Chapter Text
Freezing cold water rushed over Patton’s calves and shifted the sand under his toes, the strange sensation making him giggle. The wave receded again, and Patton’s gaze followed it all the way back to Roman, standing in the water with his back to him. He was facing off against a giant wave with all the determination he had for every challenge in his life, and he dove through it with that same level of bravery. When he came back out at the top, he turned and smiled at Patton, pushing his twists away from his face.
Patton grinned and waved enthusiastically at him before he turned away and dove back under the water. Patton wondered idly if Roman ever wished that his mother, Ariel, had never come to land, so that he could be a merman. Would he even be ‘Roman’ if that had happened, and he had a different father? Would he and Patton have ever met?
Dang it, now Patton was sad. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the thought. He wished he could go out there and swim, but his wings couldn’t get that wet or they would probably tear, and he still hadn’t figured out how to hide them yet. His mother, Fairy Godmother, had tried time and again to teach it to him, just as she had tried to teach him all magic, but he’d never really gotten any of it. He could speed up plant growth, and he was quite talented at an empathy spell, which showed him glimpses of other people’s emotions, but beyond that he was hopeless. He’d tried recently to turn a ripped shirt of Roman’s into a slightly fancier and not ripped shirt - which was a much simplified version of his mother’s simplest famous spell - and had instead turned it green. Not even a pretty green either, a pukey-poopy green that made Patton nauseous just thinking about it. The rip was still in it.
“Hello, Patton,” Logan said, and Patton turned to see him walking down the beach towards him.
His arrival really did make Patton feel better, so he was only forcing it a little bit when he smiled and said, “Well, hey Logan! Don’t you look de-light-ful!”
Logan paused where he was setting down his towel and glanced down at his shirt, which had a light bulb on it surrounded by the words “full of bright ideas.” Patton had bought it for him as a gag gift last Christmas, and it made him happy to know that Logan had kept it.
“Hm. I should’ve expected that. Yes, this is one of my few t-shirts, and you bought it for me, so I thought it appropriate to wear to our ‘berry best buddies’ beach day.”
Patton laughed loudly, he hadn’t been expecting Logan to remember the name he’d given their outing in the group chat, and saw the corner of Logan’s mouth twitch upward. “It’s perfect! Oh, and!” He reached backwards for the picnic basket he’d brought. “It wouldn’t be the ‘berry best’ without berries, would it?” Patton opened the top to reveal, as promised, a fruit tray decorated with spirals of strawberries, red and white raspberries, blueberries, black berries, and-
“Bananas?” Logan asked, picking one of the slices up to inspect and then popping it into his mouth.
“Yep! They’re technically berries because of the seeds!"
“Ah, yes. Did you know that strawberries and raspberries are technically aggregate fruits, and not actually berries, because they form from multiple ovaries of a flower, instead of just one?”
“Oh,” Patton looked down for a moment. “Well, they’re still berrylicious!”
Logan let out a very put upon sigh before saying, “Yes, I suppose they are.”
“You broke out the picnic basket without me? For shame!” Roman exclaimed, hand help over his heart as he walked over to them.
“Sorry, Roman. I just didn’t be-leaf I could wait any longer!”
Roman thought for a moment as he sat down. “Because berries have leaves?”
“You got it, super starfruit!”
“Now that’s just reaching,” Logan said.
“And the other one wasn’t? Let the man have his fun!” Roman declared, popping a strawberry into his mouth. “He certainly wasn’t when he was sitting up here by himself waiting for you.”
“You could have stayed out of the water with him if you were so worried,” Logan snarked, and Patton glanced between them worriedly. He actually had been having fun listening to the ocean, mostly anyway, but he decidedly would not be if they started fighting. “I would have been here on time, but my parents wanted to speak to me.”
“Oh? What about?” Patton asked.
“I’m sure you’re both aware that, as Prince, when I turn 18 in a year and a half I will become a member of the Royal Council.” Patton and Roman nodded. “My father proposed a… test, of sorts, to help me prepare and to prove that I’m ready for the increased responsibility that will come from this position.”
“Well then? What’s the test?” Roman asked, leaning in.
“I will be able to make one royal declaration of my choosing later this summer, which I will then have to manage.”
“Are there any limits?”
“No. I assume I will have to ‘run it by’ my parents first, and they will likely not approve anything overtly stupid or dangerous, but they trust me to make a good decision, so I doubt that I will have to worry about them vetoing it.”
