Briar had had this nightmare before.

Maleficent was alive and Phillip had never saved her and she was trapped again, helpless and at this sorceress’s mercy.

So an odd sense of calm fell over her like heavy wool, fuzzy and dense.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

But a stab of fear: Her dreams had never been this real before. She could smell the damp wood of her cottage, the earthiness where Fauna had spilled a bag of flour once and the scent had never gone away. She could taste it on the air, powder and mildew and the endless rich greenery of the forest just outside the window. Chill bit into her arms, rising up her limbs to the back of her neck, and somewhere deep beneath this protective shield was a voice, her voice, whispering This is no dream, is it?

Numb, moving as if it were, in fact, a dream, Briar stumbled to the door of the cottage and tried the handle. Locked. Her fingers were so cold suddenly, she could barely bend them, but she fought to grab the lock and twist.

It didn’t budge.

Trapped.

Helpless.

The curse is taking me again.

It took Frieda even after Maleficent was dead—it isn’t finished with me yet—I’m asleep again, and Phillip won’t save me—

Or maybe.

Maybe the curse had taken Frieda anyway because Maleficent had not been dead.

Every reason was equally horrifying, and Briar tried the door again, again, unable to come up with anything other than the consuming instinct to get away.

“No, darling,” Maleficent cooed from behind her. “You will not leave quite yet. You and I need to have something of a talk.”

Briar stayed facing the closed door, tugging hard enough to rattle the wall, shaking dust from the wood beams over her head. Her heart thundered, aching fear constricting her like vines, and she realized, distantly, that this was how Phillip must have felt in his panic episodes.

That centered her.

Don’t think about your own fear—think of Phillip.

If Maleficent had Briar…

He would have to face her again.

But he wouldn’t, because this was a dream.

“Let me go,” Briar begged, no louder or more forceful than a whisper.

Maleficent laughed. “Yes, that is what you want, isn’t it? To leave. Back to Austria. After everything I have done for you, the path laid out perfectly, you would give it all up without a fight. I did not train you to be a coward, Briar Rose. Aurora. I did not train you to be a fool.”

Briar whirled on her. “You did nothing. Everything I am I have become in spite of the things you subjected me to, and I owe you no explanation for the choices I make. Now wake me up.”

Maleficent’s red lips stretched in a smile that contrasted with the malice in her eyes. “Oh, you are awake. This is very real, darling. You forced me to take drastic measures.”

Briar’s breath went out in a sharp gust.

Maleficent was lying.

She was a liar. She was a sorceress and a villain and she was lying.

Maleficent smirked at Briar’s rising breaths. At her shaking head.

Briar blinked quickly. “No. No, I’m not discussing anything with you—you gave me nothing, nothing I will accept. Let me go!”

“You don’t have to accept it. What I gave you were not gifts. Not in so many ways. They were pieces arranged on a board. Paths forged. Luckily for you, I never expected gratitude for what was necessary.”

A cold horror chilled Briar’s limbs, froze her irrevocably in place.

She turned back to the door, banged on it with her fists. “Help!” Again, harder. “Help!” Again, again, bruising herself, pain rippling up her arms. “HELP! I’m in—”

“Darling, really. You have to know that won’t be in the least effective.”

“I will not listen to anything you have to say!” Briar swung on Maleficent, fury raging through her, breaking apart her fear so that she focused only on being angry, on being filled with vengeance. “I don’t know why you thought I would even for a moment tolerate any explanation you have to give—”

“Because it’s your fate, Briar Rose Aurora. And your aunts did not have the strength to see it through.”

That did stop her.

Her aunts?

It’s her, though, Flora had said. It’s her. How can she give it up?

Briar paused long enough that Maleficent’s smile went wicked, a hunter bending over a triggered snare, gazing at the rabbit caught in its loop, knowing there was no escape.

“You have seen,” Maleficent said in that voice that curled like smoke. “You have guessed. Your aunts have lied to you about many things. Do you want to know the full extent of their betrayal? Do you want to know how spectacularly they have failed you?”

Briar didn’t speak. Not to refuse. Not to scream for help again.

She had hated silence for months. The silence after she asked a difficult question, the silence after she did something improper. But this silence was the worst yet, a silence she created, a door she opened.

Because as much as she railed, as much as she fought, she did want answers. And Maleficent was the only one able—willing—to give them to her.

