Rothbart wasn't running for his life so much as stumbling for it.

It would've been impossible to run and run away so effortlessly after what he'd just gone through, what he'd seen. Everything he'd done and everything he'd failed to do.

The attack on the Cloud Kingdom's queen—his sister—had been months in the planning. But in the end, no one was as shocked as him, the perpetrator, at the outcome.

So the queen was gone now, along with her husband, who'd been another necessary casualty to Rothbart's so-called revolution. Their daughter had become an orphan, spared of her life but little else. Rothbart could still hear her anguished cries as her parents' bodies fell limp into her wounded arms. Much like in his case, the incident would leave her changed for life, in more ways than one.

But he could only spend so much time lingering on today's tragedies. He wouldn't have a tomorrow himself if the royal guards, the Pretty Cure, caught up to him. They were more familiar with the palace's grounds than he was and already on his tail, completely unaware of the traitor amidst their ranks.

"Rothbart!" that very traitor snarled, playing the part of the betrayed extraordinarily well as they lead the charge. "For the deaths of our beloved queen and king, we will take no mercy on you."

"I wouldn't expect you to," Rothbart mumbled as he picked up his pace.

"Quick! He's getting away!"

Spells flew at him from behind, a hassle to dodge but nothing compared to the dead end he soon found himself facing. In his efforts to escape, he'd wandered into the palace garden, where there was no other exit asides from the gate he'd come through. It was a classic storybook moment, when the hero was cornered into a fight he had no choice but to win.

But Rothbart was no hero; if his actions and inaction a few minutes ago were anything to go by, he was a villain, through and through. And he would not be winning today, not against the furious mob behind him.

His eyes wandered to the garden's pond and his decision was quick; he'd leapt in long before he'd even thought it through. If it was the last choice he ever made, he wanted to die of his own accord; that much he knew.

Cold water numbed his senses and as he sunk, he wondered where this pond would take him. The afterlife?

Wherever it was, Rothbart would be back someday.

And when he did return, he would have scores to settle and a revolution to restart.

Episode 1: True transformation! Confessions of an Evil Villain's Daughter

Fifteen years later...

Even before the discovery of Dad's evil lair, Lexa was having a rotten day.

It had all started at school, which was, admittedly, the source of most fourteen-year-olds' problems.

After a year of lying in the wait, her problem came to surface with Sarah Reyes' sudden return to town. Word of her arrival spread like wildfire at Sorrel Junior High, reaching Lexa just minutes too late.

"Did you see Gage with her, though?" a girl by Lexa's locker was saying. "He practically cornered her outside the school gates."

Her companion made a face at that, one Lexa was probably mirroring. "What does Gage have to do with Sarah Reyes?"

The girl shrugged. "I heard they were friends before she moved away." The girl might've said more, but Lexa had sped off long before she could hear it.

If the gossips' information could be trusted, it was time for what Lexa had been sure would not apply to this particular white lie: the inevitable revelation of the truth.

"Gage, for the last time, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

Lexa skidded to a stop at Sarah's voice. Her stomach churned, only partially due to her mad dash to find the duo. Luckily, Gage's infamous maroon fedora had stood out like a red flag among the crowd buzzing around the schoolyard. As she watched on, Lexa had to wonder if his choice in headwear doubled as a red flag for other matters, too.

"Before you left!" Gage was practically screeching, his voice breaking out into octaves only dogs could hear. Heads turned, adding to the count of kids who'd already been gathered around Sarah. "You know, when I said liked you last year? And you said no, we should stay friends? I was heartbroken, but I understand now, Sarah. You said it because you were leaving Sorrel and didn't want to keep up a long distance relationship. You were actually very much enamored. Especially after I helped you during the science fair. Is that why you're back now? For me?"

He reached out to touch the popular girl's shoulder, but she drew back.

"We came back because we heard Uncle Mike went missing," Sarah said coolly, pretty and put together even in a situation like this. "My family wanted to support my aunt, so I'm just staying for the semester. The decision didn't have to do with anything else."

