This wasn’t the victory lap Mal had imagined when she’d first set off in search of the Forbidden Fortress.
Defeated, the unlikely gang of four began to retrace their steps, just looking for the way out. They had lost everything, as usual. By any reasonable standard—or by her mother’s infinitely less reasonable standards, Mal thought—they were utter and complete failures, every last one.
Especially her.
The moment they retreated from the throne room, though, Mal couldn’t help but feel a shiver of relief at also leaving its darkness behind.
Although, oddly enough, the fortress had a different feel now, like it was dead. Mal couldn’t feel the same energy it had before.
“Do you think the hole in the dome’s plugged up again?” she asked Carlos. “It feels different in here.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe the magic it sparked is spent, now.”
Mal looked up at the sky. She had a feeling there wouldn’t be any more magic on the island.
Nobody said a word as they found their way back to the hall where the Magic Mirror was now just an ordinary surface—especially not Evie, who avoided so much as a glance at it.
Nobody said a word, either, as they hurried once again over the crumbling marble floor, this time avoiding both the scampering rats and the fluttering bats—going nowhere near any goblin passages or suffocating mazes or dusty tapestry rooms or portrait halls—until they reached the vast, empty cave that had so briefly become the sand-filled Cave of Wonders.
Especially not Jay, who only quickened the pace of his own echoing footsteps until he once again found the rotting wooden door that had brought them there the first time.
And Carlos seemed in a particular hurry to get through twisting passages that led to the black marble–floored, dark-fogged halls of the main fortress. As he pushed his way out the front doors, the gargoyle bridge once again faced them.
Faced him.
When the others caught up to Carlos, they stopped and stared over the precipice where he stood. The dizzying depths of the ravine below were, well, dizzying. But he didn’t seem in any hurry to step back up to the bridge this time.
“It’s fine,” Evie said, encouragingly. “We’ll just do what we did before.”
“Sure. We cross one stupid bridge.” Jay nodded. “Not very far at all.”
That was true. On the other side of the bridge, they could just make out the winding path leading its way down through the thorn forest, from the direction they’d originally come.
“We’re practically home free,” Mal agreed, looking sideways at Carlos, who sighed.
“I don’t know. Do you think it looks a little more, you know, crumbly? After all those tidal earthquakes we were feeling back there? It doesn’t seem like the safest plan.” He looked at Mal.
Nobody could disagree.
The problem was still the bridge. It was all in one piece this time, with no missing sections—but they all knew better than to trust anything in the fortress.
And not one of them dared set foot on it, after last time. Not after the riddles. Though they’d made it over easily enough the first time, once they’d answered the riddles, they hadn’t thought about having to go out the way they’d come.
“I don’t know if I can do it again,” Carlos said, taking in the faces of the once again stone gargoyles. He winced at the thought of their coming to life again.
In Mal’s own mind, she hadn’t gotten much past imagining the scene where she reclaimed her mother’s missing scepter and came home a hero. She had been a little foggy on the actual details beyond that, she supposed; and now that the whole redemption thing was off the table, she really didn’t have a backup plan.
But as she looked at Carlos, who stood there shivering, she suspected, at the memory of collapsing bridges and fur coats and a mother’s true love that wasn’t her son, Mal figured out a way across.
Mal stepped in front of him. “You don’t have to do it again.” She took another step, and then another. “I mean, you don’t get to hog all the cool bridge action,” she said, trying to sound convincing. “Now it’s my turn.”
“What?” Carlos looked confused.
The wind picked up as Mal kept moving forward, but she didn’t stop.
Mal pulled her jacket tightly around her and shouted up at the gargoyles. “You don’t scare me! I’ve seen worse. Where do you think I grew up, Auradon?”
The wind howled around her now. She took another step, motioning for the other three to move behind her.
“Are you crazy?” Jay shook his head, sliding behind her.
“Mal, seriously. You don’t have to do this,” Carlos whispered, ducking behind Jay.
“Definitely crazy,” Evie said, from behind Carlos.
“Me, crazy?” Mal raised her voice even higher. “How could I not be? I go to school in a graveyard and eat expired scones for breakfast. My own mother sends me to forbidden places like this, because of some old bird and a lost stick,” she scoffed. “There’s nothing you can throw at me that’s worse than what I’ve already got going.”
As she spoke, Mal kept pressing forward. She had crossed the halfway point of the bridge now, dragging the others right behind her.
The wind roared and whipped against them, as if it would pick them up and toss them off the bridge itself, if she let it. But Mal wouldn’t.
“Is that all you’ve got?” She stuck out her chin, that much more stubborn. “You think a little breeze like that can get to someone like me?”
