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“We’re their great big regret.” Mal’s head was in his lap, when he brushed back her hair, her neck was fully exposed. For a moment, behind the closed doors of the apartment, he let himself believe they were back at the Hideout. Unraveling in the place that was almost home.
“Well, you’re getting to be as dramatic as them.” He tapped his fingers against her sternum.
“We’re not getting better like how they want us to be.”
Finally, he let her chink his armor and burrow her way to a real answer, hand stilling against her skin. Thumb hooked over the scar where she’d been decapitated. “What the fuck were they expecting?”
Mal shrugged. Turning onto her side so they couldn’t look into each other’s eyes. Good. All their most vulnerable conversations happened facing away from each other, eyes closed or bodies turned, like that could take away who it was coming from. Like they could pretend the words weren’t their own. “Do you think we failed them?”
They’d never looked out for anyone besides their Gang and Evie and Carlos were out conquering the world, so definitely not. But…he knew. Of course he knew that’s not what she was talking about. When had the entire Isle become theirs? It had never been their problem before.
“Probably,” He admitted. They’d been Isle Ambassadors for a long time now. The rug pulled out from under them, leaving the forearm burns and scuffed knees for them to deal with. Forced them into the limelight with all the injuries. If it were any other day, that would be the end of it. It might’ve never started in the first place. But they were going too fucking soft and neither of them knew when Jay would be back. “We never asked for this, y’know. You can’t put it all on you.”
“Do you want to go back? Not—not to what it is now. But to how it used to be.” How we used to be, when we were the most powerful things in the world. Aside from our parents, aside from our prison.
“No,” He lied and it wasn’t a particularly hard thing to do, despite swearing to her that he’d never do it to her. That if this gang was going to work, they’d never hold back the truth, as ugly and barbed as it could be. “I don’t miss starving or hurting or dying. I don’t miss being homeless.”
Because that’s what it was, according to Auradon. It was all too familiar on the Isle, sleeping on the street didn’t need a name. Other than to say that they were going to be on the street that night. That their parent’s home was off limits for a while.
“I don’t mean that part,” Mal hissed, defiant in her anger and pissed at his purposeful misunderstanding.
“We can’t have that without all the rest of it.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
Jay swallowed around the lump in his throat. Found his hand encircling the scar, holding the hollows of her delicately. “I’ll be back soon.”
“I’ll name you my personal guard.” It was the most protection they could offer each other here. Jay as her guard, Mal as his. Someone to handle the threats and someone to justify the brutality.
“I thought we were done with arguments about being evil because we were raised on the Isle. Now they’re bringing all that shit up again. Did the tabloids get bored arguing over royal couples?”
“No,” Evie spun in her workchair to face him fully. Plucking the pins from her mouth before speaking. “It’s because of that girl.”
“What girl?” Carlos folded the newspaper down and Evie set her work aside. It was abundantly clear that this was becoming bigger than any of them wanted it to be. Than any of them could stomach properly.
“She was one ours on the Isle. Born to some low-level thief who managed to snag an apartment in the District. She dropped out of high school.” There was more to it than that, but Carlos wouldn’t care for her name or to know her class schedule. A lifetime ago, she’d been one of Mal’s runners. “I called Uma as soon as I saw the news. She’s been putting out fires all week.”
“So they’re being Auradonian about dropping out. How is this different than any other time the public’s overreacted to something we did?”
“She died, Carlos.”
“The gangs dissolved.” His brow furrowed at his words, raised up in a question rather than the statement it should’ve been.
Evie shook her head, “She overdosed a few miles from campus. She didn’t have anywhere to go after she dropped out. And she just—she died.”
They didn’t say the other parts of it. The bits the Auradon news would neglect in their retelling of her death. That drug overdose had been a glamorous way to go on the Isle. Especially pain-killers, which were neither in steady supply nor necessary for survival nor manufactured in the few labs that cropped up around the witches’ huts. Drugs were expensive and in even shorter supply, to die like that was a statement in it of itself. It said that someone could afford things that made the Isle miserable. That they could get food, when there was still enough of it before the next Barge Day. Or perhaps that they were strong enough to steal their method of ending.