She went on, "I said it before and I'll say it again: I don't return your feelings. If you can't accept that, then stay away from me. My friendship isn't some consolation prize for helping me with the science fair or whatever."

At that, the many spectating students burst into applause. Lexa liked to think that it had more to do with Sarah's words than any previous, perhaps well-deserved bias against Gage. Whatever its cause, the clapping was Lexa's signal for a war over with and won. She would've joined in if it didn't risk drawing attention to herself.

Relieved, she was about to follow her peers back inside for class when from behind her, Gage shouted, "But that's not what she said!"

Run, screamed a voice at the back of Lexa's mind, perhaps the true source of all her problems. Instead of obeying, her feet remained cemented to the ground, though they didn't dare turn around to face Gage and Sarah, like many of the students' had.

"That's not what who said?" Lexa could imagine Sarah blinking confusedly, maybe tucking back a stray strand of dark hair. "Who else gets a say in this but me?"

"Lexa Roth."

Every pair of eyes on the schoolyard turned to Lexa and every person behind them seemed turn against her. Facing Gage, who was pointing a finger at her accusingly, suddenly seemed much easier. Some of the spectators had whipped out phones to record Gage and Sarah's awkward confrontation, and now all the lenses were trained on Lexa, waiting for a reaction.

"Lexa?" Okay, now Sarah was blinking confusedly. "She told you that I liked you?"

"Yeah," Gage said, "after you left. You know her since your, um, uncle worked with her mom at the police station, right? She said that you hadn't wanted to reject me, but since you knew you were going to leave soon, you had no choice. That's why you deleted me off of your social media, too—because your love for me was, IS, too unbearable. Um, that last part was, word-for-word, what she said."

God, Lexa thought, this is like watching a traffic accident in slow motion. Only she was the one behind the wheel, having long lost control of the vehicle.

Sarah shook her head. "That can't be true. Lexa was the one who encouraged me to reject you in the first place. And thank god for that, too-I was feeling guilty about it, but our talk convinced me that honesty is the best policy. Right, Lexa?"

Say 'right', push the blame on Gage. You lied to keep him happy in the first place, anyway, and now he's betrayed you. He was your friend. He's probably the only one in the whole student body less believable than you are, and that's saying something.

The voice's instructions were as tempting as ever, but it was also this kind of thinking that brought Lexa these kinds of problems in the first place. Every good liar knew when a gig was up—and it always 'when', never 'if'.

"I'm sorry, Sarah. Gage." Her words trembled along with the rest of her. And her next ones echoed the many whispers around her: "I can't believe something like this happened again."

"How was your day?"

"It was good."

Lexa might've been a compulsive liar, but she couldn't have been the only one who never answered this question truthfully.

"That's good." Her mother smiled, and Lexa found it very concerning that a police officer wasn't able to see through such an obvious lie. Maybe it was this thickness that was responsible for the bout of disappearances lately in Sorrel. Speaking of which...

Lexa leaned forward in the passenger seat of the police car. "Ooh, Sarah came back today. She was at school and she said something about her uncle going missing. Is it true?"

Mom clutched the steering wheel tighter. "It is. Officer Reyes went missing last week, but he was only declared as such yesterday. Last time we saw him, he was following a lead on the Lana Goodman Case."

It sounded terrible, but through the years Lexa had almost become desensitized to the potential hazards of Mom's job. However, Officer Reyes' disappearance hit close to home, presented possibilities that made her gut wrench. Carolyn Hall was good at her job, but that was what concerned Lexa the most; the woman wouldn't stop until either the culprit was taken in, or they took her.

As Mom's brown eyes narrowed on the road, Lexa's heart went out for the bags beneath them. "Does this mean you're in danger, too?"

"Not any more than you are, I don't think~" But there was uncertainty behind Mom's cheerful façade. "If anything, it just means we have to work harder on tracking this guy down. With Reyes gone, not only are we short a person, we now also have very personal reasons to try our bests and crack the case ASAP. I was about to talk to you about that, actually. The whole station's working over the weekend, so I'm afraid you'll have to spend it at your father's."

