Evie takes a deep breath. Today's the day.

She turns to face her alarm clock with an excited grin that falls immediately.

4 am?

She buries her face in her pillow and groans.

The night before, Evie had plopped herself into bed with a smile on her face at 9 o'clock sharp, ready for an early start the next day.

However, it soon became clear that she was maybe too excited when half an hour of lying alone with her thoughts led her into nothing but anxiety about VK Day.

She tried breathing exercises, yoga, lighting candles, herbal tea, but once she started spiraling, there was no way to quiet her brain, or even get her heart rate down to normal.

Next thing she knew, it was well past midnight, and she was a nervous wreck. She had ventured to her medicine cabinet in her bathroom and chewed up some melatonin supplements that she had picked up from the store about a month ago, after deciding that nothing else was working. Ben had told her they helped him sleep when he's stressed.

They helped. Evie crashed in ten minutes, only to wake up about 3 hours later, still anxious and tired, albeit less sluggish than before.

Evie takes a deep breath. She's attempted to fall back asleep at least three times since waking up, with no luck.

With a sigh, she turns off her alarm and sits up, stretching her arms out as wide as she can. As she begins her morning routine, she attempts to hold back multiple yawns.

Oh, well. The excitement will get me through today, she thinks, tugging her nightdress over her head.

If that fails, there's nothing like good old caffeine.

***

"Are you ready for today?" Jay asks, leaning on his elbow.

Carlos shrugs, "I guess so. I mean, I'm a little nervous-"

Jay snickers, "I didn't think a little nervous existed for you."

"But I'm nowhere near as invested as Evie," Carlos finishes.

"Good point," Jay says, "No one cares about today as much as her, not even Ben."

"Yeah, this has been her passion project for months. I can't help but worry about something going wrong."

"Listen, you don't have to worry," Jay states, shrugging. "Of course something will go wrong. It always does, and we always deal. So, whatever happens, we'll face the music, and we'll get through it. Just like always."

Carlos nods, "That made a surprising amount of sense."

Jay grins, "See? I've gotten great at pep talks since coming to Auradon. Maybe Ben rubbed off on me."

"Yeah, yeah," Carlos says, "Come on, mister inspirational speaker, Evie wants us at the castle ASAP."

***

Mal reluctantly sits up, blinking sleep from her eyes. She bats at her alarm a couple times before finally hitting the button and stopping the blaring noise.

Loudly yawning, she resists the urge to flop backwards and fall asleep again. She swings her legs off the bed and stands up, flicking her finger while she does.

Once she arrives at her bathroom, she's dressed in her signature purple and green leather, complete with fingerless gloves and a light green belt cinched over her sleeveless leather jacket.

She stops at the bathroom mirror and winces at the new acne patches on her neck and face. More inspection leads her to find dark blue bruises on her right shoulder, bags under her eyes, patches of flaky skin on her arms, and her lips more chapped than they were yesterday morning.

With a groan, Mal splashes some water on her face, waving her finger again, causing the bumps to fade into smooth skin. Five minutes later, Mal has never looked healthier.

Well, except for the bruises.

Mal shrugs, planning to fix it later. She brushes through her tangled hair, scowling at the brittle strands.

Once she finally remembers the seemingly obvious question, she takes a second to remember why she set an alarm in the first place, and smiles when she does.

It's VK Day.

Feeling much more invigorated, Mal completes her morning routine in under five minutes.

She's been waiting for today for months. Everything will finally come together, and she can't wait to see it all unfold.

She places her hand on the door before remembering.

Chuckling, she travels to her nightstand and opens a drawer, pulling out a small leather-bound book. She flips through the pages for a bit before landing on the passage she wants.

After muttering the quick words for the healing spell, Mal checks her shoulder and sees nothing but smooth, cream-colored skin. Mal places the book in her drawer and walks back across the room.

I've got big plans for today.

***

Uma forces herself to take deep and measured breaths as she makes her way down to the front of the castle where the VK Day Councillors are meeting before Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos will make the round trip to the Isle.

They get the fun part.

The entire council is expecting her, Harry, and Gil to be present at the live coverage of their trip across the bridge, so she'll be there. Even though they aren't playing significant roles in this VK Day, they are still members of "The King's Council of Auradon-Isle Relations," and will be a part of its first project at least in a symbolic sense.

Tomorrow, Evie wants them to help show the new VKs around the school as well, which they agreed to do. Usually, Uma prefers to be behind the scenes, doing actual work. But she knows advocating for the Isle requires a public presence.

