Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Once upon a time in the hidden heart of France, a shining castle in the hills was home to the joyful and open-hearted. All of the inhabitants, save the Queen, had once been enclosed in a curse, brought about by the greed and apathy of the prince now King. Love and light had returned to these halls, however. Music spilled from once hollow rooms and children ran where once were cobwebbed flagstones.

One such child, a fleet-footed young girl beloved by her parents, grew up with no knowledge of the curse that had seized the castle years ago. She was the first to learn that there were Other powers at work in the world beyond the Enchantress. Agathe’s eyes had turned from the great house of stone to the far-reaches of the world, but colder eyes had settled upon it, for no great a spell as cast by the Enchantress had ever been sent forth, and magic was fading from the deeps.

Magic that was still, like a whisper, in the stones and hearts of the castle and its inhabitants. Magic that might be used. And so, like a carefully tended breeze sent to cultivate a flame, the old magic was stirred.

A child woke with a raging fever and nightmares of flying, and falling.

She fled into the night in a daze, her parents fast after her, but it was too late. Upon the road before the Castle stood a person of great stature and deep ebony airs, a patchwork of cold starlight and water, a shuddering presence. The child stood enthralled. Some of the household, a young boy in their midst, drew forward in fear for the girl, but the air itself seemed to bar their way. The Person told them all that they had come to claim what was theirs. Children of magic were their birthright, as bestowed by the ancients, an order their so-called ‘Enchantress’ had long since turned from. Do not protest, they told them. She will be safe, and I will come again, for those after her. For you.

But the girl’s mother cried out, all bright and tear-filled eyes and flying hair, Non! Never! You will not take her!

The Person had almost enfolded the girl in that feigned night when the little one heard her mother’s cry and awakened as if from a dream, screaming pure fury and fire was in her hair and eyes. The Person fell back as if pierced. A battle of wills, a battle of magic, terrible and golden. Never had a battle of magic been seen to these lands.

Even when the Person vanished into the sky, the child was still screaming.

They never told her of it, and she never remembered, and she never seared in fever again. In time, all things are forgotten, tucked away into the wary, watching recesses of the mind. She grew into a woman, running in the green places and dancing.

But the far eyes of the world never forgot.

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Morning light fell in warm and flecked sheets through the windows. There had been a storm the night before, but they had been left open, the rain and elements welcomed. A woman stretched, lightly brown skin ruddy in the light. She opened her eyes at last. A small battle won. Just in time, too, for the door burst open, a willowy and white-aproned woman framed by it.

“Bien, you are awake! Hurry now!”

Plumette doubtless could have sent someone else, being one of the higher ranking servants of the household (as she liked to remind her husband), but--mon dieu, why hadn’t she sent someone? What was today? Who had died--

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” the older woman admonished, already filling a copper basin and making a general fuss. “Alouette!”

“Of course I didn’t forget,” mumbled Alouette, burying her head. She had forgotten and was asleep again. That is, until the pillow was pulled away, and sheets as well, and she was left without refuge. The thief was airily bustling away with a coy smile, there and gone.

Her eyes snapped open again. Damn.

The castle was a lovely chaos, all light-enshrined hallways and hurrying feet and visitors, a stone carapace for a whirlwind. Today was no exception. She narrowly avoided being plowed over several times on her way out of the stretch of servants’ quarters. Shutters were being flung open, gold and brass polished to mirrors, furniture swept away, messages carried like leaves on a spring breeze.

There had not been an occasion like this for longer than a week.

Which meant everyone was in fits, of course.

“--and make sure the kitchen staff knows!” someone called to an already disappearing back. “We don’t want another event like the--oh, nevermind.” Alouette took the steps two at a time. No bannister sliding today with so many hawkish eyes about.

It was the old majordomo, stout and bent over by great age but still ordering everyone about from his chair, which he had had propped in the entrance hall for maximum ordering ability.

“There you are,” Cogsworth sighted her, squinting. He needed a spyglass. A spyglass would really suit the whole image. “I half expected you to take off with last night’s wind.”

“And leave all the work to old greybeards like yourself? Nothing would get done.”

She laughed over her shoulder at his wagging finger. He had a soft spot for her, though he denied it profusely, and it probably had a lot to do with being her godfather, after all. No, she wouldn’t miss a day of uproar like this for the world. It was the King and Queen’s anniversary tomorrow--one of them, anyway, and it didn’t particularly matter which to the household--and the guests invited were many and varied, the music arranged loud and lovely.

Alouette stood for a moment in the midst of it all, paths crossing with hers and voices echoing up and down the corridors. She tried to imagine it any other way and found she couldn’t.

“Aha! Someone has finally been roused from the tomb.”

