What trouble have you got yourself into now, girl? Rumplestiltskin bit back a gasp as power was wrenched out of him by his own spell. And your timing hasn't improved!

Regina was visiting the Dark Castle again in aid of another of her wildly ineffective schemes against Snow White, and up to this moment, Rumplestiltskin had been humoring her. Now he didn't have the attention to spare. With his protection spell on the verge of breaking, he pushed his awareness down the thread of his magic and saw what the princess saw. Nemesis!

The girl was hopelessly outmatched. Even the Dark One would think twice, or three times, before picking such a fight. Nevertheless, he couldn't help but admire her courage, and he, who had always been a coward, resolved to save her if he could.

Belle clutched her crystal pendant and ran for her life. Darkness enveloped her. She ducked, feeling the scrape of talons narrowly missing her back, and twisted out of the way. A shadow took shape between them. A winged shadow with a long neck and horns — an insubstantial silhouette that resembled a Timer, but not one she knew.

The shadow surrounded her, passing through her like a ghost, but when the eagle reached for Belle, a dark force pushed it back. A quick, furious battle followed, and the shadow was beaten back, gaps of light ripped open to bleed darkness.

Then wings filled the sky again, and the two griffons fell upon Nemesis from behind. Three against one, the magical eagle was torn apart. A flash of light, a shrill wail, and it collapsed in a flurry of feathers and hollow bones. The shadow, too, vanished before Belle could get a good look at it.

Belle stared. "You... you killed it..."

This embodiment, yes, said Eskereye, dabbing a paw at the pile of bones.

It'll be months before she can incarnate again. Otulissa padded over to Belle. Come on. I'll fly you back to the top.

Belle brushed herself off and climbed onto the griffon. She could feel the bruises, but knew she was lucky to be alive. "Thanks. For everything. Is Lumiere...?"

We were scattered in different directions, said Eskereye. Naturally he is slower to find his way back than a griffon.

"I heard that." Lumiere half-fell, half-flew out of a shadow just as Otulissa dropped Belle off in the jumble of boulders at the top of the mountain. "But I am glad to find you still among the living. Griffons against the eagle of retribution — not odds I would wish to bet on."

The Dark One helped, admitted Otulissa.

"I should think so," said Lumiere.

Belle heard the deep strain of worry behind his words, and felt a pang of guilt. She had dragged them all into danger, not understanding the risk. She wrapped her arms around herself, blood running cold at the thought. "I'm sorry. I could have got everyone killed."

"Yes, well, I hope it was worth it."

"Me, too," Belle said in a subdued voice. She picked her way through the rocks. Finding a level spot on the other side, she risked lifting her gaze from her feet to look around, and gasped.

A man, naked from the waist up, hung limply against a massive column, the chains wrapped around him keeping him upright with his hands locked above his head. A gaping wound marked the eagle's feast, a mess of blood and stray gobbets of viscera. His head lolled back, eyes shut.

Passed out from the pain, I think, said Otulissa.

"We have to help him," whispered Belle. She started forward, but the griffons were faster.

Ware traps, warned Eskereye, but this time there were none. Only a heavy, putrid stench of rotting blood and flesh. How long since the last rainfall had cleansed the prisoner?

Up close, he loomed over them, larger than human but not reaching the size of a full-grown ogre. The surface of the column was ridged and irregular, almost like—

"A tree. It's a tree!" Belle's eyes traced the chains to where they seemed to grow out of the trunk, almost like branches. She reached out to touch the bark, but it was hard and unyielding as stone. Before she could question it, a torrent of disjointed thoughts and images flooded her mind.

This means it's love. True love. It was almost her own voice, but layered with another, almost an echo. She saw a sapling that grew in her mind's eye to a tree as redolent of magic as those in Nevethe.

I am now and for all the future yours. A man's voice, familiar and not, again echoing with other voices, other words.

Then came a stab of pain and anger. You've betrayed our future, and for what? These monsters who would supplant us? Zeus was right. I didn't want to believe him, but it's true. You lied to me.

You don't understand! They have the potential—

What potential? Our children are the future, not this plague of mortal creatures who destroy everything they touch!

Please...

I will stop you, whatever it takes.

More pain. Blood on the tree.

No!

