I had intended this story to be a one-shot, but then this chapter happened. The same warnings apply.

He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's love for you leaves its own mark.
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
– Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

The night that he killed Bellamew was one of the worst nights, because his Grace failed him. His Grace had never failed him, not since he encountered that Monster-woman in the Dells. Of course, he'd been only a boy in the Dells, and a Monster was more powerful than a Graceling, so it made sense that she hadn't believed his words. But there was no reason – none – why his Grace shouldn't work on Bellamew. He searched for some explanation but never found one, and it made him want to tear his hair out.

He wasn't even looking for Bellamew that night. He couldn't sleep, so he was walking the corridors of his castle, trying to calm his mind, and when he pushed open the door to the art gallery, Bellamew was there, holding a little girl in her arms. The girl had both arms wrapped around Bellamew's neck and was gazing up at her so adoringly that Leck would've been nauseated were he not so shocked. She was speaking to her, too; Leck caught the word Mama, but that was all he heard, for as soon as he entered, they both whirled around and gasped. Bellamew didn't try to run, but she immediately set the child on the ground behind her, hiding her from Leck's view behind her skirts. She said nothing, and neither did the child, but no words were needed. Leck understood immediately who the girl was. She was his and Bellamew's daughter. Hava.

No, she was his daughter – only his. Bellamew had told him that she'd died in infancy, when she was only two years old, and Leck had always suspected it to be a lie. But how had she kept the child hidden from him for all these years? He charged across the floor to Bellamew and shoved her aside, but the girl was gone.

He scanned the room with his eye, determined to remain calm. She couldn't have gone far. "Hava, come out," he called loudly. No doubt Bellamew had poisoned the child against him, but his Grace would fix that easily. "Hava, you don't want to hide from me. You aren't afraid of me. I'm your father, King Leck. Come out now. Stop hiding."

When there was no response, he began to search the gallery, looking in corners and behind statues and drapes. Bellamew watched him closely, but she still had said nothing and made no move to stop him. She seemed strangely calm – triumphant, even – and it almost unnerved Leck. He repeated over and over while he looked for the girl, You don't want to hide from me. You aren't afraid of me. But still, she did not appear.

Leck seethed, furious and confused. The child couldn't possibly be resisting his words. No one in the kingdom could do that. So the only explanation was that she must've gotten out of range of his voice, and he didn't understand how that was possible. There was only one way out of the gallery, and the child wasn't so small that she could've slipped through it without him seeing. His castle was full of secret tunnels and hidden passages, but Leck knew them all... didn't he?

There was only explanation. Bellamew must've helped the girl to get away from him, somehow. He quickly, angrily crossed the gallery to her, but she didn't cower or shrink back from him. She held her head high and looked straight at him, unafraid. Leck was unused to anyone looking directly at him, and he grabbed her arm, so hard that she gasped but did not cry out. He would kill her, he decided – slowly and painfully, and he would find such peace in her pain. He would kill her for keeping their daughter from him for all these years – but first, he would make her give the girl to him. He would make sure Bellamew understood, before he killed her, that Hava was his daughter now, not hers. He felt certain that knowing this would hurt her more than anything else.

"You don't want to hide her from me anymore," he said to her, and immediately, Bellamew's gaze lost its sharp edge. Her face turned vacant and her eyes turned empty, and for a wonderful moment, Leck felt that old, familiar thrill of victory. He could see his Grace casting its spell over Bellamew, and very soon now, she would hand the girl – his daughter – over to him, and he would have the child all to himself. Ashen was still keeping Bitterblue from him for now, but she wouldn't be able to do that for much longer, and in the meantime, he could do whatever he liked with this girl. And Hava was a bit older than Bitterblue, wasn't she? Yes, perhaps she would be more useful to him.

I'll have two of them, he realized. Two little girls all to myself, and the thought was so sweetly delicious. He pictured Hava and Bitterblue holding hands in little matching dresses, and the image almost made his mouth water. Yes, the two of them would be his perfect little princesses, and he would train them up together to be perfect queens – just as soon as he got their meddlesome mothers out of the way. Ashen and Bellamew had always been more trouble to him than they were worth, really.

"You want to give her to me," he prompted Bellamew, now more eager than ever to get his hands on Hava. "You want to give me Hava."

"Hava..." Bellamew repeated blankly, and then – Leck was so shocked by what happened that he actually gasped aloud. It was as if the girl's name was a light. As soon as Bellamew spoke it, the fog of his Grace lifted from her, and her eyes lost their clouded dullness. She glared at him fiercely and shook her head. Leck suddenly remembered what had happened when he told Bitterblue that he would make her cut off one of Ashen's fingers if she ever disobeyed him. His Grace had failed him then, too – and on a child, no less. A Graceless little girl! "You can't make me hurt Mama," the girl had told him, her voice strong and certain.

Bellamew's voice was just as strong now. "No," she said loudly, her two wild eyes staring straight to Leck's cold one. "Never. I'll never give her to you, and you'll never find her. You'll never even look at her with your filthy eye. You'll never – "

"Where have you been keeping her? Tell me," Leck interrupted, his voice rising. He tightened his grip on Bellamew's arm and shook her hard, but she was so used to him manhandling her – she and Ashen both were – that she hardly even noticed it anymore. "Tell me where she's hiding!" It unnerved Leck that she'd managed to keep the child a secret from him for so many years. How had she possibly done it? He knew his castle by heart.

But his words had no effect on Bellamew. She was screaming now, raving like the madwoman that Leck had always suspected her to be. "You've always been in the darkness! You've seen nothing – nothing! Ashen has a light that you can't see by. Bitterblue has the strength of this castle. Someday you'll see, finally – you'll see, but then it will be too late for you!"

Leck gritted his teeth and put his face close to hers. "By dawn tomorrow," he promised, "you'll be dead, and I'll have every guard in this castle searching for that girl. I'll find her sooner or later. You won't be able to protect her anymore."

But Bellamew just laughed at that, as if Leck had just said something hilarious. She truly had lost her mind, he decided. "I'll always be able to protect her," she answered, boldly throwing her head back. "Always. I know you don't believe me, but it's true." The strength in her voice – the certainty of it – was maddening to him.

He roughly dragged her away, out of the gallery and down the stairs to his rooms, and the whole time, she kept screaming about power and strength, light and darkness, and things that Leck couldn't see. He paid no mind to her words. They were lunacy, they made no sense at all, but she went on raving. She didn't stop, in fact, until Leck pulled out one of the knives that he kept hidden in his rooms, and stabbed her through her heart.

Standing over her body, his fists clenched, panting a bit from anger – Leck didn't feel any of the comfort that he usually got from a killing. Her death had been much too fast. Likely she'd felt almost no pain at all, and that gave him the worst feeling of failure. But he couldn't stand listening to her rant on for another second. No, he'd had to silence Bellamew, once and for all. And yet... yet there was no peace in the silence, either. His rooms now felt too silent, too empty, without her voice, and when Leck raised his eyes from her body, he saw Bellamew's sculptures standing all around him, staring at him with that same mockery in their stony eyes. Like all of her sculptures, they had too much feeling, too much strength.

His control was fraying again, and he wondered, with a rare stab of fear, if perhaps there had been some truth in Bellamew's mad words all along.

FIN