Truth Or Fiction

Chapter Twenty Nine

Persephone gently led Mal and Hadie off to the side while Hades seemed to have a heated yet silent conversation with the floating eyeball that was still hovering off to the side. Mal wasn't going to lie, it was rather creepy.

Before she could say anything, however, the eyeball began to glow once more though it didn't spin. Mal blinked as a side room seemed to appear out of thin air—could this have been done the whole time?

"Called in a favor with the Fates," Hades said as he opened the door for his family to walk in. Well human family as Estelle was still taking his self appointed role as guard for Leah seriously, not letting her out of his sight. "I figured this is a talk that we should have out of the ears of some of those in attendance."

"You just don't want Zeus or Hera butting in don't you?" Persephone asked, lightly teasing her husband.

"Oh and you want your mother interjecting?"

"You raise a good point."

Mal sighed and Hadie shook his head in slight amusement at his parents' antics. It made it feel like everything was the way it had been, but it wasn't. There was a riff that was still there.

Persephone sighed and looked at her children. "Alright. I think it's time we have a little talk. Hadie, how could you talk to Mal like that?"

"Mom, really, it's—."

"Malinda, if you dare say 'it's fine' I will make good on my promise to your father and find a way to ban it from your vocabulary." Persephone stated. "Your brother knows that you had to deal with Maleficent—."

"But I never knew she was stolen," Hadie spoke up. "You guys always made it seem like Mal was always in the Underworld with us and that she just had to go to the Dragon's every so often because despite the adoption, she was still genetically Maleficent's."

"Thanks for that reminder," Mal muttered and then sighed. "Hadie, I know you're upset and it's on me. I made you think that my thoughts were going to be similar to Uma calling Celia a 'whelp' and 'useless'. I should have told you what they were. I...I guess I just thought that if I did say what my thoughts had been, you'd hate me."

"Look how well that turned out," Hadie scoffed.

"Yeah," Mal nodded. "I guess I come by it naturally. I mean, mom and dad were beating themselves up for not talking me out of my belief you'd be a girl. I should have—."

"Mal, don't," Hades spoke up. "I get it, and I get that Hadie's upset. But son, you don't know what living with Maleficent is like because we never told you. Whenever Mal got back from the Dragon's, we made sure you were either at the restaurant or with Uma. And maybe that was a disservice to you but we...we didn't know how Mal was going to come back."

"What do you—?"

"You were there for the one bit of scroll where Maleficent laid her hands on me," Mal said as she knelt down so that she was looking straight into her brother's eyes. Blue met green, and Mal continued. "Hadie, imagine that for six years. Imagine Maleficent going on tangents about dad and you could never tell her she was wrong otherwise you could wind up with a broken ankle at best. Remember this is the Fae who broke my ankle when I was four because I called her by her name in front of the Evil Queen."

"Yeah she still needs to pay for that," Hades grumbled.

"Not the time dear," Persephone told him.

Hadie sighed. "I know Maleficent isn't the nicest person or even the nicest villain. I'm not Gaston's kid after all Mal. But...everyone's getting on my case for being upset and yet you're doing the same thing you're mad at the Auradonians for doing!"