Self-hatred became another constricting tendril around her heart, squeezing, squeezing.

At her silence, Maleficent’s grin faded. She did not tease. She did not torment. She looked at Briar in one long, drawn-out moment of…understanding.

“I am not the villain you have created me to be, Briar Rose Aurora,” Maleficent said. “Your fate is such that you would have drawn the attention of things far worse than me, had we not intervened. I am but one part of a force connected to guiding the fate of powerful women rulers,” she said. “And that force foresaw an empress of the Holy Roman Empire who would unite the whole of the land in an unmatched age of peace.”

Briar waited for Maleficent to sneer at that. But no—she said it as though it was an outcome she wanted. It left her a little breathless, and Briar watched Maleficent inhale deeply, steadying her shoulders. The motion made her…made her human in a way Briar had never seen.

Briar tightened her hands into fists. Widened her stance.

She would listen, she would be here, but she would not be unprepared.

“But the vision we had,” Maleficent continued, “was unlike ones we had been given about rulers of other countries before. It kept changing. One day it would be a girl with dark hair and a stoic manner; another, it would be a girl with hair of sunshine gold and a demeanor of pure joy.”

Briar flinched. “You had visions about Frieda and me?”

Maleficent pulsed an eyebrow. “And they overlapped and changed so often, so viciously, that the Queen’s Council could not pin down precisely who the empress would be.”

“The Queen’s Council?”

A gentle nod. “The force that guides powerful women rulers. The force I am a part of, darling.”

Briar glowered.

She and Frieda were in a prophecy of sorts? Fated by this Queen’s Council?

At least she had a name for the force that had irrevocably altered her life. But knowing the name of the thing did not make Briar any more likely to obey it.

“The vision changed.” Maleficent kept talking. “And kept changing, and ripped apart and changed back. The magic of the Queen’s Council allows us to take the form that will most benefit the ruler we need to guide. But with each change of the vision, the Queen’s Council began to change as well. We…disagreed. We were one being, but with each shift of the vision, we began to split. Part believed this girl would be empress, part believed that girl, then part changed its mind again; part believed neither and it would all come to ruin, part believed the two must be tested. We could not decide on a path nor a form to take. The magic got so vigorously knotted in its own uncertainty that it sundered us into pieces.”

Maleficent spoke of pieces, and Briar saw some come together before her next words formed.

Magic.

Broken pieces.

A trapped breath welled in Briar’s lungs.

Her…her aunts?

No, she thought again, no, this is absurd—this isn’t even real—this is a dream—

But nothing had ever been a dream, had it? Not from the start. It had always been visions, had always been real women in situations just like Briar’s. Had always been Maleficent’s real cackle, because she had been alive the whole time.

“I am one such piece,” Maleficent said with a sweep of her arm, as though giving an introduction. “And once I had been severed from my sisters, I saw the purpose of that vision clearly: that both girls needed the tools to grow to their fullest potential. To that end, I took it upon myself to give you both the tools you would need.”

Briar’s stomach sank. “You’re the reason we both ended up in Hausach.”

Maleficent nodded.

She’d known. The whole time. Maleficent had known where Briar was, where Frieda was, and she hadn’t attacked, she hadn’t swept in and enacted her curse early—she’d led them both to Hausach intentionally. To each other intentionally.

“I gave you the chance to learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses in preparation, so you could ultimately face each other and determine once and for all the course of the visions themselves,” Maleficent said. “That is the only end, the only possible end.”

Briar sank back until her hip bumped a table, the anger briefly evaporating out of her in shock. “You want Frieda and me to try to kill each other?”

“Of course. One must win. Why have you taken so long to realize?”

“Because I won’t do it,” Briar stated, winded. “Because it is barbaric! You would think I would be at all driven to murder my closest friend?”

Maleficent sighed, that look of understanding still on her face, but it was heartless now. “You sound like the remaining council members. They disagreed with my methods as well. Claimed they were harsh. But the results will—”

“Harsh?” Briar shoved upright. “They were—are—more than harsh. You are cruel and a villain, no matter what heroic honor you think you’ve earned for bravely cursing two women and manipulating our lives. You tried to kill me. You did kill Frieda. You were—”

“I did that to give you the visions you now know were to your aid.” Maleficent was unfazed by anything Briar said. “Visions of other rulers that the Queen’s Council has helped, their strengths and weaknesses and successes and mistakes, so you would come armed with all the knowledge it was possible to provide. Frieda was only on the other side of life for a few moments; as such, she was able to receive the visions far more easily. You, though, needed to remain asleep for far longer to receive them, thanks to that nuisance of an amendment to my curse. Not in death, but just in sleep. And from this slumber you shall wake, when true love’s kiss, the spell shall break. Vile annoyances, easily remedied. That man of yours did make it a particular challenge to keep you from rescue.”