She turned, and two almost identical devilish grins were vis-à-vis, albeit one slightly bleary. “What sort of sloth of prehistory does everyone think I am?”

“Have you seen your mother?”

“Seen her? She all but skinned me just a moment ago.”

The suggestions of lines on Lumière’s face were just the echoes of a thousand smiles, largely the reason he still had youth on his brow. Frowns were reserved only for Plumette’s occasional revenges of dust-induced sneezing fits, but the sneezing always lasted longer than the frowns.

(“You old fool, why would a man allergic to dust marry a duster?” “Why did Juliet pierce her breast when Romeo died?” “You didn’t even read Romeo and Juliet, my melodramatic love.” “Arrête! A man tries!”)

“Better run, Lou’ ma cher,” he was saying now, eyes dancing even when he wasn’t. “If she catches you without dusters in your arms--”

“--and you’d know all about that,” Plumette said briskly, whisking by in a literal army of brightly garbed maids. A militia. Alouette found herself being towed after them, swept along in a tide. God knows there was hardly a speck of grime left to abolish in the scrubbed entirety of the castle; it was a bad century to be a bit of dust.

Lou sometimes felt as if she was on the fringe of some long-standing inside joke between her parents, but then, they were only serious when showering elaborate compliments on each other as if they had just met at the market and not been married for two decades.

Still. There was work to be done.

The library was not exactly involved in the festivities, but if Mrs. Potts or another authority mandated cleaning in one part of the household, the entirety usually received the same treatment. Alouette liked the library, but not for the same reasons the Queen did. She liked the feel of the place. Like it was breathing. Books, however, were difficult to read while moving, and so she had long since given up on them. Why read about places when you can see them for yourself, out of your own eyes rather than the eyes of some nosy dead fellow?

“You’re judging my books again, Lou,’ I can see it.”

Alouette spun around. She was distracted today. People kept creeping up on her. She curtsied to the Queen with grace of a girl who had danced since she had walked, and the former she had always done better.

“My queen, you know my voracious and unquenchable passion for reading is second only to yours. And maybe the King’s,” she added.

“For someone who hasn’t picked up a book in several months,” Belle’s lips quirked, though she feinted sternness, “you are awfully quick with your words, young lady.”

Belle had outfitted herself in an apron, her hair--which had only a sprinkling of silver, the luster of springtime still in it--drawn back tightly. The battle between her and the staff was age-old, and even Alouette was something of a veteran. Non, the Queen did not have to do her laundry. Non, she did not have to dust her own rooms. Alouette still had trouble believing that Belle had once been a village girl, but this seemed to be the lasting impression of it.

“Of course,” Alouette said, eyebrows conferring. “I--”

A wave of vertigo washed over her.

Like the whole world had rippled. Or she had. She steadied herself on one of the ladders, dropping the duster as she did so. The sound it made on the floor, like the thud of a falling bird, sounded far away.

“Are you alright, Lou’?”

Alouette realized Belle was closer now, her face drawn taut. In fact, several nearby servants were staring at her. Nom de dieu, she had managed to make a scene, and it was only nine o’clock. What an utter shock.

“Fine,” she said. “Thank you. Mistress. I just--”

Another wave. She felt a sharp burst or spark of hot fear, somewhere deep in her chest. Sickness she could stand. But this was not sickness. This was losing a sense of which way was up.

“I think you should sit down,” Belle said, and before she could protest, Alouette was being seated in the Queen’s own armchair--she gulped--and someone was being sent to get a cup of tea. Alouette muttered, holding her head. A woman couldn’t be dizzy for a moment without someone fetching a mortician. But she smiled weakly at Belle, for if she looked any more green about the gills, it would not be unlike the Queen to convey herself as a physician and bring out some odd contraption or concoction.

She jerked awake. Had she fallen asleep? Or passed out? Belle was still here, sitting now, eyeing a book longingly but set on watching Alouette for signs of injury.

Even this observation seemed fleeting, as if it was drawn away from Alouette as soon as it occurred.

The young woman felt dried out quite suddenly. Spread too thin. Tight, as if she might shatter or...or something. Like she was swimming in oil, and none of it touched her. God. I am confused.

What was this?

“Alouette,” said Belle. Her urge to read had won over her urge to be a watchful matriarch, but she still gave her fixed looks now and then over the weathered spine, and her brown eyes followed passing maids.

“Yes, mistress?”

“Please,” the older woman shook her head, running one finger under the apron string on her shoulder. “Again. I taught you to read. My husband carried you on his shoulders to see fireworks over Villeneuve. I consider you my daughter as much as your parents. I am just Belle.”

“Yes, just Belle?”