This would've normally been fine considering the circumstances, but…"Didn't I have a dance competition this weekend?" One Lexa had been really looking forward to. Her teacher—Gage's mother, actually—had allowed her input in their team's choreography and the thought of performing it had been the only thing that'd gotten her through this day.

"Gage's parents are driving you. You're good friends with him, right? You can just stay with them for the weekend."

It was everything Lexa could do not to interrupt her mother with a hiss of frustration. On paper, it made sense. Gage's family owned Sorrel Dance Studio, and they were friends before based solely on two basis's: 1) they'd been dancing together since preschool and 2) they both had such glaringly obvious faults that they could only tolerate each other's.

But after this…She wasn't sure if Nick ever wanted to see her again. She wasn't sure if she ever wanted to see him again. The things he'd said to Sarah made her want to shudder in her warm-ups.

Still, when her mother asked, "you're fine with these arrangements, right?" she responded with a shaky "right."

If the sleepy town of Sorrel had anything at all of note, it would've been Swan Lake.

It wasn't particularly large, but what it lacked in size it made up for in beauty. Lush spring grass framed brilliant strokes of blue, which made a gorgeous backdrop for the paper birds that littered the lake's calm surface. The titular swans where there was none in actuality.

Lexa wasn't sure how the paper swan tradition begun, but she was sure some tourist-trapping lunatic like her father had been the perpetrator. A Swan Lake without any live swans would've been false advertisement on the Sorrel tourist industry's part. But a Swan Lake where gullible visitors folded their own birds, and wrote down the one trait they wished they possessed before letting the paper go, to glide on the waters said to reflect your ideal self—well, that was ay-okay, and seemed to bring in enough tourists to keep her father's cottage rentals afloat. Idiots from all over the world liked to travel to Nowhere, Canada just to make their respective wishes for personal growth, as ridiculous as it was to zero in on only one area for self-improvement. Lexa thought the only word they should've been writing down was "astuteness", but hey, it was those very idiots that paid for her meals and ballet lessons.

"Over here!" Dad was waving his cane frantically by the lake to get her attention. After giving Mom one final hug and a "stay safe" as goodbye, Lexa rushed over to greet him.

Bart Roth was, as per usual, not very cleanly shaven. His greying goatee along with his drooping glasses, three-piece-suits, and ever-present, carved-owl-tipped walking cane always gave Lexa the impression of an old, villainous professor, a far cry from Mom's eternally energetic air and crisp uniform. Thinking back to his frequent mood swings, it'd never been a mystery why her parents had split up. However, Lexa always wondered how the two had been drawn together in the first place.

"How's my little princess doing today?" With his free hand, he gave her a pat on the head. While she'd inherited his chiseled features, blue eyes, and dark hair, Lexa was nowhere close to his towering height.

"Good," she replied feebly. She stayed quiet as he led her into his house, which was right at the end of his line of cottages and much bigger. She stared at the folded swans on the water. Writing down the one trait you wished you had, huh?

Lexa thought back to the morning's aftermath, the whispers throughout all of her classes taunting, "Liar Lexa's at it again." This incident had been way too close to the Paddington Noodles Lie, which had just started to die down.

It was all very unfair. She'd been truthful when she encouraged Sarah to turn Gage down, but then she'd felt responsible when she saw him sobbing beneath a staircase at school. Fibbing about the reasoning behind Sarah's rejection had seemed harmless at the time—but then, it always did. She always had good intentions—but the means and ends never justified them.

She slammed the door much harder than necessary as she went inside. Gage, fedora and all, had been one of her only friends at school, after every other one had claimed she was too untrustworthy to be around. It's not just the big, outright lies, they'd say. Whenever we talk to you, it feels like you're just saying crap you don't mean to get on our good sides. It's deceptive.

