Once Richard had finally worn himself out and was sleeping as peacefully as only the soulless could after the day they’d had, Belle rose from his bed, wrapped herself in a dressing gown, and snuck into the outer chamber of the prince’s quarters in this guest house.

The fire in the enormous stone fireplace had burned down to embers, so the room was frigid, but Belle had no interest in retreating back to bed. She pulled a few logs from beside the fireplace and set them carefully atop the embers before settling to a cross-legged seat on the icy hearth.

She was nervous to try her magic—she’d spent half the day without it, and the other half using it to desperately keep Richard from exploding. Could she trust herself to use it now to stoke this fire back to life? Fire was a temperamental beast and took a sure, calm touch to keep from getting burned. Or a sure, calm tongue.

Belle closed her eyes and focused on the sensation of freezing stone beneath her, bleeding through her nightgown. She let the frigid feeling against the skin of her thighs pull her into her own body, followed it up to a tension she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding in her hips. She had begun to shiver from the cold, and it emphasized the aching up her back and over her shoulders, a soreness in her belly. She’d been holding her mind so rigid, so controlled all day, and her body had followed suit.

The body was the greatest tool for the practitioner of movement magic—if her muscles were all in knots, her magic would be as well. Sure enough, when she looked within, the pathways of magic through her were tangled and dammed. She swirled the fingers of both hands along her hips, just as the healers had taught her long ago, massaging the taut, twisted trails of magic until they began to loosen.

Maybe, she thought to herself, this was why she so enjoyed the laborious, tedious task of detangling her mess of hair—it was so similar to this process of detangling the knots of her magic, something she had always done before and after a performance in the circus, to protect her body. And detangling her hair could be done even when she couldn’t see magic. Even when there was no magic.

When Belle had smoothed the flow of her magic enough that she was confident she could safely sweet talk the fire back to life, she leaned forward and whispered,

“Tsurhen.”

With the touch of her breath, the embers burst into flame, engulfing the logs and startling Belle backwards at the surge of heat. She quickly touched her eyebrows to make sure they were still on her face. It might have been a better idea to detangle her magic further before playing with fire—but she’d been getting cold.

Reassured by the amount of hair remaining on her face, Belle sent her gaze into the flames.

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There were an infinite number of ways to plumb the depths of one’s own mind, and Belle had used many of them over the years. Her preferred method was time—asking a question of herself, clearing a path in her mind, and waiting for the answer to come down the trail, when it was ready.

Listen, Sweet Belle. It’s alright if you don’t know what to do, because your magic does. All you have to do is listen to it.

Her magic always brought the answer to her eventually, in its own time.

But she didn’t have time. She needed to know what she’d seen in those mines. What Richard had been so excited about.

Asking the Dark Mother to show her the truth in a dream was another tactic she had tried, but Mother Dark had a habit of communicating in the abstract, or with wicked metaphors and psychedelic visuals and stories that folded in on themselves. They were some of the most incredible dreams she’d ever had, but a far cry from clear.

Her best bet right now was to peer into one of the elements, to notice the patterns until she began to recognize them as the same ones as the wrinkles on her own brain. Until she saw them as a map through her memories, and then all she had to do was follow.

It was dangerous. Lady Belle had wrapped these memories up and locked them away for a reason. Anxiety curdled in her stomach, rising up to burn her chest and tighten her throat. Did she trust herself to handle this?

Practically before she’d finished the thought, her magic answered her question:

Yes.

Her throat loosened a little. She rested a hand on her belly, feeling the rolls of flesh through the fabric of her gown. She soothed a hand over them, comforting that spoiled sensation in her gut.

We can do this.

With a deep breath, Belle settled a soft, unfocused gaze on the dancing flames once more and let her consciousness fall away.

The seconds ticked out the tempo of the flames’ dance, but Belle so lost herself to the movement of the tongues that she couldn’t hear them, couldn’t feel them slipping over her skin in the darkness. There was no way to know how much time had passed when the memories began to surface.

The memories played across a shattered mirror in her mind, all mismatched, jagged pieces. Her own broken mind displayed before her. Instinctively, she watched for pieces of the same memory and reached out to rearrange them into something that made sense—but the moment she extended a hand, the mirror began to fade. She snatched out anyway, grabbing for a shard of mirror. Pain shot through her hand, then a spurt of blood—

The flames, the room came back to her.

Belle blinked, then took a deep, slow breath. Trying to manhandle her own mind wasn’t going to work.

She was just going to have to hand herself over to her magic. Let it guide her through the sharp edges.

Once again, she gazed into the flames and let go of her consciousness…