Belle’s lips twitched. “So you are well enough to be sardonic. I’m glad. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

Alouette fought the urge to close her eyes to stop the ceiling from masquerading as the floor. This had better not be about Ollie. “I listen intently, madame.”

The Queen cast a searching look about the room again which settled on her last. She sat forward. “I know you’re not happy here.”

Even with a ballet occurring in her innards, Alouette sat up sharply. “Quoi? Non! This is my home!”

“Not like that,” Belle said, calm. Her face assumed an oft look of marble, some nobility captured by an artist. “I mean being a maid. Your parents...well, I can’t imagine their theatre and charm anywhere but here, as part of the staff, but you look at the windows and the mountains out there like you wish you could fly.”

“I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” Alouette said. How many Belles were in front of her? Surely they were not multiplying? She fought a groan and tried to concentrate on whatever daft debate the Queen was holding.

“What I’m trying to say,” Belle forged on, “is that I know that look because I had that look. You want adventure. Or at least a diversion from boredom. You’re bored. That’s what I’m saying.” She sat back, satisfied at having reached the ultimatum, as if Alouette had already agreed and moved on.

Alouette would have bristled and denied it, more out of reflex than truth, but her mother had appeared at the hand of the armchair and was pressing a palm to her forehead as if she was a child again.

“Oh, cherie, you are feverish,” Plumette said. It was unlike her to not acknowledge Belle, but then, this was already a spectacle. “I told you not to leave the windows open in a storm, Lou.’”

Alouette sat dumbly, searching for words to negate it and finding none. She usually enjoyed attention, but not of this sort. Were there shapes in the white light streaming above? The shafts. The shafts of light. They looked strange. Were they birds? Ghosts? Spectacular.

“Very sick,” someone was saying, and she was being picked up. Picked up! She struggled for a moment. She was not a child!

“I’ll see if I can’t get Chapeau to come play for you,” a soothing voice and mustache that accompanied it tickled her ear. Her father. Her father was carrying her. Had they left the library? “That always made you feel better when you were a little one. Remember?”

“--bring her a nice cuppa.”

Merde, was the whole house upside down because of a headcold? Absolutely characteristic. Even Mrs. Potts had joined the procession.

She had been set back down in her bed. Shades were being drawn. People were speaking to her, or perhaps, just one or two people. She might have had some tea.

A storm? Had there been a storm? She could only remember a dark shape at the gate, and a golden light that flared like a distant lantern in the forest. She followed the lantern through a labyrinthine hall of twilight trees into a restless and feverish sleep, but try as she night, she could never see who was carrying it.

Alouette awoke to the same flecked light of that morning, though it was far darker now, and the smell of smoke.

She sat up, clawing against the vice of sheets, disoriented and wild-eyed. In bed in the afternoon? Almost evening! And no one had come to chide her? And tomorrow the anniversary! Or had she slept the whole day and night away and missed that too? Lou finally vanquished the sheets and found she was frightened. That was a rare feat. She hadn’t been frightened since...

There was a cup of tea on her bedside table, and the rug was scuffed aside a little, as if several feet had passed over it. She took in these details with a sweeping glance, eyes hurrying to catch up. Yes, it was almost, if not just, twilight. Everything had a reddish glow to it.

It was then Alouette realized she was on fire.

Chapter Text

If being stuck on a blooming tray could not stop Mrs. Potts, stiff knees would fare no better. At the venerable age of seventy-I-do-not-care, she had spent the afternoon overseeing everything that could be overseen, everywhere at once, giving old Henri a run for his money. That is, if he could still run. An occasion of this importance must not be botched. She was proud of her staff and the house they kept, and she would not be showing it off to God knows how many strangers and familiars in anything less than its best dress.

She stopped to catch her breath, thinking warmly of a bath and a good early dinner. She’d have to have someone send up a platter to poor Lou,’ and douse her in some more tea, for that matter. A thought needled at her mind and she brushed it away. It was no good thinking of Chip, him being where he was.

Come on, old gel,’ Jean would have said. Chin up.

With a private smile, bittersweet though it was, Mrs. Potts had just resolved to see about that platter now when a scream pierced the wing she stood on the fringe of.

She had found its source even as it faded away, choked off. With a business-like determination she had the door open and beheld--Alouette stood in her chemise and stays, her skirts and casaquin torn and burning halfway on the floor. Flames were making a wider ring of black on the bed and were spreading to the carpet, leaping up with a lifelike hunger. All around her. A forest of flames.

The room was burning.

They both made a dash for the yet unemptied wash bin.

“You stay where you are!” Mrs. Potts ordered. “You’ll catch.”

