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Chapter Text

When Elena was a very young child, before bed every night she was told three rules by her mother, to stand her through the tests and trials of life.

The first, and most important, was to have courage and be kind. To live without either of these things would be an empty life indeed, and while neither was easy, both were necessary.

The second was to learn how to fix all manner of simple things, from a torn seam to a broken window pane. Being as useful as possible was the best way to ensure that she could help others, which allowed specialists to focus on their important work and not get bogged down with day-to-day repairs.

The third, and strangest thing, was to never wander so far into the forest that she couldn’t hear her own name being called from the house. When she was a toddling child, this wasn’t such a problem; the forest, with its thick, dark pines and strange animals scared her more than it intrigued her, and she was happy to stay in the grounds of the estate with the ducks, chickens, and horses. But as she grew into a girl (a very young girl, but a girl nevertheless), she couldn’t get within 50 feet of the nearest pine without hearing a panicked, “Elena!”

Elena always returned when her name was called, in part because she was an obedient daughter and in part because despite her curiosity, the stillness of the forest frightened her. Once, she asked her mother why she wasn’t allowed to play in the forest.

“It’s not safe to go there by yourself, my sweet,” her mother replied, stroking her hair out onto her pillow. “There are all manner of creatures in the forest which are dangerous to even the most experienced of travellers like Papa. You’re still very small,” she continued, her tone changing to a more playful one, “and I’m afraid they would eat – you – up!” Her mother pounced, tickling Elena’s sides as she shrieked joyfully, and the topic was forgotten as they both calmed down and Elena was put to bed.

With those three rules in place, Elena’s childhood passed in a haze of tranquility, much in the same way that an untethered rowing boat glides lazily down a river in a hot July. But as sure as a summer storm, the peace she had known for the first seven years of her life shattered – not all in one blow, but slowly. Her sweet, loving mother, who had always been a shade paler than was healthy, one day sickened and died. Elena’s father Albert was never the same after the day she passed, and more than once over the following months Elena could hear him sobbing in the night when she couldn’t sleep. Too soon, he had to set out and trade again; in letters he sent her back from France, Elena discovered that the craftsman who he usually bought music boxes from, and whom he had known for fifteen years, had abandoned Paris for a small village town following the death of his wife. A ship sunk, and then a second, and then a third. In desperation, Albert remarried a rich widow with two daughters of her own.

Elena first met Lady Johanna Tremaine, and the Misses Ann and Susan, on a cold March morning. If she had known what dramatic irony was, she would have found it in spades that day; her new step-family was warm, kind, and accommodating. Remembering her mother’s words, Elena sought to be kind to the girls a little younger than her, who had also just lost a parent; to teach them all the little tips and tricks her mother had taught Elena; to always stay within earshot of the house. The girls were reluctant to sew their own hems and make small repairs around the house, often leaving the work for Elena instead, but they needed no encouragement to stay inside the estate. Indeed, most days they stayed inside the house itself; Johanna encouraged her daughters in matters of deportment where Elena’s had encouraged hers to run around outside. The only true fly in the ointment was that Ann and Susan had an annoying habit of calling her ‘Ella’, instead of her given name. Nevertheless, for a time things were acceptable, if not happy.

Then Elena’s father died, and Lady Tremaine became as cold, mean-spirited and demanding as she had been decent and upstanding before. Elena was stripped of her fine possessions, her comfortable room, her numerous small freedoms as lady of the house – again, so slowly that it was difficult in later years to pinpoint when exactly the tipping point had occurred – and, most humiliating of all, her very name. At ten years old she was re-christened ‘Ella’ and ordered to begin as a maid-of-all-work, among new staff whom Lady Tremaine had hired to replace those who would speak out in Elena’s favour.

But even when forced to become a servant in her own home, Ella’s spirit remained merely bruised and not broken. For although her stepsisters were too afraid to wander in the woods, Ella found a comfort and serenity there that was lacking in the estate. Her time in the forest, surrounded by flowers, birds, wild animals, and the simultaneous beauty and majesty of the world were among her happiest hours in the week, and as she grew into a woman of twenty she continued to honour her parents’ memory by obeying her mother’s three rules.

And yet, unbeknownst to Ella as she struggled through her days, the fates of three other people would soon be deeply intertwined with hers. A complicated web of cause and effect were being set in motion that very moment by two very different men. One was a travelling French merchant, lost in the western side of the forest beside Ella’s house and frightened by the sudden appearance of snow in June, urging his horse down the wrong path entirely. And in the city only two hours’ carriage ride from Ella’s estate, the Crown Prince was arguing with the other, his father the King, about the subject of his upcoming marriage.

Chapter Text

“I don’t see why this still merits discussion,” Kit said. “I’ve told you a hundred times –”

“And I am telling you, it matters precious little!” his father retorted. “The facts of the matter are that you are twenty-five, unmarried, and the heir to the crown!”

“Y-your Grace,” the artist stammered nervously from where he was suspended in mid-air, “if you could face the window again?”

Kit shot the rather frightened-looking man what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and did as asked. He and his father did not fight often. The staff had learned that when they did, it was best to avoid getting between them. He couldn’t help pitying the artist, who surely had better things to do with his day than try and paint a portrait while also navigating the numerous rules of propriety that separated him from his royal patrons. 

“I’m not twenty-five yet, Father,” Kit said in a deliberately even-toned voice. “I still have four months until my birthday.”

“And what then, Christoph?” his father asked – the use of his given name a sure sign of his displeasure. “No ruler has ever reached the age of twenty-five unmarried.” 

Kit opened his mouth to protest this remark. 

“No successful ruler,” the king amended. 

Kit allowed his mouth to fall shut again. Spotting the painter’s distress, he turned back to face the window; he could not exactly prevent the natural instinct to face who he was talking to, but he could certainly correct himself once he noticed. 

“Then maybe this will be another precedent I shall set,” Kit said. “I am, as you so frequently remind me, the first child of a reigning monarch to be elected to the throne. Why not also the first monarch to reach twenty-five unmarried?”

The king muttered to himself for a brief moment, and Kit relaxed slightly. He disliked fighting with his father. And it was true that he was the first monarch to be elected whose father had also been king – a fact which, when it did not humble him to his knees to remember that the people had voted in his favour despite his youth, petrified him. His father had been a well-liked king. Was a well-liked king, Kit quickly reminded himself. He had successfully navigated their little country through the conflicts which had torn through the rest of the continent, leaving them relatively unscathed, and expanded their borders north by the love match which had produced Kit himself. It was a formidable reputation, and one which sat heavy on his shoulders as both an heir and a son. 

“It would be easier to find you a spouse had you attended any of the previous year’s coming-out balls,” his father said, not for the first time. 

Kit set his jaw. “I keep telling you, I just – I don’t know yet,” he said, also not for the first time. 

His father rubbed his temples with the pads of his fingers, stretching his hand across his face to anchor his thumb against the other side and shield his eyes for a moment. Kit wished, quite savagely for a moment, that he could be granted a similar moment to collect himself. “You’re almost twenty-five, Kit! You’re not a lad barely out his teens, you’re a man grown! How can you not know yourself yet?”

“I don’t have an explanation, Father, I just – I just don’t!”

“Every other ruler from our neighbouring countries announced their alignment when they reached majority, and here you are almost four years later –”

“Oh, stop it Father,” Kit spat. “You always told me when I was a child that when you know, you know – why have you changed your mind now that it inconveniences you?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Kit knew he had made a mistake. A thick, awkward silence hung heavily over the room. His father looked stricken – it was genuine hurt in his eyes, Kit knew. And the painter, a miserable third party to the whole sordid ordeal, was still suspended in mid-air, his eyes darting between the two men like he was watching a badminton match. 

“Father . . . Father, I’m sorry,” Kit said. “I spoke out of turn. I didn’t mean it. I know this must be a difficult time to plan for the future, and that’s not helped by not knowing my alignment.”

“No, Kit,” his father said heavily. “You have a point. Measure twice and cut once, as they say. And that is merely for producing clothing – in matters of the heart, such things are of far more importance.” His shoulders sagged a little, and he ran his hand through his close-cropped white hair wearily. 

“A chair for my father, if you please,” Kit said to the artist. “There should be one outside.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” the artist said, operating the complex series of pulleys to lower himself back to the ground again. Once he had left the room, the door clicking softly back into the hinges, Kit swung off the gymnastic horse which would become real in the painting and hurried to his father. 

“You know it is only because I wish to see you happy and settled before I go,” his father said. “You should also know that it is more important to find a person whom you could spend the rest of your life with, rather than someone who can give you an heir by traditional means.”

“We still have plenty of time before that date comes, Father,” Kit said. Bowing his head, he added reluctantly, “But yes. I understand.”

He was pulled into a rough embrace, and Kit pressed his forehead into the thinning hair on the crown of his father’s head. 

“The duke may say that you should simply present as bisexual, but do not listen to him,” his father said, slightly muffled where his face was pressed into Kit’s collar. Kit pulled away, the better to hear his father speak. “He is a shrewd advisor, but your happiness matters as much as our political position. Take the time to think, Kit. Even if you are not persuaded by the fairer sex, you have many options.”

“Thank you, father,” he said. “I . . . shall try to have an answer by this year’s ball.”

His father clapped him solidly on the shoulder. “And until then we shall send copies of this portrait to all eligible courts, so that the princes and princesses alike might have their heads turned by my handsome son.”

Kit flushed scarlet, and gave his father a mock shove away. He laughed, and Kit couldn’t help but join in with an embarrassed chuckle. 

“What? What did I say?”

“Just let me get back on the damn fake horse before the painter sees I’ve moved,” Kit muttered. “I wouldn’t like to get on his bad side.”

As a general rule, Belle acted like any other sensible woman her age. She knew how to run a household successfully. She had gathered enough knowledge from her father to assist him with his clockmaking if time was running thin for his latest project. She could barter fair prices for food – even if she did immediately regain her reputation as ‘an odd one’ as soon as she talked about the latest Shakespeare she had read. 

But in retrospect, Belle thought that fleeing Gaston’s attentions by getting lost in the woods with Phillipe, mere hours before her father needed him to pull his cart to the inventor’s fair, was not an action that a sensible woman would have taken. 

Muttering curses under her breath, Belle let out a groan as she passed a large oak tree with a knotted trunk for the third time. 

“Let’s face it, Phillipe,” she said. “We’re lost.” She allowed herself to slump forwards in the saddle, gripping the pommel with her hands so that she didn’t lose her seat. “If I don’t get you back in time, Papa’s going to miss his chance at the fair because I was foolish, and I’ll have to live with that knowledge forever.”

Phillipe, rather unperturbed by the course of the morning, shook his mane out and huffed. 

“I know, I know,” Belle muttered. “It would be easier if all the trees in this forest didn’t look the same, though.” She gently spurred him with her heel, and Phillippe began to walk on. Before they could pass the oak tree for the fourth time, Belle noticed Phillippe’s ears prick up. 

“What is it, boy?” she asked. “What do you see?”

A moment later, Belle realised it wasn’t a matter of what he saw, but what he heard. There was another horse somewhere else in these woods, one that seemed to be galloping – to the urgent dismay of its rider, who seemed to be shouting for it to stop.

“Come on, Phillipe,” Belle said, urging him into a trot. “We can at least do something useful today.”

The horse picked up speed eagerly, and Belle carefully kept an eye out for the other rider. Within a matter of moments, she could see flashes of blonde and blue through the greenery, as the rider continued her efforts to slow her horse. 

“Excuse me!” Belle called over once they were more or less adjacent. “Are you alright? Do you need help?”

The woman turned her head slightly towards Belle, the rest of her body firmly facing forwards, as she called out, “If you wouldn’t mind – Major, slow down, boy!” The set of her shoulders was too firm, her horse too panicked; in a flash of insight, Belle had visions of the woman getting thrown from her horse if he got any more stressed. 

On instinct, Belle leaned over and grabbed the reins of the other horse. She pulled on Phillipe’s reins once her grip was secure, encouraging both horses to slow down. For several heart-stopping seconds Belle worried that she herself might be dragged from her seat by the sheer force of the other horse’s gait. Thankfully, such fears were unfounded. Both horses slowed to a walk, and Belle released the reins immediately. 

“I’m sorry, Miss, you just – looked a little like you were in trouble,” she said as she caught her breath. 

“No, no – I’m sorry,” the woman said. There was a lightness to her accent; Belle couldn’t quite place it. She didn’t sound especially French, but she also didn’t sound like the other townspeople she had grown up beside, in their little border town patois of French and German. Strands of her blonde hair had fallen out of place during the commotion, and she tucked them impatiently back into her headscarf as she spoke. “If it weren’t for my stupidity, I wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Major here is getting a little old for wild gallops. I just came out here to – to read, really, I can’t get a spare minute to myself at the house, but he must have been spooked by something before I could stop him.”

“Well, I’m glad I was around, in that case,” Belle smiled. “I must confess, I am more than a little lost. I have no idea how I ended up here, and no idea how to get back.”

“I live nearby, and I know these woods fairly well. Maybe I can help you in return.” The woman smiled, and Belle felt a little jolt run through her. She had a very pretty smile. “Where do you live?”

“Villeneuve,” she said. 

“Oh, you are lost,” the woman laughed. “Apologies, Mademoiselle, but you crossed the border while you were riding through the woods.”

“Ah – I was trying to place your accent, Fraulein. No wonder you don’t sound French,” Belle said in German. 

“I was wondering why you weren’t speaking German,” the woman responded. 

They both laughed, and Belle felt herself blush a little. Hoping it was indistinguishable from the flush of exercise, she said, “Well, any assistance would be greatly appreciated. And may I say, your French is excellent.”

“Thank you. My father was a merchant; he crossed the border frequently, and taught me some of the language.”

“In that case I should work on my German,” Belle smiled. “You put me quite to shame. My father travels for his work as well, and he’s certainly tried to teach me enough of the languages he’s picked up over the years.”

The woman laughed, a note of hollowness inside as if she didn’t believe what Belle said. A moment later, the awkwardness was glossed over as she said, “What line of work is he in?”

“A clockmaker. He usually does local repairs now, but when I was younger he did commissions for wealthier customers. There was a music box which I found especially captivating as a child; it opened up like this” – Belle cupped her hands, letting them twist apart like a tulip unfurling – “to show a field of lavender. There were little birds and butterflies; their wings fluttered in time to the music.” Belle let out a sigh. Over a decade had passed since Maurice had sold the music box, and she could still remember the beauty of the little golden egg. 

“It sounds wonderful,” the woman said quietly. “Why did he stop?”

“We moved away from Paris after the smallpox epidemic,” Belle explained. 

The woman’s face changed immediately; understanding, and the pain of an injury that had healed in the wrong way. “I remember. My father was travelling at the time,” she said. “He arrived home with his stock, and we all thought that he had escaped it, but . . .” Her mouth snapped shut. She looked surprised at herself, as if she hadn’t meant to reveal that much about herself. “There were trunks full of silk. All of it had to be burned,” she said, her tone less raw-sounding. “It nearly ruined us.”

Urgently, Belle felt the need to commiserate; to show the woman that she was not alone in the consequences of that awful summer. “I caught it as well,” she offered, gesturing to the faint scars on her face. “But my mother . . . well, that was why we moved. It almost ruined us, too; it’s easier to get the materials for fine music boxes living in a metropolis than living in the country. Hence, clockmaking. He’ll still make a music box for the fair, though.” The trouble and cost of getting all the materials to Villeneuve was more than compensated whenever her father attended the fair; even if he didn’t win, which he had not for the last two years, he would inevitably run into an old coworker or a new benefactor who would ask for assistance or book a commission. For at least a few months following, Belle would get to see her father do the work he really loved. 

“And on that note,” Belle said apologetically, “I must ask your assistance in finding my way home. The fair starts in two days and Phillipe here needs to be ready to pull the cart by the afternoon.”

“Let me guess – you keep passing the same oak tree?”

“Yes!”

The woman smiled, her face open and sunny once more. “It happens often. Take a right the next time you pass it, then straight on until you reach the river; if you keep the river to your left you should arrive near the border road.”

Belle would have liked to keep talking to the woman, despite the fact that she had just noted time was of the essence. “Well, thank you again, Miss . . . ?”

“Ella,” she said. “Everyone calls me Ella.”

“Isabelle,” she offered in return. “But everyone calls me Belle.”

Ella looked her up and down, her dark eyes flitting over her strong fingers, wind-tangled hair, and muddy boots. “A fitting name,” she said earnestly – so sincerely that for a moment Belle wondered if she had read their conversation incorrectly after all. But there was a flash of something in her eyes, as her smile took on a knowing curve. Belle blushed. 

Before she could respond in kind, she heard a distant voice calling out. She couldn’t make out the words, but Ella’s face fell minutely, her mouth slipping out of its smile and back to a neutral expression.

“Ah,” Ella said. “Duty calls, I’m afraid.” She spurred her horse, and turned to leave. 

“Wait!” Belle called out before she could think better of it. 

Ella turned around again, drawing her horse to a stop. “Yes?”

“My father has this horse until the end of the week. But afterwards – I could ride out here, now that I know the way. And I would like to see you again.”

“Really?” Ella asked, in obvious confusion. “Why?”

Belle gestured towards the saddlebag, where she could see the outline of the book Ella had mentioned. “I love to read, too,” she said. “We never even got to talk about books. And,” she added, “I enjoyed our conversation, and I would love to have another one.”

A faith blush grew over Ella’s cheeks. “You’re too kind, mademoiselle,” she said. “But – yes. I would like that as well. I will – I will try to be here for next week.”

The same distant voice sounded – Belle still could not distinguish the words, although she was unsure whether it was due to the muffled sound or the different language – and Ella turned to leave again. “Until then!” she called back. Within a matter of moments, she was gone, the sound of her horse’s echoing footsteps the only indication she had ever been there. 

Belle felt another smile creep over her face. “Until then,” she echoed quietly. She gently spurred Phillipe, and set him trotting back towards the border path.

Chapter Text

The Beast sat in his lonely tower, watching the enchanted rose with grim resignation. A petal had started wilting today – the first to do so in almost six years – and he felt obligated to witness the confirmation that his time was finally running out. It still clung to the stem as stubbornly as it had that morning, when he had first noticed it. By now the sun was setting, turning the eternal snow in his grounds into a riot of orange and purple. 

He hadn’t told his staff yet. He would, once it had fallen. Until it did, he wanted to wait. It felt strangely private, even though the curse settling in would affect the entire castle. He’d often wondered why the Enchantress had extended the curse the way that she had. He knew that Mrs Potts blamed herself in part, for reasons which he could neither understand nor guess. She hadn’t been the one to turn an old woman away from the door, after all. She hadn’t been the one who had laughed at the insignificant gift of a half-dead rose. And she hadn’t been the one who had been foolish enough to ignore the woman’s final warning, given moments before – well. Before there was a clearly delineated Before and After for the castle and all who lived in it. 

The Beast sighed. The petal continued not to fall. 

He looked out of the glass balcony doors to see the sun had finally sunk below the horizon. He knew that it would be only a matter of time before the little light and colour left in the sky would sink away to the dreary blue-grey of dusk. He wished, not for the first time, that the Enchantress had left the passage of the seasons in his castle well enough alone. If Cogsworth had kept his calendar correct – and whatever else he was, the man was fastidious about the passage of time – the Beast knew that it should be early June. The sun sank so early in winter, and it had been winter for five years and seven months. He missed so much of his life from before this curse. He had never expected to miss something so simple. 

Half-lost in thought, the Beast turned his head back towards the table that housed the rose. After all his waiting, the petal had fallen without his even noticing. 

He felt a spark of anger in his chest; the first feeling he’d had all day that wasn’t miserable anticipation. Five years and seven months, and now his time was finally drawing to a close. He had expected to feel – not relief, exactly, but more of the numbness that had characterised the last few years under the curse. The anger almost surprised him. 