"No!" Belle wrenched herself away, blinking away the visions. Her legs suddenly wobbly, she sat down heavily.

Otulissa nudged her. Told you to be careful.

"It's a true love tree," said Lumiere quietly, staring at the stone column.

"Like the ones in the Wood Beyond? But it's—" Belle swallowed, not wanting to say it.

"Dead. Petrified." Lumiere glanced at Belle. "Locked by true love's lifeblood. How else can a creature as powerful as a Titan be bound?"

"Love is a chain." The voice was hoarse, gutteral.

Belle looked up in shock to see that the Titan's eyes were open, boring into her, dark and edged with blood. "P-Prometheus?"

The Titan snarled at them, "Who sent you? Nevethe?"

"The Queen is bound not to meddle," Lumiere said meticulously. "The others owe her no allegiance, and as for me, let us say I am a tourist."

"Thousands of years, and she has not lost her taste for games?"

"Thousands of years, and have you lost your taste for rebellion?"

The Titan jerked his hands forward, twisting and straining against his bonds. His freshly healed wounds broke open, oozing new blood. The chains clanked and scraped against stone in shrill complaint but held as they had held for millennia. Finally he let his head loll forward, and whispered, "...thirsty. So thirsty..."

Belle scrambled forward with the enchanted water gourd, glad to have something concrete that she could do to help. "Here..." She climbed up on a boulder and leaned over to reach him, tipping the opening into his mouth. "Drink..."

It was a messy affair, most of the water seeming to run down his chin and torso or spilling straight to the ground, but at last he flung back his head. "Enough." Then he blinked at the gourd in Belle's hand. "Ha. I made that, a long time ago."

"Aurora did say it was an antique," Belle said. "Another of your gifts to...?"

Prometheus bared his teeth. "...to the monsters. Have you overrun the earth yet, little monster?"

"We're not..." Belle gulped, remembering the voices haunting the petrified tree. Branches reaching out to bind the traitor... "Why did you do it? Why did you help humanity against your own kin?"

"Because your potential for evil exceeds even mine, so I thought I'd hand on the torch. So to speak." The Titan laughed, a grating horror of a laugh full of hatred and bitterness.

"No..." Belle staggered back, shaking her head. "I... I can't believe that. Evil?" She glanced at the griffons, then at Lumiere.

The flames in the Timer's eyes flickered uncertainly. "Certainly we are all capable of evil. As we are capable of good."

"And when he gave us fire, was that good or evil?" Fire warmed them, fire cooked their meat, but fire also killed and destroyed. It heated the forges for human tools, but what were weapons but tools for death? Belle looked at the Titan, wondering what his original intent had been. Just how much had he foreseen?

Prometheus grinned vilely at Belle. "Free me, little monster, and I will answer your question..."

Belle shuddered. Could she? Should she? "How do we break your chains?"

"You cannot." The Titan's eyes dropped from her face. "But you carry one of the tears of Nevethe. Touch it to the tree that binds me, and persuade her to let go..."

He's dangerous, hissed Eskereye. If you free him, we will not be able to bind him again.

Belle looked at the Titan's face, wondering which was the truth? Had he given humankind fire in order to warm them? Or to burn them? How could she tell?

Rumplestiltskin kept himself together long enough to dismiss Regina brusquely from his castle, then collapsed into bed as his magic crept back into his battered soul. Even with two griffons to distract the divine eagle, it had been touch and go for a few heart-stopping moments before he had brought it down.

Weak. Stupid, taunted the darkness. Trying to play hero? Pathetic. You're a monster, always will be. That will never change.

No, of course not. He didn't have the strength to push the darkness back, could only fight it with his determination to protect what was his. Possessiveness was something the darkness understood and encouraged.

She's mine, he told himself. A lie to keep him halfway sane through the agony of his slowly healing wounds. A bit of light to grasp at through the darkness.

He remembered — a glimpse of eyes impossibly wide with terror, impossibly blue, set in a face too young, too brave, too kind to ever be his in any way that truly mattered. He knew that, yet his heart went out to her. He would do anything to ease her terror.

It's you she should fear, sneered the darkness. Will you tell her what happened to your first wife?

Rumplestiltskin shuddered. Too weak to claw his way back to consciousness, he sank back into darkness. Deep in his bones, he felt the future slipping from his grasp, and he was swept inexorably forward into chaos.