"SO WHAT IF I DON'T MEAN WHAT I SAY?!" she found herself yelling. "YES, RILEY, THAT DRESS WAS HIDEOUS THAT DAY, BUT SO WAS THAT GLOOMY EXPRESSION ON YOUR FACE. I WANTED TO CHEER YOU UP DARNIT, WHY'D YOU TURN ON ME?!"

"Um, Alexandra?"

Dad's saying her full name pulled her out from her train wreck of thoughts. She was in his dingy kitchen by then, with her fists clenched at the ceiling and tears rolling down flushed cheeks.

"Sorry…" She wiped her face and sat down at the table.

"Don't say sorry," Dad said sternly, in a tone that made Lexa want to apologize for apologizing.

He softened when he saw her flinch. "I don't know what's wrong, but you should only say that when you truly feel you did something wrong."

Lexa looked down to her lap, thinking that she hadn't 'truly' felt much—other than numbing regret over past actions—in a while. Suddenly, she lunged across the table, where some napkins had been stacked haphazardly. She grabbed a pen and started scribbling furiously on one of the napkins, pouring all of her unshed tears and unspoken fury into a single word:

"True?"

Dad was peering over her shoulder, squinting a little behind his rimless lenses and looking a little bewildered by her sudden, frantic actions.

"I wanted to make a swan," Lexa explained. "I realized…that my dishonesty is the real source of all my problems, and it has to go if I'm gonna go on. I want to change and become more true to myself, more true to others."

Before she could ask to release it on the lake, the doorbell rang.

"Crap, that's probably Gage and his parents!" She dropped the pen and napkin like they were on fire and dove under the table. "Tell them I'm sick and I can't go to the competition."

Dad was stunned silent for a moment. "Didn't you just say you wanted to be more honest?"

"I-it…" Lexa scrambled for a loophole. "It doesn't count as my lie if you're the one saying it!"

She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard Dad walk off and open the door. As he went on to Gage's mother about how terribly sick Lexa was, but how kind it was for her family to offer to drive her while he was doing some cottage housekeeping during the weekend, Lexa realized how her father was a much smoother, more refined liar than she was. He was the one who'd introduced the habit—and talent—to her in the first place, though, so this wasn't a surprise. That introduction hadn't been through just inheritance or example, however; Lexa's many faces first saw the light of day when her parents had started arguing. She'd learned soon enough that appealing to both sides was a much easier way to live than choosing from either. And that had meant lying until her pants were on fire, even long after their divorce.

There was a long stretch of silence after her father explained the situation and Lexa was tempted to peek from beneath the table. She crept cautiously forward along the kitchen walls, then let out a little gasp when her knees glided against a rounded object lying on the ground: the pen she'd dropped earlier. She staggered, turning to a nearby bookshelf for support.

Only, as soon as she'd touched it, there was no longer a bookshelf to support her.

She stumbled and fell sideways into the newly revealed opening. Where the bookshelf once stood, the doorway to another room loomed in its place. It was dark in there, too dark to see even with the light filtering through the kitchen. Shadows enveloped Lexa as she crawled in.

"Breezy, is that Rothbart coming?"

Lexa froze. She felt her blood curdle and turn to ice.

"Breezy, wake up, someone's coming!"

No, she couldn't have been mistaken the first time. There it was again. A pitchy girl's voice that couldn't possibly have been hers, and too close to be from anyone at the front door's.

Ever so slowly, she looked up. Catching some of the outside world's light was a single, silver birdcage seemingly dangling in mid-air. Lexa could barely make out the silhouettes of two birds, one of which was staring right at her with brilliant blue eyes.

What the—

"Lexa?"

This time it was her father's voice. No, perhaps the last things she'd heard had been from him, too.

But what about this…room?

This house was built along with the nearby cottages when Dad had bought the lakeside property a few years ago. Secret passages weren't a thing with newer buildings, right? So how come…

Lexa backed away from the doorway at lightning speed. From where she was sprawled before, the bookshelf snapped back into place.

Her dad chose that moment to return to the kitchen. "So why didn't you want them to drive you to your competition? They seemed perfectly friendly and—hey, what's wrong?"