But Alouette came through them, black smoke thickening about their heads and the hem of her singed smock. Someone else had heard the scream--a footman, in the doorway. They already had the bin over the worst of the flames and were pouring the water when he came to their aid.

"Not nearly enough!" the girl exclaimed, hoarse.

Still, it quenched the highest of them, the blaze snaking up the white curtains as if fleeing.

“Get another,” Mrs. Potts ordered the footman, and her steely expression sent him running, shoving past the gathering in the hallway.

“Come out and close the door!” someone shouted from the hallway. “The stone will keep it in.”

“We don’t know that,” Mrs. Potts said, and took up the unburned duvet with trembling hands, though her voice didn’t betray her. Together they beat at the fire with a vengeance. The heat of it, the awful wildness of it, did not dent Mrs. Pott’s stolid expression. It wasn’t as if this was the first time, in a castle of candles. Alouette stumbled back in a fit of coughing. The duvet crumbled in her hands.

As if summoned, her father was in the doorway, shielding his eyes with his shirtsleeve. A flash of gold and he had caught hold of her arm and pulled her behind him.

“Madame, leave this to me,” he exclaimed over the low roar of it, beckoning Mrs. Potts back. “Ah, it's just a bit of fire, non?”

“You can’t, Lumière! You know full well you can’t. We need to get some water in here.”

The round room was almost unrecognizable now. Only a few minutes and it was cracking, red light throwing their throbbing shadows every which way. The flames leaped back, a semicircle of safe floor burgeoning. Before Lumière could do something rash, the footman arrived with another bin, and another after it, and slowly but surely they felled the bright forest, amidst a terrible hiss of smoke. By the time the King himself had threaded through the amassed onlookers, they had flung the windows wide and were practically hanging out of them for want of air. It was indeed a strange sight.

“What’s going on here?”

“Candle fire, Master,” Mrs. Potts said, sighing deeply and wiping her hands on her no less sooty apron. Oh, she needed to sit down. Somewhere soft.

Alouette trembling, scouring the room for a rogue flame. If she was embarrassed to be before a small crowd in her long undergarments, she didn’t show it.

Lumière embraced the girl, his bouteiller finery as ashen as she. God help her when Plumette arrived--she’d be smothered. “It wasn’t your fault. Ne t’en fais pas, mon étoile,” he might have said.

But her eyes were fixed on Mrs. Potts, who had seen a woman burning without a mark upon her. There was a question in her expression, an open and almost childlike one over her father’s shoulder, and it was one that Mrs. Potts found she had no answer to. In all her years, in all the peculiarities she had born witness to...

“It was bound to happen sometime,” Adam said, seeming as he always did to address everyone individually. He gave a fleeting smile, clearly searching for the right soft quip in the face of something that had, only narrowly, avoided catastrophe. Their group dwindled, already the fervor of preparation beginning again, as short and violent as its interruption was.

“I suppose you’re right, sir,” Mrs. Potts said, trying to set her mind to rest.

Yes. It had happened before, and it had again. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“We’ve been very lucky,” Lumière said conversationally, even as he still had his arms wrapped around his daughter. For his comfort or for hers, Mrs. Potts wasn’t certain. “And one more good thing--her fever’s broken.”

In the deeps of the green woods, the meadowed stillness that remained just beyond the ordered near-evening bustle of Villeneuve, a horse came down the road with long strides. She tossed her head, eager to go faster, but her rider was not sure of the way. Other roads had carried him for longer than this one. He drew his hat down over his head in the dusk, though it was not very cold, and looked for the opening in the trees. Perhaps it was overgrown now. Perhaps. He had a young face, a forgettable one, or so he was told, but the same look that would tell the eye of youth would also speak of age.

His own eyes were etched with time. They shone with it. Kind eyes. He pulled his hat all the lower, matted dark hair in disarray and almost to his shoulders.

He trailed riverwater, and sand, and speckles of mud, and most of all, that stale sweat of urgency. Fear.

The trees and thickets drew in close like dark escorts, but it wasn’t this that tightened his face and grip on the reins. No, these trees were not enemies. He had met some that were, on his way. It was a wide world, and a dark one. Ah. The rider came to a cobbled road, the stones only a few years old, matching his stare in the gathering moonlight. Which of those did I lay myself? How many?

At the end of it, he knew, it would be…

A tug on the rein and the horse did a slow about face, apparently reluctant at having given up some elusive chase. She should have been a lord’s horse, the man reflected. On hunting parties, with hounds baying ahead and the heat of pursuit. Should have been.

He had gone too far. Missed a turn. Could he trust his memory if he hadn’t even seen the place?