“That makes us evil, then? Dying?”
“Drugs,” Evie corrected but he only scoffed. “They think she was an addict.”
“She was starving,” He corrected, because any of Mal’s lower crew couldn’t have afforded to have been an addict. At least not of Auradonian pain pills.
“Doesn’t matter. Her toxicology report says it all.”
It was so fucking difficult to be angry in Auradon. They masqueraded behind smiles and proper language. Would rather point out her sneers than the issue at hand, because she’d delivered it in the wrong way, said it a bit too harshly and now they felt guilt. How dare she do that. How dare she make them feel at fault for any of it.
The Boy-King rubbed his temples, rubbing a hand down his face as soon as they called for a recess. “I have a headache.”
She didn’t care. Didn’t care how tired he was or how his poor head hurt. Didn’t care about the pressure or the investors or the political campaigning. It was all a fucking excuse and she had grown tired of them the first time she’d gone without dinner for more than a week on the Isle.
Uma tapped her waist where the hilt of her dagger used to sit. Her boys had gone apartment hunting, trailed along with Gonzo who at least had some sense. “What’s the deal with separation?”
“Pardon?”
Uma gestured vaguely in front of her, letting her hand fall from the hilt of a dagger that had never been there. “You’re all vying for your own property, your own land. You separate girls and boys dorms on campus. You look at us like we killed your grandma when we touch.”
Ben flushed at that. “Is this about gang activity?”
She wondered, not for the first time, exactly what the fuck Mal had been telling her fiance about the Isle. “This is about you trying to separate us.”
“On record, it’s about helping VKs assimilate and break down barriers and prejudices by pairing a VK and AK together. Off record, the council doesn’t think it’s good to have too many VKs in one place. They’re worried about an uprising.”
Uma tried not to hiss at the language. To get all Auradonian about it. But really, they were in Auradon, where their words matter far more than their actions. A group that used to be under Mal had started petitioning to be called Isle Kids or Islanders. Anything but Villain Kids. They’d staged a protest during the last contract signing, said they weren’t implicated because they weren’t Villain Kids, they were from the Isle. It was going to start a clusterfuck when the council got offended at them for daring to be offended.
“You can’t just break up gangs.” Harry and Gil had been slipping into her room for weeks, but at some point some gang was going to get caught. It would be a scandal which wouldn’t have mattered if everyone was off the Isle. But things were standing on a knife’s edge and Uma wasn’t going to rock the boat until everyone was safe. “I don’t know what your princess has been telling you, but she sure as shit didn’t stay away from Carlos and Jay because you separated their rooms.”
She was so tired of explaining things to rooms of people who didn’t care. Who looked at her like she was out of her mind. But Ben waited patiently, tilting his head as if to say go on. “Family doesn’t matter on the Isle and friends don’t exist. We have our gangs. Our—our groups, usually they fell under mine or Mal’s territory, but there were some fringe kids. Those are the only people those kids are going to trust out here. Breaking that is going to break them. You need someone to watch your back. I don’t care what the council says, you need to keep kids like that together.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Uma scowled. It had been a fleeting, stupid idea that Ben might be able to make it better. That he could promise her more than trying. But he wouldn’t. No one here would.
Coach had stood with him on the field the morning before their last game of the year. “There’s gonna be a lot of college recruiters in the crowd tonight.”
“Oh yeah?” Sweat poured down his face and his lungs were gasping for air. But it had felt good to strain the muscles again, to get a pre-game workout done when morning practice had been canceled in preparation for the game.
“They’re looking at you,” He paused and Jay thought Coach was waiting for him to do something. He wasn’t sure what. It was too late, anyway, the moment passed and he went on. “You’re the pick of the litter. You could go anywhere you wanted, any school in the world would be lucky to have you leading their team.”
Jay snorted, “I’m not a captain.”
“Not yet. You will be though.”
Heat flooded his cheeks, Jay looked away, kicking at a ball of dirt. There was a surety to his words that he’d never felt before. Maybe it was that, or the brightness in his voice. That Coach really thought he could do it… “I’m enlisting.”
“What?”
“I already signed up. I go to basic training in early July.”
