The Dark One and Belle were walking around the gardens that day after Bae's lessons. Belle told the Dark One how, earlier, Bae had insisted she play the princess while Bae, Crystal, and Bianca were the brave knights who rescued her from the dragon (a largish bird borrowed from the dovecote). Belle fed the dragon breadcrumbs to keep it from flying away too soon. When it finally did fly off—all the yelling and wooden swords being waved about were making the dragon nervous—they ran about even more, yelling that they were dodging fire while the dragon tried to kill them. At one point, Bianca declared that she hadn't gotten out of the way of the fire in time and was about to die. She also told them they must all be very sad and cry for her. This led to an argument. Crystal, who was seven, didn't see any reason she should act like a crybaby, especially when it was Bianca's own fault for not being careful. Bae didn't see why Bianca should be dying in the first place. It was only a dragon. It wasn't like it was an Ogre or something scary. Bianca declared that she should so be dying and that Crystal must be an Ogre if she couldn't cry for her sister when a dragon had killed her. Crystal said, if Ogres cried for their sisters, then they were big crybabies, too.

Belle had interrupted the fight by pointing to the sky and saying, "Oh, no! The dragon is coming back! Save me, good knights, save me!" and the debate on death and the mourning habits of Ogres was tabled as they drove back the dragon, waving their swords, then led Belle to safety on the other side of the garden.

Everything would have ended happily, except Crystal told Bae that the boy-knight always had to be kissed by the beautiful maiden after a rescue. Bianca thought that meant her and grabbed Bae.

"Bae ran to me, screaming. He said he had girl-ooze all over him," Belle told him. "He had to wash his face before it poisoned him."

The Dark One laughed. "Girl-ooze? Where did he get a phrase like that?"

"It's what the children say—or the ones at the castle did. I think it's because the healers were always talking about wounds oozing, especially when they're bad."

Belle treasured the moments like this, walking peacefully in the warm sun and laughing about innocent games the children played. She also (she admitted this to herself) enjoyed being with the Dark One. She didn't know if she should. Remembering how she'd begun to feel safe around him before the night in the inn, she wondered how badly she would pay for enjoying the quiet, safe feeling of their time together. But, perhaps, she told herself, it would be worth it.

Or not. The Dark One was already giving Belle a sideways look, the one that meant he had something difficult to tell her. "I went to the Marchlands," he said carefully. "To see Lord Maurice."

Belle felt hot and cold. "Did he—did he ask after me?"

"We spoke of you," the Dark One shifted like a guilty child, not sure he should make his confession. "He called you his precious child."

Belle stopped. The blood thundered in her ears. She could not have heard that right. She could not have.

"He called me his . . . his child?"

"I asked. It was said in confidence. Just to me. But, yes, he did. Here, you need to sit down."

Although Belle usually flinched when the Dark One touched her, she hardly noticed this time as he put his hands on her arms, helping to steady her and helped her sit on a marble bench (there had been no marble bench there before. Had there?). "He never—he told me I must never ask. He would never say—he really said that? He admitted it, that he's my father?"

The Dark One nodded, watching her uncertainly. "It means so much to you?"

Belle shook her head. "I don't know. I don't. . . . When Maurice brought us off the ship, I was so afraid he'd send us back. Or, if something went wrong, if Gaston—if he—" If he tired of me. If I bored him. If Maurice died, and it was no longer worth Gaston's time to keep Maurice's bastard as a pet. If he decided Bae was a danger to him. "—if he decided not to be my . . . protector any longer. If he threw me on the streets." Belle shut her eyes, trying not to remember what that could mean, trying not to remember the darkness of the ship's hold and men taking their turns with her. She remembered one of them slapping her across the face when she cried and another pulling him back.

"Not the face," he'd said. "The captain's particular about that. Don't mark her face."

If Maurice acknowledged her, doors that would be slammed in the face of a lord's rejected, penniless mistress—especially if he wanted her son out of the way—would be opened for the last living child of Lord Maurice, even if she wasn't an heir.

But, though she told herself that was all that mattered, it wasn't. His precious child.

She had lost everything. Her mother, Claude, then Rumplestiltskin, even the village where she could have mourned alongside friends and neighbors who had suffered the same, terrible loss. She had no family, no kin. In Maurice's court where she had no power beyond Gaston's favor and where the simplest conversations could hide deadly traps for her and her son, she had had no friends.