Lexa struggled to stand up. "N-nothing, I just…why do you have this bookshelf in the kitchen?"

She could've sworn she saw Dad's eyes widen for a hushed heartbeat. "No particular reason. I just thought it'd spice up the décor a bit."

Lexa scanned the room's mismatched furniture and peeling wallpaper. Dad had never been one to care about "décor", but then, that actually kind of explained the bookshelf's presence. And he did like his books; that they had in common.

"Listen," Dad said. "I'm guessing you're uncomfortable with Gage's family driving you, so how about I go with you to the competition instead?"

"Don't you have some guests coming to take care of?"

Dad shrugged. "I'll get one of my…employees to do it. Besides, now I feel bad for dumping you on others when this weekend could make some good father-daughter bonding time. So how about it? You still have your costumes and crap on you, right?"

"Right." Lexa gave the bookshelf one last look before she followed her father out.

Whatever suspicions Lexa had about her dad disappeared with the weekend's passing. By Sunday evening, she was pretty sure she'd imagined the whole bookshelf and birds thing.

Actual dancing had taken up very little of the weekend, and the little it had went extremely well. Lexa beamed when her troupe did the glissades she'd suggested. She was pretty sure Gage had scowled doing them, though, which was totally the cause of their getting placed fourteenth. That was all she saw of him the three days though; she'd turned avoiding him into a game.

The rest of the time she'd spent loitering at various fast food joints with Dad. Their father-daughter bonding quota had definitely been filled, making up for all the lost time she usually spent at her mother's. He even let her order room service from the hotel, which Mom never did. The rides to and from the competition venue had been brimming with tall tales from Dad's clients.

He was a good storyteller—every good liar was—but tended to avoid stories about his own past. Lexa knew next to nothing about her father's beginnings, but figured his silence over the subject was more telling than anything.

Anyway, she left his house that Sunday feeling a lot happier than she had in a while. She didn't know what she was going to do at school tomorrow, but if Dad had been able to survive his apparently unspeakably terrible childhood, then she could make it through the rest of junior high.

Darn! Lexa realized with a start. I never got to release my swan, did I? It was a stupid superstition, but if Lexa really did want to overcome her habit…

Well, I'll need all the help I can get tomorrow. Maybe the swan will act like a good luck charm… She was lying to herself and she knew it. The only swan she was after was the one in the bookshelf's passageway.

After checking that he was indeed out for dinner, sneaking back into Dad's house was easy; who actually kept spare keys under the doormat? She flung her bags onto the porch and went in.

The bookshelf budged as easily as it had before, giving way to the same pitch-black expanse. This time Lexa had the sense to turn on her cellphone's flashlight.

The silver birdcage from Friday welcomed her almost immediately after the light blinked on, along with its two bird inhabitants. The cage wasn't floating in mid-air after all, it seemed. If you looked closely, you could see fishing wire attached to the handle, securing it from the ceiling. So with that out of the way, maybe she'd just imagined the bird's speech…

"Princess! Was this the girl you were talking about?"

The girl you were talking about. This time, it was the other bird talking. A…robin?

The one who'd spoken last time, a gorgeous white swan, nodded. At least, Lexa was pretty sure she was nodding. "Doesn't she resemble me, Breezy? If she was older and had blonde hair."

"I…" Where the birds had one too many, Lexa had no words. She felt faint. "How can a human look like a swan?"

The swan leaned in close so that her beak was poking through the cage's bars. "No, no. I mean you resemble me when I was human. Before Rothbart's spell."

"Rothbart?" Lexa's head spun. "Like…Bart Roth? My dad's name?"

"Your dad's name?!" the robin—Breezy—echoed. Her voice was shriller than the swan's, younger and more hyper. "Aww, Princess, this is Rothbart's daughter! I didn't know he had one, but you were right; she's another one of his cronies. Looks like we're not getting rescued any time soon. Clouds, no wonder you look alike. She's your cousin."

