Wicked Dawn | 'Till The Night Falls Book 1 (Disney Descendants)

Chapter 10: On the Wall

 Evie awoke in a fiery and blistery pain.

At first, she couldn't remember where she was or how she had gotten there. A crash of thunder had helped out with that problem. She was on the Isle, looking for one of Mal's Dragonfires. Queenie had been there. She'd tried to stop them.

Them?

Doug.

An image of her boyfriend formed in her mind and she groaned, struggling to turn over and face the huge room before her, expecting to find him fast asleep against the wall with a mountain of books before him.

No Doug.

She frowned only slightly. He had to be around somewhere, right? Maybe he just couldn't sleep and had gone for a walk. Around the Isle. At night. No...no way. Doug was far too smart to do something so blatantly stupid. He was even too afraid to go to a campus bonfire because the sun had already set. (She really needed to ask him what his problem with the dark was).

Later, she told herself as she weakly sat up and scanned the room, her frown growing deeper by the minute. The place was deserted. There were no signs of anyone living there. Evie knew Doug was a perfectionist but this seemed a bit ridiculous!

"Doug?" she called, her voice coming out more as a croak.

Silence. Evie hated the silence. It reminded her too much about what life had been like before...and that was not what she wanted to think about at all.

She slowly stood up, still feeling a bit dizzy. She blinked away the orange spots that danced before her eyes. What had she been doing again?

Oh...that's right...

"Doug?" she called again as she moved slowly towards the stairs. "Where are you? Doug?" She reached the top and peered around the corner into a small side room which was filled with books and notes for classes from their old school, along with some theories and papers on getting to Auradon (most of these were written by Carlos while he was building his gizmo to punch a hole in the dome), hoping to find him studying something or another as he tended to do when he was stressed.

She entered the room slowly, using the wall as a balance. She looked around hopefully for her boyfriend but was disappointed, and a bit worried, not to find him there.

She noticed a few books lying scattered on the floor and she walked over to kneel down beside them. They were reminders of the last time the four of them had been on the Isle before their parents had shipped them off to Auradon Prep. She smiled slightly as she ran a hand over one of the bindings, remembering how they raced through the streets, causing mayhem and misery to everyone they met. Good times...

But those days were long behind them. It had been almost three years. They'd changed. They weren't the villains they'd once been. They were heroes now. And, as they'd shown by giving up their talismans, heroes didn't need magic to survive. They were smarter and better off without it.

"Doug?"

Where could he have gone? It wasn't like him to disappear without telling anyone. Had Queenie come back? Was Doug in trouble? Where was he? Okay, breathe, Evie, breathe, she snapped at herself, trying to recall what Mal would say to her in a situation like this. You can't help him by getting all worked up. You're probably just overthinking everything. Besides, Doug is capable of taking care of himself...

But, then again...

"DOUG!"

She hurried out of the room and continued her search.

                                                                                               ***

Mal winced as she stood up. Though the hole was dimly lit, she could still make out the laughing figures of Carlos and Ben standing over her. The latter holding out his hand to help her up. Jane, meanwhile, was busy running her hands against the dirt wall as though searching for something.