around.
“You mean Frédéric,” Rosalind said wearily. “Do you remember now? Frédéric D’Arque?”
Maurice looked confused. His eyes batted in strange blinks. Something not quite natural was going on in his mind. “Frédéric…” he said slowly. “My old friend…Frédéric. D’Arque? How did I…how did I forget who you were?”
“He is—or was—a charmante,” Rosalind said. “My own spell made you forget.”
“No longer one of your kind, thank you very much,” D’Arque said with a nasty smile and a nastier little bow. “I managed to cut the impurities out of myself years ago.”
“But…how did you manage all this?” Maurice asked slowly. “All of these people…From here, and our home…How did you get—kidnap, I mean—all these people?”
“I had the full support of the king and queen,” D’Arque said, drawing himself up haughtily. “They wanted to rid themselves of the charmante problem, but for more…strategic reasons than myself; they considered your kind a threat to their power. Once they heard of my own theories and opinion on the matter, they gave me a generous stipend, the funds to buy the old asylum, and the manpower to collect my subjects and patients.”
“You were behind the disappearances from the beginning,” Rosalind said flatly. “You kidnapped and killed Vashti.”
“I didn’t kill her,” D’Arque corrected. “She took her own life, here, eventually. Sometimes they do that.”
Belle watched her mother’s jaw drop, her hands slowly gripping and ungripping some object she obviously no longer had.
A wand, maybe?
“Frédéric…” Maurice said slowly. “I don’t understand. We were friends.…How could you do this?”
“My apologies for borrowing your innocent self and pure daughter,” he said, lowering his eyes almost convincingly. “I was after larger prey, as it were. You were just the bait.”
Belle’s eyes widened. “Beast. Oh, no…”
“Yes. I made the connection after Gaston told me about Maurice’s ‘beast in the woods.’ It was the little princeling from the forgotten fairy tale kingdom, all grown up. If not into a man, precisely.”
Rosalind narrowed her eyes. “Whatever has happened to him, it is not his fault. Leave him be.”
“I cannot let a marauding monster go free in our countryside,” D’Arque said, clucking his tongue. “And who are you telling me to leave something be—you who go marching around, cursing princes and changing les naturels into something they are not? What gave you that right?”
Rosalind looked pained. “I made mistakes. I would correct them….Killing the Prince solves nothing.”
Belle’s curiosity made her speak up, despite all that was going on. “Monsieur Lévi said something about you promising not to touch me,” she said accusingly.
“Ah, yes, well,” D’Arque said, shrugging. “Lévi was one of the least harmful charmantes, and careful not to ever practice magic in the village. In return for his not…exposing my operations, I agreed that neither I nor any of my associates would bother you.”
“But you kidnapped me and my father!” Belle snapped. “And Monsieur Lévi!”
“Well, regrettable as breaking my word is, it was for a good purpose. And only to a charmante. It means nothing—like promises to a bird. I needed to make sure he didn’t help either Belle or the Beast…So I figured it would be best to keep him safely out of the way.”
“Promises to a bird?” Maurice asked in disgust. “Frédéric, we were friends. You came to Belle’s christening!”
“What?” Belle asked involuntarily. Her mind raced. If he was close enough to be at her christening…“You were all friends…
“You killed Alaric Potts.”
At that, for the first time, D’Arque looked bothered, shaken out of his smugness.
“You knew he was helping to rescue les charmantes out of the kingdom…bringing them to Maman and Papa. Or maybe you didn’t know what he was doing with them until you killed him. And when you found out, you went after Maman.”
D’Arque shifted nervously, irritably, from foot to foot on his expensive, old-fashioned heels. “I never intended to hurt any man—any human. Least of all my old friend. His betrayal was beyond enraging—and dangerous.”
“HIS betrayal?” Belle demanded. “You turned on your best friends! All of them!”
“He turned on his race!” D’Arque hissed. “Why would someone born innocent, born pure, help les charmantes? He knew how dangerous they were!”
“We are going to go now,” Maurice said carefully. “And you are going to just let us go. I think you know just how precisely vile you are, Frédéric. You’re a smart man. You always have been. You know this is the way it needs to end. Good-bye.”
And Maurice put his arms around his wife’s waist and his hand in his daughter’s and turned around very deliberately to go.
“You are incorrect, old