If you're new to the Seven Deadly Sins series, this is the third story. You can find the order of reading on my profile, or if you'd prefer, the entire series in one story titled 'The Horsemen's Cycle'.

Vanity: No Escaping the Crown

The Rescuers

Penny was pretty and young when she defeated her villain (it wasn't difficult- Madame Medusa was old and drunk, and not very good at anything {she was almost certainly mad}) and it led to her abounding happiness and adoration from crowds. For an orphan, it was a dream come true. For a little girl who'd prayed for love, it was a message from God.

For a teenager, and eventually a young adult, it made for a spoiled brat.

Penny lived in a mansion. A cold, lonely mansion, but a mansion nonetheless. And her governess accepted the first offer for marriage that came her way.

So she married a nice man, Lord Frederick Annington (not quite the standard that was deserved by a hero, but it was too late to change her mind {and she wasn't that much of a hero anyway}).

Her husband spoiled her. Trips to Paris in the spring, and Mauritius in the summer. They went skiing down the alps in the winter, and in the fall they stayed in Auradon, gorgeous as it was, and he would buy her pearls and diamonds and silk brocades and anything that caught her eye for longer than half a minute (it was all her money, earned from attending events and taking over Madame Medusa's Boutique and Pawn Shop {he didn't have any of his family wealth left, and she was not allowed to touch any of her "new money" and they both pretended that it wasn't like that in public}).

They were invited to King Ben and Mal's wedding and were the envy of so many of the peasants there (they were envious of many in attendance as well {perfect lives with pretty crowns and jewels they could afford and marriages to princes that had saved them}).

And Penny danced with Ben, and Frederick with Mal (although he later claimed that he hadn't wanted to, that their new queen had forced him to {and the word was sour in her mouth. Mal wasn't good, had defeated no villain, but now she was a queen}) and as she swooped through the hall on Ben's arm, glittering in the candlelight, she got a glimpse of what she had been like, before Madame Medusa and the kidnapping. When she lived in the orphanage and was no one's darling.

Innocent.

Ben, though he was King, was one of the most innocent people she'd ever met, raised on the true values of Auradon (her child, sweet Peggy, was raised on the values of a broken home, even though she pretended she wasn't) and it showed. He was pure and honest with her, even though (and she knew this) she was seen as a gauche upstart with too many jewels and too few years for her husband.

She could see, in a way, how Mal had fallen for him. She still found the couple unlikely, but she could see the appeal on Mal's side- she might have to try harder to see Ben's.

So for Penny, it was a shock.

Some people claimed they saw it coming. That obviously the children from the Isle wanted no more than Ben's crown.

She thought they were wrong.

Mal had had plenty of opportunities to kill Ben, but she had waited. Perhaps, some of Ben's innocence had reflected on her, had made her softer (or, they whispered, or she knew the laws. Or maybe she knew the Consummation Law).

Penny and her family hid. They pawned off all their jewels on black markets (they never knew how many of them found their way to Mikhail) and stayed underground, waiting. Some of the greatest heroes were killed by the kids of villains, and still, they waited. They watched the broadcast of Queen Evie killing her mother, and the Queen of Hearts losing her head.

They all looked to Penny.

She was, after all, the hero.

What they saw was a coward.

Penny wasn't the real hero of her story, it was her friends, the mice and the albatross. And they were framed on Mikhail Medusa's wall in the boutique (never sold, because they were beyond all value).

Penny died of starvation. Her son was sold into slavery and her daughter became a prostitute to keep her father alive (no one mentioned how Peggy was eventually accepted amongst the villains, how she turned traitor on what she was raised with {except she didn't, really, because she was raised with the values of a broken home}).

And those values taught her to survive.