murmur went up from the gathering. Several guests fainted. Curses were muttered, exclamations whispered as people took in the black cloaked form that had stolen the center of attention. “The nerve!” was a common utterance from the lips of many.

“Blasphemous!” mumbled the Duchess of Ornsbury.

“Dreadful!” Lord Hindersbrook wheezed.

“Righteous horns!” Gimlet, one of the palace guards whispered to his comrade as they watched the sorceress glare menacingly at the royal pair. “Where do you think she got ‘em?”

“Probably wrestled them off of Lucifer himself, that one did.”

“Right on!”

“Am I missing something? How can you find anything about that monster even remotely positive?”

“My mum was a strong-willed lady. Never took any shit from anybody. Everyone on the block called her a bitch. My mum probably would have liked a pair of horns like that.”

“That lady’s not just a bitch and you know it. There are fifty heads on pikes lining the drawbridge to her home just to prove she’s not your run of the mill misunderstood hard-ass.”

“Trying to keep people at arms length, I expect. Classic defense mechanism, that is.”

“I’m not talking to you anymore, you’re not sane.”

“Didn’t know it was a requirement for this job. Is it?”

Nearby, another set of eyes watched the impressive figure who dominated the room.

“Who is she?” Aurora asked the man to her right, the Earl of Grovelsworth. He was a cousin from a neighboring kingdom she’d just met.

“One of your four fairy godmothers, I’m afraid. Though in her case, the title is hardly suiting. She’s Maleficent, an evil temptress, a mistress of darkness, the downfall of many, a scourge on what’s good and right.”

“A temptress?” Aurora considered the imposing figure. “She looks kind of intimidating for that.”

“Well, she hasn’t done much in the temptress line of things lately. Been keeping to herself quite a lot, cloistered in that castle, cavorting with the powers of darkness. She was once a blight on the land, no virtuous young woman was safe from her twisted, deviant ways. Recently, she hasn’t shown much interest in things flesh and feminine. I’m sure she’s still as loathsome, despite her lengthy hiatus. Must’ve become a full-time preoccupation, conjuring up evil.”

“So what you’re saying Earl, is that after having spent a good many years holed up in her castle, there’s a distinct likelihood that she’s single?”

The Earl blinked at his younger cousin and stuttered, “Well, I, I suppose... Aurora!”

Aurora didn’t hear him. She’d begun to walk to the center of the room, drawn inexplicably to the dark figure that loomed there. She watched, fascinated by the radiant glow of green fire that sparked and streamed off of the tall woman, and admired the effect.

Maleficent was basking in the discomfort her presence had provoked in the room. She especially enjoyed the terror she glimpsed in King Stephen’s eyes as he sat, transfixed, disbelieving, on his throne. A seat of power soon to be tragically (or conveniently, depending on your point of view) vacant.

A slight figure moving at the edge of the crowd, caught Maleficent’s eye. Caught may not aptly describe what the figure did to her eye. Captured, trapped, absorbed might be more fitting descriptions.

She watched the young woman make her way across the deserted space that separated Maleficent from the stunned crowd. The gentle sway of the woman’s hips, the sheen of her hair, the ripe swell of her breasts as they nudged persistently at the neckline of her gown’s bodice...

Maleficent wondered if she hadn’t spent one, maybe two years too long in that library. Surely such a strong attraction to a woman, even such a lovely specimen as the one before her, could only be the result of extreme deprivation. She felt herself hesitate, felt the fine muscles of her eyes resist her brain’s request to move away from the pleasant visage. This was hardly the sort of business she’d come all this way for. “But what’s the rush?” she asked herself. She’d waited this long. What was another minute or two? Not even a blink in the cosmic scheme of things. And besides, the alluring creature before her looked as though she might speak. As indeed she did, after making a deep, respectful curtsy, “Through some tragic oversight, we’ve not met. I am the Princess Aurora, your fairy goddaughter.”

Maleficent’s eyes widened slightly. This was Aurora? The princess? Maleficent wondered at the woman, she wondered at herself a moment as well. Wondered how it was that the gentle tones of Aurora’s speech could so fire up the engines of her long dormant libido. The sudden rush of desire distracted her from realizing how it was that she, an awesome sorceress by any standard, hadn’t known Aurora on first sight. It was the kind of thing she could discern of a stranger by looking at them. But it was what had happened when she’d first set eyes on her that was wrecking havoc on her otherwise singular determination, derailing, however briefly, her carefully planned takeover of the realm.

A delicious prickling sensation moved through Maleficent's body as she gazed at Aurora. It was a sensation she hadn’t felt in some time. An insistent call, an irresistible intoxicant. The princess was stunning, that wasn’t helping matters any. She was wearing an off white brocade gown, her fine golden hair flowing down to shoulders that were tastefully covered, yet the cut of her dress displayed a smooth and surely soft expanse of skin. Maleficent was determined to explore this certainty at the soonest possible opportunity.

“What’s going on?” Prudence asked in confusion. The sisters stood nearby, watching the spectacle unfold with the rest of the audience. “Why are they looking at each other like that?”

“Perhaps the spell has weakened over time. Perhaps they’re falling in love? Maleficent has grown so powerful since the christening.” Juniper lamented.

“I-don’t-think-so.” Sybyl said through clenched teeth. Watching the duo closely, she’d detected something.

As Maleficent's mouth watered Aurora’s went dry. The sheer presence of the sorceress was enough to make her quiver in her shoes. Shoes, she noted, that no sane woman would choose to wear of her own accord. But her godmothers had adored them and insisted that she must. She’d capitulated, never wanting to let them down. But she would have liked someone to tell her how it was that you could have three fairy godmothers, sorceresses all, and still have uncomfortable shoes. There was no magic in the realm to make a pair of glass slippers comfortable. But there seemed to be something else that could. Distraction.

The moment she’d set eyes on the dark, flowing creature standing before her, she hadn’t given her feet another thought. She had however, pinched her cheeks and wiggled in her dress as discreetly as possible to lower her bodice, thus displaying her cleavage to best advantage.

She’d been successful Maleficent noted. She swept an appreciative glance over the young woman’s figure. Not a full figure as yet, but one near maturity. Near enough. She smiled a most enchanting greeting at her godchild. As enchanting as her years of cloistered study could make it.

Unknown to her, all of the enchantment dissolved in an impotent fizzle before ever taking hold on the princess. Something else had got hold of the young woman, however. Something urgent, something raw, something to do with the youngest of her godmothers. And while that should have been a disturbing and awful thought, all she could wonder was what that woman would look like without those horns on. Possibly, without anything on at all.

“This isn’t possible.” Prudence whispered. “That was no simple spell we cast, to be outgrown, no matter how powerful she’s become. Something else has happened.”

“Oh yes,” Sybyl agreed. “Something else altogether.”

“What? What is it?” Prudence asked.

Sybyl made no attempt to disguise her disgust, “True lust.”

---

Clich here for Part III