Stop, he told himself, or some wiser, ingrained voice over the years told himself, smiling mirthlessly. You’re doubting. Doubt does nothing but delay. At last, the horse and rider, shadows of the trees sliding over them like a sharp patchwork, reached a certain opening in the murk, a path that seemed deceptively scant and tracked only by animals. The rider swung one leg over and dismounted, tying his horse out of sight of the road. Were there still wolves? He was something of a wilderling, now, yet it was hard to tell.

He tied the reins loosely.

A short trek through the brisk air and the stars were already fashioning themselves a place in the heavens, but he didn’t look up. He looked ahead.

“So you have come.”

The man whirled, hand on his belt.

She stood as if stitched into time, coldly unchanging. When he had last seen her, she had been taller than terror, fascinatingly beautiful, and golden bright. Long years ago. Thirty years ago, forty. It did not matter. Something between contempt and curiosity pricked him. Unreality. They now stood face to face.

“Agathe,” he said, and the word sounded strange.

“If you like.”

“I don’t like,” he said, and the adult grate of his voice sounded stranger. Before her, he felt as a child. “Not you. And not your curse.”

The Enchantress stood--for that was who she was--robed and hooded. Like a peregrine before she was released on the world, he thought dryly. But something strange: the open tree behind her was hollowed and empty of possessions, and like a commoner, like someone who was not a being of immeasurable power, the woman had bags of herbs and vials and food strung over her back.

She was leaving on an exodus perhaps even longer than his had been.

“You’re going.” More softly.

She nodded, and at this he felt dizzy. He was speaking to her.

“Wait,” he said, as if she might vanish right there. “I need to...my daughter. She’s dying.”

“Yes.”

“Then you can help her?” the man took a step of renewed vigor, his eyes pinpricks of fierce light. “Please. My wife…” He stood, at a loss. All the miles in the world and he had lost the strength to speak. Fighting exhaustion, he stepped closer. “Your curse is killing her. Somehow. I know it.”

“Your wife?”

“My daughter,” he snapped, and then felt ashamed. His knees almost buckled. Stand, silly fool! Have a bit of backbone! came another voice across the years, the phantoms of his childhood, though it was his own mind now that spoke to him so curtly. “She cries, and her skin burns. Her tears boil. And me...I…”

The rider looked down at his hands, and then at her. The silence was filled by the hum of life around the edges of the clearing, the early summer chorus. He waited.

“It is not my doing,” Agathe said quietly.

“What do you mean it’s not your doing? Of course it is. It has to be. Please, I don’t know what else…” He stopped himself from begging. By God, he wouldn’t beg. Not with her standing there as imperturbable as moonlight. “It’s your magic working again. And it’s not fair!”

She’s done nothing. She’s a child. She’s an innocent. So was I, but that didn’t matter. Only she matters now. His thoughts came in fragments, each of them ringing like they did, another mile, another mile. Another mile and Agathe will help you.

“You have to do something,” the man said. “She’ll die if you don’t. She screams like agony.”

“It will pass.”

“You--”

“It will pass,” said the Enchantress, “but not for all. A deeper magic is at work here. An older hand than mine is stirring what should not be. The petals,” she said suddenly, the eyes beneath the hood wide and fixing him where he stood, halfway bent as if struck by a blow. A golden light to them sent chills down his spine.“The petals will save your daughter. But salvation--destruction--think beyond yourself and your daughter, for I can tell little what will divide them.”

The man was numbed to the core, drowning in the torrent of words. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“What begins it will end it,” she said. “Go.”

Thank you. He stumbled on roots in his haste, nearly falling as he tried to mount his horse. Thank you. The pistol at his belt dug into his ribs, and he quivered at the thought of using it. Fool. All a man needs is words, came another phantom voice in his ear, a self-assured whisper and grin. And perhaps manners. But you’ve lost most of those, garçon.

He brushed the voice away like a cobweb.

The castle was just a mile beyond. Another mile.

Another mile. She rode as if a legion was at her back, and it might well be. She rode with her black hair streaming in the night, a riding cloak tied about her. Another mile to the village, the sprinkling of lights in the dip in the land. The wild spontaneity of her action made her dizzy. The flight. But she almost laughed, for at least this wasn’t the sickly vertigo of hours past. This was just her own sort of madness--what her mother called her wanderlust.

No, it was more than that. Her hands clenched. They might at any moment become her enemy, but she mustn’t think like that, non--another mile. Would they be worried? Probably. But they must understand. They would understand.

Faster, Guilland! she wanted to cry.

She thundered past a horseman bent over the saddle, two passing ships in a gray waste of starlight.

Faster!