Coach paused, staring at him with this look. This terrible fucking look that Jay had never seen on someone’s face before, so close to disappointment that he felt his calves tensing to run. “Those recruiters come with scholarships to good schools. They can pay for tuition, housing, hell, even books if you need it. I can read through any contract they try to get you in, just to be sure.”
“It’s not about the money, Coach.” And for the first time in his life, it was true.
It was a good look to serve the country. Jay had been the worst of them, the most outwardly violent. Mal could hide the impulse and Evie could distract everyone from it and Carlos could hide behind his creations. But what was Jay without his fists? At least this way it looked productive. Mal hated the idea, but she’d dyed her hair blonde six months after saying she’d never do it again.
He could protect them again, like this. Work his way up to castle guard, to be at her beck and call again and they could pretend nothing had changed. That he was still her second, still her enforcer and she was the most wicked thing in the land.
It would almost be true. Auradon was still convinced she was rotten to the core, despite the increased PR budget. Jay had gained two reputations in one—for being the best Tourney player to come out of Auradon Academy in nearly a decade and for being its most aggressive striker.
“Don’t throw it all away for the military, kid. You’ve got options out there.”
When? Nothing Jay had ever done had been his choice. He was one man on a tight leash, trading hands between different masters. Some he favored more than others, but he’d never turned around to bite any of their hands.
He just shut his eyes, plastered on a grin that had placated more people than he could count. “I’ll think about it.”
They’d built up their reputations to get more kids off the Isle, to give them a chance for something more. Evie started her business, using real currency to sell clothes instead of trading her medical skills for a can of fruit. She got so many degrees that Mal could hardly keep track, only to be beaten out by Carlos. Who’d gotten his first PhD and dove right back into engineering. Jay had gone into the military and had come back as her guard. Uma went to law school—was the first of them to graduate despite having gone to Auradon Academy for the least amount of time.
With all that glamour, they could ignore the way Harry and Gil just barely scooted by with their diplomas. Dogging Uma’s heels instead of actually going to school. The press got their photos, at least. All three sat up in a pre-law classroom, only one of which was enrolled. It had made a pretty picture, had been easy enough to roll past. They’d only had to dish out a small fortune to the PR team to spin it into something digestible for the public.
Mal, for her part, had become Queen Consort to the High King of Auradon, Preserver and Protector of the Sovereignties.
“In comparison to its population, Isle children are five times as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to experience homelessness, and three times as likely to experience physical peer-to-peer bullying than an Auradonian child.” The presenter stepped back, eyes trailing over the room.
Mal had liked the council chambers when she was first shown them. The way the council sat in a semi-circle high above the presenter. Looking down at them from their rows mahogany wood seats with gold accents. It had made them look so small, so insignificant compared to the people descending their fate.
It had reminded her, implicitly, of standing over the Hideout’s balcony. Calling orders down into the market in the lead-up to a turf war. The way their heads had to tilt all the way back to look her in the eyes, the way her voice echoed against the shuddering metal buildings. There was a power to that Mal had never learned to let go of.
The snuffling man rocked on his feet, turning back to his presentation. “They are far more likely to engage in risky behavior, though we have not invested in enough studies to have the exact results. The incidents reported to the local police and academic authorities show that, at the least, Isle children are more likely to get caught for acting out.”
This wasn’t going…well. Not in the slightest. They’d scooped out most of the population and now here are the results. A bunch of dead-beat kids, the oldest of which are mostly unemployed. The youngest on their way to juvie or at least suspension. It was an ugly bunch of statistics to look at.
Ben squeezed her hand. Mal smiled slightly at him, “We set expectations too high.”
He just shook his head, giving her hand another squeeze. It would be okay, they’d figure out how to get Villain Kids to graduate Auradonian schools. They’d find a way for them to get hired or go to college or do something. They had to do something.
“It seems that despite freeing them from their parent’s prison, Isle-born children are prone to outbursts leading to juvenile detention sentences. The longest of which will be for the next seven years for aggravated assault.”
The general rumble of the room struck that bone deep urge to fight. That these people were a threat, were going to pull the plug and all she could do was go in with swinging fists. But that was never going to work here. They were never going to be free. Not really. Not when they were so close to losing everything.
