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 something important and responsible and presidential beside me, 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 some kind of emotional accountant:

Situation One:

Whenever another girl got too close to Sebastian, my whole chest tightened. Like someone 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 me 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 someone wrapped my soul in one of those fuzzy blankets you find in shady markets that definitely weren't legally obtained.

Whenever he talked to me, 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 me 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, something terrible might happen. My chest would constrict, my breath would hitch, and suddenly I'd be halfway across the academy without remembering how I got there.

It was awful.

It was concerning.

It was...

"Possibly a curse?" I whispered. "Some kind of longing spell? Or emotional parasite? Or ooh, maybe I inhaled something 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 someone 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 me seemed to vanish. The soft mist-screens stopped drifting .Even my heartbeat stalled for a split second.

Because the face beside me…

The face I saw through the blindfold…

Wasn't Alectra's at all.

It was someone else.

Someone I hadn't seen in a long time.

No.

My stomach dropped.

My fingers curled into the arm of the chair.

That was a face from a time I had locked away so deeply I sometimes 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 warmer somehow, brighter, almost molten with that soft glow I remembered far too well.

She sat across from me with a small, calm smile, the kind of smile she used to give me whenever she caught me doing something stupid but endearing, as if she wasn't sure whether to scold me or pat me on the head.

My breath hitched.

My heart stopped.

And for a single fractured moment, everything inside me froze in place.

Because this woman.

This woman sitting across from me.

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 remembered 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 something 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 meeting, was something my mind refused to accept.

But my shock lasted only a heartbeat.

A single, tiny beat.

Training slammed into place like a metal 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 came 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 same time. Light streamed through wide windows. The air smelled 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 me.

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 memories.

A memory 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 me, by my ridiculous obsession with Sebastian, by the suffocating need to understand what was wrong with me.

Of course.

My brain had decided to throw me into the one memory I least wanted to revisit.

I exhaled shakily.

"Well… that explains that," I muttered under my breath.

The woman across from me tilted her head slightly, the red of her hair shifting like fire in sunlight, and that same small smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

I stared.

My chest tightened.

Questions clawed up my throat.

Why now?

Why this memory?

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 me.

I didn't know if she would respond.

I only knew one thing:

This memory, this woman, this moment.

It held the key to whatever was happening to me.

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 came next…was something I had avoided for a very, very long time.

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