If Mal lived in a crumbling palace, Jay lived in a graveyard of dead technology. He slept on a threadbare rug beneath shelves groaning with the hollowed-out carcasses of 20th-century televisions and telephones with severed cords remnants of the world the "Heroes" had moved past.
His father, the former Grand Vizier Jafar, was now a hollowed-out husk of a man who spent his days polishing rusted lamps that would never grant another wish. To Jafar, Jay wasn't just a son; he was a retrieval tool.
"You should be atop an elephant, leading a parade," Jafar rasped that morning, his eyes clouded with a madness born of twenty years in a cage. He watched as Jay pulled on a sleeveless leather vest, the boy's muscles corded from a life of climbing tenement walls and fleeing guards.
"Sure, Dad," Jay replied, his voice flat. He didn't smile; smiles were for marks. "I'll bring you back a trunk if I find one."
Jay was a "Prince of Thieves" only in the sense that he reigned over the gutter. He stepped out into the narrow, suffocating streets, moving with the fluid grace of a predator. He didn't "mischievously" filch billfolds; he hunted them. He navigated the labyrinth of clotheslines heavy with the grey laundry of the damned, his fingers ghosting over pockets with surgical precision.
The Isle was a parasitic ecosystem. Everything from the stale bread to the "Used Brooms That Sweep Okay" was the discarded waste of Auradon. Jay moved past Ursula's Fish and Chips, the air thick with the smell of rancid oil. He didn't just "grab" fries; he snatched them from the hands of a startled customer, disappearing into the shadows before the first curse could be hurled.
He moved through the bazaar, swiping a bruised, mealy apple. He didn't wave to the daughters of Madam Mim out of friendliness; he did it to see which one was distracted enough to have her earrings lifted.
When he crossed paths with Maleficent's henchmen the boar-like guards who were more beast than men he didn't just steal their caps for a prank. He took them because they represented a week's worth of trade credit at the pawnshop.
Jay caught sight of a shock of purple hair near the Slop Shop. Mal was staring into a cup of murky, grey liquid as if it held the secrets to her own execution.
Jay didn't ask. He moved like a blur, snatching the cup from her hand.
"Give it back, Jay," Mal said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, low hum. She didn't look at him; she looked at the space where his throat would be if he didn't comply.
"Make me," Jay challenged, though his eyes remained wary.
"I could make you bleed out in this gutter, thief," Mal hissed. "But it's too early for the paperwork."
Jay took a gulp of the "coffee." It was lukewarm, gritty, and tasted of rust and boiled amphibians. He handed it back, his stomach cramping with a hunger that never truly went away.
"Pressed mud and toad-spit," Jay muttered, wiping his mouth. "Extra protein."
"It's the only thing keeping your heart from stopping," Mal replied. She adjusted her jacket, the pockets bulging with jagged metal and a rusted sword hilt she'd scavenged from the docks. They weren't friends. They were two wolves in a cage too small for one.
As they walked toward Dragon Hall a literal mausoleum converted into a school the temperature dropped. The "In Evil We Trust" motto above the doors was choked with dead ivy.
"Heard the news?" Jay asked, his voice low.
"The only news is that we're still here, Jay," Mal snapped.
"There's a new girl," Jay insisted. "Castle-schooled. A blue-haired princess who's finally been dragged down to the dungeon with the rest of us."
Mal stopped. The air around her seemed to thicken, a cold weight settling over the graveyard.
"A princess?" Mal's voice was like a razor.
"Think of the loot," Jay said, trying to ignore the sudden chill. "If she's been hidden away in a castle for twenty years, she's got to have something worth taking. A crown... a ring... a soul."
Jay saw the flash of a memory in Mal's eyes the ghost of a six-year-old's birthday party and a mother's curse that had turned a neighborhood into a graveyard.
"You're right, Jay," Mal said, a slow, predatory grin spreading across her face. It wasn't a smile of joy; it was the look of a cat watching a bird with a broken wing. "She's a guest of honor. And I think it's time we threw her a party she'll never forget."
Jay shivered. He had meant to suggest a mark, but he had accidentally awakened a monster. As the school bells tolled a mourning sound that echoed across the ash-heaps of the island he followed Mal into the dark, wondering if even a thief could survive the storm she was about to summon.