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.