Too dangerous. Eskereye was right. Belle had risked too much already and nearly gotten her friends killed. She couldn't let herself be blinded by a story in a book — books could be deceptive and writers could be mistaken. She shuddered at the malice she saw in the Titan's eyes, as if he knew what she was thinking. As she started to turn away, the Titan's voice arrested her.

"Little monster, wait." His voice grated against her conscience. "If you will not release me from my chains, then slay me. Death, too, is freedom..."

Slay him? Belle spun back in shock, but covered her dismay with a near-flippant question. "If the eagle hasn't managed to kill you after thousands of years, what chance have I?"

"The chains that bind me can also kill me." Prometheus twisted his lips into a smile. "If she wills it."

The same as before, then. Belle looked helplessly at Lumiere. "What should I do?" She already knew what the griffons thought, but Lumiere had been strangely reticent since the Titan had awoken.

"I cannot choose for you, Belle," said Lumiere quietly. "I am bound by the decisions of the Queen, but you are not."

"But what if I make a mistake? Do I have the right? Whatever I decide could affect the whole world."

"You are here and they are not." Lumiere sighed. "'Who is he?' is one question. The other is, 'Who are you?'"

Belle gulped and nodded. "You mean, am I the kind of person who walks away from eternal suffering when I could end it?"

At least make him promise to be good! Otulissa suggested.

Make him promise not to hurt you or anyone you care about, said Eskereye. It's better to be specific when making a deal.

Belle looked at the bound Titan. By the look on his face, he had no trouble understanding the griffon language. "Would you agree to that?"

"Would you trust me to keep my word?" countered Prometheus.

So it came down to the same thing in the end. There were no certainties in this world, only educated guesses. There was no evidence that Prometheus had ever directly harmed anyone, not even during the war between the Titans and the gods. She had seen his torment with her own eyes, met the eagle of his punishment. He would rather die. No matter what, she had to free him. But kill him?

No.

She nodded, decision made. She stepped forward again to the stone column where Prometheus was chained and took the crystal from around her neck and pressed it to the petrified bark. This time, she shut her eyes and braced herself for the onslaught of thoughts and memories.

At first she was trapped in the same vicious cycle of love, distrust, and betrayal — the shackles forged by the gods, she realized, manifested in the material world as the chains binding Prometheus. His true love had been slaughtered on this tree, her blood used to seal his heart. And because she was dead, she would never change her mind, never let him go.

Belle was alive. The crystal reflected that, but it was also part of this tree, as all the trees of the Wood Beyond were connected, no matter where they were or in what realm they grew. She eased herself into the hardened knot, slipping through the tangle of petrified memories. Her presence introduced the possibility of change to that which had remained unchanged for millennia.

Let it go. Let HIM go. Enough is enough. In the end, that was all it was. She understood time as a mortal, and that instinctive knowledge of endings infected the cycle and ground it to an eventual halt.

Belle opened her eyes to see the Titan stepping forward, his chains falling from him in a shower of rust. Before she could react, he had closed the distance between them and bent down to whisper in her ear.

"Here is the answer I promised, little monster." As he spoke, a blaze of heat shot through Belle's spine, and her heart juddered as if struck by lightning.

"Wha—?" Belle mouthed, all the air squeezed from her lungs. His answer?

Prometheus laughed darkly. Then he snapped his fingers and vanished in a plume of red smoke.

Belle? Belle! The griffons crowded around her, and she wondered why she was looking up at them.

Then she realized she was lying flat on her back, too stunned to move.

What did he do to you? Otulissa's eyes were round with dismay. Are you all right?

"A gift of fire from heaven." That was Lumiere, a shadow at the edge of her vision. "Direct from his hands, this time, rather than through a grail."

"...?" Belle fought to get her breath back, wanting to demand more details.

"Magic."

Regina watched the girl through a mirror, the image distorted and hazy from the obfuscation spells surrounding her, but Regina's mastery of mirror magic had found Belle in the end. This insolent chit, this runaway princess of Avonlea, she had magic! That the Dark One claimed her as his future bride was well-worn gossip, and no threat to Regina's ambitions, but now it seemed she might displace the Evil Queen as Rumplestiltskin's apprentice.