The chaplain was not in his little chapel when she hammered on the door, bruising her wrist with the blows. It took a certain scrambling of thought and a pinched expression, but she remembered his house and led Guilland there on foot, as fast as she dared in the dark. “Monsieur Robert!” she called, voice catching. She felt very alone in the shadows of his yard, every sharp edge and ordinary article gleaming like razors. “Monsieur!”

The door opened wide, a glow of candlelight bathing the front step. A kind, dark face looked down at the young Frenchwoman through the shadows.

“Let me take your horse,” he said.

Once Guilland was stabled and she was seated inside, Alouette fought for a sense of calm. It was difficult to be agitated around the man, worn and white-haired and quick to smile. She had only spoken to him times enough to count on her right hand, but the Queen trusted him.

“Now, tell me, Alouette,” Père Robert said, settling himself in an amiably groaning chair. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Not, ‘Why the hour? Why the flight?’ for Guilland was heaving for breath, nor ‘It was dangerous to go alone.’ Alouette sucked air through her teeth sharply.

“Minister,” she said, “I think I am possessed.”

She listened to the small fire whisper, flinching at every pop of firewood. He steepled his hands at his throat in thought. What would he do? Exorcise her? Cast her out? Alouette shivered and wished for home. But she’d come this far.

Finally, he made a noncommittal sound and nudged a bowl on a hearthside table towards her. “Have a cherry.”

“Monsieur, I don’t think you understand--”

“I understand,” Père Robert smiled, and her forced calm was almost ruffled. Another prod and the bowl slid closer, but not before he had a cherry himself. “I think. But the cherries are in season. Someone’s got to eat them.”

“Monsieur,” Alouette started, a wild, careening edge to her voice, “Earlier today. I burned. But I didn’t burn. The fire didn’t touch me. And my room...it’s in cinders.” She started to swear but remembered who she was speaking to. “Does that not sound demonic to you, Monsieur Robert? The work of the devil?”

He examined the cherry pit, smile fading a little. “A long time ago--”

“But this happened now, monsieur.”

Père Robert gave her his first stern look, eyebrows bristling slightly, and her mouth closed. Then his easy smile returned, faint now, but steady. “A long time ago, I watched a village in uproar over such claims. Dark magic. Evil. I, above all of them, should have been outraged, yes? I pray to a God of light, not of magic.” With a gentle toss, the cherry pit was in the fire. “But I saw something, young Alouette. It was your Queen, our Belle. She was in love. I have come to understand that not all magic is evil, and most evil is neither magic nor diabolical. Love is a kind of magic, after all.”

Alouette’s mouth had opened again. It was all well and good for the minister to sit there, pleased with his addages and lovely tales--which were not wrong, not by any stretch of the imagination--but she might be sitting here tainted by evil, and he is content to eat cherries!

Robert laughed, but not at her. “I understand. Calme-toi, my lady. You are not possessed.”

“But the fire--”

“Was something I do not understand,” he said, “at all, actually. But not that. You know of the curse, of course?”

The young woman felt her skin prickle. She knew of a curse, a vague and hazy picture of one curse, painted by soft discussions and reminiscent gossiping. Perhaps an imagination of her childhood. At worst, a witch’s ramblings against the Prince, or his family. Some long forgotten ill luck or foreboding.

“Alouette?” Père Robert looked troubled for the first time. “You do know of the curse?”

Not wanting to appear ignorant, Alouette nodded, and he looked relieved.

“Then you know,” he went on, “of Agathe.” Her silence was heavy. At last, Père Robert’s dark eyes seemed to glean the truth, but he forged on as if hoping he was incorrect. “It is likely some strange remnant, some echo, of that magic. I don’t know how but…” A puzzled smile twitched. “As to the origin of the fire not harming you, I can guess.”

Alouette eyed the cherries. She had not gone this long without speaking in perhaps her entire life, but in the face of confusing fantasy coming from a minister, of all people, she had only the silence.

“Did they tell you that Belle broke a curse that, if not for her love and the--and the King’s, would have remained on the castle forever?” he burst out at last. “Would have destroyed your parents and everyone else in it?”

“Non,” Alouette’s silence broke, mouth contorted. “No. Never. I have absolutely no idea what you speak of.”

“Goddamn.”

“Minister!”

Chapter Text

The darkness pressed on the windows of his chambers. Grand chambers, to be sure. But not cold. Never cold. His mother had filled them with books, and his father had read to him whenever he was plagued by nightmares. His playing grounds had been like the library of Alexandria, a kingdom of stories far grander, even, than the one he would someday sit as guardian of. Now he stared into the mirror unseeingly. He was afraid of seeing a change, but he was more afraid of finding no change at all.

Behind him was devastation.

