I sat there in my big fancy chair, the one that looked like a throne but was actually just aggressively over-cushioned, and tried to make my brain function.
It wasn’t going well.
My legs were crossed, my chin was in my hand, and my blindfolded eyes stared unseeing at the smoke-screens drifting around the room like lazy ghosts on break. Alectra was rambling about sothing important and responsible and presidential beside , but I was too busy being attacked.
By feelings.
Very aggressive, confusing feelings.
I pressed a hand over my chest, frowning as if maybe I could scold my own heart into explaining itself."Okay... let’s think. Let’s think... Belle, think. Let’s do the thinking thing."
My heart thumped harder.
"Not like that," I muttered.
The feeling wasn’t new, not exactly, but right now it was so loud I couldn’t ignore it.
I started listing them out like so kind of emotional accountant:
Situation One:
Whenever another girl got too close to Sebastian, my whole chest tightened. Like soone was grabbing my heart and squeezing it like dough they’d already over-kneaded. It wasn’t painful... but it also wasn’t not painful.
And I always felt this weird heat behind my ears. As if there was a very soft and kind voice, a voice that sounded like an angel but belonged to the devil, pushing to accept the urge to lightly, gently, politely throw the other girl into a lake.
Very politely.
Situation Two:
When I was with Sebastian...Ohhhh that was a different feeling entirely.
Warm.
Soft.
Floaty.
Like soone wrapped my soul in one of those fuzzy blankets you find in shady markets that definitely weren’t legally obtained.
Whenever he talked to , that feeling swelled so big and warm that if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was turning into a campfire.
And then...
Situation Three:
The one that terrified most.
The feeling I got when I wasn’t with Sebastian.
That suffocating tug in my gut... that weird sense of wrong. Like the world was slightly tilted, and if I didn’t go find him right now, sothing terrible might happen. My chest would constrict, my breath would hitch, and suddenly I’d be halfway across the academy without rembering how I got there.
It was awful.
It was concerning.
It was...
"Possibly a curse?" I whispered. "So kind of longing spell? Or emotional parasite? Or ooh, maybe I inhaled sothing weird in that swamp I fell into last month...?"
I tapped my blindfold thoughtfully.
Nope.
None of those felt right.
It felt... natural.
Internal.
Mine.
Unfortunately.
With a dramatic sigh, I let my head fall sideways until it bumped against the back of my chair.
"...I don’t get it."
I peeked toward Alectra (not that I could peek with a blindfold, but I was doing it anyway).
Maybe she could help.
She was smart.
Stable.
Responsible.
A perfect student council president and she had that very normal, unfazed aura of soone who had dealt with Sebastian’s stupidity for years without losing her mind. Surely she’d understand feelings... right?
"Hey, Alectra?" I asked gently.
No reply.
Strange.
I turned my head a bit more.
"...Alect—?"
She wasn’t Alectra.
My breath froze.
The air around seed to vanish. The soft mist-screens stopped drifting .Even my heartbeat stalled for a split second.
Because the face beside ...
The face I saw through the blindfold...
Wasn’t Alectra’s at all.
It was soone else.
Soone I hadn’t seen in a long ti.
No.
My stomach dropped.
My fingers curled into the arm of the chair.
That was a face from a ti I had locked away so deeply I sotis convinced myself it never existed.
A ghost from the past I had buried.
My voice trembled.
"...why are you here?"
Bright red hair.
Golden eyes.
The exact shade as Alectra’s, but warr sohow, brighter, almost molten with that soft glow I rembered far too well.
She sat across from with a small, calm smile, the kind of smile she used to give whenever she caught doing sothing stupid but endearing, as if she wasn’t sure whether to scold or pat on the head.
My breath hitched.
My heart stopped.
And for a single fractured mont, everything inside froze in place.
Because this woman.
This woman sitting across from .
She wasn’t alive.
Not anymore.
Not in this world.
Not anywhere.
I knew because I had buried her myself.
I knew because I had killed her myself.
I rembered the dirt under my nails, the cold of the night, the weight of her body in my arms, limp and fading, and the way the world had felt strangely hollow afterward, as if sothing essential had been scooped out of it with a spoon.
So seeing her here, sitting in a café booth as casually as if we’d arranged a pleasant afternoon eting, was sothing my mind refused to accept.
But my shock lasted only a heartbeat.
A single, tiny beat.
Training slamd into place like a tal door closing.
My lungs steadied.
My senses expanded.
Instinct took the reins long before conscious thought did. In the next breath, I wasn’t Belle-who-panics. I was Belle-who-survives. Belle-who-calculates. Belle, who walked through every nightmare the world had to offer and ca out the other side with her heart still embarrassingly soft.
My blindfold wasn’t on anymore, and I could still feel its absence, like phantom pressure around my eyes. I blinked slowly, letting the scene settle.
A café.
A small one.
Everything was warm browns and polished marble, the kind of place that tried too hard to look rustic and fancy at the sa ti. Light stread through wide windows. The air slled faintly of roasted beans and pastries, and the hum of soft chatter filled the background like a gentle lull.
I knew this place.
Everything was coming back.
Not all at once, but like a slow tide rolling in.
The sensation of déjà vu prickled down my spine.
I lowered my hands to the table and felt its smooth, polished surface. The grain of the wood. The tiny scratch I knew was there my own doing, actually, from when I tried to slice a bagel with a dagger because I insisted it would be "more efficient."
I swallowed.
This wasn’t a hallucination.
This wasn’t an illusion forced on .
And it wasn’t a curse.
It was too familiar.
Too precise.
Too... painfully mine.
It clicked.
I was sitting inside one of my own mories.
A mory so deeply buried I hadn’t touched it in years, sealed shut behind layers of willpower and denial and "let’s not think about that ever again."
But now it had surfaced.
Dragged up by the emotional storm inside , by my ridiculous obsession with Sebastian, by the suffocating need to understand what was wrong with .
Of course.
My brain had decided to throw into the one mory I least wanted to revisit.
I exhaled shakily.
"Well... that explains that," I muttered under my breath.
The woman across from tilted her head slightly, the red of her hair shifting like fire in sunlight, and that sa small smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
I stared.
My chest tightened.
Questions clawed up my throat.
Why now?
Why this mory?
Why her?
I pressed my palm flat against the table, grounding myself, forcing the tremor out of my breath.
"So," I whispered, barely audible, "this is what my heart dragged up."
I didn’t know if she could hear .
I didn’t know if she would respond.
I only knew one thing:
This mory, this woman, this mont.
It held the key to whatever was happening to .
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
But I was already here.
So I looked at her.
Really looked.
At the face I once knew.
At the woman I had buried.
At the past I had spent years running from.
My fingers curled slowly.
And I braced myself.
Because whatever ca next...was sothing I had avoided for a very, very long ti.
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