How dare he! Regina was his star pupil. She was a queen. Who was this little nothing that so occupied his thoughts? Regina needed the Dark One focused on helping her achieve the ultimate revenge on Snow White, and this distraction was unacceptable.

Regina had killed before to secure her position with the Dark One. She could do it again. No. She only needed to make him think she was dead. Regina could then keep this Belle in reserve, saved for some day when she desperately needed leverage against Rumplestiltskin. It would be more difficult than simply arranging a death, but potentially much more profitable, as long as she was careful about it.

Regina assembled the plan piece by piece over the following months. She acquired a magic-blocking leather cuff from a wandering peddler. She uncovered other witches and sorcerers who held grudges against the Dark One and researched their abilities. She found three who would serve her purpose admirably.

"Hell, yeah, that scaly bastard owes us for the Chernabog," agreed the sea witch Ursula. "But if you're not going to trade the girl back right away..."

"Best of both worlds, darling," noted Cruella. "He'll be out of our hair while he's off chasing the wildlife, and we'll have something to hold over him later."

"Exactly." Regina looked at Ursula. "So are you in?"

Ursula frowned. "I hear she has magic of her own. What if she escapes?"

"Oh, that won't be a problem." Regina dangled the leather cuff from her fingertips. "Thanks to this." She explained in more detail than she would have preferred, but Cruella insisted, and Regina needed her.

"I want to see this 'peddler' of yours," Cruella said at last.

"Why?"

Cruella shrugged. "I feel a shopping spree coming on."

Well, what harm could it do? Besides, Regina was curious to know what about the man had caught Cruella's interest. The side-trip was enlightening indeed, even if the peddler managed to escape at the last moment.

"I'll catch the miserable pipsqueak later," said Cruella darkly. "He can enjoy the anticipation until then."

To Regina's disappointment, her old friend Maleficent turned down her proposal.

"It's not your best idea, my dear." Maleficent had lost her fire again, it seemed, content to lurk in her cold fortress with only her pet unicorn for company. "You'll only antagonize the Dark One for no good reason."

"No good reason? He's meant to be teaching me, not mooning over some disgrace of a princess." Regina glowered at Maleficent. "And after what happened in Bald Mountain, you deserve vengeance!"

Maleficent sighed. "Perhaps there is a debt, but I think I'll wait to collect it. When you get to my age, you understand the value of patience."

"Patience?" spat Regina. "Or have you just given up? Never mind. I don't need your help. I was merely doing you a favor by offering you this chance."

"Thank you, then, and I'll return the favor by reminding you that making enemies is counterproductive."

Regina rolled her eyes and stormed out in a cloud of magical smoke.

Once Regina was out of her domain, Maleficent stood up from her throne and called out, "You heard everything, Uncle?"

Prometheus stepped out of an archway and nodded to Maleficent. "I did. A pity you couldn't talk her out of it."

"Do you want me to protect the girl? After what she did for you..."

Prometheus chuckled maliciously. "No need. With what I've given her, and the Dark One in her corner, it's your Evil Queen who needs protection."

Maleficent nodded. "He defeated Nemesis. I... I didn't expect that. All these years, and I've never been powerful enough."

"Not your fault."

"Still, I regret that you had to endure such suffering."

"It doesn't matter. I'm free now."

"Freed by a human." Maleficent sighed. "One of fate's ironies. So was she a hero, or merely naive?"

Prometheus shook his head. "She made her decision as if I were one of her own kind, part of her community."

"So you made her part of yours?"

"No more than the Dark One had already done."

"Or what you did in the beginning, that turned the gods against you." Maleficent gave him a worried look. The gods were still against him, and it was only a matter of time before they made their move, if they hadn't already.

"Yes, there is that." Prometheus smiled. "But I don't plan to stand alone. Thank you for your hospitality, my child, but it's time I moved on."

"Be careful." Maleficent had offered to go with him, but he had refused, claiming she would be more help to him in the mortal realms. So when the moon rose over the lake, she spilled her blood into the water to summon the ferryman for her uncle. In her long life, she had died more than once, having inherited immortality from her Titan grandfather, Prometheus's brother.

Now he went to seek more powerful allies than Maleficent from among those locked away in Tartarus since the dawn of time.