Lightning cracked overhead, and she started to run—her friends right behind her. By the time they reached the other side, the bridge had begun to rock so hard, it seemed like it would crumble again.
Only, this time it wouldn’t be an illusion.
The moment Mal felt the dirt of the far cliff safely beneath her feet, she stumbled over a tree root and collapsed, bringing Carlos and Evie down with her. Jay stood there laughing.
Until he realized that he wasn’t the only one laughing.
“Uh, guys?”
Mal looked up. They were surrounded by a crowd of goblins—not unlike the ones who had chased them through the goblin passages of the Forbidden Fortress. Except these particular goblins seemed to be of a friendlier variety.
“Girl,” one said.
“Brave,” said another.
“Help,” said a third.
“I don’t get it,” Evie said, sitting up. Mal and Carlos scrambled to their feet. Jay took a step back.
Finally, a fourth goblin sighed. “I think what my companions are trying to articulate is that we’re incredibly impressed by that show of fortitude. The bravery. The perseverance. It’s a bit unusual, in these parts.”
“Parts,” repeated the goblins.
“It talks,” Evie said.
Mal looked from one goblin to another. “Uh, thanks?”
“Not at all,” said the goblin. The goblins around him began to grunt animatedly—although Mal thought it might be laughter, too. Carlos looked nervous. Jay just grunted back.
The fourth goblin sighed again, looking back at Mal. “And if you’d like our assistance in any way, we’d be more than happy to help convey you to your destination.”
He looked Mal over.
She looked him over, in return. “Our destination?”
He suddenly became flustered. “You do seem far away from home,” he said, adding hastily: “Not to presume. It’s a conclusion I draw only from the irrefutable fact that neither you or your friends seem, well, remotely goblin-esque.”
The goblins grunt-laughed again.
Jay stared. “You’re about two feet tall. How would a guy like you get people like us all the way back to town?”
Evie elbowed him.
“Not to be rude,” Jay said.
“Rude,” chanted the goblins, still grunt-laughing.
“I’m pretty sure that was rude,” Carlos muttered.
“Ah, there you have it. Alone, we are but a single goblin, perhaps even, a brute.” The goblin smiled. “Together, I’m afraid we are a rather brutal army. Not to mention, we pull an excellent carriage.”
“Pull!” The goblins went nuts.
An old iron carriage—like the kind you might have seen Belle and Beast ride away in, except black and burnt and nothing that either the queen or king of Auradon would so much as touch—appeared in front of them.
No less than forty goblins manned either side, fighting for a grip on the carriage itself.
“Why would you do that?” Mal said, as a good seven goblins battled the broken door open. “Why are you being so nice?”
“A good deed. Helping a fellow adventurer. Perhaps there’s a chance for us to get off this island yet,” said the goblin. “We have been sending messages to our dwarf kin asking King Beast for amnesty. We’ve been wicked for such a very long time, you know. It does get tiresome after a while. I would kill for a cream cake.”
“Currants,” said a goblin.
“Chocolate chip,” said another.
Mal had to admit, she was starting to feel a little exhausted herself. She knew, because she slept the entire way home, without even being embarrassed that her head was resting on Evie’s shoulder.
When Mal returned to the Bargain Castle, she fully expected her mother to scream invectives at her for failing in her quest. She opened the door slowly and stepped inside, as quietly as she could, keeping her eyes on the ground.
It was no use. Maleficent was on her throne. “So, the prodigal daughter returns,” she said. Her voice sounded different.
“Mother, I have something to…” Mal stopped, looking up.
And stared.
And then stared some more, in about ten different varieties of shock.
Because she found herself staring at the long black staff with the green globe at its top that her mother was holding.
The Dragon’s Eye.
“Is that—” She couldn’t speak.
Maleficent nodded. “Yes, it is the Dragon’s Eye. And yes, you did fail me. But thankfully, not all my servants are as useless as you.”
Mal ignored the word servant. “But how?”
Maleficent laughed. “Silly child, what do you know about quests?”
“But we found it in the Forbidden Fortress! I just touched it—an hour ago!” said Mal. “It was in your own throne room. Suspended on the wall. Where you could see it, from where your throne used to sit.”
Her mother eyed her. Mal couldn’t be certain, but it was possible, for the briefest of all split-seconds, that her mother was the slightest bit impressed.
“I touched it, and that thing knocked me unconscious.”
“You touched it? You don’t say,” said Maleficent. “Well, good job, you. You really are as soft as your father.”
Mal bristled. “I don’t understand.”
“You touched the Dragon’s Eye? Instead of tricking one of the others into doing it? Such weakness. I didn’t want to believe the news when I heard it.” Maleficent banged her staff upon the floor next to her feet. “How many times, Mal? How much more will you shame me?”