For Maurice to admit he was her father, to admit she—and Bae—were family was everything. "It means we're not alone anymore," Belle said. She flushed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—you've done so much for us—I don't—"

The Dark One waved this aside. "Your family," he said. "I understand." He started to say something else, then, seemed to think better of it. "Your mother," he said. "And Lord Maurice. Do you—do you know how things were between them?"

If the Dark One had been a member of Maurice's court asking this—and if she'd been allowed to speak of Maurice as her father—she would have thought he wanted gossip, a salacious story he could repeat about the courtesan's wanton mother. But, his inhuman eyes seemed kind and a little . . . sad?

Oddly, she thought of Rumplestiltskin. The Dark One's scaled face was nothing like her husband's, of course, but she found herself remembering the way Rumplestiltskin had sometimes looked at her when they were first courting. He had the same odd mix of uncertainty with flashes of hope.

But, not the sadness, she thought. Rumplestiltskin had never looked at her with such sadness.

It was a mad thought, anyway. He was the Dark One, a frightening, powerful wizard. Belle tried not to forget what he was. She remembered the night at the inn and everything that had happened after until she nearly died in the snow.

It was only that, since then, things had changed between them. Belle knew how dangerous trust could be. But . . . he was always so careful around her, trying so hard not to hurt her again.

Not sure if it was the right thing to do, she found herself answering him as if Rumplestiltskin had asked the question. "My mother was a strong woman," Belle said. "Stronger than I am. They always tell you women in the Frontlands are like the land around them, hard as stone. Unyielding. Men die on the mountains or in the wars, and the women keep going. My mother wasn't born to it, but she had a Frontlands soul. Do you know, she was pounding on doors, waking people up when the Ogres attacked? Telling them not to waste time getting dressed, just to grab their things and run." Belle smiled ruefully. "She used to read up on battles when she was a girl. She had a fair grasp of battle tactics, Uncle Claude used to say, which meant she was very good. She understood what the Ogres were doing. They weren't attacking the village, they were breaking the dam." The Ogres had expected the people to huddle in their houses, getting ready for an attack, Claude said. They never would have stood a chance when the dam broke.

It was what she had wanted ever since she had been a little girl, Claude told her, to be the hero and save the day. If only she had had a chance to slay the beasts, it would have been perfect.

That was the kind of hero Maurice had been, Belle thought. At least, in the tales told of him. Brave and valiant, noble in battle. He must have been everything her mother adored.

"Maurice was a great hero in his younger days," she told the Dark One, trying to make him understand. "There are ballads about battles he fought, even before he saved the king's life. I think—I think my mother idolized him. Then, she was sent to live with him and Rosamonde—Rosamonde wanted my mother to have strong ties to the Marchlands. She was expected to strengthen Maurice's ties to whatever lord she married, you see, and . . . well, it doesn't matter, now.

"When Rosamonde fell ill, my mother was the one who nursed her—in the Marchlands, healing is a woman's art. Or a cleric's. I was told, when she first fell ill, they expected Rosamonde to either die or get better. It's what usually happens, isn't it? No one expected her illness to just go as it was for years.

"Maurice was by Rosamonde's bedside all that time, night and day, praying for her to get well, afraid she would die at any moment. I'm told he went days without sleep, afraid of losing her the instant he closed his eyes.

"I suppose . . . my mother looked a great deal like Rosamonde. Only much younger. There were fifteen years between them. She was about the age Rosamonde was when she and Maurice married.

"I can see how it happened. There was Rosamonde, on the brink of death; there was Maurice, wishing more than anything Rosamonde would be the young, healthy woman he remembered; and there was my mother, looking exactly like the answer to that prayer. They were together all the time, bound by the same griefs and fears. My mother saw the hero she'd always imagined—I've seen a portrait of Maurice back then. You might not believe it now, but he looked like everyone's idea of the perfect knight in those days." A more golden haired version of Gaston, she thought, if a bit heavier and more muscled. "I suppose that was reason enough for it."

"So . . . Elise wasn't angry with him?"

