This is Mei's courtyard and her legacy--or at least what will remain that belonged to her that I know of. The fire we passed through must've been protecting this place from above. But--"Why did you bring me here?" A spark of fear fills me at the thought that I might be put here permanently. Is that what I was brought here for? To be Mei's replacement?

I can feel my breath hitching again. My head snaps from around me to the Beast, who has been still gazing at the pavilion as if it were the moon.

My words seem to have shaken him out of his thoughts, or even his regrets. The Beast looks at me as if not really seeing me: his pupils are wide and blown before they sharpen into a thin slit and fixate on me. "The riddle," he all but rasps out, claws digging onto the path. The stone doesn't crumble beneath them, but any more agitated he is, and it might. "Our puzzle."

"Sorry?" The-- "You mean-?" My brain stops before it begins again. "You--you want to do a riddle? A riddle here?" A riddle, that I decided, with a wager of--the greatest puzzle being the mystery of another's life.

"Riddle..." The more I've spoken, the more his head sways and his teeth flash. But he calms himself down, letting out hot steam from his nostrils, and raking a slow claw across a whisker. "A puzzle." His head lowers, teeth bared at nothing in particular, before he raises his head up. "Yes, this place is a puzzle."

He's talking to himself now, and begins to move. His eyes swivel to me, before his head whips away just as fast as his tail slashes quickly back and forth.

"Come."

"I--" I debate staying behind, but, made uneasy by the too-quiet of this place, I follow after hurriedly. Thanks to Ching's magic, my footsteps are even together, with no waver. "Where--where are we going?" I don't know why we're here now, to--if we're not-- It's hard to catch up with him, because he's moving so fast.

"A puzzle, Guest Chao." He seems to be gathering himself back together again, but it's clear that this entire place bothers him as much as it does me with how his head jerks left and right as if expecting something to come out of the silence. "This place is a puzzle for you and I grant you permission to be here. I insist upon it," he says too, "I insist."

"But--" Still--his steps are still too huge-- "--but here?" What puzzle is here for him? Is it...does it have something to do with the curse?

"...Here," the Beast's sleek voice ghosts back at me, as he turns his head back. He leers, almost mockingly back at me, and then shakes his large head once, twice. "Why find you so unnerved, Guest Chao? The spirits know better than to touch a place like this. Even I..." He turns his head away. "This is nothing but a human woman's home."

A home the Beast had said, even if he hadn't been in his right mind was for love or marriage or whatever it had been. So maybe that was it. The Beast had loved Beauty and--and what? She'd decided to run away? Had there--was the curse even related to them both?

"It just." I don't know how to describe it. When I first saw this place at the front of the courtyard's gate with Ching, it didn't feel like this. A cold chill, not as soothing as the Beast's mist as we rode through fire, settled down onto my spine. It was nothing like the uncomfortable, invading invisible hands trying to steal my words from me along the paths. "It doesn't feel right."

"You are not incorrect, Guest Chao" the Beast says. He leads me to the pillars on either side of the entrance and stops there, studying it. "Your human instincts would do you right. This is not a happy place, nor auspicious. It is a place trapped and sealed by my magic."

I don't understand a word he's saying about magic, except that this place isn't a good place. There are things that are mine to tell and those that are not.

"I can tell you to both come or go," the Beast says to me. "What am I?"

I stare at him, but he's looking at the entrance, and I look back at him.

It's not hard. It's a riddle, so it must be--

"Enter," I answer.

And before us, the pavilion gates open.