Hello everyone! The plot thickens significantly in this chapter, so I'm very curious to hear what people think of the new development. And of course, thanks for reading!

VIII

It was almost shocking, Belle contemplated sometimes, how quickly she had come to be dependent on Regina in the course of the weeks that stretched into a month, and then another. She could talk to the Master – but there was only one person to whom she could talk about the Master, and sometimes she was so eager to do so that the words practically gushed from her mouth and she found herself waiting impatiently until she was alone in her room at midnight and could say Regina's name into the mirror.

Regina usually appeared within moments, but not always – some nights she would just stare at her own expectant-looking reflection until, after several minutes, she had to accede that Regina had some business of her own and hid the mirror away again. Belle had to admit to herself that she still knew little about her new friend; Regina's clothing was always plain and dark, and what Belle could make out behind her friend was just a quite simple stone wall. And while Regina was an excellent listener, patient and inquisitive, she was not very talkative by nature. When asked she would share details about her day ("I came across two lost children in the woods; would you believe it, their father had just left them to die" or "I met a hunter in the woods today who has a wolf companion, I never saw anything like it") but always modestly and concisely. It was only when the subject of her father was breached that she truly grew animated; there was a new shine to her dark eyes and an involuntary smile around her lips when she spoke of him. "My mother was an unkind woman," she would state, matter-of-factly and without qualms, "but my father was always there. He was always on my side – to talk to me and try to help me however he could. He is such a sweet, patient, caring man – there's no one in the world like him anymore."

"Anymore?" Belle repeated. "But there used to be?"

There was a brief silence. "It's a turn of phrase," Regina said, and Belle decided not to pursue it. Over time she had become more attuned to the things Regina didn't say, after many hours of having seen only her face within the mirror frame. There had been a drawn, tired look to her recently, a suggestion of pain in the clench of her lips when she wasn't speaking, a gazing off into the middle distance as if lost in thought for just a split second. But when Belle asked her if something was wrong, she would smile and shake her head. "Nothing, nothing. What did you say you wanted to ask me about the Master?"

"Well, he said something very odd today," Belle said slowly, frowning as she remembered.

The Master, for the first time in weeks, had been moody and restless again that afternoon, sitting down at his spinning wheel and snatching up a handful of straw only to scatter it back in its basket again and stand up, pace towards the window and fall still again. "I'll be away on business again in a few days," he said, keeping his back turned towards Belle.

"Sick of your vacation already?" Belle suggested, unfazed. "You should take up a hobby for retired men. Checkers… or gardening."

She had grown too used to his moods to be very intimidated by them, and she could tell by the movement of his shoulders that he was willing himself not to chuckle.

"I don't think gardening will quite do the trick." He finally turned and crossed the room to sink down onto the couch, leaning back to stare up at the ceiling. "Not when it's the suspense that is killing me."

"Suspense for what?" Belle inquired. "Or is that yet another one of your deep, dark secrets?"

His head was still thrown back, expression unreadable. Then he suddenly sat up. "I might as well tell you," he said. "If only because it concerns you too, in the end."

That hasn't stopped you from keeping secrets before, came into her head, but this rare moment of openness was not the time to reprove him. She silently perched on the arm of the couch, looking down on him as he took a few moments to gather his thoughts, as if unsure how to tell her. A small knot of anxiety formed in the pit of her stomach, for the Master was seldom at loss for words, and she almost considered asking him not to tell her.

"There's a storm gathering over the land, Belle," he started finally, "and no-one knows it yet. People call on the Dark One every day, and they want things – to forget, to remember, to kill, to save, to lose mothers, to gain sons, it never stops. They want all these things so badly, they wholeheartedly believe that the deals they strike with me are important, that they matter and that they will bring them happiness; and no one knows that everything we do now is irrelevant, really. Because our days in this land are numbered, and running out fast."

"What do you mean?"

"This land – this world –as we know it is about to stop existing, as soon as the Dark Curse comes. It will be destroyed completely and we, all of us, will be going to another world."

Belle wasn't sure she had understood right. "What kind of world?"

"A world without magic."

"Will it be a happy place?" she asked, frowning.

He smiled, almost sadly. "Not for everyone," he said. "Not for most people. But you will be there. And I will be there. But there will be no magic."

His words hung between them for a long time. Belle didn't know what to say, torn as she was between a storm all of its own that was raging within her.

