Hours later found Belle in her bedchamber, pacing anxiously with thoughts of the evening feast and the man she would be expected to marry. With so much happening, and so much of it of such monumental import, she had not even seen her father since the day before, let alone spoken to him about her intended.

The Dark One knew him. He'd claimed the man's name was Gaston, that he was a knight who had asked the king for her hand in return for the cursed dagger.

Her father had agreed without protest, or so the Dark One had claimed, but he might have just been toying with her in a mean-spirited way. He hated her king, he wanted her to hate him too. The Dark One wanted a voice on his side, and while she hated what he was doing, Belle could not hate her father.

The ladies and servants that Belle had questioned about this knight, this Gaston, had all had good things to say of him. A loyal knight, handsome and polite. A man of honor, truly, as he had given the power over the Dark One away to his king to save the country rather than take the dagger and use the demon to grant whatever petty wishes he might have.

"He is most handsome, my lady." Kala had told her after she'd finished with braiding Belle's hair for the night's feast. "He is a fine rider, stoic as a knight should be."

Her life being what it was, Belle had little experience with flightly talk over men. So much of her life in Avonlea had been heavy with misery - always there was news of the threat coming closer, closer, eating their country one mile, one farm, one village at a time. She'd had no mother and so few friends, gossiping over infatuations and dreaming of their weddings had never been part of her life. No, Belle had no experience in this.

"I've heard some of the same. He was a scouting knight before, and my father placed him in the king's guard after he gave over the dagger. The Dark One claims Gaston has designs on the crown." Belle confided.

"He would hardly be the only man to angle for a useful marriage."

Belle found she didn't object if the throne was what this Gaston was after. She had been engaged before, and her poor lost Duke - for all his boyish daring and charm - he had been after the throne just the same. It was the life she'd been raised to expect, nothing more. The only unexpected figure that was playing into her future was the appearance of the Dark One.

"True. Kala, do you think happiness can be found in an arranged marriage?"

Her maid set aside Belle's best slippers - the pair with the least amount of holes worn into the soles, and thought on the question. "Perhaps. In time and if you and your husband are able to find a few interests to share. Marriage needn't be a trap. It can lead to friendship and love." Kala drifted for a moment, thinking of her own husband, but refocused back on the task at hand. "Which dress, my lady?"

The two women looked on her limited wardrobe, all of her dresses had grown drab during Avonlea's struggles. What care could be spared for fashion in the face of war? Even during her short stay in Arendelle, Belle had given little thought toward her appearance. Instead, her time there had been spent in anxious dread, waiting for news of her father's death, her country's fall and the uncertainty of what her life would become when the end inevitably came.

The whole world had changed so fast and so completely that Belle felt she'd barely had a chance to make sense of it. Truly, she still hadn't. The Dark One had told her so much, and yet not a thing that could help her find a stable place in her kingdom's new future.

So many things he said...

"Well. I've already worn my best dress today." Belle said, looking down at herself, the pale rose dress that was a touch too short, too tight and too worn to be acceptable for meeting one's fiance.

Kala took out a plain dove gray dress but, noting the hole in the skirt, replaced it back into the wardrobe. "Why did you wear it today?"

"I...I wanted to look as presentable as I could when I sought out the Dark One."

"You sought for him! Why would you do this?" Kala demanded, forgetting all decorum and reaching to hold Belle's arms. Her pulse pounded in dread. Hadn't it been only the night before that her princess was upset, fully sobbing over having spoken to the Dark One, terrified of the wrath he would unleash the instant he had the chance? And now, Belle again confessed to speaking with the mage - even dressing for him! What was she playing at?

"I wanted to speak with him. To thank him again, to ask after his feelings. We spoke for a time but there are still so many things I want to ask of him."

"No time like the present, dearie."

Both women whipped around to find the Dark One across the fitting room, perched happily on a chair in the corner. Kala gasped and backed away, but Belle found herself smiling. "Dark One! What are you doing here?"

She approached him, reaching to touch his hand in greeting, her reservations gone after having spent the morning with him in the blooming gardens. His appearance held no fear for her, already she thought of him as a friend, harmless. Well. It had already been said that the princess was naive.

Kala was not so gullible - where she was immensely thankful for his power that banished the ogre threat, the Dark One himself was still fearsome and certainly he had no place in the dress fittings of Avonlea's princess! Seeing him here, up close rather than from across the crowded main hall, was very unnerving to her, as was seeing his clawed fingers curling over the princess's hand as he rose up from the chair to stand in close with Belle. The familiar way they looked on each other made Kala distinctly uncomfortable - what was he doing here? Why would the princess welcome him?