He had been angry in the first few days of the curse. He had been furious. He had raged, and stormed, and destroyed much of the furniture in the West Wing. He might have ventured further destruction had he not been afraid that instead of smashing a plate, he would smash a servant. Over the years he had settled vaguely into the numbness that overruled him now; it was difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that he had lost hope of a young man or woman ever stumbling upon his castle and freeing him from this curse. Now, the Beast began to feel for the first time the full extent of the helpless frustration he had lived with for the past five and a half years. 

“It’s not fair,” he muttered out loud, turning sharply away from the rose in a manner that made his tattered cloak billow out behind him. “Bad enough to be cursed to look like – like – but to wait almost six years and nobody to come!” For the briefest of moments the thought crossed his mind, although it was quickly suppressed, that perhaps the Enchantress had meant for him to never break the curse. Outside, rain began to fall with serious intent; it was the kind of rain that would soak even him to the bone in mere minutes. 

“No,” he said aloud, quietly. “No, she wouldn’t have left me without some way of undoing it.” The Beast had not been overly familiar with traditions of magic before his curse; after the first surge of his anger had cooled, he had scoured the library for any and all books that mentioned the subject. His findings were clear. The Enchantress had set her conditions into the curse, which meant it could be broken; but only by those means. Learn to love another, and earn their love in return by the time the last petal falls. If not, you and your castle are doomed to remain as you are for all time.

The Beast turned back to look at the rose again, running his paw gently over the magic mirror which habitually lay on the table beside it. He lifted it up, keeping the glass face-down. He was about to, as was his habit, ask the mirror to show him the person who would break the spell – the only request which the mirror took a perverse pleasure in denying him – at which point he would most likely sink back into the numbness which characterised the last five and a half years. 

Instead, his animal ears picked up the unmistakable sound of the entrance doors to the castle – rarely oiled, and more rarely used – slowly creaking open. 

The Beast stood frozen for a moment. He was the only person in the castle strong enough to open those doors, which meant that it had to be a stranger. Adrenaline coursed through his blood, as his mind went shooting in several directions at once – was this a robber, a looter, a lost traveller? – before hitting on the crucial question. Could this person, whoever they were, possibly break his curse?

The Beast stalked across the West Wing, pushing open the doors near-silently as he hurried towards the hall. Although his tread tended to be loud and heavy, he could be stealthy when needed; years of hunting his own prey, both before and after the curse had been laid, had seen to that. As he drew closer to the entrance hall, winding his way through the stairs and corridors that separated his chambers from the rest of the castle, he absently noticed that he was followed by the more agile members of staff; mostly feather duster maids, and a few candlesticks who had previously been footmen. He gestured for them to stay behind him. If this stranger was unwelcome, the last thing they needed to see was a group of enchanted objects. 

The corridor opened up into the entrance hall, and the Beast quickly hid behind a large pillar, his large form easily disguised by shadows. The only light in the hall was coming from – he felt his tense instinctively – Lumière, who was currently held aloft by the stranger. The Beast cast a quick, assessing glance over him. An older man, possibly around the age of his parents, had they still been alive. His hair and beard were both silver, but he did not carry himself with the stiffness or stoop of the elderly. He was clearly not a nobleman, by his clothes, although the quality of the fabric suggested he was a merchant rather than a peasant. 

The Beast’s heart sank. Too old, too old by far. The light shifted as the man adjusted his grip, and the Beast caught sight of a silver wedding band on his finger. 

“Hello?” the man called out. “I – I’m sorry to intrude, but I have lost my horse and seem to have gotten lost in the woods.” He coughed into his elbow, a wet and ugly sound, before continuing. “I would be on my way, but it is . . . strange weather outside.” 

The Beast could not contain a smirk of amusement at the merchant’s astute assessment. 

“I would ask only that I may sit by the fire for a few moments, until I can gather my wits enough to make my way home – it isn’t too far from here, but –” The man was again cut off by a cough, this one lasting longer than the first. 

The Beast stood in indecision for a moment. This man was useless to him as a means of breaking the curse, and every moment he stayed in the castle was a potential danger to himself and his staff. But the Beast could not forget the last time he had turned a lone stranger into the snow. 

“Lead him to the fire in the drawing room,” he said in a mutter to the servants surrounding him. “Tell Chef Bouche to serve him the meal I was meant to have tonight; it should still be warm enough. And somebody prepare one of the rooms for him – he may as well stay overnight, since he’s here.”

With a soft murmur of assent, the servants fluttered off in different directions. The Beast stayed in his position behind the pillar, waiting until the stranger had been ushered towards his meal before making his way back to the West Wing. He felt  . . . strange was the only word he could find to describe it. It was akin to the feeling he sometimes got in the hour before a storm, when the change of pressure in the air set his teeth on edge. 

Once back in his chambers, he settled down on the bed, drawing the half-torn curtains around so that he was in temporary darkness. He had yet to reattach the curtains which normally ran around the balcony doors and windows, even though it had been many years since he’d torn them off in a fit of rage. Although he was emotionally worn-out from the events of the day, he didn’t expect to sleep – which made it all the more surprising when he was startled awake by the sound of someone walking around inside the West Wing. 

The Beast snapped instantly to attention, his heart beating quickly. He could see the early morning sunshine streaming past the holes in his curtains, and he carefully moved so that he could line his eye up against the nearest of them, while keeping the rest of his bulk in shadow. The stranger from last night – there was no one else it could have been, but the confirmation was nice – was walking slowly around the room, his hat clasped in one hand. He moved aimlessly, his eyes taking in both the destruction and what remained of the original features of the room. The Beast wondered for a moment what he was doing here in the first place, but quickly set the question aside. He could find that out later; the most pressing thing right now was to ensure that the man did not see him. Thankfully, the curtains seemed to suggest enough shadow and darkness that as long as he remained still, the stranger was unlikely to notice him. 

The man continued to walk around the room. He drew nearer to the bed for a moment, and the Beast tensed his arms and legs, ready to spring away. Before the stranger could look closer, his attention was caught by something else, and he wandered away again. The Beast took two deep, near-silent breaths in an attempt to calm his racing heart before changing his position to see what had captured the man’s attention. 

Instantly, his heart was racing at full speed again, banging against his sternum. The stranger was drawing close to the enchanted rose. 

“How curious,” the stranger murmured. “It’s unlike any flower I’ve ever seen . . .”

The Beast was frozen once again. There was an inevitability to it – the stranger would touch the rose, and it would be crushed or otherwise damaged, somehow, and then the curse would become permanent, with no chance to ever break it. 

The man, oblivious to his presence, lifted the glass bell jar. He reached out one finger to brush a petal. 

In a sudden rush of movement, the Beast leapt through his curtains, yanked the bell jar from out of the man’s hands, and slammed it back over the rose, curling his body over it protectively. He growled, raising his eyes to meet the man’s. 

The stranger had evidently been too startled to scream; a harsh gasp spilled out his throat as he took the Beast in. His hat dropped out of his hands, landing upside-down on the floor. 

“How dare you try to steal from me, after the kindness I showed you last night!” the Beast snarled. 

“I – I – who are you?” The man took a step backwards; the Beast growled again, and the man stayed put. 

“The master of this castle.” 

The man frowned for the briefest of moments. The Beast could have kicked himself for revealing such key information. 

“I should not have let you see me – I would not have, if you hadn’t come into my chambers! You see now that I cannot let you leave.”

The man’s face turned white, and he lifted his hands. “No – please, sir, spare me my life. I have a daughter – she’s still unmarried, I can’t leave her alone, unprotected like that. Please, don’t kill me.” Although his words were pleading, the Beast was struck by his low, calm tone; he knew he was a frightening sight, and he was certain that braver men than this stranger would have screamed before now. 

“I will not,” the Beast said, stung despite himself – he did not intend to become a murderer, and had in fact settled on keeping him prisoner instead. But the mention of an unmarried daughter had sent his brain spinning with an idea. It was a terrible idea, and almost guaranteed to backfire spectacularly. But, glancing down at the rose again to ensure that no more petals had fallen since the previous morning, the Beast knew that it was his only chance to break the curse that had fallen over him and his servants.

As soon as she was within sight of the manor again, Ella dismounted Major and hurriedly settled him in his stall, removing his bridle and ensuring that he had enough hay and water to sate him for the rest of the afternoon. She scratched him behind the ears and dropped a kiss on the spot between his large eyes, before hurrying back into the house. 

“Ella!” she heard her stepmother shout for the third time. 

“Coming, Madam,” she called out. With efficiency born of long practice, she washed her hands with the coarse soap she had been allocated, tidied her hair as best she could, and tied a fresh apron over her skirts as she flew through the kitchen and up the stairs to the parlour. Lady Tremaine and her daughters were in the same room she had left them in; Anastasia and Susanna were even still seated at the breakfast table. However, the mood in the room was miles removed from the hateful spite that had caused Ella to flee into the woods half-blinded by tears. 

Lady Tremaine stalked up and down the room, the long bustle of her blue morning gown making her look like an overgrown butterfly. In one long-fingered hand, she held a piece of paper; it trembled with her excitement, matching her shining eyes and the twin spots of colour high on her cheeks. 

“There you are, girl,” she said, too overcome to lace the words with her usual venom. “I have been shouting these past ten minutes, where have you been?”

Ella opened her mouth to reply automatically, but Lady Tremaine dismissed it almost before Ella had taken a breath. 

“Never mind, never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter – what does matter is this, girls!”

She glided back over to the table, smoothing the paper back on the surface; before Ella could peer over her shoulder to see what the fuss was about, her stepsisters had crowded over the paper. Anastasia shrieked, before clapping a hand to her mouth and whipping her head towards her mother. Susanna took another moment before responding, but she had the same reaction of intense shock, instantly repressed. 

“Took him long enough,” Susanna said, receiving a swat on the arm from Anastasia for her trouble. She yelped and flicked her fingers towards her sister’s face; a juvenile imitation of her mother’s elegant hands. “What?” she said. “It has! He’s six years older than me, and you were all asking me about it when I was fourteen!”

Ella said a brief prayer for what remained of her self-composure, before asking the question that everyone clearly wanted her to ask. “What’s going on?”

“The prince has finally announced that he will be participating in this year’s coming-out ball, and not just attending,” Lady Tremaine said. “And you know what that means, girls.” She smiled at her daughters. It was such a rare occurrence that Ella was genuinely unnerved. “This is your chance!”

“Her chance, you mean,” Anastasia sniffed. “Unlike some, I couldn’t bear to marry for politics.”

Ella stifled another eyeroll; Anastasia had been unable to catch the eye of any eligible lady in the two years since her own coming-out ball, and had been getting more annoyed about that fact with every passing month. To her surprise, she noticed a momentary expression of pain on Lady Tremaine’s face at her daughter’s words. It had come and gone so quickly that Ella was half-convinced she had imagined it. 

“Yes, well,” Lady Tremaine said, settling back to her normal demeanour. “Ella, take note; you must run down to town and have the dressmaker get started on three dresses post-haste, à la mode Parisienne.”  

It was one of the rare, uncharacteristic spots of kindness in her stepmother’s behaviour that always startled Ella – when the blow she awaited turned out to be a kiss instead. They always came at the most unexpected moments. Lady Tremaine moved her into the attic when she was ten; the next week she had given Ella fine blue ribbons for her hair. She would spend upwards of an hour berating her, taking her apart with words that rarely escalated to a shout, and then a few days later look at her and softly mention how similar she was in appearance to her father. This morning she had called Ella a useless, dirty thing unfit to wait at their table, let alone sit with them and eat breakfast. And now she was paying for a gown for Ella to wear to her very first coming-out ball. Ella should have debuted the same year as Anastasia, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. 

“Yes, Madam,” she said. “I’ll run down this afternoon.”

With another wave of her fingers, Lady Tremaine dismissed her. Ella left, her heart filled with gladness and light for the first time in a long while. She worked undisturbed for the better part of an hour before her stepsisters began hounding her with detailed requests for the dressmaker – to such an extent that Ella fished out her notebook from her pocket to write them all down.

“Make sure that mine is the right shade of green to bring out my eyes,” Anastasia said, the last in a long list that also included ruffles, a bias-cut, and “yards and yards of lace”. 

“And I want a blush-pink,” Susanna said. “Not dusky rose, blush.”

“Yes, yes,” Ella said, writing it down. She was not looking forward to the inevitable conflict with the seamstress over her stepsisters’ laundry list of requirements, but any and all future negotiations would hopefully be Lady Tremaine’s domain, and not hers. “If that’s everything, I’ll be off into town now.”

Susanna opened her mouth again, no doubt to make sure that Ella had noted down the request for a dropped-waist, but a swift elbow from Anastasia shushed her again. 

“Yes, you must hurry,” Anastasia said, “otherwise I’m sure the dressmaker will be mobbed.”  

For once agreeing with her stepsister, Ella tucked the notebook away again and slipped on her cloak and straw summer hat. She managed to leave the estate and start the short walk towards town without incident, and as she walked began idly thinking about what sort of dress she would wear to the ball. It would certainly not be as extravagant as her stepsisters’ – both because of her station, and due to her own natural tastes. Maybe purple, she thought. Like the lavender Mother planted in the southern border. Purple, or perhaps pink – but then that might draw comparison to Susanna, which would certainly not do. Blue might be nice as well, Ella thought. Although I do wear blue most days – a change might be nice. And after all, this is most likely going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. 

Of course, what was most likely to happen was that Ella would buy the cheapest fabric from the dressmaker she could while still being of high quality, and end up making the dress herself. But, she found, she didn’t mind the thought of that. It would actually be refreshing, to sew a dress purely for pleasure and not just for function. Indeed; between this, and the pretty girl in the woods who would be waiting for her next week, Ella couldn’t help but feel that things were finally beginning to look up. 

Chapter Text

When the soft knock at her door sounded for the second time that week, Belle was halfway down the hall from force of habit before she remembered what had happened last time she opened the door. 

She froze mid-step. It seemed unlikely that Gaston would have recovered his pride so quickly and easily – not when his humiliation had occurred in front of the entire town. Still – she had misjudged the limit of what Gaston was willing to do once before. Who was to say that he wouldn’t come back, despite Maurice’s absence, despite her continued rejection of him and his suit, despite being deposited in the mud in front of everyone, and try to propose to – or worse, marry – her again? 

Belle glanced around the hall. It was sparse in terms of self-defense weaponry, although the umbrella would be a boon if she could get to it in time. Her biggest concern, if it was Gaston outside, was the rainstorm that had started before sunset and was still hammering against the roof of their cottage, hours later. Last time Gaston had arrived on a crisp summer afternoon, surrounded by witnesses. Now it was night, and he might be alone outside her door. If he would break down her door and attempt to kiss her in broad daylight, Belle shuddered to think what might happen under cover of darkness. 

The knock came again. Belle realised why she had automatically gotten up to answer the door despite recent events in the split second before her father called out from the front step. 

“Belle? Belle, are you there?”

“I’m here, Papa!” she replied, hurrying towards the front door. Drawing back the bolt and undoing the chain was the work of a moment, made quicker by the myriad worried thoughts that flew through her head. “What happened, Papa?” she asked as she pulled the door open. “I thought you were still supposed to be at the . . .”

The words trailed off into nothing as Belle laid eyes on a rain-soaked and shivering Maurice. He had been gone for less than a week, but he already looked completely different to the neat, fastidious father she knew. His hair was loose and tangled, his clothes mudstained and wrinkled, his spectacles nowhere to be seen. Worse than that, though, was his physical appearance – his face was deathly pale aside from two spots of colour high on his cheeks, and his eyes were almost consumed by his dazed, blown pupils. 

“Papa!” Belle gasped in horror, immediately looping an arm over her neck and half-dragging him into the house. She deposited him before the fire, which she was suddenly thankful she had lit that night. Maurice shuffled closer to the hearth as Belle ran outside to check on Phillippe, dodging the downpour wherever she possibly could. Surprisingly, he had already been stabled and given hay, and Belle felt a twinge of fond exasperation even as she worried about her father. Of course he had taken care of the horse before taking care of himself. 

She hurried back inside, locking and bolting the door again. As she slid the chain in place, she heard a wet cough from Maurice’s direction. 

“How long has that been going on?” she asked as she hurried across to the kitchen. 

“Three days,” Maurice said, punctuating the sentence with another cough. “Belle – listen, I need to tell you –”

“Not yet,” Belle said firmly, although she was on fire with curiosity. “Get warm and dry, Papa, and then tell me everything over some tea. I’ll get bread and cheese out.”

Maurice looked as if he was about to argue, but another full-body shiver interrupted him instead. With a sigh, he nodded and hunkered down in front of the hearth again. Belle spent the next twenty minutes in a flurry of activity to distract herself from whatever might have happened to her father; she laid a warming pan between his sheets, found fresh nightwear which Maurice took gladly, and set the kettle boiling as she found food for supper. By the time she had finished laying the table, Maurice was shuffling back in from his bedroom, his hair freshly brushed and in clean, dry nightclothes. 

“Belle –” he started again. 

“Eat,” Belle said, pushing the plate towards him. “Drink. You look pale as death, Papa.” She poured herself a mug of tea as well, and they sat for another few minutes in silence as Maurice attacked his meal. 

Eventually, there was nothing else Belle could do or say to delay Maurice’s story from being told. He held the cup loosely between his hands as he began. 

“Phillippe and I got lost in the woods on the way to the fair. Our usual road had been blocked by a fallen tree – if we hadn’t had the wagon it wouldn’t have been an issue, but there was no way to manoeuvre around it without losing time we didn’t have. So I took the other path, hoping we would circle back around.” He took a deep breath, meeting her eyes. “And at some point down that path – and even I’m not sure when exactly it was – I realised that it had started snowing . . .”

After her father had finished recounting his ordeal, Belle spent a long moment just staring numbly at him. It was hard to say what was more unbelievable; that the Beast from so many old village stories really did exist, or that he had apparently held her father hostage and then released him. 

“Papa . . .” she said, for once in her life at a complete loss for words. 

“I know how it sounds,” he said, wincing. He coughed into his elbow, triggering a wheeze which lasted for several seconds. Belle immediately sprung towards her father, hovering by his other side for a long, useless moment before Maurice’s breathing returned to normal. When he lifted his head again, his face had lost some of the colour it had regained in the past hour. Belle’s hands settled on his shoulders, rubbing her fingers in small, soothing circles. Maurice reached up and placed his hand over one of hers. The touch was comforting, although his fingers were still cold despite everything.

“I have proof,” Maurice said after a moment. “In the saddlebag.”

Belle crossed the room, picking the saddlebag up from where it had been unceremoniously dropped by Maurice the moment he stepped foot through the door. Belle hadn’t even looked at it until now, too preoccupied to pay it any mind. It was large, easily as long as two of her hands laid end to end and very deep. The brown leather was of a high quality, and it was obviously well cared-for. When Belle picked up the saddlebag, she was surprised by the weight held within it; she hefted it over to the kitchen table and undid the two clasps holding it shut. The contents of the bag spilled out; golden coins which shone like fresh butter; two poppyseed rolls, warm as if they had just come out of the oven; a gilt-edged copy of As You Like It, in English; and, finally, a ragged-looking rose, covered in powdered snow. As Belle gaped at the contents of the bag, the snow began to melt onto the aged wood of her kitchen table. 

“I think they’re gifts,” he said. 

“I think they’re bribes,” she spat, surprised at how venomous she sounded. She couldn’t shake the thought, once it had slotted into place in her mind. It settled there, unmovable as if decades of rust had already sealed it into place. 

Maurice sighed. “Belle . . .”

“No, Papa,” she said, warming to her anger now that it had taken root. “Who does this – this Beast think he is, to terrorise you half out of your mind, and extort a promise from you when your only alternative was –”

Her words cut off mid-sentence as she imagined what the alternative would have been. Would the Beast have murdered her father where he stood, or would he have locked Maurice in some dank, damp dungeon – with Belle none the wiser at home? 

