Disclaimer: I don't in any way, shape, or form own Disney Descendants or its characters.

Prologue

Growing up with mothers like ours was, in a word, difficult. My mom expected me to learn how to run a business from a young age, so that when the time came, I could take over her fashion and cosmetic industry. Evie's mother expected her to be "the fairest of them all," training her to be the perfect pageant princess from a young age. Evie was trained how to "pageant walk," as they called it, from the second she could walk. Her mother was always forcing her to be sure her back was ramrod straight and her head was always held high. Her mother never accepted anything less than perfection.

While Evie was dragged from beauty pageant to beauty pageant, I was taken to every one of my mother's company meetings where I would sit and take note of any and everything my mother did to make sure her business stayed on top; whether that meant bribing or overtaking her competitors, after all she did buy out The House of De Vil because of its growing success. She didn't care as long as The Sinful Spindle House of Fashion stayed number one worldwide.

On the outside our mothers seemed like the sweetest people one could have the pleasure of knowing, what with all their efforts to promote humanitarian aid and all the money they spent towards helping charity. Nobody ever questioned what was below the surface. Society didn't know that while my mother promoted humanitarian aid and spent millions of dollars on charity, below the surface she using child labor to create her products, both cosmetic and fashion. Or that she bribed influential politicians, Evie's mother included, in an effort to keep the conditions of her industry a secret. Or that she would yank me around, gripping hard enough to leave bruises whenever she believed I had disappointed or disrespected her.

Nobody knew that Evie's mother berated her about every little thing; her hair out of place, her eyebrows misshapen, her make-up a mess. At times she would even stop Evie from laughing lest she'd develop a wrinkle. They didn't know that every time Evie lost the highest winning title at a beauty pageant or got turned down for a modeling job, her mother would make her practice her pageant walk or her talent routine until Evie's feet were blistered and she could no longer stand. Or that Evie was kept on an extremely strict diet because she was always "a bit too pudgy," and never quite "pretty" enough.

Evie and I had given up hope long ago that society would open their eyes to see below the surface, to seeing what our mothers really were, what our mothers were really about. That was until someone finally got up the courage to speak the truth. A single confession changed the lives of Mallory Faery and Evelyn Royal forever.