"I came to play dress-up." He quipped.

Belle laughed. Kala scowled.

"You should not be here. This is no place for a man." She told him, hoping he could not hear the false courage in her voice.

Clearly he did, though, as he turned his attention to Kala and oh, she had thought she had known fear before. The ogres were terrible, but theirs had been a wild, dumb savagery much like a stampede of panicked cattle. But to be under the direct focus of this creature of cruel legend, to meet his eyes and see, know, that he was real, that she had displeased him...

Kala felt her heart seize in her chest as he released Belle's hand and began to step toward her. He was claws and scales and fangs and magic - brutal, remorseless and calculating.

He stopped and stood before her, those horrible eyes holding hers. When he spoke, it was with the softest of voices. "Have no fear, maid. I've been commanded to come and see the princess properly attired to receive her intended knight."

Kala had no response to that. The king would command his pet demon to come attend Belle's wardrobe? The king indeed must be mad if this was the errand he would assign the Dark One - sending him into the realm of women's fashion. It surely must have been just another way to humiliate the mage...yet the Dark One didn't seem to mind being here with the princess, in fact he was clearly pleased and Kala felt a sinking, horrible suspicion take hold.

"My father told you to come and dress me?" Belle laughed. "This is beyond bizarre!"

"Beyond the norm but not wholly unique." He said, thankfully turning away from Kala to address Belle again. "I've only just returned from dressing your knight."

"You dressed Gaston?" She smiled, looking the Dark One up and down, "Let me guess, all dragonhide and leathers."

The demon didn't appreciate her teasing. "No! I'll have no one fashion themselves after me. I keep my attire distinct for a reason, I've never been found of copycats! No, be sure I dressed Gaston to look fit for a king...a real king, not your fool of a father."

"I will ignore your insults." Belle told him firmly. "How am I to look to see my fiance?"

In turning their talk back to her fashion for the evening, Belle dispelled his temper toward her father. It seemed that, for all his power, he could be distracted easily enough.

The Dark One stared at her, tapping a claw against his lips as he walked a slow circle around her. Watching his open assessment, Kala had the sick feeling that this wolf was toying with the lamb. "Mmm...I prefer darker colors myself, but you are a lighter soul and so the lighter colors suit you best. Look to your mirror."

In a blink, Belle and Kala gasped to see that she was suddenly wearing a beautiful gown of lavender brocade and bright, golden lace. Gone was her old dress that had seen its best days in her girlhood, here and now, she wore a gown that any queen would envy.

"It's beautiful!" Belle gasped, smoothing her hands down the skirt.

Still circling and ogling, he clicked his tongue. "It's not the clothes that make the woman, princess. Remember that."

Belle forced her eyes away from her reflection. She looked to him, her smile enough to light the room. "Thank you for this."

"I only did as commanded, but I am glad it pleases you. I will see you during the feast."

"You will be there?"

"Of course." He gave an irritated sigh. "I've been ordered to sing again, please tell me if you have any special requests."

Belle took her place at her father's left side, noting that the main hall had been repaired and decorated, the hall itself hazy with the scents of fresh food and flowers. Great vases of fresh blooms were set out on every table, ornate tapestries hung as banners from the rafters - though Belle was less than pleased to see that one of them depicted her father as the hero, smiting the ogres with one great sweep of his sword.

Everyone in the hall knew he had never once lifted his blade on the battlefield. She huffed, annoyed by his shameless glory-seeking. It should be the Dark One shown in those banners, by rights it should be the Dark One seated on the throne- Belle stopped herself from finishing that thought, shocked at herself. What am I thinking?

She cast her eyes about and saw him at his place on the low table, the small space set aside for the servants, and felt a fresh wave of tension against the king. In placing the Dark One there, her king's message was clear, he didn't want the mage favored in any way, yet he would keep him close at hand just to visibly assert his power.

Her father was taking to power so easily, just as the Dark One had warned her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the figure joining the table, to her other side.

The man was tall, with dark hair and eyes, a kind, unsure smile. This was him, then. The knight known and loved so well, by so many. Gaston.

They stared at each other for several long moments, but he blinked, remembering himself, and hurriedly took up her hand and kissed her knuckles.

"My lady Belle."

"Good sir." Belle returned in greeting. "Won't you sit?"