The room was, though he did not know it, just an unburned echo of a ravaged room several floors below. Tables had been broken. The sheets torn. And the books…pages were strewn about, a snow of paper that he couldn’t bear to look at. It plucked at his heart. His mother had turned those pages, lost in a world of words, but never so lost as to not look up at him and smile as if they shared a secret. His father had read those books, had damn near recited them, in his deep voice that he could somehow make into that of all characters, even the silly ones.

It was a wonder someone had not heard Oliviend.

His hands were bleeding. They might be broken. He doubted it though. It was just splinters, just glass. Just his childhood under his skin.

Why?

The Prince could barely remember doing it. It was a dream, like the blurry and distorted ones you have in a fever. He was trembling, and his hands were bleeding, and his--

A knock at the door.

“Please wait,” he said, and was surprised to find he sounded calm. Content, even. The horror of minutes ago had passed like the dream it was, and when he opened his eyes, it would all be...still there. It was still there. “I’m coming. One moment.”

In the brightly lit hallway beyond, Adrien, a page he knew well. Surely almost a footman; they were not so far apart in age. Oliviend was not overly muscular, but what breadth he had he used to block the doorway. Adrien didn’t even look.

“There is a visitor downstairs, master,” said the page. A small smile. “You told me to tell you if ever anyone interesting arrived in the night.”

He had really taken that childhood musing to heart. How long at it been? Oliviend could almost have grinned, laughed even, if not for the growing feeling of unmooring.

“Thank you, Adrien,” he said, absently. Green eyes held brown. The page might almost have spoken--he could hear him, as he could sometimes, a sort of empathy--Is something wrong, master?--but he didn’t, and Adrien strode away with a respectful nod.

Oliviend could breathe again. His hands, carefully hidden behind his back, would not do. With steady fingers, he tore his shirt and bandaged them, and then pulled winter gloves on. The least elaborate he could find. Who had given him these? Ah, Chapeau. Chapeau, who had taught him to play violin. Was the violin intact?

Focus.

Adrift in whatever spell held him, Oliviend found what clothes he could that were not damaged and followed the steadfast candles in the halls, down to the great stairs and the dining room.

What sort of visitor might this be that he was not being given a grand and noisy welcome? Lumière must be asleep. That would be the reason for the quiet.

At last, his feet carried him to the kitchen, to the smell of something warm bubbling on the stove. No, Lumière was not asleep. And Mrs. Potts, and Plumette, and several cooks, halfway listening and halfway cooking--they were not asleep either. If anyone noticed him come in, no one said anything.

Oliviend moved into the light. Sitting at the round table, tearing into some bread, was a man.

His face was not gaunt per se, but it had a stretched quality, and the shadows under his eyes were dark and deep. Oliviend was struck by a sudden memory of seeing a young man, a teenager, with mischievous eyes and something like Lumière about him, as if he was the debonair boutillier’s prodigy. And Mrs. Potts, she was always around him. His mother. Their smile was the same, and a warm one. Or it had been. He was not smiling now.

This was Chip.

“--and never answering my letters,” Mrs. Potts was saying, somewhere between delivering an angry tongue-lashing and throwing herself across the table to embrace him. “Ten months! Ten months, Chip! And your father…”

Her voice died away. If Oliviend did not know better, he would have thought tears had filled the old woman’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” the man said at last. “I’m sorry, mum. It’s been…” He caught sight of Oliviend, and for the first time, Lumière and Plumette looked about. He realized that they were hovering together, not entirely concentrating on what Chip was saying.

Alouette, Oliviend realized. Where was Lou?

“Prince,” Plumette murmured, and Lumière gave some distracted semblance of a bow.

“...it’s been bad,” Chip finished finally, still looking at Oliviend, and continuously picking at his bread. The man’s hair was as dirty as the man himself, the prince realized. Uncombed and uncared for. Oliviend probably didn’t look much better, thinking of his shredded wig upstairs and feeling queasy, though not for the wig’s sake.

“What has been? Chip, what’s wrong?” Mrs. Potts said, voice querulous, but a note of iron in it. “And why now? Why didn’t you write?”

“My daughter,” he said, but stopped. “My wife. Simone. She left, or vanished. I looked for her a long time but I suppose she didn’t want to be found. And Rose…” His face darkened. “Serves me right.”

Was the man mad? Mrs. Potts looked at a loss for words, and after standing there, hesitating, she busied herself making a pot of tea. Oliviend felt something in him relax at the sight of it. Things would be alright. Nevermind the fact Lumière was gripping a chair hard enough to make it squeal, if it could. Nevermind Plumette’s eyes boring into an unobtrusive dried herb hanging from the ceiling.

Nevermind Alouette slipping into the kitchen as silent as a shadow, hoping not to be--Alouette!

