Isabel should have asked Gold to stay. She desperately wished he was there, with her, holding her, telling her it would be all right.
He did that for hours. Do you want him to stay with you the rest of his life? To never go outside, or speak to anyone else? To be as trapped as you are?
She was broken, crippled, and had been since that night. She remembered walking home, the milk icy cold in her hands. It was late, but the street was well lit. The alley . . . she couldn't remember the alley.
She must have seen it. Whether there was enough light to see garbage cans and brickwork or whether it was lost in shadow, she must have seen it. It must have registered that it was there, even if she ignored it.
And her attacker. She must have seen her attacker. Even if he were just another shadow lost in the shadows, there must have been something that she'd seen, even if she hadn't known what it was.
But, the first sign of danger she could remember was gloved hand closing over her mouth, smelling of leather and myrrh, as the attacker's other hand closed around her and pulled her back.
He'd been a big man. She was sure of that. Her best chance would have been if she'd seen him, if she'd had time to scream or run.
But, even knowing that, she couldn't help thinking of all the things she could have done differently, how she might have fought or struck back. If nothing else, she could have thrown the milk at him. Instead, she remembered it flying out of her hands. Had he knocked it aside or had she just lost her grip on it? She didn't know. It was useless, either way.
He'd said nothing the whole time. He'd beaten and crushed her like a mad animal, but he never said a word. It was almost as if she weren't there. There was no person named Isabel Lacey, just an object he was determined to break and grind into the dirt as thoroughly as Henry knocking down a tower of bricks. They were both of them blank and soulless.
She wanted Gold. She remembered what it had been like when he showed up in the hospital, driving back the mayor and her monsters, keeping her safe. It reminded her of when she was a child and her dragon man had suddenly appeared and rescued her.
Gold had been the only person she talked to about her dragon man since her adoptive parents died. She hadn't told Henry stories about him, not even disguised as the half-remembered fairy tales her childish imagination had turned them into—although that might have been reason enough to keep silent. The mayor hated any stories that weren't solidly anchored in the real world. Even stories about Australia were looked at askance, as if it were another world Henry might go searching for through a wardrobe or down a rabbit hole.
Had she ever seen her dragon man hurt someone? Had she ever been afraid of him?
Gold had asked her that, once. Something had been eating at him these last few weeks. He looked at her with guilt in his eyes. She remembered how hard she had had to work to seduce him, long after their marriage. It was as if he couldn't believe anyone found him attractive.
But, this was different. He kept acting as if he'd done something wrong, as if he'd failed her, as if everything that ever happened to her were his fault.
Deep down, she thought that was why she'd let him go instead of begging him to stay. She'd seen the look in his eyes, she'd known what was eating him alive. Whatever wrong he thought he'd committed, he needed to do this to set it right.
Maybe I don't care what he wants. Maybe I just want him here.
When he asked about the dragon man, she knew, in some way, he was asking about himself.
Isabel wondered about those fantastic memories and tried to make sense of them. Some were easy. She knew her legs had been so weak she could barely walk when her dragon man had freed her. Rickets and inactivity. She remembered wearing sparkling, golden stockings—as a child, she would have sworn they were magic—that let her run and play as she grew stronger. Those would have been metal braces. If she hadn't exactly run wild in them, well, it must have seemed she could after so long with not even the small freedom they gave her.
As for her dragon man himself, she had a few stories she made up for herself about him. People had been afraid of him, she knew that. And he had never come to see her or even written her once she was sent to her new home. The Laceys had been told next to nothing about him.
Isabel suspected he had been on the wrong side of the law, a fence or a smuggler maybe, someone who could walk right into a house on the wrong side of town, pick up a child, and walk out with her. And no one dared stop him.
But, there was one memory in particular she remembered when Gold asked her that question.
She'd told Gold how she remembered her Rumplestiltskin's home as a grand castle, even though it was probably just a large house, and how she remembered running through it with her little dog, the first Wee Jock, dressed in wild princess dresses patchworked together from velvets, lace, silk, and wild embroidery stitched together with golden thread. . . . Well, the patchwork was probably right.
She'd also told him how, whenever she was scared or strangers came, she pretended her dragon man could turn her into a cat. That was an obvious enough game for an abused child to play. Whenever things became too much, she pretended she was something strangers would ignore and that didn't have to deal with all the feelings a frightened, little girl would.
So, she was a cat the day the stranger came, the one Rumplestiltskin had hurt.
The stranger, as she remembered him, had looked like a prince, handsome and tall. He wore what she remembered as a blood red coat with golden buckles, a silver sword at his side (although, if she were right and the dragon man had been involved in the criminal world, maybe it had been some other, less idealized weapon).
And . . . he had offered to buy her.
That's what she remembered. Maybe she'd been wrong.
She must have been wrong. She remembered him offering the dragon man ten children to do whatever he wanted with, in return for her.
A nightmare, that's what it must have been. A dream cobbled together from fears and whatever a small child imagined adults were saying when she couldn't make sense of them.
Ten children. Rumplestiltskin could have his pick of any in the kingdom.
Any but one. The prince's daughter.
Not because he loved her. Not because he wanted to keep her safe. But, because (and this was why she knew it had to be a nightmare) the prince's daughter had to take Isabel's place, to be locked up and beaten in Isabel's place. It was, he said, the only way his father could become king.
Ghaston, that was what he said his name was, the Chevalier de Ghaston.
Purple and gold mist rose up from the ground around the prince. Isabel still remembered the sound of his screaming.
"I'm sorry," Gold whispered when she finished telling him. "I shouldn't—you should never have witnessed that. It doesn't matter what kind of deal Ghaston tried to make, I—he shouldn't have done that in front of you."
"It was a dream," Isabel said. "If it meant anything, it meant I was safe. And that it wasn't my fault. The prince—anyone who would do that to a child—that's who deserved to be punished. Not me."
"No," Gold agreed. "Not you."
Not me, Isabel whispered to herself. Not me.
She hadn't deserved what happened to her as a child. And she hadn't deserved what happened to her as an adult. She didn't deserve what was happening now.
Isabel took a deep breath. She was sick of running. The fear eating away at her was something she could fight. She opened her eyes and looked at the closet.
I'm not afraid of you, not anymore. Whatever you want, you won't be getting it from me.
She would fight this, she and Gold together. No matter what it took, she was going to be free.
Isabel heard a key turn in the door. She breathed easier as the door opened, but it wasn't Gold on the other side. It was Dove.
"Mrs. Gold," he said, stepping into the house. He was worried—maybe even terrified, though it was hard to tell with Dove. He'd never set foot in the house before without her or Gold's express permission. "Are you all right? Mr. Gold was afraid—"
He stopped abruptly, eyes widening in surprise. Dove started to turn and look behind him. But, before he could complete the gesture, he slumped slowly to his knees. Then, he fell to the floor. Blood flowed from his back.
"Hello, Princess," Peregrine Ghast said, a blood-covered knife in his hand. "You and I have some unfinished business."