Auradon politics are so unnecessarily complicated. Not that things were peachy on the Isle, but at least she could get things done, albeit messily. Here, you have to jump through fifty hoops just to start the process of appealing for a goddamn traffic light.

It took almost an entire year for the first VK Day to happen, even though Ben presented the plan almost immediately after the original VKs "successfully" integrated. Since then, getting the VK project fast-tracked has taken even more endeavoring. It required the federal councils' agreement, which took almost a month to gain. They then had to form their own council, for reasons Uma doesn't understand. For that, they needed a petition with 5000 citizen signatures (in this process, they found out Isle residents didn't count as "citizens" and changed that). After, they held a citizen vote (now including Isle residents) to determine the number of councilors needed (twelve, including Ben). Ben nominated 35 candidates, and we held another citizens vote to elect 11 council members. Then, we could make things happen.

Apparently King's "first decrees" get a lot of leeway with these checkpoints and endless amounts of voting. These oh-so-special first decrees have built-in approval from the federal councils no matter what they are, and forming a new council is unnecessary. All Ben had to do for the original VKs was hold citizen votes and get his father's approval stamp. He managed both in under a month.

Ah, well. Eventually, they did it. Today is happening.

"Here we are," Harry remarks as they step onto the castle grounds.

Uma lets out a low whistle, "And that is a lot of cameras."

As the three approach the castle entrance, the sheer amount of cameras, reporters, and large news vans clustered around the area is a little overwhelming. All three of them dodge through the crowd, with no one noticing them or trying to ask questions.

"There you guys are!" Evie greets, "We're just about to get going once we answer some questions."

Audrey walks up behind Evie and says, "And when they leave, we stay here to get eaten alive by the press."

Evie rolls her eyes, "Come on, it won't be that bad. Ben will get the worst."

Harry shrugs, "And at least there's safety in numbers."

"That's the spirit!" Evie says, "Alright, see you guys soon. Good luck."

Uma sighs as Evie walks off to talk to a reporter with a weird-looking moustache. She sees Jordan and Jane talking to another with red hair and super white teeth, Lonnie and Carlos standing next to a brunette while the camera man gives them a lot of thumbs up, and Ben and Mal talking to an entire team of reporters.

Jay beckons them over, where he's seemingly in an interview with a young journalist, or maybe some poor writing student who wants the story for extra credit. Gil and Harry stroll over, but Uma shakes her head to let Jay know she's going to pass on this one. He shrugs and continues talking to the reporter, waving to Harry and Gil as they walk over.

"Hey," Audrey juts her chin toward a disheveled blonde by the edge of the swarm of news vans, "That one looks new. Try an easy one first to sort of dip your toes in."

"Thanks for the tip," Uma says as she glances over at the aforementioned reporter. She examines the news setup a little longer before turning back to Audrey. Uma grins and offers, "Want to join me?"

Audrey returns the smile. "Why not?"

***

I toss another rock into the water, sighing in boredom. In hindsight, walking to the plaza as soon as the sun rose might not have been the best idea. I had wanted to be the first here.

I arrived and found about eight other VKs with the same idea. I don't really recognize any of them; they look like Voicecatcher or maybe Disputed territory kids. It was hard to tell. Territories used to be militantly separate and caused a lot of tension until a few years ago. The only way to differentiate people by territory now is their clothing. People from Dragons' Eye (like me and George) usually have leather, denim, and wool clothes in brighter colors and a simpler scheme with possibly a few accessories here or there. People from Disputed usually have cloth made from plants with muted colors, and there are few accessories in their outfits. They dress more practically. Voicecatchers make their outfits super mismatched, a mix of a bunch of different styles, materials, colors, and accessories. It's the style there to either sew two shirts together or put a bunch of patches on whatever it is they're wearing.

A few of the kids huddle next to a wall together, playing some sort of clapping game. The rest are like me: alone, just waiting for VK Day to officially start.

Unfortunately, all of them arrived here before me and crushed my dreams of being the first to VK Day. Well, maybe I also wanted to avoid my mother and her never-ending list of jobs for me to do around the house. So, not a total loss.

Molly brought me some breakfast, but she left about half an hour ago to help her sister with some chores.

I can barely believe that it's VK Day- all day long I've been waiting to wake up from what has to be just a dream.

The entire Island has been waiting for such a long time, and it's not pre-decided like it was last time. Now it's monumental. It's the most important day of my life. A knife that's ready to slice my entire existence into before and after.

I can't decide which option sounds worse: not getting picked, or getting picked while none of my friends do.

The more pleasant possibility is that me, Molly, George, and Chris all get picked and ride off into the sunset together to live happily ever after in Auradon.

But when has "Happily Ever After" ever been a possibility?