"So when is this happening?" It came out a little wavering. "How much time do we have until this storm comes? Where does it come from?"

"That is precisely the source of the suspense, dearie," he said, chagrined. "I don't know why it hasn't happened yet. All the ingredients are there, but one – and I would have thought that my darling pupil would have taken care of that, by now. It's why I have to go out again, to find out what is taking so long."

"Why would you, of all people, want this Dark Curse to hit?" Belle asked. "Your magic is the source of your power."

"Why don't you seem more pleased that it's going to hit?" he responded with a counter-question. "I thought you'd be eager to leave this place."

"Yes," she said slowly, and pointed to the large library window, through which they could see the full, green crowns of the trees outside. "But it seems odd – all these years that I've spent here at the Dark Castle, and it's only ever been summer. I've never known it in any other way; now time is finally moving again, and I'll leave before ever having seen an autumn or winter or spring."

He grinned crookedly. "I could take care of that," he said, finally leaning in to the tea tray that had been standing, cooling, on the side table forgotten for half an hour. "A little extra magic before it all gets taken away, hm?"

"That's the chipped cup," Belle pointed out, but he shrugged, sipping the lukewarm tea.

"It's my favourite," he said. "This cup always reminds me that I owe you."

…

Belle didn't relate this last part to Regina, feeling her face flush a little just recalling it.

"So I was wondering if you knew anything about that," she concluded. "This Dark Curse."

Regina's face had turned pale and set as Belle spoke, and the look in her eyes now was positively tormented.

"Do you know about this Dark Curse?" Belle repeated, more forcefully.

Regina looked away, the pain on her face apparent now. "No." The lie was obvious.

"Regina," Belle said. Her hands were gripping the mirror's frame; if they had been in the same room, she would have grabbed Regina's arms. It was frustrating to be separated by the thin layer of glass when she wanted so much to drag the truth out of her friend. "Regina, what is it?"

Regina made a small sound. It was so uncharacteristic of calm, composed Regina that it only hit Belle after a few moments that it had been a sob. "I have to tell you something," Regina whispered, "that I'm not proud of."

"It's all right, you can tell me," Belle encouraged her. How bad could it be, after all?

"It's no coincidence that I found you." Regina's voice was soft and rushed. "I didn't look for you to see if you were real, I didn't look for you to befriend you – I looked for you because I need you."

"How? Need me how?"

"The Dark One – your Master –" Her voice cracked on the word – "made a deal with me, some time ago."

Belle waited, with an ominous sense of foreboding.

"All I want is to be happy. It's all I ever wanted, all this time when my mother kept me prisoner and sold me in marriage to a man twice my age, who left me to his cruel and callous daughter when he died so that I am now forced to live in the woods like an outlaw. I was so desperate I called for the Dark One, to provide me with an enchantment or spell that would bring me the happiness I wanted. And he did…" Belle could have said next words along with her: "…At a terrible price."

"What does he want?"

"My father's heart," Regina said, and bent her head, crying in earnest now. "The spell requires the heart of the only person in the world that I love, and who loves me now…"

Belle's own heart seemed to have plummeted. "I'm sorry," she said urgently. "I'm so, so sorry…" All her senses told her that Regina's horror and despair were pure and unfeigned; they reminded her of the same sentiments that had engulfed her when the Master had told her that her own father was dead. And although it wasn't her crime to apologize for, it felt like a stab to her own heart to learn that the Master was wreaking this havoc upon someone else.

Gasping, Regina wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. "It's why I looked for a way in," she said in a thick voice, "through the old tale of the girl who made a deal with some monster who took her away – I was hoping there was someone who could help me, tell me something."

"I will," Belle promised her. "I can speak to him…" But Regina was shaking her head impatiently.

"Talking to him?" Her voice was almost scornful now. "There is no talking the Dark One out of anything, Belle, and you know it. You can't even tell him about this mirror, you have to hide it in your dresser like a little girl who's afraid of her father because he would destroy it if he found it and there is nothing you can about that or anything else."

Regina had never spoken like this before, and Belle was taken aback even as the knowledge sank in that Regina was probably telling the truth.

"What do you want from me then?" she asked, frustrated. "You said it yourself, I'm a prisoner."

"But you don't have to be." Regina's voice had become low, tense. "I've come to know you after all these weeks, and to care about you. You're miserable, you're trapped when you don't deserve to be – you're exactly like me, and you need the same thing as me to be free and happy."