Belle laughed bitterly. Her mother may not have told Belle much about her father—and what she did tell her was carefully respectful, her mother thought she knew better than to cut down a father to his child—but Belle had heard all her warnings about good men and bad men and what to look for in a husband she could trust.

Belle had thought her mother so wise then. She still did in many ways. But, her mother had known so little about the pain men could cause, whatever she'd believed.

"Oh, she was angry with Maurice," Belle said. "She was furious. Sometimes—sometimes I think—Maurice was so much older than her. He was acting as her guardian. He was her hero. And—and he—" But, Belle couldn't find the right words. What could she say? She was a commoner, no matter what Maurice had said to the Dark One, and there were crimes commoners never accused great lords of, no matter what the circumstances.

She remembered the burning pain on her back. She couldn't accuse a common sailor, not even if she'd seen his crimes with her own eyes.

But, the Dark One said what she couldn't. "He seduced her, that's what you think." Politically phrased, Belle thought. But, he said it oddly, with none of the mocking sneer Belle would have expected. If anything, he sounded as if letting go of a great weight.

"You sound relieved."

The Dark One ducked his head, embarrassed. "I am. I'd thought . . . worse things, much worse things. I'm—" he floundered. Were Dark Ones supposed to flounder like that? It didn't seem something evil wizards would do. "—I'm glad it's—it's not what I feared."

Belle looked away, understanding what he meant. "Did you know, they say a child's soul is created from the parents'. When they come together in love, they give that love to their child. If they come together in cruelty, in hate . . . maybe that's what I am. Jones used to say—" Belle stopped, swallowing back bile as memories hit her, making her sick.

No. These were just memories. They had no power. It meant nothing. She slowed her breathing, trying to find a still, quiet place in her heart.

There. Better.

She took a deep breath, focusing her thoughts on that calm, unmoving feeling inside, not letting memories get in the way of the words. "—used to say I deserved it. Had asked for it." He said I wanted it. "The things—the things—" the things he did "—that happened to me. Is—is that what you think? When you look at me? Is that why you thought Maurice had—had—" Her voice fluttered, like a trapped bird beating itself against stone. Was that what he saw? The Dark One was a powerful wizard (the most powerful wizard around, in his not-so-humble opinion). She thought he would know about souls, more than she ever could.

But, when she dared to look at him, he was staring at her, horrified. Then, his horror changed to anger. Belle cringed back at the fury she saw in his eyes, though the Dark One didn't seem to notice. "I'd like a chance to discuss philosophy with the good captain. Pity he's dead," he growled. Belle, seeing that anger, thought she should feel sorry for Jones. She couldn't do it but she ought to.

The Dark One turned his attention back to Belle. The anger had gone as quickly as it came, leaving just that wistful sadness. "If looking at you, at your soul, told me what your parents were like and what brought them together, I would know they had the purest love of any who ever lived. But, that's not how it works."

Belle shook her head. Rumplestiltskin. She could imagine him saying something like that. She remembered the way he looked at her, as if he couldn't believe there was someone like her in the world or, if there was, that she could possibly be in love with him.

He'd been wrong about her. And so was the Dark One. She thought about everything that had happened since her husband died, the things she'd done. Every day she breathed had been a betrayal of his memory. "Have you ever heard the story of the siren?" she asked. "When you see her, she looks like the face of love. But, it's only what she seems to be. It's not what she is inside."

"I've met the siren," the Dark One said. "Believe me, there's no confusing the pair of you."

"You met her?" Belle stared at him, knowing she should stop being surprised at the things he told her, not that telling herself that seemed to make a difference. "Didn't she try to drown you?"

"She could try all she wanted, dearie. I don't drown."

He looked so impossibly self-satisfied, Belle couldn't help laughing. It was one of the ways he wasn't like Rumplestiltskin. Although . . . Belle remembered when Rumple set off for war, his smile, the jaunty confidence in his step. He hadn't been afraid of dying, not then. She wondered what he would have been like as a wizard. Yes, he would have laughed. He would have enjoyed what he'd become.

Belle shook her head, putting her ridiculous imaginings aside, and turning her thoughts back to her companion. "Is that because you're a wizard? Or is that because your people just don't drown?"

