Page 13 of Malicent
A familiar voice—a whisper, a temptation, a need.
Unstoppable. Take it all. Have it all.
Use it just one more time.
The darkness coils through me like a drug, sliding over my skin as if waiting to be fed. Just one hit, one pulse of power, and I’d feel it again.
Raw. Consuming. Limitless.
The idea is intoxicating.
The need unbearable.
Power always comes at a price. And you never truly know the cost until it’s too late.
A sharp finger snap slices through my thoughts.
Kalix.
He must sense the monster in me awakening. His eyes are on me, steady and unyielding.
“Put it on a leash. We have a job to finish,” he warns, his voice low and firm. No patience for argument here.
He turns on his heel, cutting through the shadows of the garden, boots grinding against scattered cobblestone. The path ahead leads to the guest house, looming like an omen in the distance.
I shake my head and follow Kalix, pushing the hunger back down. Burying it. Black mages were never part of creation.
Our origins are unclear, lost to time and half-truths. The old texts claim that we were never meant to exist. It’s accepted that our magic formed as a response, an answer to the ever-growing power of witches. An evolutionary necessity.
Maybe that’s true; maybe it isn’t.
But I know this: there is something inside me.
It wakes, restless and starving.
What am I?
I’ve never had a single apprentice complain of a presence in their veins, whispering of its hunger. They call me Cage, Lord Black, or the first mage to the king of the South. A respected warrior. Protector of people.
If only they knew this is just a mask, a skin, I wear.
What would they think of what dwells beneath if they knew the truth of what I am?
The evil within has surfaced countless times. It drove me to wander, to destroy, to seek power. And no matter how much I took, it was never enough.
Nothing was ever enough.
I hungered for more. Fuck, I was starving for more. Always more.
Even now, restraint is a daily battle. Time has made managing the monster easier, but it was very much still alive.
It’s still there. Watching. Waiting. Tempting.
And, gods, it is ever so tempting. Sometimes, when I spiral too deep into the depths of my being or when I become thethingthat lurks down there, I wonder if Nora was right.
Maybe the Coven wasright.
Maybe their lessons, their punishments, their chains really did protect people from me.