Carlos’ hand wrapped around the knife by the time the second knock sounded out in his apartment. Anybody worth bothering him at this hour would have a key. And as far as he knew, Mal, Ben, and Jay were still in the capital and Evie was at her vacation cottage on the lake in Charmington.
Progress, he thought bitterly. That he had to go to the kitchen’s knife block to get a weapon instead of pulling it from under his pillow.
He moved through the dark apartment with muscle memory, hand finding the doorknob and wrenching it open. The knife behind his back and—
“Squirmy?”
He was used to blood, more so than he thought anyone should be. The tacky feeling of it along his skin after Cruella got into a fit. The splash of it over Jay’s jaw or crusted over Mal’s fists. Or, on their worst day, pouring out of Evie’s side before any of them could stop it. He didn’t think she’d ever forgiven them for the scar it left.
He stumbled out of the way of the door, letting him inside. Even in the darkness, he could see the outline of a bruise on his cheek. The redness along his lips. Neither of them were fighters, they’d had the more brutal Hooks to deal with their conflicts. Family alliances and all—a favor owed to Mr. Smee, he didn’t know. Didn’t care to dive into pirate business especially not now.
“Do you know where my brother is?”
“What?” Gangs didn’t separate, those were the rules. They—the oldest of them, now supposed to be well-adjusted and Auradonian—were apart. But that was—he’d never get used to that. Not really. On his worst nights, he curled under the sink and pressed his phone to his ear with shaky hands just to hear their voices. A half-plead for them to travel across the world for him. To see their faces, to feel their hands. To know they were alive and there and still one body with too many limbs instead of four separate people.
But he never let it get all the way out.
“You brought us here.” It was the angriest he’d ever heard the kid. The longest sentence he’d ever spoken without Squeaky jumping in. “You put us in foster homes. You know where he is.”
“I don’t—I don’t do that anymore.” Carlos gestured to the table, only then realizing that it was with the knife. Squirmy didn’t flinch from it. Only boring a glare at him. “I’m a student now. I—I haven’t dealt with the Isle in a long time.”
He was never the medic of his gang, but he’d patched himself up enough times to know the process. He took out the first-aide kit Evie had thrust into his hands when she found out he’d be moving to Corona. Finishing his degree and helping put new technology into old-world buildings.
It was made with a kind of care he couldn’t stomach to look at most nights. Usually, when he got a cut, he went to the supermarket to buy plasters instead of digging it out.
Squirmy let him wipe away the blood, put a cold compress to most of his face. “What happened?”
“They separated us. Nobody wants two Isle kids at once.”
“Isle kids?”
“Anthony doesn’t want us calling ourselves VKs. He says they’re wrong.”
“Okay,” Carlos said, stuffing the kit back away. “I can call Mal, see what she can do. Did you get into a fight? Is that what this is?”
“You said it’d be better here.”
“It is, isn’t it.”
Squirmy just shook his head. He wouldn’t look at him and the bile was rising up his throat again. He wasn’t supposed to jump to conclusions like this anymore. Auradon wasn’t supposed to be like the Isle. It—that doesn’t happen here, Ben had promised. It didn’t— “You’re a liar.”
“Why am I a liar?” He was going to throw up. He clenched his fist around the knife, hoping the cool metal would be grounding but it wasn’t right. The handle wasn’t wood or leather, the weight was all off for a street fight. It was a butcher’s knife, it was never supposed to fight anyone.
“I want to go back.”
“Squirmy.”
“Dad never hit us!” He spit all that rage lashing out at him. From the kitchen, he could see the deep purple the bruise had taken. “I want to go back! I want to—I want my brother and the crew and I want to go home.”
Who was going to believe Squirmy? Ben might believe Carlos because they were friends, might believe any Isle kid by virtue of spending the last five years surrounded by them. But the social workers? The police? Fuck.
Carlos pinched the bridge of his nose, resisting the urge to send Squirmy out. To shut the door on him and that life he was trying desperately to leave behind. He’d stopped wearing his leathers three and a half years ago. He stopped carrying a weapon a year ago. He wasn’t Cruella’s son here, he wasn’t some Isle Ambassador. Let Mal be the queen and Uma be their lawyer and Jay be their general. Just leave him alone.