Briar surged forward, hands in fists. “Do not speak of him.”

Maleficent waved dismissively. “I was never going to hurt him, and I was never going to hurt you, or Frieda, or anyone in your miserable little lands. Why do you think I let your prince think he had killed me? I did not want to torment you. All of this was for you, and you are here now, on the cusp of the prophecy coming true. One of you will become empress.”

“Yes,” Briar said. “It will be Frieda. I conceded.”

“Aha, no. That is not how this works, Briar Rose Aurora. I did not arrange these pieces and set up this board to perfection for you to take the coward’s way out. That is not a woman worthy of a prophecy so strong that it shatters a mighty force into pieces. Do you understand the gravity of what your destiny has done?” Maleficent’s eyes glittered, with awe and hatred and that vile pity. “You broke a force that has existed for time immemorial. You and Frieda—your fate was powerful enough to nearly destroy us. So do not think your little wants and wishes are capable of combating what is coming for you. If the Queen’s Council could not stand against it, you are but helpless to be carried in its grip.”

“Helpless.”

The word was a sparked flame. It was a knife dragging up her spine. It was enough to ground her and infuriate her, and in this moment, Briar was anything but helpless.

“You have seen me grow,” she said, her jaw tight. “You have watched me become who I am. What makes you think I will not fight every moment to break free of this?”

“Fight if you want,” Maleficent said with a shrug. “I am saying you will be ineffective. Your destiny lies here, facing Frieda, until one of you emerges as the true empress.”

“An empress determined through bloodshed will bring about an age of peace? Do you hear how contradictory that sounds?”

“Peace does not come without sacrifice. Do not be naive.” Maleficent finally took a step away from the fireplace, the first movement she had made at all, and Briar matched her with a step backward, hitting the table again.

“Now.” Maleficent’s faintly amused expression turned wicked. “You will return to the castle and see through the path to fate I have made. My time grows short—I have outrun my own fate too long. And besides, we have other rulers to aid than you. Don’t be so selfish, darling. Do what must be done.”

Briar could only manage enough control of her senses to keep breathing. Quick, shuddering breaths.

Maleficent would make her return to the castle and kill Frieda?

It didn’t make sense. None of this did. Not Maleficent claiming this was the only way to achieve peace; not her explanation about a force breaking, a Queen’s Council rendering, and her being one part of it.

Other things made no sense, too.

They had not made sense for months, but Briar had ignored them, pushed them all deep down, because to truly confront the inequities and failures of her aunts, she would have broken apart herself. Frieda had declared their flaws at the rithmomachia game, but even then, Briar had barely begun to acknowledge how her aunts had failed her. How they had shoved her back into harm’s way the final night of the curse. How they had let Phillip go into the fight against Maleficent alone. All their little mistakes over the years of living in Hausach that Briar had shrugged off as her bumbling aunts, even when their mistakes cost her food and security.

For as powerful as they were, it made no sense that they had failed at what should have been simple, obvious things.

Her aunts were the other parts of this council.

Maleficent, Flora, Fauna, Merryweather—they had been one magical force that was rendered to pieces.

And now, separated as they were, they were incomplete, and that incompleteness made them unreliable and dangerous and shortsighted, well-intentioned but imprudent.

Briar remembered the visions she’d had in Maleficent’s dreams. The women, their power and strength, and, at the base of it all, their supporters and friends and advisers.

None of them were alone.

Indeed, when these women had been alone, they had been at their weakest.

Maleficent had given Briar these visions so she would learn from other rulers.

But the biggest thing Briar saw in them, the solution that came raging at her full and bright, was not one that Maleficent had intended.

Or perhaps she had.

Perhaps, somewhere in the brokenness that was Maleficent and the Queen’s Council, this was what Briar had been meant to see all along.

And she knew, as she stared at Maleficent, surrounded by a magical illusion of her childhood home, how this mighty story between her and Frieda would end.