"Oh, crocodiles can drown, given enough time. I'd suggest bringing a book, a big one, if you wanted to wait while it happened. But, it would. Eventually. I just didn't bother drowning. Once I'd made that point clear, she and I had a discussion about the proper receiving of guests. We came to an understanding. I let her live and she gave me what I came for."

"What you . . . came for?" Belle asked uncertainly. It was something Gaston or one of his companions might have said discussing a woman. It was always like this, she thought. She would be feel comfortable, even safe. Till small, insignificant things, a handful of words, a turn of phrase, made her wonder if that safety had been an illusion all along.

The Dark One's eyes widened. "Ah," he said, running his tongue over his lips as if the double meaning she had just brought to his attention could have left and aftertaste. "Forgive me, my lady, I didn't mean. . . . My tongue runs away from me, sometimes. The waters of the siren's lake have healing powers. That's what I'd come for. That's why I didn't destroy her. Destroy her, and the waters also die."

"Oh." It was Belle's turn to be embarrassed for how she'd misunderstood. "What—what did she look like?"

The Dark One was silent a long time. "The face of love," he said at last, looking away from Belle. "I was angry when I saw it," he said. "I told her to never dare show that face to me again or I would make a loom out of her bones and use her skull for a drinking cup." Belle shuddered at the anger in his voice. It was too close to the anger he'd aimed at her when she first came to the Dark Castle. When she reminded him of his wife, she thought. Was that the face the siren had worn, then?

His anger passed and the Dark One's voice softened. "But, I told you, I didn't kill her. I didn't even hurt her, not really. I left her in the bottom of her lake in her house of dead men's bones. She hid herself there, out of sight, so I wouldn't have to see her. I don't know if she can wear a different face than the one she was made to, the faces of the people her victims love. I've taken water from the lake since then, but she's never shown herself to me again."

The Dark One looked at Belle again and saw how she was looking at him. "I'm sorry, my lady. I'm a monster, much as I try not to be."

Belle pulled her shawl closer around her. "It sounds like she was a monster, too. The dead men's bones, they were men she'd killed?"

"Some of them. I think the mermaids bring her more, the bones of men who've drowned at sea. They're her cousins, you know. But, she's killed many men, perhaps enough to make the house I saw. You can still hear their cries as the water flows through their bones."

And yet, he'd let her live. Because, the waters of her lake were too valuable to destroy. And, no matter what he said, because he hadn't been able to destroy a woman who'd worn the face she'd shown him. Silence was too painful. Belle tried to think of something else to say. "The stories all talk about men trying to steal her waters and being caught by her. Don't women ever try?"

"Ah, the lake's powers are interesting in that regard. A man who comes must face the siren. A woman who tries to draw out water without the siren's permission will be transformed and become a creature of the lake."

Oh. That would be a problem. "And children?"

His yellow eyes darkened. "The same. Boys, she drowns. Girls, she changes. But, only if they can get near the waters." He got that self-satisfied look again. "Thick thorns grow all around it, for some reason, and stones block up the way. Children, heroes, they all have a great deal of trouble getting anywhere near it."

Just then, Bae came running up to them, scratched and covered with dirt, holding an abandoned bird's nest he'd found while climbing a tree. Belle knew the signs of birds and beasts in the Frontlands but not in this mountain kingdom. She couldn't answer Bae's questions about what kind of bird had left it. The Dark One, however, nodded wisely over the nest and began to tell Bae about a bird called the ice swallow.

X

Belle was right. Rumplestiltskin had felt relieved when she told him what she believed about her parents. If nothing else, he didn't have to choose between avenging his mother-in-law and doing something Belle would never forgive. Maurice's conviction that everything Elise had done with her life after fleeing the Marchlands was revenge against him was just his guilty conscience. Deep down, he knew how much harm he'd done her and that all the hardships she'd endured were because of him. And, great man that he was, be blamed Elise's "revenge" for the discomfort his guilt caused him.

Rumplestiltskin thought of the Elise he remembered. She'd been a hard woman, in her way, as Belle had said. She made her own choices and accepted the consequences, good or bad. It had been hard to imagine Maurice being able to go up against a woman like that and take what she wasn't willing to give.

But, Elise's strength was all in her fiery soul, not in her small body. Rumplestiltskin knew from experience that winning a battle of wills wasn't the same as winning a battle. If it had been, he would have bet his will against Hordor's any day, especially when it came to protecting Morraine. He would never have needed the Dark One's dagger to save her.