Would a murderer feed his victim first? a small voice in her head asked. Would a murderer give him a warm place to sleep for the night? Would a monster send him home with food for the journey and a book to pass the time?

Belle curled her hands into small fists, feeling her nails dig into her palms. “Very kind of him to send you home to recover, before he expects you back at his castle again.” Although Maurice wasn’t the target of her barbed tongue, she could see him flinch at her tone. Belle bit her lip, before sliding back into her seat at the table. She reached over and placed her hands in her father’s. 

“Why did he let you go?” she asked quietly. “Was it just to let you say goodbye?”

Maurice hesitated. It lasted for only the barest fraction of a moment, but Belle noticed. She knew her father better than anyone; they had been living together alone for so long that she could recognise all of his tells. Her father was not a good liar. Belle had not grown up believing in the usual childish fairy stories, because one look at Maurice would prove them false. Instead, her surroundings had been enriched by imagined companions from the books she read; childish fairy stories from her own head, not her father’s.

Maurice moved his hand, so that both of his clasped one of hers. “Yes,” he said, and Belle knew that he was lying. “I must return by the end of the week. The saddlebags were to . . . help sustain you after I was gone. There’s enough there for a dowry, or to travel – whichever option appeals to you more.”

Belle felt her heart sink in her chest. This Beast – he didn’t want an old man like her father. He wanted a young woman. And Maurice loved her enough to go back to this Beast’s castle and – who knew what. Lie, if he was sensible. Tell the truth and risk the Beast’s wrath, if he wasn’t – or, Belle realised suddenly, if his judgement was clouded by illness and fever. 

Belle sipped her tea quietly, and looked at her father, his face lit with warm oranges and yellows from the fireplace. They passed the rest of the evening solemnly, the saddlebag still lying on the table like an accusation. By the time the two of them had gone to bed – Maurice slowly and awkwardly, wheezing all the while – Belle had come to a decision. By the time moonlight began to make a path over her whitewashed ceiling, sneaking through the gap between curtain rail and wall, she had begun to make a plan. And by the time Maurice rose the next day, several hours after Belle and with a face still worryingly pale and tired, Belle knew exactly how she would set her plan in action.

Darting a glance behind him, Kit let out a long-held breath. He had spent all of that morning in meetings with various advisors and organisers. Sadly, they had not been discussing policies or matters of state, which Kit actually found interesting. Instead half the meeting had involved numerous questions about minutiae of the ball in October, which Kit had no opinion on. The other had revolved around whether he had come to an early decision about his declaration, and the various pros and cons of all the most eligible men and women he could hope to marry. As Kit himself was still unsure what he would declare as, the meeting had been long, awkward, protracted, and deeply infuriating. 

The further he got into the woods, the more Kit could feel the tension in his shoulders bleeding away. He gently spurred his favoured hunting horse Jasper; although he wouldn’t be hunting today, he knew he would need the exertion of a long, hard ride to regain his patience before dinner with his father and the Duke that night. The breeze caused by Jasper’s speed counteracted the otherwise suffocating June heat that had been so stifling during his meeting, and the thick summer foliage of the forest provided plenty of shade from the heavy sunlight. He hit his stride soon enough, and for the next little while Kit allowed himself to forget who and what he was – or might be – and simply be a man enjoying an energetic horse ride. 

By the time he fully came back to himself, the sun had shifted from its midday position to the gentle light of early afternoon. He glanced around the landscape, trying to get a sense of where he was. Kit had, at one point or another, ridden throughout the entire kingdom. Today he had also consciously chosen not to steer Jasper towards one of their usual routes, which stuck fairly close to the castle. Leading Jasper into a slower trot around the clearing, he began to scan the forest for any obvious trails or paths which might lead to a town. None was forthcoming, and Kit sat for a moment in frustration amongst the (admittedly very beautiful) scenery. It was only then that he heard the muffled sounds of a woman crying, deeper into the forest. 

Kit urged Jasper east, following the sound. If he moved any faster than a walk, the sound disappeared underneath the birdsong and the thundering of Jasper’s hooves against the forest floor – it was no wonder he hadn’t heard it earlier. The trees thinned out to another clearing. At the other end of it was a blonde servant woman on a grey horse, holding a letter in one hand while the other loosely held the reins. 

“Hello?” he called out. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but it sounds as if there’s someone in distress around here. Is everything alright?”

The woman’s head shot up. Her nose was red, and her large brown eyes still had tears falling from them. With one hand she folded up the letter again, while she wiped away her tears with the corner of her faded apron. Almost absently, Kit noticed that she would be very pretty had she not just been obviously crying. “Oh! I – I’m sorry to have disturbed you, sir,” she said, nodding in his direction without dismounting the horse. 

“Is there anything I can do to help you, Miss?” Kit asked, who had noticed that she had not answered his question. 

“I – no, I don’t think so,” the woman said. Her fingers closed around the letter, so tightly that her knuckles blanched. “It’s not me – I met a . . . a friend, who said she would be here. She seems to have run into some trouble.” She glanced down at the letter again, before darting her gaze up to meet his. “She’s French,” she explained. “Even if . . . even if you believed me, you have no obligation to help her; she isn’t a German citizen.”

Kit dismounted Jasper, walking towards the woman slowly. He was slightly surprised that she had recognised him without the usual accoutrements of a prince, and even more so that she had done so without addressing him as one. In his experience, noblemen’s servants were hyper-aware of how the monarchy should be addressed – more so than his own servants, most of whom had known him since he was a small child and still called him ‘Master Kit’. He was also fairly certain that if he brought this to her attention, the woman would clam up due to the class disparity between them. There was something about her quiet crying, and immediate assumption that he would neither believe nor help her, that made Kit obstinately even more determined to assist.

“I was brought up to always help those who needed it to the best of my ability, no matter who they were or where they came from,” he said instead. “And likewise to never reject or ridicule someone out of hand merely because their problem sounded strange.”

The woman looked at him for a long moment, deliberating. With a swift movement, she extended the hand that held the letter. It trembled slightly in her fingers. Kit took it from an arm’s length away, careful not to advance any closer than necessary. He stood still as he unfolded the letter and began to read it. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he darted his eyes up once before turning back to the letter again. The woman’s piercing brown gaze was trained on him, even as she nervously fiddled with a loose strand of blonde hair at the nape of her neck. 

Dear Ella, the letter read. 

I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I won’t be there to meet you in this clearing. I want you to know that if it was up to me, I would absolutely be here. Unfortunately, my situation has changed, rather abruptly. I thought it only right that you should hear my reasoning, although you might think me a fool or a liar. 

As you also live in a border town, I am hoping you have heard of the tale of the Beast that supposedly roams this forest. Like me, you may have thought that the stories of how he kidnaps and eats unwary travellers to be a children’s fairy story. Unfortunately, he appears to be very real. My father had an encounter with him on the way to the fair I mentioned when we first met. He escaped with his life – and a condition to return. However, I have reason to believe that my father is concealing what I suspect is the real truth – that this Beast is after young women, not old men. My father is old and in poor health, and yet he still resolved to go back to this Beast to spare me. I could not in good conscience allow him to honour a promise which must have been exerted under duress, and which would require such selfishness from me to allow my father to sacrifice himself for me. As such, I am going in his place. I have left a similar note explaining my reasoning to him.

I do not think it likely that the Beast will eat me, seeing as he let my father go free – and with ‘gifts’ to boot. However . . . I have no idea what I am about to walk into. I’m absolutely terrified – but the only thing that scares me more is the idea of my father going in my place. I have to go as soon as possible, before he tries to sneak away. 

Once again, Ella, I’m so sorry that I won’t be here next week. I was really looking forward to talking to you again. I can only hope that the waterproof envelope I’m borrowing will preserve this letter through the weather of the next few days. 

I remain,

Yours,

Isabelle Dupont

Kit folded the letter back up, and handed it to the woman – Ella, apparently – at arm’s length once again. She took it from him gracefully, although her face remained troubled. 

“You believe her,” Kit said quietly. It wasn’t a question, and they both knew it.  “About the Beast.” His voice sounded loud in the otherwise deserted forest.

“My mother warned me, when I was a little girl, never to stray so far from the house that I couldn’t hear my own name being called,” Ella said. The words came slowly, as if she was tapping into something deep within her that had lain undisturbed for some time. “She said – she said there were all manner of creatures in these woods. I used to think she just meant bears and wolves. But then the stories of that Beast started – it must have been about ten years ago, now – and I wondered.” 

Kit made a small noise of agreement. It snapped Ella out of the mood she had slipped into; when she looked at him again, it was with sharp eyes, sitting up straight in the saddle.

“I’ve heard those stories, too,” Kit said. “Diluted by distance, up in the capital, but I have heard them. They can never seem to determine whether he is a French Beast or a German one – but if he’s a creature of the border woods, I suppose that would make sense.”

“You don’t believe me,” she said flatly. “Or her.”

“I don’t know about a magical Beast,” Kit admitted, “but there is something strange going on here.” He was prepared for the split-second of hurt that flashed across Ella’s face when he made his doubts clear. It still stung, to know that his honesty had done it. “What about you, Miss Ella?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“The past half an hour has been so strange already,” Ella said. “How is the reality of a magical Beast any harder to believe than that a prince and a servant can talk almost as equals?” 

It was Kit’s turn to be stung by honesty, and they sat with the statement for a moment before Ella continued. “Regardless of what either of us believe, Belle said she would be here today and left this note instead. I’m worried about her.”

Kit nodded. “Would you leave this matter with me? I give you my word that I will do everything I can to uncover the truth of the matter.”

Ella’s jaw dropped, although she recovered quickly. “You – you would do that? For someone you just met by chance? Your Majesty –”

“Don’t,” Kit interrupted. “Call me Kit, please. And yes. I would, and I am. I have the means and the ability to help, which means I’ll do it, and gladly.”

Ella blinked. “That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, Your – Ki – Mister Kit.”

Kit’s heart spared a moment to ache on her behalf. He made a mental note for the next council session to review the standards which currently applied to the living conditions and employment contracts for servants. 

In the distance, he heard a shrill voice call out, “Ella!”

Ella’s head snapped in that direction on instinct, more strands of blonde hair slipping out of her headscarf as she did so. “I need to go,” she said apologetically as she turned back to face him. 

“What would be the best way to keep you informed?” Kit asked. “Should I write?”

“No!” Ella said. It was almost a shout. A small line appeared between her eyebrows as she thought. “Madam – she opens all the letters, no matter who they’re addressed to,” she explained. 

“I could come back here – say in a fortnight?” Kit offered. 

Ella nodded decisively. “A fortnight, then. I – I can’t thank you enough, Mister Kit.” Before Kit could awkwardly accept her thanks again, she turned her horse around and disappeared into the woods. 

Kit walked back to Jasper and mounted him, gently easing the horse into a trot as they traced their way back towards the palace. Kit found himself grateful for the long ride ahead of him, even as he finally realised with some shock that he had ridden to the border of the country within three hours. The ride would give him time to start thinking of where the most likely place for an enchanted castle might be – and how best to convince his Captain of the Guard that this would require Kit’s personal attention. 

Chapter Text

“Master? Master!”

The Beast lifted his head up from his folded arms, turning his gaze from the enchanted rose (which had lost a second petal over the course of the week) to the sound of his butler Cogsworth’s voice. Cogsworth, who was currently trapped in the form of a small mantel clock, stood just inside the doorway of the West Wing, barely visible to someone without the Beast’s keen eyesight. The Beast could see flashes of candlelight reflecting off metal, as he twisted what had once been his hands in front of his chest. 

“What is it, Cogsworth?” he said, pushing himself to sit upright. 

“Well, you see, Master – you may recall the gentleman who visited last week?”

Instantly, the Beast snapped to attention. He was keenly aware that his heart was pounding. He forced himself to take three slow, easy breaths through his nose before answering Cogsworth. The conversation between the Beast and the gentleman had not ended with a resounding acceptance of his terms. The man had left the castle, and had given his word that either himself or his daughter would return. But there was a hesitance in his voice that had left the Beast doubtful that his daughter would appear – and a sickening worry that he had thrown away his only chance at freedom because he had lost his temper at an old man. 

“Yes? Well?” he said, eloquently. 

He heard the tapping of Cogsworth’s small feet as he drew further into the West Wing. “It seems you were incorrect in your assessment of his character, Master. The girl has arrived.”

The Beast blinked. “Oh.” For the briefest of instants, his burden of responsibility and hopelessness lifted. “After so many years . . .” he said. The words to sum up those years were not forthcoming, and the Beast’s sentence trailed off inelegantly. 

“Yes,” Cogsworth sniffed. “I quite agree, Master.” They remained frozen in place for another few moments, before Cogsworth cleared his throat, expectantly. “Will you . . . be coming down to meet her, sire?”

The Beast felt the weight of his responsibility for the entire castle settle over his shoulders once again as Cogsworth looked at him. He had worn it for the past six years. There was nothing to lift or ease it – everything might still go horribly wrong as soon as he actually began to talk to the girl. Inexplicably, he felt the sudden urge to jiggle his leg as his stomach swooped – it took him a moment to realise that he was feeling nervous. 

“Yes, Cogsworth,” he said, moving away from the table before he gave into his impulses. “Where is she? In the drawing room?”

“Yes, sire,” Cogsworth said. 

“Very good,” the Beast replied as he stalked out of the room and down the corridor. Once he was out of sight of his servants, he awkwardly manoeuvered into a standing position. Given a choice between intimidating the girl with his height and weight, or first appearing before her on all fours like a dog, the Beast knew which would leave his dignity more intact. He hurried down the rest of the way to the main hall, being sure to move as lightly as he could – he didn’t want to intimidate her that much, after all. Here and there, he noticed some of the larger, more obtrusive staff members sneaking glances at him from the rooms they had been confined in for so long. While normally prolonged attention made his hackles rise up – unfortunately for him, literally – the Beast couldn’t blame them for being curious. This was the second visitor they had had since the curse was laid – even without the melodramatic events of the previous week, this was a moment of high intrigue. 

Before long, he was at the top of the main staircase in the entrance hall – the same staircase he had been hiding behind just last week. From his current position, he could just make out the sounds of muffled conversation coming from the drawing room. Although his hearing had improved greatly with his new form, the words and exact timbre of the voices were inaudible. However, the Beast could hear just enough to note an unfamiliar tone, amongst the familiar sounds of Mrs Potts and Lumière. Continuing to step lightly, the Beast descended the stairs, careful to keep his claws on the carpet. Nails on a chalkboard had been an extremely irritating sound for him when he was a – even before the curse. Claw on stone was ten times worse. 

Safely on the ground floor, he padded over to the closed drawing room door. This close, he should have been able to hear the conversation clearly. However, the sound of his own heartbeat echoing in his ears drowned out almost all other sounds. The Beast took a moment to gather himself, and take one last breath. Then, his heart in his mouth, he lifted one enormous paw and rapped his knuckles on the door three times. 

Immediately, silence rushed in. The Beast paused expectantly for a moment, before he remembered that neither of the two staff members inside the room were physically capable of opening the door for him. His ears twitched downwards (his current form’s equivalent of the red-cheeked embarrassment that had been so awkward for him – before), and he gingerly opened the door.

In the dead silence of that room, the Beast’s every slight movement sounded as loud as if he had pounded straight inside and roared in the girl’s face. The rustle of his cloak and his muffled footfalls seemed to echo off the lushly carpeted floor as if they were in a craggy cavern. The only chair in the room stood facing the fireplace, which cast the rest of the room in bold yellows and reds as the wood burned. He could see a sliver of the woman’s blue skirts, the shadow of thick working boots, and nothing more. He had intended for the fire to give comfort in the cursed, unseasonably cold night. The Beast hadn’t anticipated that the flames would accentuate his hulking shadow, an exercise in chiaroscuro. He couldn’t even see her face, and he already knew that she would be terrified of him – how could she not be? 

He glanced towards Lumière and Mrs Potts, stood on either side of the chair. Lumière, ever the showman, clasped his two candlestick-hands together in a ‘brava!’ gesture that did little to inspire the Beast’s swiftly waning confidence. Mrs Potts met his eyes when he turned to her, and slipped him a small, encouraging smile. It sunk into his chest, a sliver of warmth, and the Beast felt a small knot of tension in his stomach release. 

“Good evening,” he said in a low rumble.

The girl sucked in a startled breath, but otherwise did not react to his words. Somewhat awkwardly, the Beast mentally fumbled around for the next item on the list of usual social niceties.

“I . . . hope your journey wasn’t too taxing. One of my servants can show you to your room if you need to rest.”

Still nothing. 

The Beast glanced at his staff for support, at a loss for what to do next. He had been known for his silver tongue before – well, before – but while he was used to filling long silences, the ladies and gentlemen he used to know would at least interject with a hum every so often to let him know that they were listening. This girl was completely stoic – the statues in the garden had more life than her. Lumière, by dint of having arms, mimed eating with a knife and fork, and the Beast seized the prompt gladly.

“You . . . you must be hungry?” The Beast winced at the obvious note of uncertainty in his voice. “The dining room is already prepared for dinner.”

“No.”

The Beast fell silent, less because he was unused to being interrupted and more because of the force behind the simple word. While a small part of him was annoyed that she had cut him off so suddenly, a much larger part was beginning to realise that he had not, perhaps, thought his plan through completely. 

“A word to Cuisinier and we can –”

“No.”

His jaw clenched. He was slightly aware of his tail, curling back and forth across the carpet like a relaxed whip. He cleared his throat, half-bowing towards the back of the chair in half-remembered gentility. “The nights here are cold, and your journey has been long,” he said, carefully enunciating every consonant. “As your host, it would give me great pleasure if you would join me for dinner.”

“No.”

She rose from the chair and spun around to spit the word directly at him. Her face went pale as she took him in from head to toe – his increased size, his horns, his claws, his fangs. A moment later, her face was as terse and unforgiving as her voice had been. Thick, straight eyebrows guarded high cheekbones and a stern mouth, although the freckles on her nose and wisps of loose hair around her face leant a little softness to the overall impression. The only visible trace of fear was the white-knuckled grip she had on the back of the chair. 

“Very well,” the Beast said slowly. “I will eat later. You should go now, while the food is hot.”

Her face lost its stern expression, the harsh lines of her eyebrows and mouth softening in surprise. For a moment, their eyes met. There was certainly surprise, and a little fear in her hazel eyes – but what struck the Beast the most was the anger in her gaze. He looked away first. 

“Lumière, if you could show our guest to the dining room.”

Lumière hopped to attention, but before he could open his mouth, the woman scoffed. “You may be giving me warm food and placing me in a fine room, but that doesn’t make me a guest. Unless you bribe all your visitors with saddlebags of gold?”

The silence that followed was far worse than when the Beast had entered the drawing room. This silence had teeth. He couldn’t look at her. 

“That’s what I thought,” she said. Her voice had lost the biting contempt it had held. It sounded small, and empty. 

The Beast closed his eyes. He had known at every step of the way that it was a bad idea – but confronted with it now, his shame was overpowering. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. He stood there numbly as the woman’s skirts rustled past him; not towards the dining room, but back to the entrance hall.

Abruptly, he remembered the last time he had been paralysed by his own shame. If he had said something, anything back then . . .

“I . . .”

She stopped, and half-turned towards him, still bathed in the rosy light from the fire. He remembered the conversation he’d had with her father, only a week ago – how frightened he had been, and how clearly he had prioritised his daughter’s wellbeing despite the danger he had been in. Thoroughly unbidden by the Beast, another conversation sprung to mind. One from years earlier, with a woman who by the end of his acquaintance with her had held nothing but contempt for him. 

The Beast knew there was only one thing he could say to the woman. His shoulders sagged slightly, as the weight of his hopelessness – gone for less than half an hour, in the end – settled back down.

“You do not have to stay. But at least eat, and rest a little. These woods can be dangerous at night.”