He just wanted to be left alone.
Hatred burned in his eyes so brightly that he flinched. “Where did you last see Squeaky?”
“At school.”
It was almost August. He was going to be sick. “I thought you two stayed on campus.”
Squirmy shook his head, “They put us with foster families this year to ‘be more normal’.”
“Is that what they said to you?”
“It’s what CJ said.”
“I’ll talk to Mal. We’ll find somewhere else where you can go. Someone who—they weren’t supposed to be like this here.”
“They weren’t on the Isle,” Squirmy argued. “Everybody is mean here.”
Carlos let his mouth slip, let the hysterical laughter fill the air. How different the Isle could be when he had violent people looking out for him. When he had a father who was decent, was the henchman to a powerful man with powerful children. How violent Auradon could be beneath its mask of incredulity.
“It won’t happen again,” He said and didn’t promise a thing. He couldn’t be sure, didn’t know how the council was going to shuffle them around next. But he’d try. He’d go back to the capital for them, just this once.
“It’s not a solution and you know it.”
They were too old or too Auradonian to come to blows now, but it felt like the entire building was shaking with their anger. Most of the kids had fled the scene but a few hung in corners, shell-shocked or hungry for it. Waiting for blood in the water.
Uma was reminded that as much as they told everyone gang relations had dissolved, half of the kids in her house were still Mal’s. Would, if the time came to it, fight Uma’s crew with vengeance. The instinct faded like a bruise—the discoloration was gone, but it still ached to the touch.
“Where else do you want them to go, Mal? I’m not sending anyone where they don’t want to be and I’m sure as shit not leaving them on the streets like the council would like to.”
“They want them to assimilate. We have programs now. Homes with families who want them.”
“Who's vetting the program?”
“It’s families that’ve already registered to foster.”
Uma could only scoff at that. The excuse was flimsy, lying flat between them even as Mal said it. “They won’t take all of them, not like how they should.” Uma’s entire crew refused to separate from each other once she’d got them across the border. They were the first stuffed inside the apartment. They called it a sleepover back then, or lied to everyone about where they went at night.
It had been early. Easy to lie about. Auradon was too fucking scared of them to question where they were going. They definitely didn’t want an Isle kid inside their house.
“They don’t want us holing up like this.”
“Well that’s not their choice is it.”
“Uma,” Mal said, far softer now, because it very much was their choice. When push came to shove there was nothing they could do to protect them anymore. They weren’t gang leaders anymore, they weren’t viscous enough to keep anyone in line. They didn’t get to make the rules for everyone or draw the territories.
She couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t. Mal would take that shit lying down when she was queen but she refused to let them fall through the cracks.
“They’re going to take the kids away from you. The government is their legal guardian until we can figure out who stays on the Isle and who gets rehabilitated. None of us get parental rights, we were never their parents.”
But they were, in the closest way anyone could be on the Isle. Not good ones, certainly. And not parental in the way they were here. But in charge, delegating. Offering a bed and a meal for their service. Patching them up when they had the supplies, treating them like one of their own.
Now, Uma couldn’t walk down the street without being glared at. She couldn’t keep her crew from getting chased down the block.
“We could call it public housing. For—for youth at risk.”
Uma shook her head, “Call it what you have to, to make it legal. Doesn’t change what it’s been.” Auradon and their fucking words.
Mal nodded, firm, like it was when she led armies instead of coaxing a diplomat into thinking children born off the coast weren’t, in fact, irredeemable evil hellspawn. Uma almost forgotten what she looked like when she wasn’t meek.
She held out a credit card.
“I don’t want your fucking money.”
“It’s not a favor and it’s not my money.” Mal understood the implication immediately, not letting her hand falter. “Buy the building. Get the supplies you need.”
It was as much permission as she was ever going to get from her. For this barely-legal apartment filled with people with nowhere else to go. Uma took it and it was as good as a handshake or a drop of blood.
