“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.”