The woman stood in the doorway for a long moment of indecision. The Beast – who had not moved from his spot since she had risen from the chair – risked a glance up at her face. Their eyes met again. He could see that she didn’t trust what he said – and he could hardly blame her for it. 

“What is your name?” he asked quietly. 

“Isabelle Dupont,” she said. She looked half-surprised at herself for allowing him to know it.

The Beast turned so that he faced her directly, and awkwardly half-bowed towards her, still trying to maintain eye contact. Court etiquette dictated that he should be on one knee, but he knew his body would never allow itself to be contorted in such a way. “Isabelle Dupont,” he said, “I give you my word that you will not be kept here against your will. As my word is my bond, on my honour as a gentleman.”

She quirked an eyebrow, clearly without meaning to, when he mentioned his honour, and it almost made him stutter over the last line. Having made his declaration, he straightened up again. Her face was still all tense lines, and he wondered if he had imagined that eyebrow quirk or if it had been a trick of the light. 

Isabelle took a breath. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll stay to eat, and rest. But then I’ll go home.”

He nodded. “If you need anything while you’re here, my servants will attend to you.” 

She walked back in the room again, carefully skirting him as she did so. The Beast couldn’t fault her for doing so, but it still stung a little. She could do worse than cross the room from you, and it would be well-deserved, he thought – and for once, the thought was true. She followed Lumière towards the dining room in a silence more contemplative than it was heavy. When the door clicked shut in its frame behind them, the Beast sank into the abandoned chair with a heavy sigh. 

Without opening his eyes, he could tell that Mrs Potts had moved so that she was next to him. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked. “Lock her up in the dungeon? I should never have wrangled that promise from her father in the first place. I knew – I knew it was a bad idea even before I opened my mouth, but . . .”

“These are desperate times,” Mrs Potts said. “And you thought it was your only hope.” 

They sat for a moment in the relative quiet of the room, as the firewood popped and crackled eagerly. The Beast glanced at Mrs Potts out of the corner of his eye. She was staring at the fire, her white porcelain turned orange by its light. He had gotten better at deducing the emotions of his staff in the last year or so, but it was still difficult to decipher their expressions through the inanimate objects they were forced to inhabit.

“Still,” she said, “I’m glad that you didn’t force her to go through with it, Master. And you never know. There could be another opportunity right around the corner.”

The Beast sincerely doubted it, but he said nothing. Instead, he smiled weakly and left for the West Wing, so there was no danger of running into Isabelle again that night. When he woke up the next day, the morning birds still heralding the sunrise, she was already gone. 

He remained in the West Wing, unsure what to do with himself after the sudden raising and self-imposed dashing of his hopes. He could tell that the servants were tiptoeing around him. A week ago, it would have irritated him to no end. Now, he was almost grateful. It meant that he didn’t need to stare at them in what little was left of their faces, for throwing away the one opportunity he had been given to break their curse. Another petal threatened to fall during that time, leaving the Beast in anticipation that was almost painful. 

Eventually he grew sick of staring at the same four walls, picking at the food that was quietly left out for him by the outer door. The Beast finally emerged from the West Wing three days after Isabelle had left, carefully avoiding the staff members who were most likely to try and console him. He slipped into the grounds at the rear of the castle – the first time he had done so in quite some time. The midwinter morning was crisp like an apple. His breath steamed before him in a great cloud, as he filled his large chest with the cool, fresh air. The disconnect between the cursed winter of the castle grounds and the passing seasons of the forest outside never ceased to confound the Beast. It was especially difficult now, in summer months; just a few yards beyond the gates at the front of the castle the forest was in full bloom, dark green foliage everywhere. 

Slowly, he began a perimeter of the grounds. He padded around on all fours, to better navigate the snow – it had fallen fast and deep in the intervening days, which only made it more difficult to walk on his hind legs. It crunched beneath his paws, and the Beast was briefly thankful that there wasn’t any snow falling at the moment. As he moved past the grand, floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the ballroom, he spotted a few of his senior staff meeting inside. Although he couldn’t tell what they were saying, he glanced absently over a few times as he walked. Against the striking gold of the ballroom, Mrs Potts’ white porcelain stood out easily; she was standing on her tea trolley between Cogsworth and his metamour, Plumette, who also could be easily picked out for the same reason. Lumière was addressing all three from the grand piano, tucked in the corner. He was gesticulating wildly – then again, that was hardly an indication of whether he was experiencing a particularly heightened emotion. 

The Beast continued on his walk, skirting the eastern wall of the castle as he approached the front gardens and, further onwards, the large wrought-iron gates. He had to admit, it felt good to be outside and feel the fresh open air, even if his surroundings had been unchanged for the last six years. The only thing that ever differed day to day was the amount of snow lying piled on what had once been the rose bushes planted by his mother. 

Just as that thought crossed his mind, the Beast’s ears pricked up. He froze – unsure of what he had heard, but sure that he had heard something. A moment later, he realised what it was, although that made the sound no less confounding. It was the sound of hoofbeats, rapidly approaching the gates. 

For a brief instant, the Beast wondered if it was Isablle or her father, deciding to return after all. He shot it down immediately – she had seemed perfectly certain that she didn’t want to stay with him, and he sincerely doubted that her father would return either. But that did leave the question of who it was, how they had found him, and whether or not it was sheer coincidence that three separate people had stumbled upon his castle in less than a fortnight. 

The horse’s hooves continued to beat out a tattoo as it drew nearer. Taking another breath, the steam hanging momentarily in the air before dissipating away, the Beast drew nearer to the gates. If his suspicion was right, and this stranger knew of his existence, it would be better to solve everything out in the open instead of getting his staff’s hopes up again. If he was wrong . . . well, it would certainly save time and food if the stranger didn’t receive his hospitality. 

He stood and listened as horse and rider approached the castle. He could tell when they crossed the border of his curse; the rhythm of the hoofbeats changed slightly, presumably as the rider wondered at the change of season and adjusted their horse to the new conditions underfoot. Drawing nearer, the Beast heard the horse slow to a trot, and then a walk. Judging that they must be just behind the last of the trees, he settled himself directly in front of the gates. He stood on his hind legs, ignoring the little ache that came with the weight transfer, and adjusted his cloak so that it hung better around his shoulders. Moments after the Beast had situated himself to his liking, the horse and rider appeared from the last of the trees. 

The rider was a man – a young man, probably around the Beast’s age. He wore a green jacket that matched the foliage of the trees behind him almost perfectly, his jaw as strong and straight as the seams along his broad shoulders. Like Isabelle, he had dark hair, thick, straight eyebrows, and seemed not to take the existence of a magical Beast as a complete surprise. Unlike her, his mouth was relaxed at the corners, and his eyes were the pale blue of an autumn sky. Those eyes raked over the Beast, filled not with shock but with amazement, darting up to take in his castle before slipping back down to meet his gaze. 

“Hello,” he said in easy, slightly accented French. “I was wondering if you could help me. My name is Christoph – my father’s kingdom borders yours through these woods. A friend of mine received a distressing letter last week, and I hope you may be able to shed some light on the situation. Do you know where I might be able to find Mademoiselle Isabelle Dupont?”

Chapter Text

“Absolutely not,” Captain Harker had said, once Kit had finished explaining the bare bones of the promise he had given to the woman in the woods that afternoon. One-handed, she released the topmost button of her grey training uniform before settling back into the ‘on-guard’ position. Her sabre glinted in the light as her hands moved, always carefully kept below her waist. 

He sighed. He had known that convincing the captain he was still in possession of his wits would be a difficult battle, even before he expanded on the details of Ella’s situation. He rolled his shoulders back, one after the other, before readying his blade in turn.

“It’s out of the question, Your Highness,” she said, grunting a little as they moved through their sword forms. “You have enough to do here, in the capital. Also, this concerns an individual who is a citizen of another country; that can easily get messy.” She lunged towards him; Kit saw her attack coming and raised his sword to block what would have been a hit to his shoulder. Captain Harker pivoted sharply on one heel as if it had been her plan all along. Kit darted backwards, parrying her sabre as it attempted to hit his upper thigh. She used his momentum to force him further backwards as she continued to turn, their swords clashing as they followed the rhythm of the forms.

“Also,” she added, “whoever lives in this castle could easily pose a threat to your life. It’s generally frowned upon when the sovereign dies before they can even take the throne.”

Kit locked their swords together, bracing his foot behind hers so that she couldn’t retreat with her usual grace. “I know,” he admitted. “You’d be correct in any other circumstance, Captain.” 

He felt the slightest adjustment of the Captain’s grip on her sword, and knew she was about to take advantage of his distraction. Determined, Kit pulled his foot backwards, throwing her off-balance for a brief moment. He used that opportunity to force them both to travel across the training mat, their swords ringing out again as Captain Harker parried his attempted hits. He drew back for an instant; the Captain raised her sword to parry his clearly telegraphed attack, but Kit was too fast for her. He lightly tapped her waist with his sword, and couldn’t stop the grin that spread over his face.

“But?” she asked, batting him away gently with the flat of her sabre. 

“But,” he said, “I made a promise. And my word is –”

“Your bond, yes,” she said. They sheathed their blades in unison, born from years of fighting together. Beads of sweat were starting to drip down the Captain’s forehead; she swiped them away with the back of her hand, undid the tie that had kept her braids gathered at the nape of her neck, and glanced at the floor. Kit tried not to look as pleased as he felt. He knew her tells. She was about to concede to him. 

“Your father won’t like it,” she said resignedly. 

“I wasn’t planning on telling him. Not right away, anyway,” Kit said. 

Captain Harker looked at him sharply. 

“He has enough to worry about already,” Kit protested. “Between arrangements for the coronation, keeping the Duke off my back about what my alignment is, and . . .” He trailed off. The subject of his father’s health was an open secret, but it would still be unwise to mention it so off-handedly. Kit also tried (a little childishly, he knew) to avoid saying it aloud as much as possible. There was a certain irrevocable reality to the words “My father is dying,” that was absent when the words echoed only in his head. 

Captain Harker hummed in acknowledgement. She was part of a very small circle of people who knew the extent of his father’s ill health. 

“Besides,” Kit said, “it may all come to nothing. That woman’s friend might reappear well before I promised I would come back and see her again.”

Captain Harker sighed, her braids swinging gently as she shook her head twice. “At least tell me you have a plan beyond blindly searching the border woods for the castle of a magical Beast that may or may not even exist.”

Kit smiled winningly. “Of course I do. I’m going to go to the library first.”

And that was what Kit had done for the next three days. In between his usual responsibilities as the upcoming monarch he had pored over maps of the border between Germany and France, as well as books of folklore he remembered from childhood. The former proved more useful than the latter, as Kit had gathered a working knowledge of the border forest and even identified a castle to begin his search. Meanwhile, none of the fairy tales or folklore books he found mentioned a Beast in the forests. It was an undeniable snag in Ella’s story, but Kit didn’t break his promises lightly. 

He was more hopeful about the castle. It stood on the outskirts of a small French principality located right beside the woods, and had been uninhabited for a good seven or eight years. However, Kit soon found that the records were infuriatingly vague on the name, age, gender, and current location of the last person who lived there – not to mention their reasons for abandoning the castle in the first place. Incidentally, it wasn’t far from the clearing where he had met Ella; if he left early, and nothing untoward happened at the castle itself, Kit estimated that he could easily be home before the late summer night deigned to fall. 

At the end of the third day researching, Kit had realised that he was unlikely to find additional pertinent information. The only thing to do was to set out, and hope that Ella’s friend was correct in her assessment of the mysterious Beast’s temperament – if such a creature truly existed. With that thought in mind, when Kit rose early the next morning he was careful to remember his sword and scabbard. Not the ceremonial set he wore when in dress uniform, and not the blunt training set either – the scabbard was an unassuming brown, but the sword was wickedly sharp. Both stayed in his personal chambers, within reach of the bed. After a quick stop in the kitchen to beg a small packed lunch from the cook – something Kit hadn’t done since he was a very small boy – he saddled Jasper, nodded politely at the gate guards who were nearing the end of their night shift, and started the ride towards the border forest. 

The ride passed more quickly than it had the first time. Now that he was riding with a destination in mind, Kit found himself taking stock of his surroundings – the river that forked here, the copse of apple trees there – and soon found himself in the clearing where he had met Ella only a few days before. She was nowhere to be seen today, which Kit supposed made sense. Her mistress seemed to be a very strict one, judging from the way she had yelled for attendance, and Ella’s insistence that Kit’s very basic manners were the height of kindness – to say nothing of her assertion that her mistress opened all the letters. True to his (unstated) promise, he had asked the Duke to add living and employment standards for domestic servants to the agenda of the next council meeting. Kit did not especially like the Duke, but even he could not deny that the man would make a thorough investigation of the topic if directly asked. 

Kit frowned at the memory, even as he began to steer Jasper deeper into the woods. There was something about the plain disbelief on Ella’s face when he’d offered to help that sat ill with him. Nobody should look like that when confronted with kindness. He had an inkling that addressing the root cause of that disbelief would be beyond even his considerable power. He sighed, gently shaking it from his mind, and turned his attention back to the surrounding landmarks. He had another promise to fulfill today. Fruitless ponderings on how to affect a situation he had next to no information about wouldn’t help him find Ella’s friend. 

Keeping the river to his left hand side, Kit gently spurred Jasper onwards under the dappled canopy of lush summer leaves. He could picture the maps he had referenced in his mind’s eye, overlaid on what he was seeing in front of him. As the sun began to slide from mid-morning to it’s highest meridian, Kit began scanning between the trees for the beginnings of the path towards the castle. He tugged at his collar, where a light sweat on the back of his neck had formed from the exercise of riding, and the hot June sun. 

“It should be around here somewhere,” he muttered to himself. He urged Jasper further to the northwest. He didn’t give up hope yet – after all, a path which hadn’t been tended for seven years would almost certainly be overgrown by now. As he had ridden further away from Ella’s house, the sounds of wildlife had become more active, trees and wildflowers becoming more overgrown. Either the records were correct, and the castle had indeed been abandoned for several years, or Kit was wasting his time in an unrelated part of the forest. 

Just as he reached this conclusion, Jasper’s ears pricked up. The horse turned his head, and a moment later Kit saw what he had noticed – a fallen tree, struck by lightning, which revealed a paved path behind it, leading gradually downhill. 

“Clever boy, Jasper,” Kit praised, stroking his neck. “Come on. Let’s see what we can see down here.”

Jasper’s hooves tapped insistently against the stones as they rode down the path. Within a few minutes, Kit began to feel a prickling feeling on the back of his neck; as if there was a storm in the air. Beneath him, he could see Jasper tense up; thankfully, his horse was too well-trained to bolt nervously, and Kit gently reassured him as they kept moving. He realised with a little jolt that the busy sounds of summer wildlife had not followed them down the path. As if there was something here they were avoiding. A shiver ran down Kit’s spine. Perhaps there was more to the tale of this Beast than he had given credit. Another chill ran through him; unexpected this time, starting from the back of his neck. Kit frowned and glanced around him, easing his shoulders down from where they had reflexively tried to touch his ears. Nothing revealed itself in the immediate vicinity, although another chill landed on his neck almost immediately. Kit looked forwards again, and the frown lifted off his face in disbelief. 

It was snowing. In June. Kit popped the collar of his jacket up to stave off the snowflakes, even as his senses struggled to take in what he was seeing and feeling. The woods which just moments ago had been filled with the sounds, sights, and scents of summer now looked as if they had been plucked straight out of December and set down wholesale two seasons later. The river, which had wound its way to his right, was no longer a clear cornflower blue, but instead a dark ribbon snaking through the white blankets of snow on either side. His surroundings were an exercise in black and white; the dark undersides of branches and glimpses of tree trunks, bearing inches and inches of suffocating snow. Kit glanced upwards, blinking away the odd snowflake that landed on his eyelashes, but his monochrome surroundings were echoed in the dark snow clouds that covered the sky above. 

He and Jasper wandered down that path for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably less than ten minutes. As the trees around them began to thin out, Kit eased Jasper into a walk. The path also levelled out, and Kit knew that he was about to encounter whatever awaited them at the end. There was one final bend in the road through which he could glimpse a high stone wall. Besides that, he was going in almost completely blind. He took one short breath to fortify himself, and urged Jasper onwards. 

As they cleared the bend in the road, the first thing Kit saw was the castle. It loomed in the background, a collection of high towers stabbing upwards at the sky. It was surprisingly compact, nothing like the comparatively low, sprawling, modern castle his father had built in the capital when he was first elected. He was briefly pleased that he had successfully located the castle after all. Then his eyes flickered down from the castle to the tall wrought-iron gates that punctuated the wall. 

Behind the gate stood the Beast. 

So Ella’s friend was right after all, Kit thought numbly as everything he thought he knew about his world was turned on its head. 

He was very tall – Kit estimated him to be somewhere between eight and ten feet, and standing on two legs like a man. Large ram’s horns curved away from his face, which would have resembled a lion were it not for the two fangs curling up from his lower lip. Thick brown fur covered his face and, presumably, the rest of his body. A pair of dark trousers covered his legs, but the rest of his body was swathed in a pale blue banyan, threaded with silver details. His hands – paws? – peeked out from the cuffs of the banyan, the same thick fur covering what little Kit could see of them. It was difficult to miss the sharp claws that topped them, or the way that the Beast’s entire body seemed to scream that he was a predator, the kind of monster Kit had been reading about since he was a child. 

For a moment, Kit was tempted to draw his sword unprovoked. He glanced up at the castle, wondering if Ella’s friend was indeed imprisoned there. If he would need to attack this Beast in order to keep his promise. When his eyes slipped back towards the Beast, he was surprised to see something he hadn’t noticed during his initial assessment. Beneath his thick brow and domed forehead, the Beast’s deep-set eyes were a blue so light they were almost green. Kit realised with a start that just as he had been taking in the Beast, so too had the Beast been looking over him. He looked . . . well, it was difficult to ascribe any emotion to an appearance so different from what Kit was used to. But the mere fact that he hadn’t been attacked on sight, he reasoned, must show that this Beast was not merely a mindless monster. Resolved, he took a breath, and a gamble. 

“Hello,” he said in French. “I was wondering if you could help me. My name is Christoph – my father’s kingdom borders yours through these woods. A friend of mine received a distressing letter last week, and I hope you may be able to shed some light on the situation. Do you know where I might be able to find Mademoiselle Isabelle Dupont?”

The Beast blinked, clearly surprised. “Mademoiselle Isabelle Dupont?” he asked. His voice was very deep. A breeze came through which ruffled the folds of his banyan slightly. Kit noticed that he was wide and barrel-chested, in a fashion that reminded him of horses, as he drew his own green jacket closer over his shoulders; it was a summer jacket, not one meant for weathering winter. “She – she left. A few days ago.”

Kit frowned. “Left?” he echoed.

The Beast nodded. He seemed almost pensive as he continued to speak. “She was here earlier. But I . . . I let her go.”

Fragments from Belle’s letter flashed across Kit’s mind, as the Beast’s shoulders slumped downwards. My father . . . escaped with his life and a condition to return . . . this Beast is after young women, not old men. “Why?” Kit asked. 

“My behaviour in getting her to this castle was . . . dishonourable,” the Beast said. He lifted a hand to awkwardly tug at one ear, revealing more brown fur on his forearm as his sleeve fell back. “It was unbefitting of a ge –” He stopped himself mid-sentence. “It was unbefitting,” he said again. “She was only here for one night, when all was said and done – and only because it was late. If the weather had been better, I suspect she would have left on the same day.” He let his arm fall back to his side, the sleeve hiding his arms up to the wrist once again. 

Kit shifted in the saddle, glad that Jasper’s head and neck concealed his hands fiddling with the reins. He had gotten what he came here for – confirmation of a magical Beast, and his word that Isabelle Dupont was no longer in his castle. He should turn around, ride back to his own castle and perhaps even send a messenger to the nearest French town, Villeneuve, to see if any of the villagers there had seen Isabelle. But there was something about the Beast that intrigued Kit. Something beyond the fact that there was apparently magic in the world he had been entirely unaware of up until now. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it yet. 