“Do you have any ideas?” Patton asked.
At the same time, Roman said, “You should declare that everyone in the kingdom gets a free baby dragon!”
“Oh, yes! That would be so cute!”
“No.”
“Oh, come on, calculator watch, why not? It would be so epic! We could have hatching parties and dragon races and epic duels!”
“See, this is why I said no. Can you imagine the amount of abuse that would occur against these dragons either in an attempt to carry out some ill thought out adventure, or when their owners realized that dragons are not just cute little pets, and they will burn up anything they come into contact with and grow larger than many houses? Most people likely don’t even want a baby dragon, so then we’d just be what- forcing them upon them? So many would end up in the streets.”
“Well, I suppose when you put it that way it doesn’t sound quite as spectacular. So many neighborhoods would burn down, and so many innocent dragons would be slayed.” They all had a moment of silence for the hypothetical dead baby dragons. “Well, if not that, then what, Logan?”
“I… haven’t yet figured that out. I was hoping the two of you could provide some useful ideas.”
Patton hummed and looked over the ocean. His gaze caught on the giant dark blot on the horizon: the Isle of the Lost. Sometimes, Patton felt like it was following him, which was ridiculous, because it was an island and couldn’t even more, much less be able to think enough to know that Patton exists and want to follow him, but… It seemed like no matter where he went or what he did, it was always sitting there in the corner of his eye, waiting for him to notice it.
And notice it Patton did. Like, besides being a big, horrible, black mass always somewhere in his vision, it had real people on it. Real people who had to deal with the seemingly constant storms hanging under the barrier, and the claustrophobia that must come from hundreds, or maybe even thousands at this point, of people all being stuffed together on that tiny little island, and the abuse and violence that the villains had to be inflicting on their children.
“What about the Isle?” Patton said abruptly, accidentally interrupting Roman, who closed his mouth with a snap. Neither he or Logan responded for a few moments as they shared a look.
“What about the Isle, popstar?” Roman said eventually.
“Well, I mean…” Patton straightened his back and took a deep breath. He could do this. “It must be a kind of horrible place to live, right? And the children of those villains didn’t do anything to deserve being there. Honestly, I don’t think some of the villains themselves did.” Patton mumbled that last part, sure that the other wouldn’t agree with him.
“Of course the villains deserve it. They were convicted and sentenced by fair and impartial juries, as is the law,” Logan said.
“I mean, were they really though? Most of their ‘crimes’ are so infamous, no one could really be impartial. And, bringing the dead villains back to life just to trap them on that Isle because, what, because they’d got off too easy? That just doesn’t sit right with me.”
“They were not revived and sentenced to the Isle purely because they “got off too easy” as you said. It was to set an example for others, that if you commit crimes this heinous, you will be punished for them, no matter what. And the Isle really isn’t that much of a punishment. Yes, none of the residents can use their magic, but other than that they have completely free reign. Many people were sentenced there because there wasn’t enough room or security for them in other prisons, or because a life sentence in a traditional prison seemed too extreme,” Logan said.
“Right!” Roman exclaimed. “And, I mean, they’re evil. We can’t have them interacting with our society. That would just bring ruin and despair!”
“Okay, okay, fine. Maybe the villains do deserve to be there. But what about their kids? They haven’t done anything wrong!”
“Um- did you not hear me? They’re evil!”
“The kids?”
“Yes! It runs in their blood, or their DNA, or whatever. If they weren’t on the Isle, they would just be causing havoc here! And we can’t have that. Above all, our duty is to protect Auradon..”
“I hear what you’re saying, Roman, but isn’t the Isle part of Auradon? We created it, right? That makes it, and everyone on it, our responsibility.”
“Yes, it is our responsibility to make sure they stay there! And, like Logan said, the Isle really isn’t that bad.”
“But the children haven’t done anything to deserve it! I don’t think that anyone is born evil. Maybe they’re taught it by their parents, but we can counteract that! We can teach them good! Isn’t that our “duty” as heros, to save others and help them be good too? How can we claim any moral superiority if we just leave them there without even trying? I mean, what if you had been born on the Isle, wouldn’t you have wanted a chance to prove that you aren’t just an extension of your parents?” Mm
“I wouldn’t have been born on the Isle, because I am not evil!”
“Patton has a point, Roman.” Logan cut in.