He quickly took the seat to her left and smiled boyishly. It endeared her, to see that he was nervous. Oddly, she wasn't. The Dark One had told her that her hand had been promised to this man by the king in return for the cursed dagger - this knight had asked for her and Belle was expected to keep her father's promise. It wasn't a question in her mind that she would do so.

The safety of her country's future had been bought with the Dark One's freedom and her hand in marriage. In this, Belle had something in common with the mage, but she had been taught that as a royal, as the sole heir of Avonlea, there were duties to fulfill. Marriage to the savior knight was only another one of those.

Looking on Gaston with his handsome face and the fine figure he cut in the velvet tunic and leather boots he wore, Belle thought that her duty of marriage to this man may well be more a blessing than a chore.

Gaston sat but he had yet to release her hand. "My l- ah, princess Belle. If I may be so bold, I don't believe your father has informed you, but you and I will be wed in time."

Belle nodded. His words were direct and to the point. Her father had not even greeted the hall yet, nor had the wine been served, yet here he was, already eager to speak of their nuptials. "My father has not told me, but I've known since last night. The Dark One told me."

He raised a brow but did not appear so scandalized as Kala had been to know she had spoken to the Dark One over something of a private matter. "Ah. I confess I am glad I have not shocked you with the news, then. I should have let your father speak to you first."

"Do not worry yourself. The ogre threat has given strength to us all, I think. News of my engagement would not have caused me to faint."

"No man in Avonlea would accuse you of being a fainting damsel, this is true." He cleared his throat, his eyes searching hers. "Do you...do you recognize me?"

"I am sorry, no. Once I learned your name I asked the servants and ladies about you, and I have heard many good things, but I could not place your name with any faces I knew."

"Ah, well. It was foolish of me to hope you would, I think. It was last year. My squadron killed five stray ogres and while we returned to the castle, we were not without injury. You tended my shoulder and I...you have been in my thoughts since that time." He said, and there was a great relief in finally being able to tell her this.

"That is why you asked for me in exchange for the dagger?"

"I...it was not my intent to ask for you in trade. I just didn't see another way to go about it. Please forgive me."

Belle smiled at him, "There is nothing to forgive. You brought the dagger that delivered our people. Will you tell me the story of how the dagger made its way into your hand?"

"Yes!" Gaston agreed excitedly, then blushed and lowered his voice. "That is, yes, I will tell you. Would you...we could go riding sometime soon if I am permitted away from my duties."

"With the ogres gone I don't know that there will be any duties left for our knights." She commented.

"You are mistaken, princess. With the country now set to rebuild, we will be busier than ever. I...our king warned me that you and I will not see each other much, as I now head in the king's guard, but I wanted to say...I will strive to be a fit husband to you when the time comes." It was a sweet thing to say, and very honest.

Even watching and listening from across the hall, the Dark One could sense no deception in the knight's words.

Belle felt a blush rise in her cheeks. "Gaston...thank you."

The remainder of the night's feast rushed by in a blur of food and wine, excited, hopeful thoughts on the future, and the Dark One's performance.

All too soon, everyone began to depart for the evening.

Gaston took her hand again and gave her knuckles another swift kiss. "I...I must away now. Goodbye, Belle. I will seek you out when we come back."

She watched as Gaston disappeared down a corridor, and Belle did not see him again for several days.

When he made his return, she found she had not missed him.

Word of Avonlea's rise spread like fire in the forest. King Maurice had enslaved the Dark One, the demon at his command. In a day the ogres were dead. The next saw the lands renewed. Still the next saw villages rebuilt. Blood skies shined blue again. Waterways cleared. Valleys grew green.

As promised, the princess rose to her monument of the dead. It was not the great pillar she had imagined, a list of names reaching through the clouds.

No.

Like so many things of great power, her gift was a simple sight to behold. Where she had held the vision of a grand pillar, what she'd found instead was a round, dark stone in the center of her castle's renewed courtyard. It hovered, suspended just an inch over a raised dais, the altar to the Avonlea dead.

Belle stood before it, curious and unsure.

What is this?

A sudden voice at her back.

"It's yours. Your monument to the decade of death."

She turned to find the Dark One two steps behind her. She had been quite alone just moments ago, and wondered if he had perhaps been waiting for her to come.

He had made this for her, after all. It had been her respectful request, not a demand forced upon him.

"It is not how I pictured it."

"Nothing ever is. But don't judge it on sight alone."

"I don't see any names, how does it work? The stone, you cast a spell over it?"

"Of a kind. Place your hand on the opal and think the name of one you've lost."