“May I ask why you extracted such a promise from her and her father in the first place?” Kit asked. “The stories say that you . . . waylay errant travellers, but if that was the case . . .”

To their mutual surprise, the Beast chuckled. He glanced up at Kit, a strange expression on his face, before he settled back into his previous serious, pensive attitude. “If that was the case, a great many things would be different indeed,” he said cryptically. Before Kit could ask what he meant, the Beast continued. “I made her father promise to stay because he saw me. If word got out that there was a Beast in a magical castle – anything could have happened, and not just to me.” He sighed. 

“But you still let him return home to say goodbye to his daughter,” Kit said. 

The Beast paused, for a long moment. “As I said,” he rumbled. “My behaviour towards Mademoiselle Dupont was not honourable. I realised that almost as soon as she arrived.” 

They let the conversation sit in the cold, bracing air for a moment. Jasper snorted, shifting his weight around from hoof to hoof. Kit snuck glances at the Beast, disguising them by pretending to look at his castle. Now that he was no longer directly addressing Kit, his head had drooped. He was picking at a loose silver thread in his banyan with one of his claws. He lifted his head again, inadvertently catching Kit in the act of staring at him. There was a hunger in his eyes, as if he wanted to go straight over to where Kit and Jasper were still standing on the other side of the closed gate. But he hadn’t moved from his position at all – like he was anchored to the ground where he stood. 

“Does that mean that you’re going to make me promise to stay here as well?” Kit asked. “Since I’ve now also seen you.”

The Beast shook his head. “I should never have extracted such promises in the first place, and I certainly won’t do so now. It was only that –” He cut himself off again, reaching up with one hand before aborting the movement partway through. His hand hovered awkwardly in midair for a moment, before he moved it back down and grabbed it with his other hand, as if to prevent any further movement. He glanced back at the castle, before turning to meet Kit’s gaze once again. 

He’s lonely, Kit realised with sudden clarity. 

“Besides,” the Beast added. “You’re already on horseback. If your horse is fast, you might be able to reach a village for aid before I could catch up with you.” The delivery was dry, but it was clearly a joke. 

Kit laughed, and he could almost see a glint of light appear in the Beast’s eyes. “Jasper is a solid hunter,” he said, clapping the horse’s neck. “And very fast. I think your reasoning is sound.”

The Beast smiled, but there was a weight to it that pulled his head back down to stare at the ground. Kit’s face grew serious in turn, his brow knitting together. “Although . . .” he said, without entirely meaning to. 

The Beast’s head lifted back up, his expression guarded. “Yes?” he said. 

“I can’t stay here, in your castle,” Kit said. “I have responsibilities of my own to attend to. But I would be able to come back here to meet with you, a few times a week.”

The Beast stood to attention, his whole body straightening up. Even his ears had pricked up, which Kit noted with an amusement he hoped didn’t show on his face. “You would?” he asked, in a voice surprisingly level. “But why?”

That was the precise question Kit was asking himself, and the same question he knew Captain Harker would ask when he told her what had become of this mission. Scrambling for an answer, Kit said the first honest thing that came to mind. “Because I suspect that myself, Mademoiselle Dupont, and her father are the first people you’ve seen in a very long time.” 

The Beast blinked, clearly taken aback. Then, slowly, he said, “You are correct in that matter, Prince Christoph.”

The use of his full name threw Kit off slightly – but then again, it was how he had introduced himself. “I should return home soon,” he said, glancing up at the sky again; the clouds were clearing, and he could tell from the sun’s position that the afternoon would soon be upon them. “But I can come back in a few days. If there is somewhere I can put Jasper, while we talk –”

“No,” the Beast interrupted him. “Don’t come back here.” Kit frowned, confused, and was about to open his mouth in protest when the Beast continued. “There’s an abandoned monastery not far from here – do you know it?”

Kit took a moment to conjure up the mental image of the maps of the area. Sure enough, an old monastery had been marked on his map, perhaps twenty minute’s ride north-east of the castle. He nodded. “Yes, I can find my way to it.”

“Good,” the Beast said. “We can meet there – for the same time?”

Kit nodded again. 

“Very well,” the Beast said. “I will see you then, Prince Christoph.” 

“Oh, you should just call me –” Before Kit could complete his sentence, the Beast dropped from his hind legs to all fours, and swept the trailing ends of his banyan over his back like a cloak. He tossed his mane back and raced back down the path beyond the gate, towards his castle. In a matter of moments, the Beast was gone. 

“– Kit,” he finished lamely. He sighed. Then, spurring Jasper back to movement, they turned around and made their way back up the wooded path. Kit gasped when they crossed whatever invisible barrier marked the borders of the strange winter that encircled the castle; going from the freezing snow to the hot June summer was like stepping into a full-body bath. He noticed that there were shallow puddles of water on the ground, and the leaves were slowly dripping water, and realised that what he had experienced as light snowfall had, in the other part of the forest, been a brief summer rain. 

One thing was for certain, he thought, as he spurred Jasper into a fast gallop to get them back to the capital. As surreal as the entire conversation with the Beast had been, he had a feeling that the next few weeks would only get stranger. 

Chapter Text

The grey half-light of early dawn was just beginning to bleach the sky when Belle made her escape from the castle. She was shivering as she tiptoed down the hallway towards the large main door – both from the impossible winter she wasn’t dressed for, and fear that the strange Beast would go back on his word after all. 

After she had followed the candlestick – Lumière – into the dining room, he had kept up a seemingly effortless one-sided patter while she ate in silence. Belle had nodded and hummed at the appropriate moments; she found it too difficult to abandon twenty-odd years of manners, no matter how strange the circumstances she found herself in. The food had been good, too – a thick, hearty, well-spiced soup, with slices of thick cheese and pale bread to go down with it. He and the teapot – was it Mrs Potts, or had she just misheard? – had shown her up to a grand bedroom twice the size of her cottage’s living room after she was finished. 

“Now, mademoiselle,” he had said as she wandered in, “if you are curious at all about the castle, I would be more than happy to provide a tour –”

“Leave it, Lumière,” Mrs Potts had interrupted, quietly but firmly. Belle couldn’t help but feel a little grateful that she didn’t have to turn him down herself. The situation was awkward enough as things stood. 

“Ah,” Lumière had said, his eyes darting from one of them to the other. “Of course. My apologies, mademoiselle. Until tomorrow.” He bowed elegantly before hopping away into the hall, the flames on his head and hands flickering wildly with every movement. 

“I don’t know what your plans are, dearie,” Mrs Potts said after he had left. “But if you fancy a spot of breakfast before you leave, just pop down to the kitchens and I’m sure we can scrounge something up for you.”

“You’re very kind, but that won’t be necessary,” Belle had replied. “I plan to leave early tomorrow.”

She had looked a tad disappointed, but hadn’t pressed Belle on the matter. With a friendly nod, Mrs Potts had followed Lumière into the hall, letting the door swing shut behind her. The moment it settled into its hinges again, Belle felt the exhaustion of the day’s events sweeping over her for the first time. Shakily, she had unlaced and toed off her boots, collapsing in a heap on the neatly made bed without even removing her apron. When she woke up to the pre-dawn light barely two hours later, only her reluctance to spend a minute longer in the castle than needed prompted Belle to groggily rise from the bed and find her boots. 

To her relief, nobody accosted her as she stole out to the stables. She sucked in a breath through her teeth once she made it outside – it was just as bitterly cold today as it had been yesterday. Snow was lying on the ground, oddly uniform. Belle pulled the hood of her light summer cloak over her head, crossing her arms tightly around her body as she half-walked, half-ran around the side of the castle. It was strange enough, but no stranger than anything else she’d seen over the past few hours. Thankfully, the stables were easy to spot. Even better, they were uninhabited aside from a slightly confused-looking Phillipe. Belle quickly saddled him, wasting no time. Judging from the half-empty trough and fresh-smelling straw, he had at least been well-cared for overnight – another unexpected relief. 

“Alright, my boy,” Belle said, leading him towards the horse block. “Let’s go home.”

So saying, she swung herself into the saddle and directed him back towards the tall, imposing gates she had passed through barely eight hours ago. They crossed the substantial grounds in barely a minute, and were making their way back up the winding path towards the woods by the time the first scarlet brushstrokes of dawn painted the sky. Belle didn’t relax until they had passed the invisible border between winter and summer. Even then, she didn’t look anywhere other than straight ahead until they had regained the clearing in the border woods where Phillipe became so nervous last night. She refused to consign herself to Hades because she had wanted to take one last look behind her. 

Tossing back her hood now they were safely in the woods, Belle gently encouraged Phillipe to pick his way back towards Villeneuve. It would probably take the better part of the morning to return home, Belle thought, already thinking wistfully of her little attic bed. Although, she hoped, it would be slightly quicker than the almost three hours it had last night, between trying to find the castle in the first place and leaving the note for Ella someplace she was likely to find it, but unlikely to be too damaged by the weather. 

At the thought of Ella, Belle’s heart lifted again. Looks like I’ll be able to see her again after all, she thought. A soft smile teased at the corner of her mouth. It had been a long time since Belle had been excited to speak to someone her own age. She loved her father dearly, but she hadn’t been lying when she told him there was nobody in Villeneuve she could really talk to. The girls her age had thought her odd for talking so much about her books. By the time she had learned to identify the glazed-over look they got whenever she had been prattling on for too long, they had started looking like that every time she struck up a conversation. And none of the boys had given her so much as a by-your-leave when her smallpox scars were still fresh. By the time they had faded into insignificance, Gaston had decided to start pursuing her instead. Never mind that she had tried a hundred times to tell him that she wasn’t interested. 

Belle let out a frustrated sigh, but her thoughts didn’t dwell on him. Instead, she watched the reflections of the morning sun sparkle and shift like diamonds off the river, as she followed it back towards the main road to Villeneuve. The songbirds were beginning to wake up, while Belle caught the thick, sweet smell of lilac as the blossoms opened with the light of the sun. She was half-sorry to leave the dappled shade of the forest when it came time to make her usual turn-off. Although it was still too early for the full heat of the sun to come beating down, there was a peaceful stillness to the forest that calmed something deep within Belle, after the strange, stressful night she’d had. She steered Phillipe off the cobbled path into Villeneuve, leading him towards the outskirts of town. She didn’t quite feel ready for the sharp staccato of his shoes on the stones, wanted to stay in this calm, almost dreamy frame of mind for a few minutes longer, even though it would take longer for her to reach their cottage than if she rode through the middle of town as she normally did. 

Belle heard the church bells tolling out the hour as she rode past, finally giving her a sense of time; it was eight o’clock. And just like clockwork, she heard the usual sounds of her village waking up and starting the day as the last chime died out. 

“Come on,” she said to Phillippe, as she heard the distinct sound of the baker berating his wife for not having their stock for the day on display yet. “Let’s go home to Papa.”

They skirted the edges of the village without issue, Belle keeping an ear out the entire time in case she heard Gaston’s booming voice. Luckily, it seemed that she had successfully avoided him, and she let out a tiny sigh of relief once they had crossed the brook by their house, perched on the hill at the opposite end of town to where the tavern sat. Belle’s eyes followed the path of the brook back into the dark forest, somehow still looking sinister even in the bright June sunlight. She wondered absently if it was a tributary of the larger river that had wound through the forest to the Beast’s castle, before abruptly stopping her thoughts in their tracks. 

There’s no need to think about that place ever again. Put it out of your mind, she thought, in a voice that sounded eerily like her father’s on the rare occasions when he was annoyed with her. Although most of her attention shifted back to guiding Philippe up the hill to his own stable, a small corner of her mind kept stubbornly thinking about the mysterious castle and the downright odd behaviour of its owner, as if to be contrary even to Belle herself. 

She slipped off Phillippe’s back once they were at the top of the hill, leading him to the stables so that the cottage stood between them and the rest of Villeneuve. The likelihood of Gaston seeing her from the town, or even approaching her house if he did see her, was admittedly low. But childishly, Belle couldn’t help feeling a little safer hiding behind the house. She stifled a yawn as she led Phillippe into the stable, removing his tack with the quick, efficient movements born from years of repetition. Once he was settled with fresh water and hay, his eyes looking about as heavy as hers felt, Belle wandered to the back door and slipped inside the cottage. 

She took off her shoes as soon as the door was closed and locked behind her. Belle shivered in the cool shadows of the kitchen, her stockinged toes curling on the icy stone. Normally Maurice was up to light the fires first thing, even before Belle herself was awake. Evidently he was still asleep in bed where she had left him; although a cupboard door hanging ajar suggested he had been up in the night to eat something. Belle knew logically that she should light the fire herself, and get some breakfast going for herself and her father. But she was so tired, and it was such a relief to be home and safe again. It was starting to require effort to keep her eyelids open, and Belle yawned again as she padded softly through the house. 

She paused briefly outside Maurice’s door, wondering if she should open the door and check on him. It had been a while since either of them had been laid up with a particularly bad illness, but Belle still remembered how awful she had felt two years ago when she’d had a horrendous case of influenza. Better not, she thought. If he’s slept this long, it won’t hurt to let him sleep a while longer. She slipped past the door, taking the stairs up to her attic bedroom. The bed was still half-made and the curtains drawn shut, the way she had left it the previous day. Burying her face between the pillow and the sheets, to block out the sunlight as best she could, sleep claimed Belle in a matter of seconds. 

When she awoke a few hours later, the bright midday sun piercing through the barriers of her curtains and blankets to hit her eyes, Belle knew instantly that something was wrong. 

It was too quiet. Maurice should have been awake by now, puttering around the house downstairs even if he was too sick to work in the cellar. The familiar hum of background noise wouldn’t have been enough to wake her, but its absence was. 

Belle shot out of bed, leaving her sheets in disarray. “Papa?!” she called out as she hurried down the stairs. Her stockings slipped a little on the cold wood in her haste. “Papa!” she repeated, a frantic edge slipping into her tone. Reaching the ground floor, Belle raced for his bedroom and flung open the doors to reveal just what she had feared – an empty room. She ran over to the bed, even though it was clear from the doorway that it had been made and left undisturbed for several hours. Her hand dropped to the pillows, cool linen against the soft skin of her palms. Looking around the room, Belle could trace her father’s thought processes from the untidiness he’d left behind; disturbed dust tracks on the floor where he had dragged a trunk out from under the bed; the wardrobe door left hanging ajar, a stray sock left dangling on the handle; the fireplace, carelessly extinguished with handfuls of ashes several hours ago – maybe even during the night. 

“Papa . . .” Belle gasped, dread curdling her stomach. She ran to the living room, where she’d left her note last night – was it only last night? – a note that, in the clear light of day, now seemed unforgivably callous. The whole room was overcast with a pale blue tint, bright sunlight bleaching the thin curtains Belle’s mother had made when they first moved into the cottage. She had pinned the note to the Beast’s saddlebags, undisturbed by both of them since they had unpacked their contents. Looking at the table now, she saw that the saddlebags and gifts had not been moved; but her note was gone. In its place was a different scrap of paper, which appeared to have been unfolded and then carefully refolded at least once. She picked it up hesitantly, and began to read. 

Léon, it said in her father’s spidery handwriting. Belle recognised the bookseller’s name.

Your offer to check in on me after the events at the tavern were very kind, but as you can see, no longer necessary. I meant what I said last night; if nobody else will help me find Belle, I’ll do it myself. I know that Belle and I have often been regarded as eccentrics, but I at least thought that we were accepted as residents of Villeneuve. I’m disappointed to see that I was wrong. 

What surprised me almost more than that, however, was the reluctance of the big fellow – Gaston, is that his name? – to extend a helping hand. From what Belle has said, I had thought he was attempting to court her; I suppose we must both have been mistaken. Far from it, in fact – when you found me in the mud, it was because I had been thrown out of the tavern on his orders. Now isn’t that a fine kettle of fish!

I don’t know when I’ll be back, but it won’t be until I find my daughter and have her safe in my arms again. I may not have a horse, and I may not have any idea where she is, but I will find her. I lost Nicole to that plague; I will not lose Isabelle to this Beast, no matter how fearsome he is. If you could keep on top of the dust, I would be ever so grateful. 

Eternally your friend,

Maurice Dupont

One of Belle’s hands came up to cover her mouth, as she felt her knees give way beneath her. She collapsed on the ground, barely noticing the pain as her shins, knees, and hips jarred against the floor. She was too shocked to cry, too dazed to laugh the way she almost wanted to at the idiosyncrasies in his letter. She could only stare numbly at the brown leather strap of the saddlebag, until one banal thought finally made its way up through the aimlessly spinning machinery of her mind. He didn’t even take the poppyseed rolls with him.

The thought of that – her father, scatter-brained at the best of times, forgetting to pack food on his mission to rescue her, because Belle had been too stubborn and self-righteous to tell him what she had planned – was what finally caused the dam to break. Belle curled in on herself and started to sob, cocooned in the dull blues of her abandoned home.

Ella felt her spirits rise as the carriage rounded the turn in the road towards town, although she didn’t dare let out the sigh of relief she’d been holding until the sound of turning wheels had faded from her ears. A slow smile spread across her face as the quiet background noise of the estate filled the blessed silence; the rustle of leaves, the everlasting creaky gate that no oil could ease out, and Bruno’s contented whuffling as he padded back towards her, his nose to the ground and his tail swinging happily. 

She was alone. For an entire afternoon, no less. 

Of course, Madame Tremaine had still left a laundry list of tasks (including the actual  laundry) to be done, and so after another minute of basking in the June sunlight, Ella rolled her shoulders back and set to work. The time seemed to fly by today. She was unsure whether it was her stepfamily’s absence, or her own skill that was the primary cause. Either way, by the time Ella had washed the latest batch of linens, scrubbed the silverware, dusted the study, parlour, and upper hallway, swept the fireplaces in all the bedrooms and sitting rooms, and fed the animals, she found to her delight that Madame Tremaine and the girls were still nowhere to be seen. 

As the remainder of the afternoon was technically her own – Madame Tremaine had said so herself, although Ella suspected that her stepmother never truly expected all her work to be finished – she resolved to spend it enjoyably. Given that she had finished her tasks early, she even went to the trouble of brushing out her hair and letting it hang in a loose braid, instead of tying it back with her kerchief as she usually did to keep it out of the way. Within ten minutes, Ella had saddled Major, grabbed her book from the attic bedroom, and was riding to the clearing she liked to think of as ‘hers’. She often liked to read there; it was far enough from the estate that she was at a much lower risk of being disturbed. There was a peace in the silence of the woods that Ella always struggled to find on the rare occasions the house was empty. 

As she drew closer to the clearing, Ella’s thoughts wandered to the topic of Belle’s whereabouts – and the fact that the Crown Prince himself had, for reasons best known to himself, given a personal promise to help find her. Ella still felt a little dizzy if she lingered on the details for too long. It was already too surreal that Prince Christoph had asked her to call him Kit – and that she was halfway towards referring to him that way in her head. To add in the apparent fact that the Beast her mother had warned her about as a child was real, and that Belle had gone to his castle in a moment of filial self-sacrifice was even more bewildering. If not for the evidence of Belle’s letter, safely tucked away in the trinket box she kept underneath her floorboards, Ella could have convinced herself she’d imagined the whole thing. 

She shook her head, as if that could sweep thoughts from her mind the way she had swept the floors that morning. She was concerned about Belle, but Ella knew that, much like the rest of her life, there was nothing meaningful she could do to change the source of her worries. All she could do was wait, and hope that the prince would keep his promise after all. She tried to put it from her mind, and focus instead on the few hours of sunshine remaining, where hopefully she would get to read a little more of the small green-bound book in her saddlebag. But just as she and Major approached the last trees which gave way to the clearing, Ella heard the unmistakable sounds of another horse, stamping its feet against the bare ground of the clearing. 