If strength of will were all that was necessary, Belle would never have suffered any of the horrors that had left scars on her back and the hidden places of her body. Lady Rosamonde, who could order her husband from her sickbed to cut out her still living heart and use it as she commanded, would have driven back the Ogres with a word. She could have commanded the disease ravaging her flesh to depart and been obeyed. Will alone wasn't enough.

Besides, the Elise he'd known was who she had become over twenty years after fleeing the man who should have been her protector, the man who should have been the hero she'd worshipped, after he'd proven far too human and weak. If that girl had still lived inside Elise, she had been too deeply guarded for him to ever see her.

Only her man-at-arms, Claude, the loyal servant who had helped Elise in her escape and watched over her—and given her the patina of respectability that a young woman with child and claiming widowhood needed to back up her claim—he was the only one who knew that girl. And, whatever she'd been through and whatever she feared to return to, he had judged it worth giving up the life he might have had if he'd stayed behind—he'd judged it worth Elise's own decision to give up the life of a noblewoman for the life of a not-too-badly-off peasant (say what you would about mother-in-law and her hard sensibleness, she was far too practical to flee without taking money with her).

Claude had been the one to bring them news of Elise's death. He had wept at some points (something Rumplestiltskin hadn't known he could do), laughed at others (a sight even stranger than his tears, but what else could he do when describing how Elise met death on her own terms? That small, almost doll-sized woman stealing away the lives the Ogres would have taken and defying them to the last?). He had left a message, Rumplestiltskin remembered. He'd told Belle only to open it if she were truly in great need and under no other circumstances. That and her mother's ring were the only inheritance Elise had left her. The rest, Elise's house and land, whatever coins and other belongings she had left, had been drowned in the flood. Elise wasn't a crocodile, to spend slow hours at the water's bottom before surfacing unscathed.

The letter had been gone along with Belle when Rumplestiltskin returned.

He should ask her, he thought. He didn't think she'd taken it with her. Maurice may have been a fool, but he was probably right about Jones. If he'd seen a letter sealed with a noble's crest and telling Belle the truth of her birth, he'd have delivered her to Maurice (and claimed whatever reward he could for a job well done).

Or killed her to hide the evidence.

At the very least, he'd never have set port in the Marchlands unless he was willing face Maurice and answer some hard questions. Maurice may have been a fool, but Jones couldn't know he would be.

But, Rumplestiltskin had pressed Belle enough for one day. He'd forgotten the old wives tales about souls. There was a little truth to them. Strange forces could be conjured in a child from the forces in their parents' hearts. Take little Princess Emma, daughter of Snow and Charming, who had far more magical gifts than her parents yet suspected, her birthright as daughter and granddaughter of true love. Alas that intelligence didn't run in her family. As for Bae, he might have been born long before Rumplestiltskin came into his curse, but he was the child of the Dark One. He was not untouched by power.

But, those powers didn't shape the soul. As an old hermit had once told Rumplestiltskin (they had engaged in a long battle of wits before the hermit finally gave Rumplestiltskin an amulet he'd needed), if you did not make the choices that are your sins, how can you repent? No one was born to be punished.

Although (Rumplestiltskin reflected on his own life), some of them worked awfully quickly at changing what they deserved.

For now, though, he was trying to show Belle and Bae gentle, pleasant things. He picked up a fallen leaf from the grass and transformed it into a small bird, to show them what an ice swallow looked like. It sat on Bae's fingers. Belle knelt beside her son while he showed it to her. Then, the bird flicked its wings, flew around them, and settled back on Bae's hand before becoming a leaf again.

Bae was asking Rumplestiltskin to change it back when Goodman Dove walked up to them. "There was a messenger at the door," he said.

Belle got up, brushing leaves from her skirt. She looked curious. "A messenger? Did you show him in?"

"No, my lady. He wouldn't stay. But, he gave me this to give to you." He handed over a thick letter, sealed with wax. Rumplestiltskin recognized the seal. It was the same as the crest on Belle's necklace. Belle opened it up and quickly scanned it. She turned pale.

"It's Gaston," she said. "He's coming here."