Cronies? Cousin? If her dad's side of the family consisted of birds, Lexa could understand why he didn't like to talk about it. Family reunions must have been amazing.

"Can you guys…can you please tell me what's going on?" She waved her phone around wildly, searching for any hidden cameras. The room looked like an enlarged jail cell, with a staircase that went downstairs.

Lexa didn't remember having a basement.

"Well," the swan said, "if you aren't working for your father, we were hoping you'd let us out. I understand that that may place you in an inconvenient position, but it's been half a year since we've been trapped, and the fate of the Cloud Kingdom hinges on our freedom."

"Princess!" Breezy hissed. "Are you crazy? She just said that she's Rothbart's daughter. This is probably all just some elaborate ploy to get you to reveal Falcon's Spellbind."

"Breezy," the swan started soothingly. "This may be the only chance we have at escape, and the only chance the Kingdom has at winning the war against Rothbart. I don't care what tricks he has; I can't recall Falcon's Spellbind any more than I can recall my own."

There was that word again. Lexa voiced one of the many questions wearing down on her sanity: "Wh-what's a Spellbind?"

"A single quality one wishes they possessed," the swan replied. "It's usually the response to a fatal flaw. The desire to change oneself holds a very special power, one unique to its owner. It is like a key to their identity, an identity that can be altered if the Spellbind falls into the hands of someone possessing magic."

So it's like the words we write on the paper swans. "A quality you wished you possessed…I think I have one of those. But wait, is that what happened to you two? Spellbind falling into the wrong hands? You mentioned, um, this 'Rothbart' casting a spell on you before. Did he use your Spellbinds against you?"

"Yes, he used mine against my whole kingdom." Lexa wasn't sure how a swan's expression could darken, but this one's did. "I lost my memories when Rothbart attacked me as a child, you see, in his attempt to take the throne. I've been trying to remember my old Spellbind ever since. We're constrained to one for life, but the five-year-old I once was is a stranger to me. Because I couldn't remember the Spellbind, I could never unlock my due power as the Cloud Kingdom's crown princess."

"When Rothbart, your father, returned last year," she went on, "he used my lost Spellbind to turn all those in the Cloud Kingdom without Spellbinds of their own into helpless birds like us, or monsters called 'harpies' to join his army. Breezy would be a victim of the former, as would more than half of our population."

"He turned literally you into foul creatures," Lexa blurted. Then she blushed. "S-sorry, I just…" I barely understand what you're talking about, but are you sure it's about my dad? The one I fed McDonald's fries to pigeons with yesterday?

"It's fine," said the swan, "wordplay like that would make you quite the Spellbreaker back home, cousin."

"Call me Lexa."

The swan nodded. "Alright. And you may refer to me as Princess Odette. Beside me is Lady and Knight-in-Training Brianna Von Schwarzfels."

The robin looked pained. "Breezy, please. Princess, look, if we're actually going to trust her, then she needs to bust us out quick before Rothbart gets back."

"Of course. Lexa, would you please take us downstairs? The keys to the cage are there."

Lexa responded to Odette's request by pocketing her phone and yanking the birdcage off of its wire. It was heavier than it looked and she had a hard time balancing it on her way down the stairs.

She wasn't sure what was more surprising: this situation, or how easily she was going along with it all. Helping others, though, that was familiar territory, and she was always eager to do it. Even if she had no idea what she was actually doing.

The stairs themselves were steel and simple, the ladder-like sort with just planks and no risers in between. They reminded Lexa of the ones you saw backstage at theatres, ugly old things that gave way to wings and the true show center-stage.

And what a show it was that awaited her.

The room above had nothing on this one. Ink black brambles ran up its blood-red walls and onto the ceiling, where they formed a shaky chandelier that bathed the lair in a ghostly purple glow. Wooden shelves stock full of books stood tall next to Lexa like a maze as she wove through. In one corner was a life-sized birdcage identical to the one she held in her hand. An ornate, throne-like seat sat opposite a desk turned high tech control panel at the back, which didn't go at all with the Hot Topic Phase I'll Regret In Two Years 'décor' the rest of the massive space had going.

