Descendants: To Kill A Dragon

Chapter Three

A/N: This chapter focuses a lot on the abuse suffered by the kids. I know Evie has a skewed perspective on mental abuse, but she's the one member of the core four I identify most with, and her relationship with her mother is the reason why.

If you were wondering, Cassandra is a character from the Tangled animated show. She has an adorable relationship with Rapunzel and Flynn.

• • •

Even with Jay's help, it took them a few months to get all the fruit Evie needed for her cyanide recipe. She had apple seeds, peach and apricot pits, and when she was certain they had enough to kill Jafar, she ground them up in a mortar and pestle, separating the liquid from the shells.

"Remember, you need to give this all in one serving." Evie said, as she placed the vial into Jay's ready hands. "It won't work as well if it gets diluted."

"Got it." The thief nodded in answer. "I plan to put it in his coffee tomorrow morning. That stuff from the Slop Shop tastes so awful that he won't even notice."

"And if by some miracle this isn't enough?" Mal asked, not because she doubted Evie's skill, but because it was always better to have a backup plan.

"Then I'll smother him while he's weak. That way it'll still look like an accident." Jay replied. That would never fly in Auradon, but on the Isle, there was no coroner or morgue. Who was to say Jafar didn't have a heart attack or stroke, or die in his sleep? Thanks to disease on the island, it wasn't an uncommon fate.

"Lucky you." Mal retorted. "Some of us still have to go home and face our parents."

Everyone looked to Mal with various degrees of solidarity. They all knew what it was like to be mistreated like a servant in your own home. Hell, Carlos ran away from it, and Jay was pushed to the point of murder to escape his father's grasp. For the first time since her birth, Mal was seriously contemplating the thought of murdering her mother. Everyone on the Isle probably thought about it at one point or another, unless their parents were a rarer type of villain, who protected their children and cursed everyone else.

For the first time though, Mal wasn't just wishing her mother was gone, as she made the long trek home, nursing the bruises on her wrists and throat. No, for the first time, she was actually thinking about logistics.

Maleficent was strong, gifted with the kind of strength that all powerful fae bloodlines were blessed with. The old hag had proven it often enough when she choked Mal within an inch of her life, or flung her across the room. In a fair fight, there was no way the daughter could win. She knew from experience that the fire in her blood burned away most poisons with nothing but a brief period of agony. If she, a half human had that immunity, no poison on earth could harm her mother.

Mal's mind turned over her advantages. One thing she had going was the fact that she could do magic, and her mother could not. She didn't know if it was a flaw in the barrier, or some other unknown force, but it never occurred to Mal that she might be stronger than her mother. After a lifetime of being cut down and told she wasn't good enough, she hadn't yet realized the truth: Mal Bertha was more powerful than her mother ever realized, and the barrier was the only thing keeping her from realizing it. That said, Mal had one more great advantage: at the young age of thirteen, she had already killed, something which Maleficent had never truly accomplished.

She kept those advantages in mind, as she dreaded the beating she would receive when she got home.

• • •

Evie had always felt a little guilty when her teammates talked about the abuses they suffered at the hands of their parents, because the Evil Queen never actually hit her daughter. That might have only been because she thought bruises were ugly, but the fact remained, she had only ever slapped Evie once or twice, in a rage. One of their school teachers (Yen Sid, the old wizard) insisted that Grimmhilde's constant judgement and put downs were just another kind of abuse, but Evie had a hard time seeing it that way.