It was too soon for the prince – Kit – to be back at the clearing. He had promised to return in a fortnight, and it had been only a few days since their meeting. Frowning, Ella pulled Major into a slow walk. She stayed mounted; although their estate was secluded enough from town that she had never had problems with unwanted strangers until this point, Ella wasn’t so naive as to assume it could never happen. Cautiously, she followed the path into the clearing. 

Sure enough, there was another horse in the clearing; its reins were looped carelessly around a branch, and it lifted its head to look curiously at Ella and Major for a moment before turning its attention back to the lush summer grass again. But more surprising than the horse was its rider, who turned around in a flurry of blue skirts as Ella dismounted Major. 

“Belle?” She couldn’t believe her eyes. 

“Ella,” she replied, her hands twisting nervously. Her hair had fallen loose from whatever arrangement it had been in previously, and it spilled over her shoulders like a dark cloud. “Hi.” 

“What . . . what are you doing here? Your letter –”

“You got it? The envelope worked?”

“I – yes, it worked, it was dry as a bone,” Ella said, momentarily distracted. “But that’s not – what’s important is, how are you here? I thought you went to the Beast? How did you escape?”

Belle took a breath, before meeting Ella’s gaze head-on. “I didn’t,” she said. “He let me go.” 

She took a few minutes to explain the events of the last few days – her missing father, the saddlebags, her decision, and all that had followed on from it. When she had finished, Belle’s face was downcast again, her eyebrows knitted in the centre of her brow. 

Ella walked over to her, hesitantly laying a hand on her arm. Belle grasped it with one of her hands like a lifeline, and Ella gently laid her other hand on Belle’s shoulder, holding her gently. Tear tracks the size of pennies landed on Ella’s sleeve, but she said nothing and neither did Belle. After a long moment, Belle raised her head again. Her nose was red as a cherry, the last traces of tears still clinging to her eyelashes.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at them with her free hand. “I’m not normally like this, I swear.”

“It’s alright,” Ella said. Her thumb rubbed against Belle’s shoulder, comfortingly. “But if I can ask – what happened after that? How did you end up here again?”

Belle nodded, steadying her breath before she began to speak again. “I stayed at home for a day or two. I thought –  I hoped – that Papa might not have gone far, that he would come back soon. He left a note for a friend of ours, the bookseller – I went to his house last night, but nobody was there. On the way back, I saw . . . a man from my village, in the street. He was laughing about my father being away with some of his friends. He said that he might pay a visit to our cottage, just to make certain that my father hadn’t lost his mind, and I was actually sitting at home.” 

Belle shuddered, and her face went pale, her eyes somewhere far away. Ella squeezed her hand tighter, unsure what else she could do or say to help. 

“I ran back and saddled Phillippe right away,” she continued. “He’s . . . I’ve learned he’s not the kind of man who takes ‘no’ kindly. So I ran, but I didn’t know where to go . . .”

“So you came here,” Ella finished. 

Belle turned to face her, guilt and shame creasing her brow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know we barely know each other, and we’ve hardly spoken, but Papa and I don’t have any other living family, and I – the only other place I’ve lived is Paris, and that’s so far away –”

“It’s alright,” Ella said, cutting her off. “Belle, it’s alright.” She rubbed little circles into Belle’s shoulder, thinking rapidly. The loosest idea of a plan began forming in her head. It was by no means a well-thought-out plan, but faced with the alternative of leaving Belle to fend for herself in the border woods, Ella knew it was their only real option. 

“Come home with me,” Ella said. 

Belle blinked, as her eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline. 

“Like I said the other week, I live nearby,” Ella said hurriedly. “My . . . my mistress keeps a small household. She hires a cook, but I’m the only live-in servant. Nobody would notice you. You could stay in the cellar; nobody ever uses it except for storage, and in the height of summer it’ll be cool and quiet. It’s not perfect, but . . .”

“It doesn’t need to be,” Belle said. “That’s – that’s so kind of you. Oh – but what about Phillippe?”

“I don’t think anyone will notice another carthorse in the stable,” Ella said honestly. For how controlling Madame Tremaine was, she paid precious little attention to the daily goings-on outwith the bounds of the house. “And he certainly won’t dent our supplies too badly, either.”

Belle glanced over her shoulder at her horse, clearly considering it. 

“Just for a couple of weeks,” Ella said. “Until something changes, or you hear a word from your father. The post-carriage comes straight to our door – if you wanted to write a letter to him, I could sneak one into the bag.”

Belle turned back to Ella, the decision clearly made. “If you’re sure,” she said, her dark eyes serious. “Then – yes. Thank you. I don’t even know what I can do to repay you, but I’ll try in any way I can.”

“Kindness never needs to be repaid,” Ella said. “It simply is.”

Belle smiled, but in such a way that Ella could tell she disagreed. “Nevertheless,” she said, dropping her hands and walking over to her horse. Ella went back to Major, mounting him again, and the two women started the short ride back to the estate. 

“You’re sure your mistress won’t mind?” Belle asked as they left the clearing. 

“What my mistress doesn’t know,” Ella said, with the force of all the spite that had been gathering in her soul for the last ten years, “won’t hurt her.”

Chapter Text

Belle woke with a start, clutching the rough horse blanket tightly to her chest. Although she had a straw pallet to lie on, the craggy stone floor loved to leech away her body heat. This persisted even when she was still fully-dressed, as she was now save for her shoes. For a groggy moment which spun endlessly before her eyes, she was completely disoriented to time and space. She wasn’t even sure what had awoken her, until she heard it again – the sound of Ella’s mistress, shouting loudly from two floors above her. 

It all came flooding back to her in an instant, and Belle sagged back onto the pallet again. Ella had been half-right about the cellar – it was cool even at the hottest hours of the day. It was not what Belle would personally have described as ‘quiet’. 

She had been hiding in Ella’s cellar for less than a week, and she had already heard Ella’s mistress scream at her at least twice a day. Those were only the ones she was able to hear – Belle felt confident in assuming that her mistress continued to berate her at a more socially acceptable volume throughout the day. She couldn’t help but feel distressed every time she heard another attack; not just because Belle was half-convinced that Ella’s mistress was about to march down to the cellar and discover Belle hiding there, but also for Ella’s sake. Even if Ella had been a slow, lazy servant, this amount of screaming at her would have been unwarranted – and Ella did not strike Belle as somebody who was either of those things. The real mystery was why her mistress hadn’t dismissed her already, if she was so dissatisfied with her work. 

The sounds of shouting died down, and Belle judged it safe to move again. She rolled her shoulders back and slowly stood up, gasping with relief when her lower back audibly clicked, relieving some of the pain that came from lying on such an uncomfortable bed. Still in her stockings, she decided to walk around the large cellar to restore the blood flow to her legs, doing her best to ignore how frozen her toes were as she detangled her hair from the braid she had worn to sleep. There were, understandably, no clocks in the cellar, but judging by the household sounds above her Belle thought it was late morning – possibly approaching midday. 

I can’t believe I’ve started sleeping in so late, Belle thought, but in truth she wasn’t overly surprised at the hour. The cellar was both dark and cold – with no sunlight to visually tell the time, and no clock to rely upon in its absence, she supposed it was only natural that her sleep schedule should suffer. Her hair smooth and braided once again, and her legs no longer feeling as if they were being used as pincushions, Belle turned back towards the pallet. Ella had snuck down some bread, cheese, and apples for her to eat during the day, which Belle did now with some eagerness. 

Her hunger satiated for the moment, she sat back on the pallet again, half-listening for any signs of life in the house above her. The other half was concerned with not slamming her head against one of the brick pillars in the cellar out of sheer boredom. 

Belle sighed to herself – quietly. It had been a very generous offer from Ella to let her stay. An offer that Belle now suspected might come at risk to her own personal safety, based on how often she heard screaming coming from up above. Nevertheless, Belle couldn’t stop the niggling, ungrateful boredom that had ferreted into her mind over the past few days. Although she had a limited supply of candles, she had no books with her to read. There were also no clocks or other small mechanica in the cellar for her to tinker with – and even if there had been, Belle would have been afraid of damaging them and making things worse for Ella upstairs. So instead, Belle lit two of the candles, and continued what she had been occupying herself with for the past several days – needlework. 

Belle’s first night and day in the cellar had been a uniquely distasteful mixture of nerve-wracking and banal. Fortunately for her, after the ladies of the house had gone to bed, Ella had collected Belle from the cellar to share a bowl of hot soup and the banked kitchen fire, a small mending basket full of silks and satins by her side. They had talked a little, but this had been doubly hampered. For one thing, their suddenly changed dynamic was too fresh and precarious for either of them to talk with complete freedom. Secondly, after inhaling her food at a speed which left Belle shocked, Ella had promptly and unexpectedly fallen asleep while still sitting upright. 

Left alone in a strange kitchen, Belle had finished her soup for lack of anything else to do, drinking in the rest of the room with curious eyes. It was a large room, fitting the size of the estate as Belle had glimpsed it on her way in. All the utensils and fine china crockery used for the family had already been cleaned, tidied, and put away – the only items left standing were the plain, old, (and in some cases, cracked) bowls and cutlery. They were clearly part of the same set that Ella had served their meal in. There was also a tub of dry washing by the door, filled with plain linen and cotton clothes Belle guessed were Ella’s. She had glanced back towards Ella – who was still fast asleep, the skin under her eyes almost as blue as her irises – before carefully standing and padding her way over to the tub. 

Peering in, Belle had seen that the clothes were both clean and dry. They just hadn’t made it to that final step, being properly folded and put away. The top layer of laundry was mainly aprons and petticoats, all well-worn. The hems on several were fraying, and while the aprons sported several patches each, Belle could see that the petticoats weren’t so lucky. The largest hole looked big enough to fit three of her fingers through. 

She had glanced back at Ella, still sleeping by the fire. Her kerchief had come loose, and long strands of blonde hair tumbled over her face, rising and falling with her breath. Like the laundry in the basket, the clothes she wore currently were all plain and well-worn. Belle didn’t need to be a genius to deduce that the poor state of her clothes was likely a result of the sheer amount of work Ella was expected to do in a day, combined with her long hours and the large pile of mending which could only belong to the ladies of the house. 

Eager both to be of use to the woman who had been so kind to her, and to have something to do during the day, Belle had made her decision easily. She grabbed an armful of laundry from the tub and secreted it down into the cellar. She also snuck three needles, a spool of white thread, and scraps of brightly coloured floss from the mending baskets into her own pockets before storing them with the aprons and petticoats. Ella had woken up not too long afterwards, embarrassed both because she had fallen asleep and because Belle was washing their dishes. They had muddled through the rest of that first evening together with conversation that carefully skirted past more sensitive topics, only separating for bed when Ella’s yawns grew too frequent for them to ignore. 

Since then, Belle had found herself falling into a pattern. In the evenings, once everyone was in bed and the cook had gone home, she and Ella would sit by the banked kitchen fire and share a hot meal. Belle would do whatever dishes still needed done, while Ella remained sitting – she hadn’t fallen asleep again since that first night. They would talk for a little while, about books the two of them had read, or childhood anecdotes. Sometimes Ella would share the latest village gossip she had heard from the cook, and Belle indulged in the petty satisfaction of knowing all the details of a situation without being personally involved in it herself. They didn’t talk about anything more recent than their first meeting in the woods. Ella hadn’t asked her anything else about her time in the Beast’s castle, although Belle was sure she must be dying of curiosity. Likewise, Belle didn’t ask why her mistress was so cruel. 

They could only stay beside the fireside for so long, however, before Ella grew tired enough to need her bed. They would separate for the night; Belle down to the cellar, and Ella upstairs to the garret. It was always a shy wave, or a mutual nodding of the head, that parted them. Belle found herself lingering by the cellar door later and later every night, waiting for the last of Ella’s footsteps on the stairs to fade away. Once she could no longer hear any sound in the house but the ticking of the grandfather clock and her own breathing, Belle would begin her self-assigned task – punctuated by her body’s needs for sleep, food, or movement – of repairing Ella’s aprons and petticoats. 

Hemming the aprons was dull but relatively simple work. Over the past few days, Belle had made a steady dent in the pile; she was currently working on the last apron. Shuffling closer to the candles, she rethreaded the needle and continued where she had left off last night – or technically, she thought, earlier that day. At each corner, she added extra stitches to reinforce the bunched linen, as Belle did with her own aprons. It didn’t look as neat from the back as folding the seams flat would have, which bothered Belle slightly. Unfortunately, the needles she had borrowed from Ella weren’t strong enough to penetrate the four layers of fabric, and she hadn’t had another chance to snag a different one. Belle had two reasons she wanted her needlework to be a surprise. Firstly, she suspected that Ella might be embarrassed that she had helped. Secondly, she couldn’t deny that the idea she was like the elves helping the shoemaker appealed to her imagination. 

Belle tied off the thread, before holding the finished apron up for closer inspection. Her brows couldn’t help knitting together looking at her clumsy corners, but overall she was satisfied with the work. It was a perfectly serviceable example of mending; and although Belle had never been particularly gifted with her needle, the satisfaction of seeing a completed project pleased her. She folded it up carefully, laying it to one side with the other aprons. 

With a long-suffering sigh, Belle turned her attention to the petticoats. Although she fully accepted the necessity of sewing, it was not the kind of repetitive task which Belle found enjoyable. The aprons were at least dealt with reasonably quickly, by virtue of their smaller size; the petticoats would eat up still more of her day. Well, she thought, it’s not as if I would be doing anything with it anyway. With this thought in mind, she lifted the needle again and started work on the first petticoat – the one with the hole large enough for her fingers. 

The rest of the day passed in a similar fashion to the others; Belle sewed, ate a little, moved when her joints protested too much, and felt a cold jolt of fear run down her spine every time she heard raised voices. She breathed an internal sigh of relief when the telltale sounds of the cook making her departure echoed down to the cellar. Not only would Belle get out of the cellar for a couple of hours, there would be some relief from Ella’s mistress. 

Sure enough, the ambient noises of the house began to slowly die down. By Belle’s internal reckoning, slightly less than an hour had passed before Ella knocked rhythmically on the door. 

Glancing backwards to be sure her secret projects were safely hidden away, Belle responded with two knocks – an all-clear signal they had developed during the first night. The door swung open, and Belle couldn’t help her soft smile upon seeing Ella. 

“It’s good to see you,” Ella said. Her dark circles were especially pronounced tonight, and she paused to roll her ankles with some relief as Belle climbed the cellar stairs. Despite this, there was a lightness in her eyes and character to her smile that Belle hoped had something to do with her. 

“You too,” Belle replied. They made their way into the kitchen, quickly settling into their usual positions by the fire. Ella had soup tonight; a thick vegetable broth, with creamy pearls of barley thickening the consistency until it almost resembled a stew. Belle received the bowl gratefully, and for several minutes they sat and ate in a companionable silence. The only sounds were the ambient noises in the kitchen; the odd crackle from the firewood, the usual creaks and groans of the old house settling on its foundations, and the soft, calming white noise of summer rain in the background. 

“Has it been raining all day?” Belle asked once her bowl was half-empty. 

Ella nodded, swallowing her spoonful of soup quickly before answering. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear the thunder earlier. It was a proper summer storm – I’d hung out some dresses to dry, and I had to abandon the drawing room fireplace to bring them all in as quickly as I could.”

“At least the rain will help the fields,” Belle said. “I don’t know how different your weather has been, but in Villeneuve the farmers have been cursing the heat for weeks now.”

“True,” Ella smiled, taking another spoonful. 

There was another moment of silence, where it seemed neither of them knew quite what to say to each other. As she ate her soup, Belle’s mind began to wander; talking of the heat in Villeneuve and the people there led her to remember the last time she had seen the townspeople, sneaking past the main street on her way home from the Beast’s castle. Thinking of the Beast’s castle naturally put her to thinking of everything that had come before and after – and the guilt she felt for inadvertently sending Maurice away from Villeneuve. 

“I hope my father isn’t out in this rain,” Belle said. A moment later, her brain caught up with her mouth, and she cringed at herself for accidentally breaking the unspoken agreement to avoid talking about their present issues. 

Ella looked over. Her dark eyes were wide with surprise, but the rest of her face was clearly schooled to look as nonchalant as possible. “I’m sure he’ll have sought shelter somewhere. And you said that the bookseller from your village wasn’t at home, either – isn’t it possible he accompanied your father?”

“I just –” Belle broke herself off mid-sentence, turning away from Ella to look determinedly into the soup bowl. “I can’t help but feel it’s my fault. Papa shouldn’t have had to go after me, and if I had only – I don’t even know. Waited, to tell him my plan in person? Anything aside from something as stupid as leaving that letter for him to read and get himself so upset over it that he –”

She broke off again, screwing her eyes shut to prevent tears slipping down her face. She heard a small clinking sound, as if a bowl had been set down on a hearth, and then the rustle of fabric. She was therefore unsurprised when she felt Ella sit beside her, elbows and knees knocking together companionably. Belle half expected her to remain silent; when she instead took a breath to speak, Belle opened her eyes again in surprise. 

“I learned a long time ago,” Ella said hesitantly, “that people’s actions are their own. To a certain extent we influence each other’s behaviour, of course. But trying to blame yourself for the actions of others, or to drive yourself into knots trying to figure out why they chose to do what they did, is to play a losing game.”

Belle glanced over at Ella’s face. She was gazing into the quivering flames, their light echoed and multiplied in her dark pupils. The soup lay forgotten where she had been sitting moments ago, and her hands now rested limply on her knees. Ella blinked twice, her eyes appearing slightly clearer, and turned to meet Belle’s gaze. 

She settled her hand over the back of Ella’s, keeping the touch light. Slowly, Ella turned her hand until they rested palm to palm. It felt . . . right to be holding her hand. As if a final loose screw had been tightened, and now the whole structure was more secure because of it. 

“Ella . . .” Belle murmured. She could barely hear herself over the crackling of the fire. “It’s none of my business, I know. But sound carries into the cellar.”

Ella’s jaw tightened, ever so slightly. 

“I just don’t understand – why do you stay here? Nobody deserves to be treated the way she treats you. Surely there must be other jobs –”

“I stay because I have to,” Ella said, her head sinking as if under some enormous weight. She didn’t sound defensive, or even particularly offended. Just tired. “This is my home. Where else would I go?”

“There’s a small city just up the road, isn’t there?” Belle asked. “And a good-sized village on the other side of the border, if you don’t mind speaking French all the time.”

Ella’s mouth curved up at one corner at that, as if she couldn’t quite stop herself from smiling. “Is that what you’d suggest? I come with you to Villeneuve and stay with you and your father?”

Yes, Belle wanted to say. Come home with me, stay in my house, weed the garden and help me take care of the chickens. The intensity of the desire scared her a little, but not enough to stop it consuming her mind for a moment that spun out into an imagined lifetime. 

“Maybe,” Belle said eventually. Their linked hands suddenly seemed like the flimsiest of constructs – as if one of them withdrawing their hands now would upset the balance of their whole relationship. “I’m not blind to the problems in my home, but at least you wouldn’t have to stay in the same house as someone who mistreats you so badly.”

Ella squeezed their hands. “Nothing’s ever that simple,” she said, eyes downcast. 

“I know,” Belle said. “But Ella – I want to understand, if I can. If you’ll let me. Why do you feel you have to stay here so strongly? Surely there must be someone who would be willing to help you – siblings, family, other friends –”

Ella let out a harsh, ugly noise – somewhere between a laugh and a sob – before smothering her mouth with her free hand. Her head shot up to meet Belle’s gaze for a split-second, before she began crying violently – a reaction all the more distressing because, aside from a high-pitched wheezing sound she made when drawing breath, she was almost silent. 