“What!”
“What?”
“People are not born villains any more than they are born a chef, or a teacher, or anything else. They are taught the values and moral codes that lead them to them assuming these roles. We could, possibly, teach them otherwise. But we can’t justify taking young children away from their parents with no proof of abuse, and I fear that anyone older would be too far gone.”
“You don’t know that! Maybe the older kids are exactly who we need to start with, people around our age! I mean, neither of you can say that, if presented evidence that you’re completely wrong about something, you wouldn’t be willing to change your mind, right? And if we can reform them, then that just proves that no one on the Isle is beyond hope!”
“I… suppose. You still haven’t provided a convincing argument for why to focus on this instead of something affecting the main regions of Auradon, though. I can’t help but think that my proclamation could be better spent on them.”
“Well, this would help them too!”
Logan narrowed his eyes. “Explain.”
“I mean, think about how much food and supplies we send to the Isle that could be going somewhere else instead! But we have to send it to them, or else they’ll starve to death, which kind of goes against the whole point of the Isle in the first place. And with how overpopulated the Isle is getting, we keep having to send more and more, wasting more food. But we have so much extra food here that we just throw away at restraints and stuff, we’d have no problem feeding them if we didn’t have to transport it!”
“That is a good point, Patton.”
“What? You can’t actually be agreeing with this, Logan!”
“I think you’ll find that I can do whatever I want, Roman.” Logan shot a glare at him, and he wilted a bit. “If we were to do this, and it is most definitely an if, who would we even bring? And how would we teach them?”
“Let them take classes at Auradon Prep. And… well, no…”
“We don’t keep records of the Isle. We don’t even know what children exist, or how old they are, so we don’t have exactly a list we could consult.”
“We could go to the Isle, interact with some people, pick them that way?”
“No,” Roman said. “If we are going to go through with this, we have to be smart. And dropping the Crown Prince and his potential-future-council-members onto the Isle, the most dangerous place in Auradon, is not smart. If we’re trying to make a statement, or whatever, I propose that…” He hesitated, seeming unwilling to say whatever he was thinking. “We invite the children of the villains from our parents’ stories. So Ursula, Gaston, and… I suppose the Tremaine’s, as Cinderella is the most famous of your mother’s wards.”
“Were you listening when I just said we don’t know if any of those people have children? Is Ursula even physically capable of having children, since there are no other Mers on the Isle?”
“Well, if you had let me finish, you would know that I was going to say that we should invite their children or children of the proper age who they are affiliated with and would like to nominate. So, if Ursula has no children around high school age, then she could nominate, oh I don’t know, Captain Hook’s child, or something.”
“That… might actually work. This whole idea needs to be thought out a lot more before any of it is actionable. I make no promises that it will be the declaration I decide on, but it's a good idea. Thank you, Patton.”
Patton smiled widely and nodded. He’d been wanting to do something about the Isle for so long, and now it looked like it was actually possible. He wasn’t going to let this chance slip through his fingers.
----
Jason’s screams echoed against the barrier, mingling with the thunder to create a beautiful melody. He was on his back on the ground, his chest just barely caved in under Remus’ morning star. Blood began to pool from his mouth as he panted, trying his best to glare through the pain.
If it was anyone else under him, Remus would be turned on.
Oh, well.
“So, Jason… Friend. Islander. Cocksucker.” Laughs sounded from the crowd gathered in a circle around him, and Jason’s face tightened. Remus’s grin widened at that, showing off the yellowed teeth that he had painstakingly sharpened into points with a nail file as a child. He leaned harder on his morning star, forcing a wheeze from the boy under him.
“There’s this little girl, Lacey, who’s been an honorary member of our crew for a while, swindling and stealing like she was born for it. We all fucking adore her. But she’s been too young to go through initiation. See, we actually care about age,” Remus said, and he relished in the way Jason’s face contorted as the people around them let out another round of jeers.
There was something strange to the yelling, though, little notes of panic. This was only confirmed when Virgil’s doubled voice shouted out wordlessly and a second later Remus’s calf was burning with pain.
His leg gave out from under him, and he collapsed to his knees, his pants immediately getting soaked by the puddles of rainwater around them. He lost his grip on his morning star in the process, and it went clattering to the side as Jason pushed up onto his elbows and started trying to shimmy away.
