Choosing Home

Chapter One

Mal smiled as she looked at her ring. It truly was beautiful—there were honestly days that she thought she had dreamt Cotillion and she was going to wake up to find herself still having Lady of the Court sessions with Natalie.

Or worse, wake up and find that she was still on the Isle.

But it hadn't been a dream. It had been real. Ben was now her fiancé. Her wonderful, optimistic, kind hearted fiancé. Thankfully, that bonk on the head that Freddy had given him eat Cotillion had only changed him in the fact that he did actually start using his guards a bit more.

Not so much that Akiho stopped ranting at him about the importance of said guards whenever he got the chance but enough that it soothed the worry in Mal's heart.

Mal sighed as she thought about him. Freddy, she meant though it would have been much more enjoyable to think about Akiho and his many antics with Ben and Emir. Two months had passed since Cotillion and they hadn't found Freddy. They suspected that he was somewhere in Auradon but they couldn't be sure.

Jay thought maybe he had gone to Apollo to heal his wounds but that idea was shot down as quickly as it came up. Apollo was the God of Medicine yes, but Freddy was so fanatical that he would have eaten his own femur before he accepted help from one of the Gods. It was the reason why he refused to have his wounds healed by magic after all.

Not to mention I'm pretty sure insulting Zeus' granddaughter the way he had at Cotillion put Freddy on the smite on sight list, Mal thought as she shook her head. The worst part about all of this was that their plans to bring the next group of VKs over had to be delayed.

Something that had not pleased the VKs in Auradon all that much.

"What do you mean we're delaying the group?"

"Harry, think about it," Mal sighed as she looked over at the pirate. "If Freddy's at large, it's not safe for us to bring over the new lot. I mean he almost killed Ben. What do you think he'd do if he got ahold of Dizzy? Or Celia? Or Gods Squeaky and Squirmy? Sammy would kill us and then find a way to bring us back to kill us again!"

Harry shook his head. "Mal, we promised that we'd start bringing kids over as quickly as possible. My sisters are still on the Isle!"

"And do you want CJ or Harriet to potentially be on the wrong side of Freddy's sword?" Uma asked as she sat down by him. Both girls had noticed Harry's use of the plural even though it'd been Harriet he had insisted fill out an application to leave the Isle. "Harry, I hate to say it but I'm with Mal on this. Delaying until we know where Freddy is just makes sense. He can't get back on the Isle with the barrier after all."

"We have so many kids who deserve to get off the Isle though," Jay sighed. "CJ, Ryan, Dizzy, Celia, Squeaky, Squirmy, Brooke even if she left us for the Angels..."

Mal sighed once more and brushed a strand of purple hair out of her eyes. Ryan, it had turned out, hadn't been fourteen like they'd thought. He'd been fifteen, a year older than CJ. He could have joined the face offs and scouting missions.

They of course had no reason to believe he wasn't the age they assumed he was—he wouldn't be the first VK to have his height stunted by the poor diet of the Isle. As well, Mal suspected that Ryan would have put up more of a fuss if CJ'd been older too. Plus...he would have been kept safe for his sister's sake.

The only reason Mal knew the truth was because she had looked through the registry, trying to help Carlos in updating the digital one. On a whim she went to Ryan's page and had stared in shock at the date. It was honestly likely that Ryan never knew—he always said that his sister was two years younger than him so if he'd been two, about to turn three when she was born...