Belle stepped closer, seeing now that the stone glimmered, a riot of color within the darkness and she saw now what it was - the largest fire opal ever held within the borders of Avonlea. She swallowed and reached forward, spreading her fingers wide, pressing her hand over the stone. Her pulse quickened as she felt a strange tingling come over her hand, the energy growing warm under her skin.

"Think the name." He guided.

Belle thought of her mother and her eyes widened as the colors in the stone began to stir under her hand. She pulled her hand away to watch the colors, turning slowly at first and then quickly gaining speed. The colors swirled, combining together into the blackness within the stone and then separating once more, forming words.

Queen Collette of Avonlea

Mauled by an ogre on the caravan road to Green Creek

The years of her mother's birth and death appeared just below the brusque epitaph. Collette had not even seen her fortieth year.

Here and now, over ten years since her mother had passed, the daughter of Avonlea's felled queen took in a deep breath and turned to face her unlikely companion.

"Thank you for this."

"Who did you think of?"

"You did not see?"

"No. I charmed the opal so only the eyes of the one who beckons the name can read their fate. I can lift that charm and see for myself, but I'd rather if you told me. If you want." He finished quietly.

Belle cleared her throat of its sudden tightness. "I thought of our queen."

"Your mother."

"Yes. She had been traveling to Green Creek, a small village half a day's ride to the east. There had been news of an attack there so she had gone with clerics and knights, showing her face to prove that the crown had not forgotten the people there. The ogre hoard had moved on, but her caravan was attacked by a straggler. Her carriage was toppled and she was mauled. They were able to bring her back to the castle but her wounds were deep. She did not live to see the next morning."

The Dark One regarded her for several long moments. "You were able to say goodbye?"

"Yes. I was so young, though. I didn't understand then what goodbye meant."

"Still. You were able to see her. And she could see you before the end came. That is something."

This was not a talk Belle had pictured herself having with the Dark One and she was struck again how jarring it was, to meet the man behind the legends.

"Thank you. This will be a comfort to so many people."

Standing there before her, fully dressed in black leathers with sinister details of silver, his coat collar high and stiff, he appeared far too formal and remote. She preferred him as she'd seen him the previous morning, before he'd been called away by her father. He'd had no coat and no shoes then, a creature far more content in the garden.

"I don't know that it would be a comfort to learn the one you loved was dead."

"Perhaps you're right. Not comfort. Closure, that is the word. It would be better to know than to spend years hoping to find someone who had already been lost."

A strange look came over his face just then, but he gave himself a shake and made an abrupt change of subject. "I've made some reparations to the castle."

"I saw that as I made my way here, and at the feast last night. I've never seen the main hall appear so grand. Did my father command it of you?"

"No. I was passing by and saw the front gate needed fixing. It will open and close much faster now. The the stained glass above the main hall, too beautiful a thing to let it remain cracked. I cleaned that so the colors will shine in the light. Also, I've filled your stables."

Belle raised her brows, "You've brought us horses?"

He nodded and they fell into step together down a pleasant garden path. "Yes. Ten of Agrabah's best. They'll be sorely missed for a time but replaced easily enough. Those horses I brought by your father's command."

"He wanted you to steal horses from another king?"

"That is a secret just between you and I, princess." He had the cheek to wink at her! "He only commanded that I conjure ten brilliant steeds for the knights in the king's guard. Taking the horses from the Sultan was the easiest way to that end."

Belle could not stop herself from laughing at that. "You are such a trickster!"

Kicking a pebble off the garden path, he shrugged at her side. "Among other things, yes."

"What else will our king command of you?"

The Dark One darted in front of her on the path, catching her off-guard when he moved into her personal space, warning her, "I have no king! You must remember that."

Belle's eyes widened, but she refused to cower in the face of his temper. Granted, her time spent with him was limited, but the Dark One's anger only ever seemed to stir at the mention of the king - he hated the man, and what had happened to him was terrible, but she would not allow his tirade of disrespect.

"My father is not your king, but he is your master. He won't allow your disrespect to carry on for much longer."

"I am already forced to obey his every command. He could order me to slit my wrists and I would have no choice - but I can't die, so if he refused to let me heal, I would bleed for weeks. Think on that! Rivers of black blood at your king's whim! When I'm not doing the fool's work or entertaining you, I am commanded to retreat into a cell of your dungeon. And you warn me to stay my tongue of disrespect to the crown!" He scoffed as if she were the village idiot.

"I know this has been an ordeal for you, I only warn you against goading him into making things worse."

He rolled his eyes, "What more could he do to me?"