The piss licking child fucker had somehow gotten hold of the knife he’d dropped and stabbed it into Remus’s leg. Remus forced a demented smile back onto his face as he sat back, dropping all of his weight on Jason’s legs. Grabbing his collar, he tugged Jason’s chest forward and headbutted him as hard as he could.
He shoved Jason back to the ground, ignoring the way his vision swam, then reached down for the knife still buried in his calf. In one swift motion he ripped it out and brought it up to press against Jason’s neck.
“Thanks for the gift, baby! This is gonna be useful later.” He winked as he leaned forward, bracing his arm on the ground next to Jason’s head so that his face was all that he could see. He didn’t even care about the heckling of the crowd anymore, just the way that Jason’s eyes widened as he tried to tilt his head to the side.
“Get the fuck off of me,” Jason finally managed, a glob of spit and blood landing on Remus’ cheek. Remus smiled and made no move to wipe it away.
“Hmmmm… No. Just imagine I’m you and you’re Lacey, alright?” Remus pushed himself back up, keeping his ass firmly positioned on Jason’s legs and the knife pressed to his pale little neck. “Anyway, as I was saying before you decided to misbehave, we just can’t wait any longer to make Lacey officially part of our crew, and so we’re gonna throw her a little initiation party. She’ll do the actual thing later. I just haven’t been able to think of a good gift for her though.” Remus pouted exaggeratedly. “Any ideas?”
Jason just glared until Remus pressed the knife further into his skin. “Fuck you,” he said.
“That’s a great idea! Since you fucked her without her permission, I’ll just take your stupid puny dick and make that my gift! Baby’s first revenge token, isn’t that sweet?” Remus ignored Jason’s horrified expression, tossing his head back to look at Janus and Virgil standing at the front of the mass of people behind him.
They glanced at each other, then looked back at him and nodded. Virgil looked a little bit nauseous as he did it, but the proud smirk on Janus’ face made up for it.
Remus turned back towards Jason, whose struggling had renewed, and cackled. He couldn’t let Jason get up while he was doing this and ruin everything, so he picked him up by the collar again and slammed him into the pavement, then again, until his eyes stopped focusing quite right. He was still very much alive, just very much concussed as well.
He slid down Jason’s legs, ignoring the shot of pain from his calf when he readjusted, and tugged down his pants and underwear until his gross little penis popped out.
He pressed the knife to its base, ignored Jason’s garbled screams, pushed farther, and- Voila! One severed penis, which he raised up for the crowd to see. Cheers burst out from most of the gathered group, though a few of them at the front - members of Jason’s crew - looked at each other in disgust and fear.
Good. They were all horrid little perverts, hopefully now that they knew the consequences of pushing themselves onto people who didn’t want them, they would stop.
Remus put his hand holding the dick in front of Jason’s face, letting the blood drip down onto him, and leaned in. “Now, I can’t actually leave the dueling ground until I kill you or you give up. I think you’ve learned your lesson, though, right? I don’t have to make you choke yourself to death on this?”
Jason shook his head frantically, his eyes still slightly glazed.
“Great! Then say it.”
Jason mouthed a few words, then seemed to realize that nothing was coming out and coughed. “Un-” He swallowed. “Unc- Uncle.”
“There you go! Good boy!” Remus exclaimed, pushing himself back onto his feet. The cheers tripled in intensity as he again held up the penis and spun around in a circle to show it off before bowing dramatically.
As soon as he had stepped away, Jason’s crew rushed over to grab him and drag him back to whatever little hovel he came from.
His leg hurt like a bitch though, as did the cuts on his arms and chest that Jason had managed to get in before Remus had put him on the ground, and his head ached from slamming it into Jason’s.
*** Virgil and Janus noticed his discomfort, like always, and started shooing the crowd away while Remus stumbled over to them. As soon as he was within arms length, Virgil reached out and tugged him to his chest, wrapping one of his giant oil spill black, feathery wings around him.
Janus, who had gone to retrieve his morning star, walked back over to them, her green and gold scales glimmering in the setting sun. She kneeled, wrapping her handkerchief tightly around the stab wound.
“How’d I do, Snakey?” Remus asked, “I make you horny?”
“Oh, always,” Janus responded, standing back up. “That was the most spectacularly sexy show you have ever put on. Now, though, I think it's time to get you home and cleaned up.”
They turned around, Virgil leaving an arm around Remus to keep him steady as they began to walk back towards their shared apartment. “What about you, Anx? Did you enjoy the performance?”