She rolled her eyes. “I sent Diablo out after you to retrieve the Eye for me. He must have taken it from you while you were sleeping off the curse.” She shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t have it in you to do what needed to be done, and I knew I couldn’t take any chances. It appears I was right. Again.”
Diablo cawed proudly.
So she’d been right about feeling as if they were being followed. Of course. That was Diablo.
Mal felt like giving up. It never mattered, how hard she tried, or what she did, she would never impress her mother.
Even now, her mother had eyes only for the Dragon’s Eye.
“The only thing is, it’s broken,” said Maleficent with a frown. “Look at the eye, it’s dead.” For a moment, she sounded like the same angry little girl who had cursed a baby over a party invitation. Mal remembered all too well, and she looked at her mother through new eyes.
“Well, the dome is still up,” said Mal, finally. “It keeps the magic out.” It was down for a brief moment, but there would be no magic on the island anytime soon.
“Maybe. Or maybe you broke the eye when you touched it,” Maleficent accused. “You are such a disappointment.”
Meanwhile, at Jafar’s Junk Shop, an angry Jafar was berating Jay, who had returned home empty-handed. “So you’re saying you did find the Dragon’s Eye, did you? So where is it, then?”
“It disappeared!” Jay protested. “One minute we had it, and then we lost it.”
“Right. And this had nothing to do with a certain noble deed performed by a certain daughter of evil for a certain other daughter of evil?”
Jay froze. “Excuse me?”
The words good and deed were chilling, particularly on the Isle, and particularly when coming out of his father’s mouth.
“Did you think goblins keep secrets particularly well, boy? The news is all over the island.”
“I swear. That’s what really happened. I swear on a stack of stolen…” Jay blanked. He couldn’t think of a single thing to steal at the moment.
But to be honest, for once in his life, he didn’t even care.
“You are such a disappointment,” Jafar snorted.
Over at Hell Hall, Carlos was getting an earful after Cruella finally discovered her furs in disarray in her closet. “Who has been in here? It looks like a wild animal was trapped with my furs! What imbecile would do such a thing?”
“A wild one?” Carlos winced. He knew it was pointless to even try. Not when the closet looked like this.
His answer was a scream, and it was bloodcurdling. Even in his mother’s signature, shrill octave.
“I’m sorry Mother,” whimpered Carlos. “It won’t happen again! I know how much you love your furs.” The words were almost a whisper. He could see the faces of the gargoyles from the bridge, mocking him as he said them.
Then he could see Mal, Evie, and Jay laughing at her with him, and he had to keep from secretly smiling, himself.
Cruella sniffed. “You are such a disappointment!”
Over at the Castle-Across-the-Way, the Evil Queen was lamenting the state of Evie’s hair. “It’s like a rat’s nest! What happened? You look awful.”
“I’m sorry Mother, we ran into…well…uh…let’s just say I couldn’t find a mirror.”
I found one, she thought. Just not the kind you want to look at.
Not when you’re supposed to be the fairest of them all.
“Just promise me these rumors I’m hearing aren’t true,” her mother said. “All this talk of a virtuous act.” She shuddered. “The goblins are saying such horrid things about the four of you.”
“You know that goblins are horrible creatures, Mom.” Evie hid her face. She didn’t know what to say. To be honest, she didn’t even know what she thought. It had been a strange few days.
Not entirely bad, but strange.
The Evil Queen sighed. “You forgot to reapply blush again. Oh dear, sometimes, you’re such a disappointment.”
Mal sat out on the balcony, hearing the sounds of laughter and mayhem from down below. Then, a shout.
“Mal!” Jay called. “Come down!”
She ran downstairs. “What’s up?”
“Oh nothing, just trying to get away from our parents and disappointing them again,” said Carlos.
“You too, huh?” asked Mal. She turned to Jay and Evie. “And you?”
The three of them nodded.
“Come on, let’s go to the market,” said Evie. “I need a new scarf.”
“I can get you one,” said Jay, waggling his eyebrows. “Oh, and Evie—here you go,” he said. “I believe this might be yours.”
“My necklace!” said Evie, putting the poison-heart charm around her neck once more, with a smile. “Thanks, Jay.”
“I found it.”
“In his pocket,” said Mal, but even she was grinning.
With a whoop, the four descendants of the world’s greatest villains ran through the crowded streets of the Isle of the Lost, causing havoc, stealing and plundering together while the citizens of the island ran the other way. They were truly rotten to the core.
Even Mal started to feel better.
And in fact, as they laughed and sang, Mal wondered if this was what happiness was like.
Because even though the four of them weren’t quite friends yet, they were the closest things they had to it.