“If you are imagining I can wish us out of this, king’s son, you are much mistaken,” said Maleficent.
“When I saw Aurora for the first time, I thought perhaps she was one of you—one of the faeries of legend. She seemed like the answer to a wish. Like a dream. I believed I loved her instantly.”
Maleficent snorted.
“You’re right. I was infatuated. And that callow, lovelorn youth is who you see when you look at me, but I have lived at the palace for months. I have been by Aurora’s side all that while. I have seen her goodness. I have sat with her in the garden when she cannot sleep at night for fear she won’t wake.”
Maleficent made a soft sound at that.
“I do love her. And you need not believe me, but I am going to prove it to you, when I get both of us out of here and save her.”
“You are perhaps not as repulsive a suitor for Aurora as I thought you were,” Maleficent said faintly. “But I will like you better still if you can keep that vow.”
Phillip had made it impulsively and meant it absolutely, but that wasn’t the same as having a plan. And it seemed all he could think of were the things Maleficent would be able to do if only she weren’t surrounded by iron, like bending the bars or perhaps turning him into an ant the way she had turned Diaval into a dragon. Then he could walk out of the prison, get the keys, and free her.
The more he thought and thought without having a single useful idea, the more he felt like the callow youth he had denied being.
But then, after all, he did have an idea.
He would wager that just as Maleficent had entertained an idea of who he was, the guards did, too. They had heard Lord Ortolan call him a prince. So he would behave like one.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Guards! Hullo!”
“What are you doing?” Maleficent hissed.
“I’m cold and hungry,” he informed her, pitching his voice loudly enough to be heard outside the room, “and unused to hardship.”
After a few minutes of Phillip’s shouting as loudly as he could, a guard entered, bearing a torch.
For a moment, the light was so bright that it was painful to Prince Phillip’s eyes. He blinked against it, scowling. But now he could see the room. And he could see that another guard had come in after the first, this one with a set of iron keys dangling from his belt—the same iron keys he’d noticed when Lord Ortolan was giving his speech.
“What’s all this howling for?” asked the guard with the torch.
“We require water and food and blankets,” Phillip said in his best approximation of what people thought a petulant prince ought to sound like.
The guards laughed. “Oh, do you now, Your Highness? I suppose you think we’re servants at your beck and call?”
“I imagine that your master would like the full ransom from Ulstead rather than the war he will get if I go missing in the kingdom of the Moors.” The guards shared a glance. No, Phillip thought. Between that look and Lord Ortolan’s words, he could tell they knew he was never intended to go home. “You can’t expect me to believe that ridiculous story we were told about murder. No one would wish to begin their reign by inviting their neighbor to make war on them.”
“You’re probably right,” agreed one of the guards.
“And,” continued Phillip, “even a doomed man is given a last meal. Should your master really mean to put a period to my life, I can’t believe he would do so without feeding me decently.”
One of the guards shoved his torch into a holder with a sigh, relenting. “I’ll see what I can find you, Prince.”
He went out, which left only one guard—the one with the keys.
Perfect.
“What of her?” Prince Phillip said, gesturing toward Maleficent.
“The faerie?” asked the guard, peering at her through the bars as though looking at a dangerous beast.
“You can’t possibly mean to leave me in here with her.”
“Scared?” the guard asked.
“Look here,” Phillip said, beckoning him over. “She’s very ill and she’s constantly moaning with pain. It’s distressing.”
“I will suck the marrow from your bones,” Maleficent shouted, looking up at him with raw anger and showing her teeth. “Then you would know distress.”
Phillip felt a rush of pure primal fear. The guard startled, too. In that moment, Phillip shoved his hand through the gap between bars and grabbed hold of the key ring. He pulled it as hard as he could. It came away in his hand, ripping loose from the leather of the guard’s belt.
“Now see here,” the guard said. “I was trying to help!”
“I am rebuked,” Phillip admitted, putting a key into the latch and turning. Nothing happened. He tried a second key and the iron door swung open with a groan.
The guard had his sword drawn, but he seemed to barely notice Phillip racing past him to grab for a torch. The guard was too focused on Maleficent, who was rising from the ground and moving toward him, her full lips drawn into a wide and terrible smile, her inhuman eyes shining with monstrous glee.
He was still busy staring at her when Phillip clobbered him in the back of the head with the torch. The guard dropped to the floor, unconscious.
The other guard raced into the room. With a single wave of Maleficent’s hand, he went flying against the back wall of the prison. She waved again, sending the unconscious guard across the floor and through the open door to the cell.
The door shut with a ringing clang.
“Wait,” cried the guard Phillip had not knocked on the head. “You can’t just leave us here.”
“No?” Maleficent asked, her hand going to the stone wall as she swayed slightly. She was obviously not at her full strength, although she spoke with the confidence of someone who was. “I think you’ll find that we’re delighted by the prospect. A shame you didn’t better provision us. Had you brought us a single luxury, it would now be yours.”
And with that, she swept out of the room, leaving Phillip to follow her.
“That was well done,” she told him in the hall.
“I am not sure it counts as a plan if my only thought was to keep talking until they made a mistake,” he said, surprised by the praise.
“We’re free,” she said, “so it must.”
Unfortunately, other than the set of keys and the torch, they had gotten hold of nothing that might be considered a weapon. Nor did Phillip have any idea where they were. Somewhere on Count Alain’s lands, he guessed. That would account for a quantity of iron so great that a prison could be made of it.
He didn’t like to think of how long the prison had been there or who had been kept in it before they had.
The hall had several doors identical to the one they’d come from and a central area where a few chairs surrounded a table with dice scattered across it. Phillip used the set of keys to unlock two more doors, finding the cells empty. But opening a third revealed a boy, who leaped to his feet as they entered.
“P-Prince Phillip?” the boy asked.
He sounded frightened. Phillip supposed he might well be afraid. What reason did he have to think that Prince Phillip wasn’t in league with Count Alain? “Yes, and I mean you no harm. I’m going to let you out.”
“Oh, thank you, my lord,” the boy said gratefully. Then he noticed Maleficent. She had remained in the hall, probably wanting to stay as far from the iron as possible, but her horned shadow loomed large in the room. He blanched.
Phillip opened the door to the cell. “Who are you and how did you come to be here?”
“My name is Simon, my lord,” the boy said, emerging into the room. “I was a groom in the palace. I looked after your horse before, and I must say she’s quite a goer.”