Virgil nodded, though he didn’t look at Remus. “None of them are ever going to mess with someone from our crew again. Probably.” Seeing as Virgil was the single most neurotic person Remus knew, and that - being fae - he was completely unable to lie, that was actually pretty high praise. He just got a little queasy around blood and gore, which made no sense considering he was the big bad Maleficent’s kid, but whatever.
“Yes, as… attractive as that was, I would so love to watch it again.” Janus was a funny little thing like that. Half of the things she said were completely opposite from what she meant. Maybe it was from having a conniving bitch like Jafar as a father. Or maybe it was just another bit she did, that was now fully part of her personality, like the gender switching. Or, well, Remus didn’t really think that was a bit, at least not all the time. She liked to do it kind of randomly, to throw people off, but she’d said a couple times that it really just made her feel more like herself to do it, so whatever. Right now, she had a beanie and slacks on, which were parts of her boy outfits, but her voice was a bit higher, her shoulders were back, and she was swaying her hips like she always did when she was a girl. Remus thought that she’d learned that way of holding herself by imitating her mom, the Evil Queen, but she’d gotten super offended when he’d mentioned it, even thrown a shoe at him, so he’d never brought it up again.
Remus himself was an orphan, in all the ways that counted, anyway. But Ursula had adopted him as a baby and taken care of him no matter how much he harassed her, so she might as well be his mom.
He loved her, as much as he could love anyone, but Virgil and Janus were way more distant from their parents, and he saw her every day at the Fish & Chips, so when they proposed all moving out of their families’ and getting a place together, he’d jumped at the opportunity. The stairs up to their little penthouse kind of made him wish he hadn’t, but he cared much less when he was injured like this.
They only had to walk up to the second floor before going over to the elevator and opening the baby gate in front of it.
“I’ll see you boys upstairs,” Janus said as he went back to the stairwell.
“Alright,” Virgil grumbled. “You ready?”
Remus nodded eagerly and pushed off the ground with his uninjured leg, giggling when Virgil lifted him into his arms princess-style. Remus hated those little prisses on principle, but couldn’t deny that getting treated like one every once in a while made him feel a bit less like he wanted to eat a handful of firecrackers.
Virgil crouched before jumping up and forward, into the elevator shaft, and pumping his wings hard, pushing them into the air.
A few years ago, one of the cords holding up the elevator car had snapped, and it and everyone inside had gone crashing from one of the top floors to the bottom. No one survived.
The car was almost too crumpled to get the bodies out, but they had managed. No one had touched it since. It had made it so the shaft (lol) was always empty and big enough for Virgil to fly in without much trouble, so Remus tried not to care.
The collar of Virgil’s black tee had gotten tugged down a little, exposing his prominent pale collarbones, and Remus idly wondered what he would do if he bit them. Maybe he’d yell. Or maybe he’d startle so bad he’d drop Remus. Freefalling was always fun, at least until you hit the ground.
Remus tilted his head and nipped at the skin just as Virgil was pushing past the curtain into their apartment, and he did indeed yell and then drop Remus, though he landed on the wood floor just inside instead of going splat on the elevator, which was less cool.
“You are so fucking stupid. I mean, what if we were still flying? What if I had dropped you?” Virgil growled, dragging him over to the beanbag in the corner.
“I would’ve become a fun memorial painting?” He glared and Remus cackled.
While Virgil was busy wrapping the penis up and putting it in the ice bin and then grabbing rags and filling a bucket with water, the door opened and Janus walked in, setting her cane and Remus’ morning star on the rack.
Virgil came back over, sitting down beside Remus and moving his injured leg into his lap. He gently untied the ruined handkerchief, handing it to Janus when he came over. He dipped one of the rags into the water and rang it out, wiping off the blood covering Remus’ leg then giving that rag to Janus too. Janus walked over to the sink to wash them off.
Virgil then put his hand on top of the injury, muttering a familiar phrase in Latin as his eyes and hand began to spark with electricity and the coiled hair on the back of Remus’ neck raised. The sharp pain in his leg turned into a steady, pounding ache, his heartbeat quickening in his chest and his breathing coming faster before Remus wrestled it back under control.
