Choosing Love

Chapter Eleven

While life seemed to be looking up in Auradon, with Leah being sent from its shores, life seemed to stay the same over on the Isle of the Lost. The days were still cloudy, the food still rotten. While that might have been better than the alternative of things getting worse, it was still rather unpleasant.

Particularly for one Isle resident. Fred Frollo, or Freddy as he was mockingly called by Mal and her crew despite being three years older than Mal, stalked around the floor of his hideout. It wasn't much, just a dilapidated church his father had tried to form but found that no one was attending. Such an activity had become a daily past time of his, so much so that his underlings had taken to clearing out of their haven to give him his privacy.

"How dare that little witch," he growled, strands of his jet black hair falling into his eyes as his hands balled into fists. "First she dares to show her face around the Isle after fleeing in disgrace to Boreadon and then taunts me by attending that coronation in Beastie Jr's. carriage?!"

If he had been in a calmer state, Freddy might have wondered how he hadn't recognized the boy who had been with Mal and Jay as the Crown Prince of Auradon. I mean, a change of clothes and a beanie could only change so much about a person.

It must have been Mal's doing. She put a spell on Beast Jr. so that no one could realize who he was!

"Honestly Fred," a feminine voice broke through his thoughts and Fred glared in her direction. "You're acting more like a jilted lover than anything else, obsessing over something that happened over a month ago. You are aware that Mal hated the ground you walked on right?"

"As if I care what the little witch thought," Freddy scoffed, looking at his little half-sister and second in command. "And what are you doing here? I thought you were on a food run Claudine?"

"Hard to do that when the pirates control the docks," Claudine said with a shrug. She was used to Freddy's erratic behavior concerning Mal. Or anyone really. The last time he had acted like a sibling to her was when he was nine and somehow got his hands on a set of daggers.

He had declared that she was going to stop being an embarrassment to the Frollo name and learn how to use them. That way, she'd stop being a timid little thing and be someone who belonged on the Isle.

Honestly, I was fine in the bell tower of Dragon Hall, she thought as Freddy continued to pace. Fred and dad are exactly the same in one regard, they both live to control the lives of others.

Though there was that one time, the day of the coronation, that Claudine had thought they had finally started to develop a sibling bond.

They had taken the opportunity of Cruella being out over at Maleficent's to sneak in. Originally the goal was to steal some furs that Cruella wouldn't miss—the floor of the Haven wasn't exactly the softest and they only had a couple of mattresses.

Freddy and Claudine got to use those as the leaders, and whoever was Freddy's fling of the month shared with him, while others like the other underlings made use of ratty old sheets they were able to snatch from a barge delivery. The furs would at least provide some padding that the sheets could not.

Claudine sighed as she thought back on that day, that fateful, fateful day.

"Hey, you think we could swipe a couple of her furs?" Claudine asked as the two Frollo siblings made their way to Hell Hall. Every member of their gang had split up to try to find a working television to watch the coronation. Not because Fred had a pressing need to see the Boreadon elite get all gussied up but it was a good idea to know who they'd be going up against for the future.