"Please, do not tempt fate. There is a saying: 'You catch more flies with honey than vinegar', do you understand?"

"You ask me to befriend the one who enslaves me." He said flatly.

"No, not befriend." Belle shook her head. "I know it is too late for that."

"Then we are finished talking for today." He dismissed her. The girl must be mad to think she could forge any kind of peace within the walls of her castle: the truth of it was that the Dark One would kill the king the moment he was able. But until that day came, the Dark One would keep his role of slave. He just had to be patient. "Show the monument to all who would wish to see it, I must prepare for what your king intends."

Belle closed her eyes, dreading his answer. When she spoke, she was careful not to address her father as king. "What has my father planned for you now?"

"Oh, he intends for us to travel, to visit those friends of the crown and grant them rewards for their loyalty. Jewels and gold, I expect. Others, he intends to repay for their treachery. For them, I expect horror."

"He's going to make you kill."

"Yes."

Belle shook her head. She had known this was coming, but for her father to lash out so quickly, barely a day after touching that damn dagger...to turn this mage into a weapon of defense was one thing, a desperate and necessary thing, but to force him into enacting vengeance?

"I must speak to him, he can't do this-"

"Don't be a naive girl." He snapped at her. "It's as you said, I am a weapon, the only weapon your king has at hand. He would be a fool not to assert his power now that he finally has claim to it."

"You corrupted him!" Belle accused.

This new cruelty she was seeing - it was a side in her father that she had never seen before. She could not reconcile that the man who had loved and mourned her mother, the man who had taught her to ride and swore to protect her above all others, he could not be the same man that had enslaved the mage, humiliated him and now intended to use him in a show of power and instrument of revenge.

The Dark One narrowed his eyes at her, displeased with her words. "Perhaps I have. Or perhaps I have nothing to do with it. Perhaps your king has spent years longing for revenge and my dagger was only the answer to his wishes."

His words seared into her mind, feeding the dark thought that what he was saying was true, that Belle was naive to envision her father as a hero when the reality was that he was only a man - a man who had spent the last decade with the weight of the world on his shoulders, betrayed and abandoned, and so desperate that he'd leapt at the chance to enslave a soul to save his people and then degrade it just as quickly.

"I wish I knew."

"Perhaps it would be better not to know the full truth. This is one of those times."

"I suppose."

They continued on the path in silence for several minutes.

"I am sorry. For everything. I wish I could change all of it."

"None of this is your doing." He shrugged.

"I am an accomplice to your enslavement and every deed my father forces on you." Guilt had settled inside of Belle. She could feel it squeezing her heart, a cold, clawed hand.

He frowned at her words. He didn't blame her, he didn't want her to blame herself. "Don't think that way. You cannot stop what your king has decided. Neither can I."

Belle rubbed at her face. "Is there a potion to go back in time and change things?"

"If there is, I wouldn't use it for this."

An interesting answer.

"What would you change, if you could?"

"Too many things to name." He took a breath, "Those who I will be set after are those who abandoned their people, those who hoped to profit when Avonlea fell. Understand, they could have sent help but they did not. They were content to watch as your people died, much like those gods your clerics speak so highly of. Let their deaths be of comfort to you."

"I can find no comfort in murder!" She shouted, surprising herself.

"Vengeance, then."

"Revenge cannot undo what has already been done." Belle fought the tightness in her throat. "It's not right. You know it's not right."

"No." The Dark One looked to the blue sky he'd gifted to her people, his scaled face shimmering in the early morning sun. Such a strange color he was; green when he turned one way, golden when he turned another, and gray when he was not in the light. Belle watched as he closed his eyes for a moment, his expression relaxing, and she wondered if this was how he looked when he slept. If he slept. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, his expression stern once more when he turned to address her. "But I haven't made it to where I am now by doing the right thing."

Belle nodded, knowing well the truth in his words. She knew the stories but it was so different to know him, the man who built those legends. Here, in this moment, she felt she was seeing something very important. For all his gloating and bravado, the Dark One took no pleasure in this, knowing blood would soon stain his hands.

She reached to him again, taking his hand. His skin was warmer now than it had been the last several times she'd touched him. She brought her other hand over the back of his, lightly stroking the pattern of ridged scales that descended toward his fingers. She held him firm and looked in his eyes. "Please, Dark One. Will you come find me once it's done?"

"If you can bear to see me, then yes."

"I thank you."

The Dark One said no more, vanishing in a swirl of dark smoke.

When it cleared, Belle was alone in the courtyard once more.

The day was warm but the princess shivered.