Truly alarmed, Belle curled her free arm protectively around Ella’s shaking shoulders, pulling her close. “Oh, Ella,” she murmured in a low tone she hoped was soothing even as her heart raced and adrenaline pounded through her veins. She continued with the sorts of calming, repetitive sentences she used when Phillipe was especially agitated, eventually transitioning into saying, “I’m sorry, Ella, I’m so sorry I upset you, I’m here,” over and over. 

Eventually, it stopped almost as quickly as it had started. One minute Ella was still shaking and wheezing in Belle’s arms; the next, her breathing had steadied and her sobs had subsided. Her head rested on Belle’s shoulder, her face turned away so that all Belle could see of her was her pale blonde hair. Ella stretched out the hand not holding Belle’s so that it gripped her shoulder, locking them in an embrace as tender as it was slightly awkward. 

“There’s nobody to help me,” Ella said after a long moment, in a remarkably steady voice. “There have only been two people who have acted towards me with any kindness in the last ten years, and you’re one of them. My parents are dead. I have no siblings, no friends, nobody.”

Belle pressed Ella even closer to her, helpless as to any other way to comfort her. In front of them, the last log on the fire began to crumble apart to embers. 

“Who was the other person?” Belle asked. 

To her surprise, Ella laughed quietly. “You’re not going to believe this, but – the Prince of Germany.”

Belle jerked back instinctively, trying to look at Ella’s face to see if she was joking. She wriggled out of Belle’s arms slightly, twisting around to reveal a face full of the utmost sincerity. Her nose and cheeks were still bright red, and her cheeks looked tacky with tear tracks. 

“I wish I was joking,” Ella said, in response to whatever Belle must have been doing with her face. She laughed to herself again. “It was the most surreal ten minutes of my life.”

“Well now you have to tell me the story,” Belle said. Without consciously deciding to do it, she reached out with one hand and smoothed some of the hair back from Ella’s face. 

Ella smiled, reclaiming Belle’s hand once she’d finished. Neither her nor Belle made any move to remove themselves from their embrace. “It was during those days when you were in the Beast’s castle,” she began, as the embers in the fireplace slowly faded away to ash. 

Chapter Text

The Beast had been pacing the inner borders of the abandoned monastery long enough to leave a faint dent in the grass, by the time his ears picked up the faint sound of hoofbeats. 

Instantly, he straightened up. He twitched the banyan so it floated slightly farther away from his body; pulling his arms across his chest, he then began to fiddle with the corner of one sleeve nervously. He knew that Prince Christoph would likely still be several minutes away. Unfortunately, this did nothing to steady his nerves and in fact made the anticipation slightly worse. 

The Beast still couldn’t quite believe the way the events of the past week had unfolded. Why fate had decided to follow his disastrous attempt to imprison Isabelle with a young man willingly proposing to spend time with him was beyond the Beast’s understanding. He had told the staff nothing of Christoph; neither his arrival, nor his questions, nor their appointment at the monastery. After what had happened, he didn’t wish to get their hopes up again. It was hardly fair to them, after everything they had been through over the last six years. 

The Beast shook his head, as if he could dislodge the thoughts circling in his mind that way, and looked up at the surrounding trees. Their leaves were a rich, dark summer green, with all the last vestiges of spring blossoms long gone. It was so wildly different from the dull evergreens which provided the only splashes of colour to the landscape under the enchanted winter. While there was, technically speaking, nothing in the specifications of his curse to keep him within the castle grounds, he rarely felt the need to venture outside of their boundaries. As such, it had been quite some time since the Beast had last seen a true, hot July day. Perhaps, he thought as he tried to remember exactly when he had last left the grounds, it had been substantially more time than he had realised. It was so difficult to keep track of the time when the seasons outside the window were dreary and unchanging. 

The approaching hoofbeats grew louder, and all musings on the topic of when exactly he had turned into a proper recluse flew out of the Beast’s head. He deliberately let go of his sleeve, letting his paws fall to his sides as naturally as he could. There was no way to sit or stand like a man in his current form that ever felt truly easy, but the Beast could at least feign a neutral stance with minimal discomfort. He turned towards the northern side of the monastery, where the sounds of the approaching horse had grown louder (proximity) and less intense (presumably, slowing to a walk as it neared it’s stopping-point). The Beast’s mouth felt a little dry, as his heart picked up in speed. 

The same brown-nosed horse from earlier poked its long nose into the clearing, placidly walking up to the old stone foundations. The Beast noted with a little surprise that although its ears were pressed back against its forehead, it was well-trained enough to show no other signs of anxiety at having to share the space with such a large predator. 

Prince Christoph, on the other hand, did not appear to be feeling any nervousness at all, let alone trying to conceal it. He was wearing the same green jacket as when they had first met, and he nodded politely to the Beast as he drew his horse to a stop and dismounted. 

“You came.” The Beast couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. 

Christoph frowned a little, as if confused. “I gave my word I would. I’m not one to break promises easily.” 

“You were under no obligation –”

“None but my own, as an honest man.”

The Beast blinked, surprised again. How two people with such strong senses of honour had crossed paths with him within the same week was, frankly, beyond him. “Nevertheless,” he said. “You’re here. That . . . means much.”

Christoph smiled. He had a lovely smile – it spread across his whole face, crinkling in the corners of his eyes. “I’m glad I managed to find this place,” he said, walking along the ruin of the outer wall towards him. 

“It’s very easy to confuse with the other abandoned monastery in the heart of the forest,” the Beast said dryly. “Happens all the time.”

Christoph laughed outright at that. He leaned one hip casually against the top edge of the ruined wall. There were still several feet between them, but he was ever so slightly closer to the Beast than his horse. He wondered if the prince had placed himself like that deliberately. It implied a trust the Beast wasn’t entirely certain he had earned. 

“How did it end up in this state, anyway?” Christoph asked. “Was the King at the time not overly fond of monks?”

“Something like that,” the Beast said. Left to his own devices, the conversation likely would have died there. He was out of practice at making conversation with people not his servants. But Christoph made an encouraging, ‘go on’ noise, turning so that he faced the Beast head on. 

“If you look in the annals for the region, it’s a very dull four-sentence tale,” the Beast said. “But this is the way I was told the story when I was younger.” He cleared his throat, trying to remember the exact cadence his father had used when telling the story. 

“This monastery used to be inhabited. It never had what we would call a large population, but it had a decent amount of monks arriving to live and work there every year; some from the local villages, and some from farther afield. They had an extensive library, which was locally famous; if the royal family were living in the castle, they would sometimes send their princes to study with the monks a few hours a day, to take advantage of their resources.”

“Just the princes?” Christoph asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“This was centuries ago,” the Beast reminded him. “It was back when one’s alignment might be publicly acknowledged, but almost never celebrated the way it is today. The nobility were still expected to participate in heterosexual marriages regardless of alignment; their views on gender were similarly rigid.”

The prince nodded, gesturing for the Beast to continue. 

“Anyway, eventually the inevitable happened, and one of the princes fell in love with a monk.” 

The Beast had once looked up the very annal that recounted this tale when he was a teenager. The language used to describe the relationship was clinical and cold, bluntly minimising whatever the two men from so long ago may have actually felt for one another. Given the social norms of the time, and surrounding historiography regarding this particular prince, the Beast felt no great remorse editorialising the long-dead annal-writer’s words. 

Prince Christoph sucked in a breath through his teeth. “I fear I can see where this is going,” he said. 

“Everybody was furious,” the Beast continued. “The prince’s parents, of course, but also the abbot and other monks. The prince was instantly sent back to the capital in disgrace, and quickly married off before the story left Villeneuve, but the matter of what should be done about the monk – and the monastery – remained.

“It was eventually settled that the monk would be sent elsewhere, to a closed order near Rouen. The monastery here tried to recover, but its reputation had suffered a blow too great to recover from. It was abandoned less than a decade after the whole affair came out.”

“A sad tale all around,” Christoph said, after a long pause. 

The Beast hummed his agreement. 

“Abandonment alone doesn’t quite explain all of this damage, though,” he said. He turned, resting his folded arms on the top edge of the wall he was leaning on to look at the rest of the ruins.

The Beast laid one large paw on the wall nearest him, which had a large chunk missing in the middle. “Most astute. The majority of the structural damage here is just from the intervening time and lack of upkeep, but during the border wars between our countries, this was used as the setting of some skirmishes.”

Christoph looked at the surviving walls and tower again. The Beast could see his eyes dancing from ruin to ruin, analysing them for signs of man-made destruction. In their silence, the birdsong sounded even louder. 

“There’s so much history here,” Christoph said eventually. “It feels surreal to be standing in front of a set of ruins, when people fought and died here; studied and gardened and lived and learned.” They were silent for another few moments, golden afternoon sunlight bathing both of them in its warm rays, when the prince spoke up again. “Do we know what happened to the prince and the monk? After they were separated, I mean.”

“I don’t think they ever saw each other again, if that’s what you’re asking,” the Beast said. “The prince was in the line of succession; he was m–” – My ancestor, he almost said, and floundered around for a split-second in a mind gone horribly blank, before he found an acceptable way to continue the sentence – “married, had the requisite heir and spare, and was even, briefly, king.”

Christoph’s eyes had shot straight over to the Beast when he had stuttered over his words, but he couldn’t see any obvious suspicion in the prince’s face. “What was his name?” he asked. “You’ve sparked my curiosity – now I’d like to see if he’s mentioned in our history books as well.”

“Alexandre III, I believe.” The Beast looked over slyly at the prince, eager to see how the next part of the story would land. Already he could see recognition beginning to dawn over his face, and so the Beast hurried to deliver the punchline. “The man who popularised the tradition of coming-out balls.”

Christoph’s blue eyes went wide. He spun around from where he had been casually leaning against the ruined wall to stare at the Beast, his mouth almost hanging open in surprise. “No,” he laughed, the word long and drawn-out. “No, you’re joking, you must be –”

The Beast chuckled. “It was quite the scandal at the time.”

Seeing that he was serious, Christoph laughed again, shaking his head in disbelief. “So, how did it happen?”

The Beast tilted his head to one side. “Surely you know yourself? You recognised the name easily enough.”

“I do,” he admitted. “But you have a way with words; I’d like to hear how you tell the tale, if it pleases you.”

It did please the Beast, although he was reasonably certain that his reaction wasn’t externally obvious. A charming prince indeed, he thought to himself. Involuntarily, his tail flicked back and forth beneath his banyan. “As you wish,” he said easily. 

“Alexandre and his wife produced their heir and spare, as I said.” The Beast tucked his hands behind his back and began to idly pace back and forth near Prince Christoph. It made his shoulders ache to hold his arms in such an unnatural position, but not any worse than it did to stand on two legs. Both stances had once been as natural to him as breathing, and even after almost six years old habits died hard. 

“It’s generally accepted in the literature that he waited to announce his orientation until he had the power and security of being king, presumably due to fear of any retaliation similar to when he was a young man living in this chateau. He chose his timing carefully – his children were grown, and he and his wife no longer lived in the same house. Politically, his reign was stable and had been for a few years by that point.”

“Thorough of him,” Prince Christoph mused. 

“Certainly,” the Beast nodded. “So he threw a ball — the pretext to which was celebrating his birthday. He had invited several newly-out contemporaries, as well as people who had been open about their alignments for many years by that point. I’m sure the rest of the aristocracy not privy to his plans must have been quite surprised to see so many people like that there. Then, of course, he made his speech, and the rest is history.”

The two of them stood quietly in the ruins, the weight of all that history resting on their shoulders. The Beast couldn’t help but think back to his own coming-out ball; how poignant and exciting he had found it, even as he made a similarly radical declaration of alignment, compared to how high-stakes and potentially dangerous Alexandre III’s must have been. His eyes flickered over to Prince Christoph, who appeared likewise lost in thought; no doubt remembering the events of his coming-out ball. 

“It was very politically savvy of him, to initially frame the speech as a celebration of everybody else’s queerness and include himself almost as an afterthought,” the prince said eventually. The line of his shoulders seemed slightly more rigid than they had a moment ago. “I’m sure the initial backlash didn’t care much about that, though.”

The Beast hummed in agreement. “It was hotly debated for many months. The political and religious lines of affiliation lay as you would at first expect. But then some religious philosophers and theologians came out in support of the king – some literally came out, as well – and that helped turn the tide of public opinion in favour of Alexandre III.” 

Prince Christoph smiled, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I suppose considering what had happened to him in this monastery, there’s a kind of dramatic irony to that.”

The Beast, knowing the final part of the story, took a moment to get his expression under control before pivoting around to face the prince again. He unclasped his claws, reaching out with one arm to steady himself on the ruins of the monastery wall. He was unused to standing bipedally for quite this long, and his knees were beginning to complain in earnest. 

“Indeed,” the Beast agreed. “Letters of support came in from all over the country, in due time. But the first one – at least by date written, if not the date at which it arrived – came from a closed order of monks, somewhere in Rouen.”

A softer smile spread over Prince Christoph’s face as the Beast finished his story. “Even though they never saw each other again, they still managed to have a lasting impact on each other’s lives – on the course of history itself,” he said slowly. “That’s one hell of a legacy.”

The Beast hummed in agreement. “I never knew about the monk writing in support of the king, when I was a child,” he said. “Technically speaking, we don’t know that he was the author, but I like to think he was.” 

The prince’s eyes narrowed for a split second – the merest suggestion of a frown – before relaxing back into thoughtfulness, for some reason the Beast couldn’t fathom. It happened so quickly he was almost convinced he’d imagined it. 

“It does lend a certain structure to the whole tale, doesn’t it?” Prince Christoph pushed himself away from the wall. 

“The two young lovers separated by a system which they managed to change together . . .” the Beast mused, setting aside the mystery of the frown for the moment. “And we’re still feeling the effects of their decisions today. Everyone on this continent has some form of a coming-out tradition when they reach adulthood. I wonder if they could ever have dreamed of the implications their actions would have, this many generations down the line?”

The question was half-rhetorical, and not really aimed at Prince Christoph at all. The fact that it immediately caused his eyes to skitter back in the direction of his horse, and his shoulders noticeably tense once again, ignited the Beast’s curiosity. 

“How much has really changed, though?” the prince asked half-absently. “Yes, the nobility show a diversity of alignment that echoes those of the common people – at least according to our census data – but the majority of people who wield real political power still end up involved in heterosexual dynasty-making marriages. And even in countries which still have traditional monarchies, I don’t think there’s ever been even a third or fourth child of a king who’s publicly declared themselves as queer, let alone an heir.”

The Beast almost had to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking if Prince Christoph had somehow forgotten the proverbial shitstorm that had dominated France’s political sphere only six years ago, after the heir to the throne had publicly stated his alignment as a bisexual. Only the fact that this would inevitably raise hundreds of questions the Beast neither wanted to nor felt capable of answering prevented him. 

Instead, he said, “Do you include yourself in that assessment?”

Prince Christoph turned to face the Beast so suddenly that the tails of his green coat slapped against his leg. “Excuse me?” he asked. 

“In your assessment of the nobility,” the Beast clarified, giving in to his aching knees and leaning his hips against the sturdiest bit of wall he could see. “When you first introduced yourself, you said your father was still king of Germany, although I imagine it must be almost time for another election if one hasn’t happened already. News travels . . . slowly, to my castle – if your coming-out ball was any time over the last five or six years, whatever your alignment was hasn’t reached my ears yet. So I’m curious as to which of those two camps you would assign yourself to.”

“I –” the prince started, before cutting himself off. His brows knitted together into a frown once again, his mouth moving through the shapes of various unvoiced words, before breaking way to surprised laughter as he shook his head slowly. He looked good, laughing. “You are . . . very astute. And surprisingly easy to talk to.”

“I could say the same of you,” the Beast replied with an honesty that shook his chest. 

Their eyes met, and for the first time since arriving at the clearing, the Beast didn’t hurriedly glance away. He looked at the prince — his surprise clearly evident, easing to a thoughtfulness of expression as he took in what the Beast had just said — and held his gaze as the prince looked at him in turn. He wondered what precisely it was he saw — and how it differed from Isabelle’s picture of him, the only other human to look at him in all this time. 

They held each other’s gaze for what the Beast began to feel was almost an uncomfortably long time, but couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds. To his surprise, he felt a sharp stab of disappointment when the prince looked away towards his horse.  

“It’s later than I thought it was,” he said apologetically. “I should probably go back.”

“Of course,” the Beast said. There was a pause, where further politenesses were clearly meant to be said. After another agonisingly long moment of searching his brain for the most appropriate thing to say, the Beast stumbled out a terse, “I — enjoyed your company.” 

Inwardly, he cursed himself for being so incapable of basic manners. Outwardly, he felt an eye and ear twitch in unison. 

Prince Christoph’s eyes crinkled in another of his genuine smiles. “As did I. You’re quite the storyteller, Mister . . . ?”

Ah. This. 

“I suppose Scheherezade would be a little too on-the-nose?” 

“You didn’t leave the tale unfinished, so I’m not even sure it’s appropriate,” he grinned.

“Well,” the Beast’s mouth said, while another part of him wondered what exactly he thought he was doing. “You have the makings of a tale half-begun, by any means.” 

“In that case, I look forwards to hearing more of it next week,” the prince said, swinging himself onto his horse once again. “But if you make me start guessing names, Rumplestiltsken will be my first port of call!” 

With that, he bowed his head to the Beast, spurred the horse with his heels, and was halfway into the forest almost before the Beast could smother his small, involuntary half-chuckle. 

He left the abandoned monastery after a few more minutes basking in the last of the afternoon sun, more curious than ever about the prince’s reactions — both the baffling display of trust in a near stranger who could easily physically overpower him, and the strange reticence around his alignment and the subject of his coming-out ball. It would be strange to keep this mystery from his staff, when he had spent so long sharing almost everything with them — but, as he quickly reminded himself, the chill of enchanted snow sinking into his fur as he raced back to the castle, it was in their best interests. 

He deliberately paid little attention to the part of himself, small as it might be, that was thrilled to once again be arranging secret meetings with a stranger in the abandoned monastery. 

Chapter Text

Ella was used to living with a certain amount of uncertainty and danger in her life. Since her father died, it had been a simple fact that Lady Tremaine would seize the most unexpected possible moments to (for example) rummage through her attic bedroom and chastise Ella for daring to still own three silk petticoats, or upbraid her on a chipped corner plate that had been sitting untouched in the cabinet for upwards of six months. That the petticoats had been too small since Ella was thirteen, and the plate in question had originated from Lady Tremaine’s china and not Ella’s, made no difference to the punishment received. 

As such, Ella had spent the last few weeks convinced that her stepmother finding Belle in the cellar was something of an inevitability. That she still seemed unaware of Belle’s presence boded well for Belle’s continued length of stay, but very ill for the inevitable fallout. While Belle’s presence in the house remained a secret, Ella tried her best not to think too deeply on the topic; as if her thoughts themselves could provide a beacon leading Lady Tremaine straight to her. 

And yet at the same time, her thoughts lingered on Belle both day and night. As well as her anxieties, Ella wondered how she found the long days in the cellar; if she was warm enough, if the little food that Ella slipped to her was enough to sustain her, what she passed her time with. After nightfall, making her lonely way up to her bedroom after talks with Belle by the fireplace, her mind’s eye kindly recreated the way Belle’s hair grew lustrous in the firelight, the curve of her smile as they talked and tried not to laugh at each other’s stories and anecdotes too loudly. Ella had even found her in her dreams once or twice, where some of her other curves were highlighted in ways that made her blush to think of in the cold morning light. 

Despite this, Ella found it surprisingly easy to find a routine with Belle. It helped that she had her usual duties to occupy her during the day. The hours tended to fly past her in that house; Ella could blink, and find that either a week or six months had passed. It was drudgery plain and simple, and the work was never done; simply laid down until the cock crowed the next morning. Having Belle’s company to look forward to after the hired cook had left for the evening made laying down the work for the night all the sweeter, in Ella’s opinion. 