"What is that?"

"To make the spell work that the Dark One gave to me," she said simply. "That which he calls

the Dark Curse, but which is dark only to him because it will take us to a better place. You can make the sacrifice because the person you love most in the world is also the person you hate the most. You need to sacrifice the heart of your Master."

Belle sat frozen. The person you love the most in the world… "No," she said finally, effortfully. "No, no, I can't."

"Why not? Because he just 'made true on a cruel deal' and is trying to make it up to you? Oh, Belle," Regina said, angrily now. "To all intents and purposes, the Dark One killed your father, and everyone you knew, as surely as if he had ripped their hearts out. He came into your life one dark night and took you away, and you never saw or heard of any of them ever again, and they lay rotting in their graves while you scrubbed his floors and prepare his meals."

"But he was sorry," Belle said stubbornly. You will be there. And I will be there. But there will be no magic… That cup always reminds me that I owe you… "He wouldn't do it again if he had the chance."

"Do you really believe that?" Regina asked, her incredulous tone making Belle's resolve waver. "That it's not really how he is? Tell me – how much has your Master told you about himself?"

"Nothing," Belle replied truthfully. "He never talks about himself."

"Then let me enlighten you." Regina's voice was full of hate as she spoke. "Believe it or not, your Master had a family once, a long time ago, before he became the Dark One. A family he loved, as far as his kind is capable – but even that didn't stop him from destroying it. They Dark One tyrannized the village they lived in; he would change grown men into snails and crush them beneath his boots like they were no more than dirt to him, he made a sport of slaughtering innocent mute serving girls because it amused him that they couldn't scream. The villagers lived a life of terror. His own young son was so horrified by his father's evil deeds that he fled to another world because he knew there wasn't a place in this one where he could be far away enough from his father. And then there was his wife – oh, poor Milah. She was trapped, much the way you are now, just a desperately lonely prisoner until one day she, too, managed to flee and ran away with a kind-hearted seaman who took her aboard his ship. The woman wasn't quite as lucky as her son, however – the Dark One never relented until he had finally tracked the both of them down."

"And then?" Belle whispered.

"He ripped out her heart, and let it crumble to dust between his fingers as he made her lover watch. The sailor was lucky, I suppose – all the Dark One took from him was his right hand, which he cut off at the wrist and took home as a reminder that no one went against him unpunished."

"How do you know all this?" Belle demanded. "This must have happened hundreds of years ago, even before I was born."

"I have spoken to the one person who was there: the immortal fairy who gave the Dark One's son a way to escape this world," Regina said. "It's true, Belle, all of it is true. You should know that, because he's done the same thing to you. He's done it before you, he's done it to you, and he's doing it to me now – the only difference is that this time, you can stop him."

Belle sat with her head bent, as the same feelings she had been trying to push away for such a long time came washing over her again at full force until she felt like screaming.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," she said with an effort. "I'm very tired and I – I think I'll go to bed." Before Regina could say anything else she had turned the mirror face-down and slid it under her pillow, where she couldn't see it. There was an enormous weariness that had suddenly come over her, but nevertheless Belle didn't sleep a wink that night.

…

Bleary-eyed and pale, Belle was up early the next morning. No book could distract her from the thoughts that were tolling through her head. It's not true, it's not true. Regina is wrong, she has to be; she, or whoever this fairy is. These things supposedly happened hundreds of years ago, who is to say that she remembers it correctly?

She decided to finally start the time-consuming job of dusting the entirety of the Master's collection, which was sure to keep her occupied for a few hours. But instead, perched on a stool to reach the statuettes lined up on the highest shelf, she made a discovery that stopped her heart in her chest. It was half-hidden from view among the other statuettes, casually placed on the shelf one day and crowded towards the back as newer items had joined it. At first Belle didn't even recognize what it was, had already touched it with the duster when it suddenly hit her. Yanking the duster away she leaned forward, clearing other statuettes away with both arms to make sure she was seeing it right. The sailor was lucky, I suppose – all the Dark One took from him was his right hand, which he cut off at the wrist and took home as a reminder that no one went against him unpunished. There, mounted upright on a wooden base on its wrist, as if belonging to a drowning man reaching desperately for the ceiling, was – pale and withered, but unmistakable – a man's right hand.