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The cracked stained glass windows were the only other source of color. The old glass was mostly broken, and sections of the windows lay entirely in ruins, their shards dashed across the floor. Mal and the others had to step carefully to avoid slipping on one of pieces. The long, window-lined corridor gave way to an even taller and wider corridor, and before long, Mal knew they were approaching some place of significance, a great chamber, perhaps even the heart of the castle itself.
Mal walked toward her fate, as Evie had said. Her destiny, if that’s what it was.
Mal could feel it, the now familiar pull toward something unknown, something that perhaps belonged only to her.
It was there in front of her, buzzing and vibrating, just as it had been since the first moment she’d stepped inside the Thorn Forest. It pulled at her, beckoned her, even taunted her.
Come, it said.
Hurry.
This way.
Was it her really destiny calling to her, after all?
Or was it just another failure waiting for her in the throne room? More confirmation that she would never be her mother’s daughter, no matter how hard she tried?
She stopped at a pair of doors twice the height of a grown man.
“This is it. It’s here.”
She looked at Carlos, and he nodded, holding up the box. She saw that he had switched it off some time ago. “We didn’t need it anymore,” he said, looking right at Mal.
Jay nodded to her. Even Evie reached for her hand, squeezing it once before she let it go again.
Mal took a breath. She felt a chill up her spine, and goose bumps all over her arm. “This was Maleficent’s throne room. I’m sure of it now. I can feel it.” She looked up at them. “Does that sound crazy?”
They shook their heads, no.
She pushed open the doors, taking it all in.
The darkness and the power. The shadow and the light. Ceilings as high as the sky, and as black as smoke. Windows spanning whole walls, through which Maleficent could manipulate an entire world.
“Oh,” said Evie involuntarily.
Carlos looked like he wanted to bolt, but he didn’t.
Jay’s eyes flickered across the room as if he were casing the joint.
But Mal felt like she was all alone with the ghosts.
One ghost, in particular.
This was where her mother used to rage and command, where she had shot out of the ceiling as a green ball of fire to curse an entire kingdom. This was her seat of Darkness.
They pushed farther inside, Mal at the front. Carlos and Jay and Evie fell like a phalanx of soldiers behind her, almost in formation.
The black stones beneath their feet were shiny and slick, and the entire room was haunted by an aura of deep malevolence. Mal could feel it; they all could.
This had been a sad, angry, and unhappy home. Even now, the pain of that time burned its way through Mal, deep into her bones.
She shivered.
There was an empty place in the middle of the room where her mother’s throne used to be. It had sat upon a great dais, flanked by two curving sets of stairs. The room was round and ringed with columns.
A great arc cradled the place where the throne had once sat, guarding an empty spot. The tattered remains of purple tapestries moldered on the walls.
“There’s nothing left,” Mal said, kneeling on the one dark spot that no longer held a throne. “It’s all gone.”