Belle returned to the Yrktheran capital after freeing the Titan. When nothing seemed amiss there, Belle decided that discretion would be the wiser course and kept to descriptions of the scenery and the weather when recounting her adventure to Mulan and the others. She had no wish to bring the wrath of gods or Titans down on their heads. Eventually they made their farewells and resumed their travels. Lumiere tutored Belle in the more practical aspects of magic.

"Well, at least the Dark One will not find it so easy to bully you," said the Timer.

"Would he do that?" Belle pressed him, since he rarely spoke openly of what Rumplestiltskin was like, claiming it was better for her to form her own impression.

Lumiere shuffled uncomfortably, caught out. "Ah, that is to say, he can be... high-handed and... forget I said anything."

After that, further questioning proved useless.

Winter came early in the Skapsian highlands. The herds were moved down to shelter in the valleys, and with them came disputes and feuds. Belle found a disturbing amount of business in drawing gravestone inscriptions and formal truces. The Skapsians held a reverence for their runes, gifted to them by gods and seers and supposedly imbued with mystical properties. Belle, despite her new gift of magic, kept herself to mundane writing as befit an ordinary member of the guild. Otherwise, she had the usual requests to pass letters and messages between villages and encampments.

After delivering a letter to a woodcutter living out at the edge of the village, Belle stepped outside to find that it had begun snowing again. At least she had plenty of daylight left, and could make the trek back to the inn in time to catch the end of Lumiere's show. She hadn't walked far when she saw a spotted white puppy looking at her. It was adorable, but—

"Oh dear. You'll freeze to death out here!" Belle looked around for any sign of its mother, or associated human, to no avail. "Where did you wander from?"

She crouched down to pick it up, but the puppy scampered away playfully.

"I was just going to take you to the inn to see if anyone recognized you," Belle explained, taking a slow step closer. The puppy bounced away again, then stopped and wagged its tail. "No, wait!"

She went after the puppy, but it zipped this way and that, then darted into the woods. "Hey, where are you going?"

Worried that the poor creature would get lost and find an icy death in the snow, Belle followed it into the woods. Lumiere hadn't taught her any dog-taming spells, and she didn't want to scare the puppy by picking it up with magic. And perhaps the puppy was simply headed home. Belle looked around for any sign of habitation.

The woods were open and inviting at first, not much different from the ones in Avonlea, but gradually the paths and coppiced trees gave way to wilder growth and thicker tangles of brush, such that Belle worried that she would lose sight of the puppy. But no, the puppy had finally come to a halt, having found something to sniff at in the snowy ground.

Belle approached gently, saying in what she hoped was a low, soothing voice, "What do you have there, hmm?" Distracted by whatever it had found, the puppy allowed Belle to pick it up. It whined at being taken away from its toy. "Oh, leave it, silly."

She imagined what dogs might find enticing and shuddered, remembering the time Gaston had handed her a dead bird. She was about to turn away when a flash of reflected sunlight caught her eye. That was no dead animal! Curious, Belle bent down, puppy under one arm, and brushed away the snow with her free hand to reveal a mirror. Startled, she met her own gaze in the reflection with a jolt. She just had time to wonder who in the village could afford something like that—

—when something snapped shut around her outstretched wrist. Everything went numb. From behind her, she heard someone say, "Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here, Lacey..."

It was getting dark and cold, and Lumiere was doing his best not to panic. If he panicked, so would the griffons, and then where would they be?

"There is nothing to worry about," he insisted. "She has magic and she has the protection of the Dark One."

None of which explained why Belle hadn't shown up at the inn, nor why her tracks in the snow led into the woods and didn't return. Or why she would wander off into the Infinite Forest.

Maybe she was hunting. Eskereye pointed at the other smaller set of prints, almost erased by falling snow.

She could have waited for us, complained Otulissa.

To be fair, maybe she wanted to make the kill herself, said Eskereye. Not much chance of that with us there!

Not our fault she's slow and clumsy.

"Be nice," admonished Lumiere, but he could tell they were secretly just as worried as he was. Then he saw the wolves ahead and everything else flew out of his mind.

Blood in the snow! The griffons took off in a flurry of wings, ascending rapidly. It's Belle! She's down!