Virgil had described it once as “speeding up the healing process.” He turned the electricity always pulsing under his skin into energy that Remus’s body could process. This energy, coupled with a little bit of other magic, did basically the same thing that Remus’ body would have done on its own - formed a scab, then scar tissue, created more blood, etc. - in a tiny fraction of the time. It had the side effect of making all of his other body processes try to catch up, which made him feel incredibly anxious and/or horny depending on what he thought about during it. He pretty much always tried for the latter.
He reached for it now, thinking about the last guy he’d made out with. It was midnight, and he was pressed against the apple seller’s stand, the rough wood digging into his back and probably giving him splinters, as he bit the boy’s lips and tasted blood-
In his mouth, the rest of it pooled around Jason’s midsection. Remus threw his head back. Jason was a fucking whore, and he deserved everything he got. Lacey’s leggings were covered in blood as she cried. Remus really didn’t want to be thinking about this. She was so small, and so scared, and there was blood everywhere - on her, on Jason, on Remus, seeped into the very fabric of the Isle.
Remus’ breath was catching in his throat for all the wrong reasons, stupid tears pricking at his eyes and stinging and he couldn’t smell anything except copper, and-
Remus’ leg was healed, and then Virgil was moving onto the smaller cuts and bruises he had gained throughout the fight. Janus was running a gloved hand through Remus’ short reddish-brown and grey dreads and whispering sweet little words into his ear.
Everything was okay. He had done his duty as a co-captain of the Dark Sides and ensured that nothing like that would happen to his crew again. Probably. Hopefully.
“Take a deep breath, slimy,” Janus said.
He did. And another one. And another one.
Virgil was done, and Janus helped him out of his ruined clothes and into a bath he’d drawn. She helped him scrub the gore out of his mustache and off of his skin, and then out of the bath and into a pair of clean boxers. He refused to put on anything else, much to her chagrin.
The one other downside to Virgil’s healing magic was that it made both him and Remus incredibly tired, and especially after the bath, Remus was fading out of consciousness fast. Janus tucked him into their pile of blankets and pillows then left, presumably to help Virgil with the last of his preparations for bed.
Remus’ thoughts kept flashing back to the fight, and all the ones like it that he’d had, which usually made him proud, but right now just made him want to curl up and die, to throw himself on his own knife or toss his morning star in the air and let it come down on his head-
The blankets shifted and Virgil’s arms surrounded him, pulling him up into a sitting position first and then back down on top of his chest once he’d gotten adjusted with his wings splayed out behind him.
Remus buried his head in his soft sweatshirt and clutched at his arm, apparently just a touch too hard, as Virgil’s hand gently pried his own away before interlacing their fingers. He settled their joined hands on top of his chest, Remus’ facing down, so that he could feel the faint beat of Virgil’s heart. He liked to count along to it when he was truly lost in his head as a grounding method.
“Thanks, Virgie,” he whispered. Virgil just hummed and wrapped his other arm tighter around his waist.
Janus, who was going to stay up to be their guard tonight, finally settled in the chair next to their little nest. A few moments later, she began reading out of the book they were going through right now. It was a collection of Greek myths that Fear and Panic had given to Virgil while ago, who had then given it to Janus, seeing as he couldn’t read English.
Just as Remus was drifting off, he heard a mumble from Virgil under him.
Janus paused in her reading. “What, Virgil?”
“I- nothing.”
“C’mon, Anx, don’t edge us,” Remus said sleepily.
“Just- Do you guys ever wish we lived in Auradon?”
“What? With all the perfect, prissy, little pussies? Fuck no.”
“Oh yes, I would’ve loved to grow up with those insufferable, weak little bobble heads who’ve never had to face a single challenge in their life.”
“That’s just it, though. None of this would have happened in Auradon. We would never have had to worry about little girls getting raped, or starting duels to defend them, or people breaking in while we’re sleeping, or anything. We could just be… happy.”
“You really think they’re happy? You can’t truly enjoy the good things in life without experiencing the bad too. They’re probably all just walking around bored and soulless.”
“Yeah! And duels and shit are so fun! They’re what make life interesting!”
“I guess,” Virgil mumbled, turning his face away into the blankets and clutching Remus’ hand harder.
Remus opened his eyes to share a look with Janus. They’d probably have to talk about this later, but Remus was so tired and Virgil seemed like he had totally checked out. Janus hesitated, then opened his book back up and began reading again.
Remus closed his eyes and relaxed into the nest they’d made.
Auradon sucked.
Remus would rather die tomorrow on the Isle than ever live there.