What stole the show, though, was the glass screen behind the panel.

It took up the entire back wall and even the relentless brambles made way for the sight of blue water that flowed beyond the screen. It looked like Dad had swiped an aquarium exhibit and plopped it down here for his own enjoyment.

But no…this was no exhibit. If Lexa were to break this glass window and swim out, she'd find herself in the depths of Swan Lake.

It was far from the only question she had, but she still wondered why Dad had this screen set up. Swan Lake had literally no wildlife to observe. In fact, birds steered clear of even flying above it.

She looked down into the water. The lake was deeper than she'd thought. And beneath it all was a blur of white, swirling around like an underwater whirlpool. It was mesmerizing.

"That's the portal to the Cloud Kingdom."

"What?"

"The Cloud Kingdom," Odette repeated. "The world where we came from. This lake is a gateway to it. After he killed my parents and attacked me, Rothbart was chased by our royal guards, the Pretty Cure, into the palace pond, which is our side of the bridge. It was assumed that he was dead, but instead he'd turned up here, in this lake. I can only guess he had you sometimes afterwards."

"I see," Lexa said, though she didn't really. Every mention of her dad—no, this "Rothbart" character that wasn't even close to the man that had taken her to her dance competition—caught her off-guard and seemed to drown out the importance of whatever else Odette was saying. "Where are the keys you were talking about?"

"Ah, I see them right there!" Breezy chirped, flapping her wings excitedly.

Lexa followed her gaze. "I don't see any keys."

All she saw were wand-like trinkets lying haphazardly on the control panel, beside a pile of unfolded paper swans. They were white, with teal accents on one and hot pink on the other. Roughly the length of rulers (so thirty centimeters...obviously), they were each tipped with delicately carved birds. Tiny gemstones decorated the birds' eyes, and Lexa was reminded of the cane Dad always carried, with the unusual owl near the grip.

"They're called Sky Scepters," Breezy said enthusiastically. "They're given to nobles like the Princess and I back home. Those are ours, actually. Rothbart took them away when he trapped us. They're like wands; they give you the ability to perform magic. Anyone can perform spells with 'em if they know the target's Spellbind, or if the target doesn't have one, but they're even cooler if you know your own. You can transform into a Pretty Cure then, just like the royal guards. And you'd be able to break spells."

Lexa blinked. "So because Odette doesn't know her Spellbind, she can't reverse the kingdom's spells?"

"Right, and since she's the only one powerful enough to break them all at once—"

Odette interrupted, "Since I'm the only one potentially powerful enough to break them all at once, it is absolutely crucial that we escape so I can find my bind and transform."

Lexa sat the birdcage down on the panel and grabbed the scepters. "Right, sorry. What do I do with these again?"

"Take one and hold it up to the cage," the swan instructed. "All you'll have to do is draw a heart shape with the Sky Scepter. It's very simple since this cage doesn't have a Spellbind."

Lexa followed suit with the teal Scepter, squinting at the swan carving sitting on top as she traced a heart in the air. The birdcage snapped open the moment she finished, falling to the ground just as the pair of birds fell out. While Breezy took flight the second she was out of the cage's bounds, Odette landed awkwardly on the cement floor with a thud.

Breezy was by her side immediately. "Ahhh! Princess, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It's just my wing."

Lexa hadn't noticed it before, but the swan's left wing was bent at an awkward angle.

"It's a wound from when Rothbart attacked me as a child," she explained. "I have scratches all over my left arm in human form, too. I can move the wing a little, but I can't fly." The swan paused. "Anyway, I can't thank you enough for helping us. We are very much indebted to you."

"It's, um, it's no problem."

"It would be with your dad," said Breezy. "Now that we're out, we can find the kid with the Princess' Spellbind and win the war against him. I don't think you see what a big thing you just did here."

Her beady robin eyes widened all of a sudden and she began shaking in her feathers. A shadow fell over the group.

