The party was a fine to-do without his presence. It was wide-reaching, and news had gone to almost every corner, bringing many great names and powers to the centrally located palace.

One corner that had been forgotten, if not avoided, had been his, though.

Through the widely thrown doors he entered, his gaze icy and his cloak travelling a long enough distance behind him that it would have been a hazard to try to walk just behind him, without the risk of stepping on the useless, dramatic fabric.

"What is this?" he called. His eyes alighted on the Altissi, Benefissi, and Malefissi. Then they narrowed at the Malefissi before turning his gaze to the King. "I said... what is this?" He swept his arms wide.

It seemed as though he were drawing the gray clouds into the hall with him.

The Prince hid his face in Nana's neck, and Nana held him all the more tightly.

"Ulysses, you were not invited," the Malefissimus stepped forward, head held high and gaze beyond angered. No one trifled with the Fair Folk, if they could help it. Much less the Three Orders. The King felt his blood running cold at the look of anger that the Malefissimus had on his face.

"Oh, I will deal with you, Issimi, later," he said. "I do not answer to the dead name you speak. I am the Maleficar."

The Issimi, one could assume, was the Three Orders. They did not look as though they liked to be called by the name. Perhaps it was too familiar. Or, perhaps, it was not the name they disliked, but the man who spoke it.

"You are a Usurper," the Benefissimus said. If it had been Cook Bertha, there would have been exaggerated finger-wagging to go along with the accusatory tone. But this was the Benefissimus, who seemed older than the wind itself. Finger-wagging was not in his repertoire anymore than magic would have been in Bertha's repertoire.

Though, there had been witch cooks employed in the palace, before...

"A Usurper," the Maleficar sneered. "Oh, do be quiet." With a display of twisted magic hat further darkened, chilled, and drearied the room, the Maleficar snapped his fingers and watched as the Benefissimus -- screaming with his mouth closed -- suddenly found himself unable to part his lips. "Sewn shut," the Maleficar said, "As they should be." And so it was true. There was a line of thick thread that crisscrossed tightly over the lips of the Benefissimus.

"Demons," the Altissima guessed.

"Who cares?" the Maleficar scoffed. He turned to the King, again. "I asked you such a simple question. Why haven't you answered it? What. Is. This?"

"My son. His... christening," the King said.

Nana stepped back, boy still in her arms. The Prince Aurore was her charge, and she would not allow the Maleficar near him. There was bad magic all around him, and evil intent written in his dark eyes, underneath his unearthly allure.

"Oh, a christening! He's a bit old to be christened, don't you agree?" The Maleficar strode forward, arms spread wide to indicate his inherent rightness. "Oh, tut tut, little nursemaid. It's rude to take the reason for the celebration away."

All the breath in the hall was held.

When Nana crumbled, it was without warning. In the silence, the sound her head made against the stone of the dais was deafening.

The King turned, without really thinking about it, and uttered a grouping of sounds that didn't quite make a word. He reached for his son, but stopped as the Maleficar cleared his throat. The King straightened and turned. There was a dangerous game to be played.

"My invitation seemed to have been lost," he said.

The King wet his lips, opened his mouth to speak, closed his mouth, wet his lips again, and finally squeezed a few words out. "It... had not occurred to me to send a messenger out to your..."

"I was not invited," the Maleficar cut in. He seemed deadly in his cheerfulness.

Nana didn't move.

The Prince began to sniffle, then to cry quietly behind the thumb that was back in his mouth.

"I was not meant to be here. Even though! Even though christenings are supposed to be open events. Free for all, free especially for those bearing gifts," the Maleficar pondered theatrically, pacing before the dais a few times as the King sweated out the implications. He knew what was to come, the Maleficar was powerful, but occasionally predictable. "A gift," he said. A curse, he meant.

The Maleficar walked over to Nana, ascending the dais, and picked up the Prince. The Prince cried and thrashed a bit, still silent, but the Maleficar merely raised the boy above his head. The Maleficar faced away from his audience. The Prince's expression, then, was easily discernable from where the Maleficar held him, just above his head. "A gift for the little prince," he said. His voice was so soft that it was almost kind. But there was nothing kind about the deranged, demon-consorting Maleficar. A rejected Malefissimus.

"Put him down!" the Malefissimus said.

"You don't want to join the other 'mus, do you?" the Maleficar asked, in a poisonously sweet tone.

The Malefissimus, playing the part of the coward, backed away, silenced.

"My gift. Now. What should I make it? Look at you. Wit. Strength. Diligence. Beauty. Goodness. Why, you are to be perfect, aren't you? That seems a bit tiresome. But rebellion would be a poor gift," the Maleficar mused. "Oh, I know. Death."

"No, please," the King moved forward as the Maleficar laughed.

The Prince's crying was no longer silent. The people, however, still were. There was dread in the quiet room, and the Prince's cries were allowed to echo off the walls.

"A Curse of Death," the Maleficar mused. "Oh, but let's make it interesting, shall we? He will grow and be beautiful. He will be the envy of every man, woman, child, faerie, and freak. He will have his wit, his grace, his beauty, goodness, diligence, and every other rotten facet he's already been gifted. And then, when he is on the cusp of adulthood... death."

The Maleficar laughed. "Hear me, child? You will die, right as your life is about to unfold before you, with all the beauty of a well-intentioned adulthood."

"Please..." the King begged.

"On his sixteenth birthday, he will die," the Maleficar asserted. "How, though? Death alone is not interesting. Oh... let me think... what is the most dramatically unlikely death?"

No one spoke. There was a long silence where only the Prince's cries could be heard.

"Oh, I know. A spinning wheel," the Maleficar seemed to be full of glee at the thought. "A spinning wheel, a spinning wheel! He will prick his finger, like a little princess with skin as thin as paper, and then he will fall to the ground. Dead!"

It wasn't a sensible death, nor a likely one. And that was the point.

The King clenched his fists, defiance lighting his eyes. But he said nothing. He was, after all, a wise King.

He didn't allow himself to continue begging, either.

The Maleficent put down the Prince and swept his cloak up as he turned. "I am done here. I will deal with the Issimi in my own time. Carry on with your celebration. I hear he has only fourteen more until you all no longer have a prince."

The silence continued and followed the Maleficent out the front door, where a waiting raven alighted on a hand he offered it.

"My son," the King said, voice heavy with sudden grief.

The Prince knelt beside Nana and shook her, hands grasping at her dress, her skirts, and her hair. She would not wake. He would not stop crying. Of course, the boy was more upset at Nana's unresponsiveness than at his own Curse. He didn't understand that he was Cursed.

"My son," the King repeated, with almost no voice at all.