She had a medical degree now. Hung on her wall beside her others, gleaming in the bright lights of her office so her clients’ eyes would trail up and see what she had done. It was more complicated than it had been on the Isle—holding someone together to avoid death. But, then, on the Isle if death came knocking, they’d wake up again in a few hours.
Nothing had ever really been life or death on the Isle. Not if death didn’t actually exist.
It was different being the one in the chair. Being told she was weak. Early-onset osteoporosis, Barrett's esophagus and acid reflux, a permanently sensitive stomach and low immunity.
Because Evie had sat in the sensitivity training modules, she knew the doctor was shocked enough by the results to say, “Do you have a history of starving yourself, Ms. Grimhilde?”
“Just Evie,” She muttered, unable to look her in the eyes. She’d—she’d stopped or at least gotten better than she had been. “And there wasn’t much food on the Isle. I suppose this is a result?”
“Yes, yes that’s very likely.”
It wasn’t all a lie. There hadn’t been, but she didn’t need to know about Evie keeping up the habit in Auradon. The slow shake of it over the years, the way she still felt sick when something passed over her lips.
If she was hungry, at least she knew she was alive.
She was so perfectly adult about all of it. Shaking her hand and thanking her for her time. Driving herself home and making herself dinner, shutting the blinds, locking the doors. Evie could function, could be completely normal without even trembling. She wasn’t even trembling. She wasn’t.
As it turned out, she didn’t need to call Mal first. The phone buzzed at her desk and she picked it up with a rushed, “Hello?”
She could hear her breath over the phone, the panicked tilt of it. Evie started talking, telling her about her latest design for a runway in Paris. Not as notable as some in her earlier years, but she couldn’t say no to a charity, could she? The sequins she ordered had come in the wrong color and no one would take the return. By the time she started on the clear differences between mauve and grape, Mal’s breath had started to even.
“I can’t get pregnant.”
Oh, Mal was on the tip of her tongue but she swallowed it back. It would only end in Mal’s detached voice and the phone call dropping. “Is it because of the Isle?”
“Isn’t everything?” She thought she was crying and that was so, so off-putting. Evie hadn’t heard her cry in years, maybe not ever. Not like this. “I didn’t even—I don’t even know if I wanted them. I just—it—it just takes and takes, Evie. I’m so tired of it taking everything from me.”
Evie curled up in her chair, tried not to think of common breakage points. How easy it would be for her spine to snap. They weren’t on the Isle anymore, she wouldn’t come back together in one piece the next day. She knew breaking the spine could take everything from her. She could lose feeling in her hands, in her arms, her body.
She swallowed back the bile. Tried not to think of the skin of her esophagus peeling away. The increased risk of cancer. Her appointment for next Tuesday to go over the results of her heart tests. That she’d have a much shorter life than anyone expected and there wasn’t anything she could do to fix that now. Not enough food when she was growing, not enough clean air. “Is Ben…?”
Evie had been raised with the knowledge of a princess’ duty to a prince. She knew she’d be a mother before she considered anything else about herself. It was a fact of life. Up until she came to Auradon, up until things could be different.
She’d decided a long time ago that she’d never wanted kids. Mal had always scoffed at the idea. Anyone on the Isle stupid enough to get knocked up was a target. Maybe they’d just watched too many people their age die with a baby sticking out of them only to come back the next morning unable to look at the thing that killed them. Or worse, loving the thing that had left them cold and motionless hours before. Maybe it was just the horror of it—another mouth to feed, a body always hungry, becoming weak and mutilated.
“He’s being so nice about it,” She said it like it was the worst thing in the world and she knew that for Mal it was. “They’ll be expecting an heir soon. I’ll just be another thing I’m failing at. Oh,” She started in a choked, high-pitched imitation of the court, “did you hear the Villain Queen can’t even have kids. Must be a good thing. I’m sure the magic’s stopping her, I’ll bet she’ll curse them.”
Evie took a breath, “We should get ahead of it then. Make an announcement about it. Use it as a reason to extend medical care to former Isle residents. Infertility could be something to campaign with. Auradon cares about kids.”
“Yeah,” Mal breathed, and Evie could hear the tiredness in it three hundred miles away. “They care about kids.”