There was some significant shared looks in that moment. Lumière and Plumette seemed to have resolved not to muddle an already tense situation between the Potts by speaking, something unheard of to date, but Alouette stood her ground remarkably well against the meaningful stares she received from her parents. He suspected it was because she could replicate both unique stares at once and reflect them back, like a kind of signal mirror.

Yes, this was not the first time she had come in out of the night, trailing leaves and wayfare, and--she might have been angry. Yes, she certainly seemed it. Alouette, angry and smelling of a flight on horseback. Could this night get any more strange?

“Christopher,” Alouette said, eyes lighting on the man at the table. His hand paused halfway to his mouth.

“Hello, little bird,” he said, and for the first time, a kind of plucky smile took shape on his face.

It must be a face that was intended to be happy, because now Oliviend remembered him more clearly.

“Oh, Chip,” Mrs. Potts diverted her course to the teabags and instead enveloped him in a hug. Slowly but tightly, his arms inched around and returned it. Everyone in the room exhaled. The cooks were openly watching now; something was burning on the stove, and a woman’s spoon had been stirring in the same place for several minutes. When they noticed the Prince watching, bemused and amused, they jumped and sheepishly got back to it.

“Alright,” Plumette said, with the sort of voice that made everyone look at her. Although everyone tended to do that anyway. Like his mother, Oliviend reflected, her beauty was as much in the way she carried herself as in her appearance. “Let’s leave the Potts to their supper. Allons-y! To bed! We have a ball tomorrow, yes? We can’t show tired faces to the King and Queen.”

Oliviend realized he himself was included in this order, and another thing seemed set right. It had been so long since the staff had spoken to him with unquestioned authority, except perhaps Cogsworth, who hadn’t yet found someone who couldn’t use some speaking to with unquestioned authority.

“To bed at once!”

They were shepherded out of the kitchen, leaving a mother and son with many long years to fill, and many cups of tea. Oliviend, when he at last found himself beside Alouette in the hall, saw his own expression on her face; that sense of unmooring. They had drawn apart in recent years--two different paths to walk, she said--and yet, unsurprisingly, their paths had again converged. But she also seemed to have a newfound knowing, some new lens she turned on him as she looked, and he was resolved to know of what. What did she now see?

“Dance with me tomorrow, Lou,’” he said.

“But you must ask me like a gentleman, Ollie.”

He got down on one knee. It was the wrong knee, and the wrong etiquette, but the thought was there. “Would your esteemed self be troubled to bestow a mercy on this unworthy dreamer and join him for a dance, as befits the occasion?”

Alouette ruffled his hair. “You read too much, mon ami.”

“Fair enough.”

They parted ways (as they always would), and Oliviend thought of spending the night in his shattered room. He was a man of thoughts rather than action, usually. Always slightly awed by Lou’s energy and resolution. A shard of thought snagged him, like those unpleasant constellations of splinters in his hands. What if it happened again? Savagery. Heedless savagery. It frightened him.

Blood had begun to seep through his gloves, another thing ruined.

Still, as long as it was only things, and not people, that this touched.

“He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, he’s gone? He cannot be gone. Not so soon.”

“I saw him leave. Ride out, I mean.”

Plumette turned on the balcony, and Lumière fell in love with her for yet another time. He had stopped keeping count. He’d never been very good with numbers. She was like a springtime of her own, a flushed and bright flower in the snow...

“Lumière,” she said firmly, though her eyes were smiling, “You were telling me something, remember.”

“Ah. Oui.” He looked out across the gardens, the green maze they had danced through, grass pricking at their stockings. “I can’t understand the boy. Here and gone, like une rafale de vent.”

“Not a boy anymore,” Plumette reminded him, and now they were standing with their shoulders touching, sharing the sunrise. “Anymore than our Lou’ is a little girl.”

“I’m worried about her."

“She will speak in her own time,” she said, as she had last night. “What matters is she is safe.”

Lumière nodded, wishing very hard that he could believe his wife’s wisdom and seeking the warmth of her hand with his own. They stood like that for a long while. He tried, he really did, not to think of the September night, the rigid fear of it, with the Person at the gate and Alouette…but They had gone, they had fled into the black...

“Lumière,” Plumette said suddenly, “If she wasn’t safe. If she wasn’t...well.” She sighed. “Je ne sais pas. I have dreams, that is all.”

“I have dreams too.”

“I imagine you do,” Plumette smiled, the kind where her lips disappeared entirely because she was teasing or trying not to laugh, he did love that particular smile, though the involvement of her lips was usually…

“Ah, pardon, what were you saying?”

“Nothing.”

He squeezed her hand. “We will look after her, darling. Nothing happens here. Not anymore. I promise."