The next thing he knew, he had charged into the midst of the wolves, biting and tearing at them as if he was a wild beast himself. He was only vaguely aware of the griffons diving for the pack, and the wolves leaping to engage them.

No, no, this was wrong. Lumiere tried to pull his thoughts together. These were no ordinary wolves, they were shifters, which meant he needed... needed... needed to extract himself from this futile melee. But the wolves had no such hesitation. They had surrounded him and had their teeth in his wings, and almost at his throat before he twisted away in the nick of time. He had to get free of them, so he could think, but the compulsion to fight overrode his sanity.

Escape! They had to flee before the wolves ripped them to pieces. Before it was too late for Belle (if it wasn't already, Nevethe help them). Lumiere dug his hind claws into the last long shadows of the day, pulling frantically at the darkness. Darkness. Light. He reached out with the last of his concentration to the griffons, to Belle, and grabbed with all his strength.

They fell out of the world. One. Two. Three... but the fourth slipped out of his grasp.

Belle!

"He didn't check in yesterday," Cogsworth reported, and Rumplestiltskin didn't have to ask who he meant.

"Drinking and gambling the night away, no doubt..." said Rumplestiltskin, thinking of Milah. No, that wasn't fair — Milah had despised him, whereas Lumiere and Cogsworth shared a mutual respect and love he dared not even dream of.

Milah wanted you dead, taunted the darkness. Do you hope for better from this princess with her light magic and heroic aspirations?

Cogsworth glared at him indignantly. "I doubt it very much! He requires his full faculties for his juggling routine... oh." He sighed in a put-upon fashion. "Ha ha, very droll. But not helpful at all."

Rumplestiltskin inclined his head in apology. "You're right. Where did you see him last?"

The inn in the Skapsian village was a quiet, humble affair. There was no sign of trouble, nor had the protection spell on Belle's crystal been triggered. Her horse was in the stable, but her room was empty.

She's finally come to her senses and made a run for it, the darkness cackled. You'll never see her again.

Rumplestiltskin gritted his teeth against the thought of another abandonment — he had never had her to begin with, he told himself. "I can trace her through the crystal."

Cogsworth nodded.

Magic led them into the Infinite Forest, where a gruesome sight greeted them. Blood stained the snow, blood and feathers in a churned up battlefield with its edges barely smoothed over by a blanket of new-fallen snow. And there, half-covered, a mangled body... a human body.

"No!" Rumplestiltskin dashed forward in shock. It couldn't be. Yet there, gleaming dimly under a layer of white, the crystal pendant. He instinctively summoned it to his hand. There was no mistake. It was the twin to his own, Belle's crystal, the ends of the broken chain hanging off his palm.

Cogsworth cried out in alarm, dropping back into his natural form to search the area. "Lumiere! Eskereye! Otulissa!"

Rumplestiltskin trembled, staring at the body. Snow whirled in a storm of magic as his anger and shock was too much to contain. A face was revealed, mangled beyond recognition, but the hair was the right color and length, and the body was...

"It's her," he whispered, unable to deny the truth. He let the pendant drop onto her chest, his fingers twitching with the urge to reduce her to dust. A clean escape! Then he thought better of it. Her mother deserved better. He waved his hand and sent her to a vault in the Dark Castle where she would be preserved from decay until he could return her to Avonlea.

"Wolves." Cogsworth had circled back, his initial inspection complete. "This place reeks of their scent. Wolf shifters..."

Rumplestiltskin growled. Wolf shifters were the kings of the Infinite Forest, incredibly strong and quick, and shielded by magic strong enough to shrug off almost any attack. They took human form sometimes, whether to mingle with the villagers or to lure unwary travellers to their deaths. All other beasts feared them, not daring to lay a tooth on any prey marked by the wolves. No crows or ravens pecked at the corpse, a small mercy.

"But why would they kill her and then leave the meat to rot?" wondered Cogsworth.

"For fun? To send a message?" Rumplestiltskin didn't care. He couldn't let this stand. "Or because they gorged themselves already on Timer and griffon?"

"They aren't dead!"

Rumplestiltskin scoffed angrily. "If they abandoned Belle... they damned well will be. Once I deal with the wolves."

"No, wait. There's something not right here. The pieces don't fit..."