"S-speaking of big things…Harpy!"

Lexa whipped around to find herself face to face with the most hideous creature she'd ever seen.

It looked like someone had thrown a crow and a man into a blender and pressed purée. Muscular arms melted into black wings and its bare chest clashed with the spindly bird legs beneath it. Most horrifying of all, though, was the face atop the monster. It wasn't just the large bill protruding where a nose should've been, but the bloodcurdling familiarity of the features behind it.

Officer Reyes.

Lexa thought back to the life-sized birdcage she'd seen earlier and wasn't all that shocked to see that it was now, indeed, open.

"Intruder…" The monster sounded chillingly similar to the man he once was.

"H-hey! I'm not actually an intruder. This is my house, you know?"

The harpy didn't seem to care; it just lunged at her. Lexa's paralyzing fear gave way to blind adrenaline. She tried hitting its beak with the scepter she had, but that only succeeded in angering it. Between fight and flight, the former clearly wasn't an option, so she ducked left and bolted for the stairs.

But the harpy was too fast. It charged forward, propelled by its broad wings. The next thing Lexa knew, she'd been chased into its cage, with nowhere else to run.

It was all going to be over as soon as it'd started, not unlike Lexa's pathetic little life. Her legs collapsed and she braced herself for the end.

"Use a Sky Scepter!"

It was Odette yelling, from all the way across the room.

"Take one and write your Spellbind in the air. You said you had one, didn't you? Write it and then say 'Pretty Cure! Spell Start!'"

When Lexa didn't obey immediately, she added, "Hurry! You want to live long enough to fulfill your Spellbind, right?"

"…Right."

Yes, she wanted to break out of this cage, this basement, and then she wanted to live long enough to break out of all the walls she'd put up with her lies. She wanted to live on until the word 'true' applied to every word she said. Everything she did from now on, she wanted to truly mean it.

Lexa stood up. She still had the scepter in her hand and her knuckles were white from gripping it too tight. Her watering eyes met the harpy's defiantly.

The harpy just looked confused, like, why isn't she cowering? Where are my screams? Lexa took the opportunity to raise the scepter up and trace four simple letters, her Spellbind:

True.

She'd told herself once that she wanted to be like Swan Lake, which was said to reflect one's ideal self, a perfect world. She'd wanted to be that for people, so she always gave compliments she didn't mean, sprouted off white lies when she wanted to present people with a better reality. All her lies were wayward wishes, a reflection of what people wanted to hear, what she wantedthem to hear. But just like a spell, they always wore off eventually, broken by the inescapable truth.

The truth wasn't permanent, either, though. It could always be altered—she understood that now. Lexa didn't have to use words to obscure reality any more. She could make reality itself better, change things just as she herself changed as soon she called out, "Pretty Cure! Spell start!"

The cursive 'true', which had been hovering in mid-air before, multiplied, until all around Lexa were swirls of translucent letters. They came in all at once to envelope her in a blue searing light. She waved her scepter around and as she did, her jeans and T-shirt melted into an intricate white dress. She had fun with it, throwing some ballet moves in as her socks morphed into point-shoe-like white slippers with wings on either side. She tested them out with a tour en l'air that turned her hair from brown into blonde, pulling itself up into a wavy side pony.

The cage the harpy had backed her into shattered during the transformation, leaving shards of silver in its wake. Lexa stood tall in the middle of it all and struck a daring pose, scepter still in hand.

"Reflecting one's true self! With the grace of the swan, I am Cure Ciel!"

Preview:

"I've transformed now, but how do I fight this monster? Any advice, Breezy?"

"Forget about the monster, what about your dad? What'll you do when he comes in?"

"Maybe he won't recognize me in this get-up."

"Or maybe he'll recognize you as Princess Odette instead. Then it'd just be up to you to keep the act up, huh?"

"Well, I still can't believe this 'Rothbart' you speak of and my dad are one and the same…"

Next time: Ciel's Secret! Reading Between the Lies