"You don't say." An impish laugh burst free. "So much for the foresight of the Wood Beyond!" He had been a fool, a gullible fool, to believe that Nevethe could or would help him. And now an innocent girl had paid for his mistake...

There is no hope for you.

No, there was still the Dark Curse, and the curse caster promised by his vision. But first he would collect Belle's blood price from the wolves. He owed her that much at least. He turned away from Cogsworth and sniffed out the trail of magic and violence left by the wolves.

"It could be a trap." Cogsworth jumped in front of him. "Please reconsider..."

"Don't care." If it was a trap, so much the worse for whoever thought they could trap the Dark One. "Either help me or get the hell out of my way."

Cogsworth choose the latter option.

It didn't take long to find the wolves. They must have had some inkling of their doom, and some sense of loyalty to their own — what must have been every adult member of the pack came out to face his challenge.

Nine wolves against the Dark One. It was laughable.

"You should have kept your predations to sheep," sneered Rumplestiltskin. He lifted his hands, snow flying from the ground and the trees to coalesce into lines of white that spun through his fingers into something shiny and metallic. Straw into gold wasn't the only transmutation in his repertoire. Snow became ice became silver — deadly to werewolves and wolf shifters alike.

They knew what he held. Nevertheless, they charged forward as if they thought they could harm him.

Rumplestiltskin loosed the storm of power that had been raging in his heart ever since he had found the corpse in the snow. Silver needles flashed. Wolves screamed and fell, hearts pierced by silver. Rumplestiltskin half expected them to transform, to take human form and beg for mercy, but they died in silence, one by one.

The darkest part of his soul delighted in their pain, but now that the worst of his rage had been expended, another thought slithered into his mind.

It was too easy.

Silver? Everyone knew about that weakness. Lumiere had magic. Was he incapable of summoning silver when needed? Even Belle should have been able... and the protection spell hadn't triggered. The wolves didn't have the power to block the Dark One's magic, or they would have saved themselves instead of dying at his feet.

Rumplestiltskin stared blankly. One or two of the wolves writhed feebly, clinging to life. He couldn't be bothered to finish them off.

"Cogsworth!" Without waiting for a reply, Rumplestiltskin transported himself back to the Dark Castle. A moment later, the Timer joined him. "You were right. The pieces don't fit..."

A calmer, more meticulous examination of the corpse revealed the truth.

"A mirror spell." Rumplestiltskin cursed under his breath at having missed it before, but in fact, he had almost missed it even now. The spell was subtly constructed, seamlessly matched to a name that belonged to this body. "This is Belle. But not our Belle."

Another dead body to his account, then. A commoner, someone with no wealth or power to protect her, sacrificed pointlessly because she happened to share a name with someone the Evil Queen had targeted. He would have to look for her family, later.

Cogsworth met his eyes. "A vile trick. You know who is responsible, do you not?"

Rumplestiltskin growled between his teeth, "Regina."

"Your student."

His student. Rumplestiltskin shook his head. He should have known it would come to this. If he acted against Regina, went to rescue Belle, then the Evil Queen would know where he stood — not as her friend or her ally, but as her open enemy. She would never cast the curse for him.

Nevethe had offered him hope, but no certainty, as today proved when Cogsworth had been as convinced as Rumplestiltskin that Belle was dead. Could he trust his future, trust Bae's future to this uncertain path? If he abandoned Belle, cut his losses, he still had time to find another way to save his son.

But what would his son say when he found out that his father had left an innocent girl to suffer and perhaps die (that was the most likely outcome for a discarded pawn) at the hands of the Evil Queen?

You've always been a coward, and he knows it. Bae will look at you the same way he did before... with contempt!

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes, remembering the expression on Bae's face when Hordor forced the spinner to kneel and kiss his boots.

You cost him his mother, twice over, the darkness reminded him. You broke your word to him. You abandoned him. He was never going to forgive you.

Then he remembered the expression on Belle's face when the eagle attacked. Terrified, but resolute. Kind enough to want to free a monster, and brave enough to take the risk. He wished he could match that courage and kindness. That was who his son deserved, not someone ruled by fear and darkness.

Rumplestiltskin took a breath, then looked at Cogsworth. "My student? Not anymore, she isn't."