It also made her rare free days fraught in ways they hadn’t been before; to stay in the house would arouse suspicion that neither she nor Belle could easily afford. Her first free day since Belle had started living in the cellar happened to fall on the day she was supposed to meet the prince again (she couldn’t call him Kit in her own head, no matter how sincere he had seemed that she drop the formality). She waited in the clearing for an hour in the early morning, but was – not surprised, precisely, but disappointed that he didn’t show his face. She left a note in the waterproof envelope that Belle had designed, explaining the situation in as few words as possible. If Ella had learned anything from her stepmother, it was never to put anything in writing she didn’t want thrown back in her face at a later date. That done, she had placed the envelope on a thick tree branch roughly eye-level, weighed down by a few stones. Hoping it could be easily seen, she had remounted Major and spent the rest of her day in town, on a specific mission. 

When she returned home that evening, successfully laden with a new book, several candles, and a safety lamp, she was surprised to see that the envelope was not where she had left it; it was on a different tree, weighed down with different stones. Ella’s heart leaped into her throat as she leapt off Major and opened the envelope, her mind’s eye filled with panicked scenarios. The message inside was scribbled on the reverse side of her note, in handwriting she had never seen before. 

Miss Ella,

I’m very glad that you found your friend, and that she appears to be safe and in good health. For myself, I cannot consider the matter settled; there are further mysteries to be uncovered, and I am doing my best to continue finding the truth of the whole affair. 

For reasons related to this, I will be passing through this part of the woods fairly often. If there is any other way I can be of assistance to you, please don’t hesitate to either leave a note or wait for me to ride by – I tend to reach this clearing by late morning, approaching midday, and return through it in the early hours of the evening.

I am sorry I missed you today – I hope you didn’t feel I had broken my promise. I’m not the kind of man to give my word lightly. 

Your servant, 

Kit

P.S. You and your mother were right about these woods. I’m sorry I doubted you at first. 

Ella read the note at least three times, her forehead crinkling into a frown before giving way to disbelief. The words remained unchanged, looking back up at her in simple black and white. She stood there lost in thought for some time; long enough that eventually even patient Major, huffing a long-suffering breath out of his nostrils, nudged her arm with the end of his nose. She came back to herself with a start, to see that the long July day was finally beginning to slip into a humid summer night. Shaking her head in slow disbelief, she folded up her note and stuffed it deep into her pocket, before leading Major back to the estate. 

Evenings on a day off were always hectic. Technically, Ella knew it was against the law for Lady Tremaine to put her back to work the moment she stepped foot back inside the house. She also knew that there was precious little the law could do to protect her, isolated and friendless as she was, and so she shrugged back into her apron and set about catching up on the most urgent parts of housework. 

Well, she corrected herself, listening to her stepsisters bickering on their way up to bed as she finished sweeping the drawing room fireplace. Not entirely friendless, now.  

The sounds of the upper household gradually faded away, as Ella kept working. Forty-five minutes after she had heard the last sound from upstairs, she judged it safe enough to bring Belle out from the cellar. Arranging the book, candles, and lamp in the kitchen near their meal (tonight, sausage casserole), Ella walked over to the door and tapped out the rhythm they had agreed on. Hearing the two answering knocks released a small knot of tension in her stomach she hadn’t noticed was there until it was gone. 

Ella swung open the door. The hinges had been re-oiled shortly before Belle had first met her in the woods, and it opened close to silently. She relaxed even further as Belle ascended the stairs, the candle in Ella’s hand throwing warm light onto her pale face. Belle smiled at her, reaching out before she had even finished climbing the steps to take Ella’s hand. 

It thrilled Ella to feel Belle sliding her fingers over her palm, the weight of their hands relaxing into each other’s grip. The night where she had lost her composure and cried so dramatically in front of Belle (which Ella still couldn’t think about too much without becoming embarrassed) seemed to have broken a barrier of awkwardness between them. She couldn’t say that the feeling of Belle’s hand slipping into hers had become something so commonplace as ‘normal’; nevertheless, something had shifted, and now Ella received more friendly touches over the course of a few hours than she would usually expect in a year. That warm and friendly touch was the only thing that soothed the terrible, gaping sense of loneliness in her chest she had felt since her father died. 

They spoke little as they stole towards the kitchen; first out of fear of somebody overhearing them, and then because they were too occupied eating a hot dinner to converse much. It wasn’t an awkward silence, though; instead filled with companionable glances and easy smiles. When they had both finished, Belle took the plates without a word and began washing them. Ella leaned against the side of the hearth, soaking in the warmth of the banked fire. She wasn’t nearly as tired as usual, but felt no obligation to take over from Belle. It was novel to sit and have somebody else do the cleaning for once. 

“How did your day off go?” Belle asked over her shoulder as she scrubbed. “I hope you got to do something nice.”

Ella smiled. “I did,” she said. “I went into town. It was the first time in quite a while I wasn’t there running an errand for Madam; it was nice to be able to wander in and out of the shops as I pleased. I even managed to buy a few things I was looking for.”

There was the barest lull in Belle’s movements as Ella spoke, a slackening of her shoulders; she roused herself a moment later, getting out a towel to start drying. Ella didn’t have to see her face to know she was pitying her. “What sort of things? Anything interesting?”

“Yes – I’ll show you once you’ve finished the dishes.”

“I’ll be quick,” she said, the smile evident in her voice. 

Ella went to grab the gifts from where she had stashed them earlier, as Belle dried and put away the plain ceramic bowls. When she had finished, she dropped into the narrow spot next to Ella, instead of retaking her own separate seat. Ella could feel the warmth of her thigh as it pressed against hers, even through both of their layers of skirts, their hips bumping together gently. 

“There’s two things,” Ella said gently. “The first is this.” She bent down and handed Belle the safety lamp and extra candles. 

“Oh, Ella – you didn’t need to do this for me!” Belle gasped. She held them awkwardly, as if unsure what to do with her hands (or Ella’s generosity). “You’ve been so kind to me already, letting me stay here –”

“There’s something else,” Ella interrupted, anxious to get it over with. She bent down again, producing the book she had seen in the window and sparked the whole idea. “Here,” she said, handing it over. 

Belle took it from her, suddenly speechless. She bundled the candles into the crook of her elbow, holding the book in both hands. Hanks of loose hair from where her braid had come loose over the day obscured her face as she looked down. 

“It’s Le Morte D’Arthur ,” Ella said as the silence continued. “I thought – you mentioned that you didn’t bring any books with you here. And I know you love to read.”

“Ella,” Belle said eventually. Her voice was thick with emotion, and when she finally looked up at her she could see her dark eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “Ella, you really – you really didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Ella interrupted. “I wanted to.”

Belle smiled, still glancing down at her book in disbelief. One of her fingers rubbed possessively against the binding. “This is my favourite book,” she said. “I have no idea how you picked this one, out of all the books that must have been in the shop.”

There had actually been a rather poor selection of books on offer – Ella suspected that the bookseller in Belle’s village was unusually well-stocked compared to most others in the surrounding area – but she kept that to herself. Taking courage, she gently laid a hand on Belle’s shoulder. She leaned into the touch immediately, glancing up at Ella’s face almost shyly. 

“I had a copy of this at home, but . . .” She trailed off, darting her eyes back down to the book again, before meeting Ella’s gaze. “I told you before, about the man who was going to . . . ‘pay a visit’ to our cottage the day my father left?”

Ella nodded. “You said he ‘didn’t take ‘no’ kindly’.”

She could see the moment Belle steeled herself. “He asked me to marry him. More like almost forced me to marry him. I told him no – I told him what he should have remembered himself, that while I had declared my alignment as bisexual that didn’t mean I was interested in him. He said that didn’t matter, and he could ‘make’ me heterosexual by marrying me.” She had gotten more and more furious as she spoke, until she was almost vibrating with rage. Her eyes flashed hot in the firelight, her jaw tight. 

Ella found that she was angry, too. Her hand didn’t move from Belle’s shoulder, but she could feel her muscles clamping into place. “Did he –?” She wasn’t even sure what she was trying to ask. 

“No,” Belle said. “No.” She relaxed a little, although her eyes kept their fire. “We were near the door, and I managed to push him out of it and into a pile of mud. The whole town was there; he wasn’t best pleased at looking so foolish, or being so publicly rejected. But I was reminded of him because he had that book in his hand, Le Morte D’Arthur . He was giving a one-sided lecture about how when we were married I would be too busy raising his sons and keeping his house to read such nonsense, and I didn’t manage to swipe it back before I threw him out.”

She looked down at the book again. Ella was close enough to see the apples of her cheeks rise, although she couldn’t see Belle’s smile. Her hand hadn’t moved. It felt a little as if it had claimed Belle’s shoulder for its home now. 

“The point is . . . that is, what I was trying to say before I went on that excessively long tangent,” Belle chuckled, “is thank you.” Her head drooped down a little, until her temple rested against the curve of Ella’s shoulder. Ella instinctively moved her hand over to Belle’s other side, draping her arm over her back. “I didn’t think I would get to read this again for . . . a long time.”

“You’re welcome,” Ella said helplessly, instead of the numerous other things her tongue wanted to say at that moment. Stupid things – dangerous things. Better, she thought, to live with the uncertainty for now, and enjoy the warmth of the fire together. 

Ella’s next day off a few weeks later was the hottest day of the year so far, which only made tensions higher and tempers more frayed. Anastasia and Susanna had been sniping at each other all week, in between Lady Tremaine’s bouts of irritation at all three of them. She had been bound up in her study for the last week, exchanging furious letters with somebody about who knew what – most likely, Ella thought, the not-insignificant amounts of gambling debt she had acquired while her father was still alive. As a consequence, her temper had been even shorter than usual. 

Ella counted herself lucky that the cellar was still dank and cold, meaning that the milk hadn’t yet soured as it had last year – and that Belle, at least, would not be suffocating in a doorless oven. Beneath her clothes, sweat gathered at the creases of her knees and elbows, in the small of her back and under her breasts; it plastered the fine hairs at her hairline and the nape of her neck to her skin, leaving almost her entire body in a faint sheen of discomfort. The last thing she wanted to do was spend any reasonable amount of time outside, when the stone walls of the house at least chilled some of the heat. 

But Ella had learned from experience, both last year and the year before, that staying on the estate while Lady Tremaine was in a temper was a recipe for disaster. She couldn’t face the idea of riding to town and back, so instead hovered around the clearing for most of the day. To her relief, there was a rather pleasant breeze that ruffled her hair and skirts at odd intervals. For the first time since she was a teenager, she had scrambled into one of the trees to read – although she usually preferred sitting on the grass or one of the rocks, something had gotten into Ella today, and she couldn’t face the idea of staying so low to the ground. 

She kept half an ear out for the sounds of anyone approaching – perhaps the prince, passing through her clearing on his way to do . . . whatever it was he planned to do to uncover the further mysteries of the Beast. She assumed it was the Beast, anyway; he had been equally careful not to put anything too incriminating in writing. Whatever it was the prince was doing, Ella saw neither hide nor hair of him for the duration of the day. Instead, she spent the day reading in the tree. It was a rare luxury, considering that her only usual opportunity was in the evenings, willing her eyes to stay open while they stubbornly struggled for sleep. 

By the time the sun showed signs of beginning to set, Ella felt unusually content with herself. Not the contentment born of being exhausted down to the bone, but a more peaceful feeling; one that she suspected had come from having almost an entire day away from her stepfamily. She was put to work again as soon as she had left Major in the stables next to Phillipe, drawing cool (“But not freezing!”) baths for all three ladies in addition to her usual cleaning duties. Even this couldn’t sway her equilibrium – she could tell that this irritated Lady Tremaine, and she took an abstractly spiteful pleasure in that fact even as she deliberately set the feeling aside to try and hold onto that contentment. 

Eventually, her stepfamily was satisfied, cooling down from the heat of the day. Eventually, they were all safely in bed. Eventually, her remaining work was finished. Eventually, Belle’s smiling face, a little paler now than it had been when Ella had first invited her to stay. Finally, the haven of the two of them in the kitchen. 

Their hands remained intertwined as long as possible, until the necessities of eating meant they had to let go. Still, their ankles knocked against each other companionably, the two of them pressed against each other in a long line, from thighs to hips to shoulders. Belle kept sneaking glances over at Ella’s face, her eyes flickering away every time Ella looked back over at her. Her cheeks had a pretty pink flush to them as well – and it could have just been the heat, but Ella could feel that there was something different in the air between them tonight. Not an awkwardness. More like . . . an anticipation. 

When Belle got up to wash the dishes Ella followed her, laughing along to an anecdote she was sharing about a similarly hot day in Villeneuve back when she was a teenager. (She had been reading in a tree with her skirts hiked up for breathability, lost track of the time, and ended up with sunburn all down her leg where it had been exposed to the sun. Her father had reportedly laughed for a full five minutes before breaking off some aloe vera leaves for her.) Leaning backwards with her elbows braced against the worksurface beside the sink, she told Belle about her day – what little there was to tell, that was. 

“I’m glad it was peaceful for you,” Belle said, bumping her affectionately with her hip as she washed up. 

“What about your day?”

“I read a little more,” Belle said. “Did some mending; my apron got a hole in it.”

“Again?” Ella asked. “Do you need more thread?”

“No, that’s alright. I managed to get by with what I had, but thank you for offering, sweetheart.”

Immediately, Belle realised what she had said and froze. Her eyes darted over to Ella’s guiltily before dropping to the sink. “I –”

Sweetheart. The word echoed around Ella’s head like the vibrations of a church bell ringing. 

“Belle?” It came out somewhat dazedly. 

“I . . .” she said again. 

Ella turned to face Belle properly. She wasn’t looking at her, instead staring fixedly down at the sink. What little Ella could see of her face looked miserable. Cautiously, she placed a hand on her shoulder. 

Belle’s head swivelled to look at her. Ella had no idea what her face was doing, but whatever expression she was making caused Belle’s brows to unknit, and her mouth to lose its determined downwards turn. 

“Belle,” she said again, helpless to say anything else. Ella tilted her head a little – it was easy to forget, but she was slightly taller than Belle. She shifted slightly closer towards her, her other hand still resting on the countertop for balance. She knew she shouldn’t need to; she was equally sure that if she didn’t she might float away. 

Belle’s lips parted, ever so slightly. The faint pink colour in her cheeks had developed into a full, rosy blush by now. Her eyes darted around Ella’s face, before resting for a long moment on her mouth. Her hands were still in the sink, half-obscured by soapy water. 

“Belle,” she whispered. “Dearest.”

Belle’s eyelids slid shut, as she took a shaky breath in. Before she could release it, Ella leaned her head down and kissed her. 

It was soft. Gentle. It stretched out for hours and hours, and was over in slightly less time than it took to unbutton her boots. As Ella broke the kiss, she was distantly aware that she was shaking. Before she could pull all the way back, she felt Belle stretch up for another kiss that turned into two. She returned them, dizzy with it, before reluctantly pulling away properly. 

Belle opened her eyes after a long moment. They were almost entirely pupil, with a thin ring of brown around the edge. A small part of Ella’s brain noticed with amusement that her hands were still wrist-deep in the water. The greater part was still locked on the way Belle’s lips had felt beneath hers. At some point her hand had slid from Belle’s shoulder to her waist. She felt quite powerless to remove it now. 

“Can I –?”

“Please.”

And they were kissing again, soft at first and then with a desperate hunger that Ella had read about hundreds of times before but never felt until this moment. There was a brief pause when Belle raised her hands from the water, flailing them awkwardly for a moment before remembering where the towel had gone. Then her hands were all over Ella, running up and down her back, pressing against her waist, stroking at her hair and her face like she was something precious, something worthy of gentleness, and she lost herself in the feeling. 

When Ella came back to herself a little more, the small of her back was pressed against the large kitchen table, Belle’s forehead pressed against hers as they both panted for breath, arms intertwined and legs slotted together. Her thighs and core burned a little from holding the pose, but Ella abruptly realised that she didn’t care as long as Belle stayed this close to her. 

“Are you . . . ?” Belle said into the sudden quiet. Her hair was only in the vaguest suggestion of a braid now, after Ella had gotten her hands in it. “Do you want me to . . . ?”

“Please,” she said. She felt like a dictionary with the pages glued together, unable to find the words. She felt like there was electricity sparking beneath her skin. “Kiss me again, touch me, anything. For as long as you want to.” 

Belle looked her up and down, her breathing starting to settle. Tucking a strand of hair behind Ella’s ear, she pressed a kiss to her mouth, and said, “I will. I promise.”

Ella woke up the next morning with a start. The sunlight coming in through her attic window was a pale golden colour. She realised with a sickening jolt that she had slept in. 

She leapt out the bed and immediately began pulling on her clothes, tugging at the laces of her stays with sleep-slow fingers. 

“Ella?” 

Belle surfaced from the sheets and blankets, her hair falling over her bare shoulders in a golden-brown cascade. She was also clearly blinking off sleep, squinting where the sun was hitting her eyes. She looked vaguely like a disgruntled cat, and Ella’s heart surged with affection even as it beat a frantic tattoo. 

“We slept in.” Her fingers were simply not cooperating with her today. Maybe she had used up all their cooperation last night. That would serve her right. “If we’re lucky I’ll get down there before the ladies wake up, but I don’t think I can sneak you down to the cellar without somebody seeing you.”

Fully awake now, Belle sat fully upright. “What should I —“

“Stay here,” Ella said, her brain slowly catching up with her panicked body. “Lady Tremaine doesn’t usually come up to my rooms so I – hopefully, you should be fine. I’ll come back and get you safely downstairs as soon as I can.”

Her hands had finally decided to do their job, and she was almost fully dressed now. She turned back to face Belle, still sitting in Ella’s bed with only a sheet covering her. She looked concerned, but not particularly angry with her. 

“Belle, I’m so –” Ella started. 

“Don’t you dare apologise,” Belle said. She stood up, wrapping the sheet around herself, and pulled Ella into a soft, one-armed kiss. “I’ll be alright up here. If anybody comes, I’ll just hide.” She stroked her thumb across Ella’s cheekbone. “Go, Ella. Don’t feel guilty.”

Ella leaned down and kissed her again, because she couldn’t help it. Then she gathered her boots and raced down the endless flights of stairs to the main floor of the house. 

Thankfully, she had been correct – none of her stepfamily had risen from their beds yet, and seemed not to notice anything awry as she served them breakfast and lit the fires. Ella worked tirelessly for the first few hours of the day, until ten o’clock began to ring from the grandfather clock. Susanna and Anastasia were occupied with their music lessons – the painful dischords of flute and piano from the music room attested to that – and Lady Tremaine was in her study, as usual. The hired cook was busy grumbling to herself as she prepared her ingredients for lunch, and Ella thought this would be as good a time as any to sneak Belle back to the cellar. 

Before she reached the back stairs, however, a booming knock clattered against the front door. Ella closed her eyes, cursing the poor timing of the household today, before running to answer it. 

A tall man with a strong jaw and black hair tied back in a neat queue stood on the other side. He wore a tight-fitting red frockcoat that seemed excessively formal, although Ella could see left-over marks from where a large stain had been poorly washed away. He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering over Ella’s body in a way that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, before meeting her eyes again. 

“Can I help you?” Ella asked. 

“Yes,” he said in strongly-accented German. “I have a meeting scheduled for today with your mistress, Madame Tremaine. She’s expecting me.”

“Do you have a calling card, or a name I can give her?” Ella asked, extremely reluctant to bring him inside but certain that he wouldn’t rest until she did. 

“We’ve been exchanging letters for the past few weeks.”

“I’m sure you have,” Ella said. “But I can’t just go up and announce you that way. My mistress is a busy woman with multiple correspondences.”

His eyes flashed for a moment – annoyance or anger, Ella couldn’t be sure which – before settling again.

“But of course. Monsieur Luc Gaston,” he said, with a sickening grin. “At your service.”

Chapter Text

Kit spent most of July trying to puzzle out the mystery of the Beast in the forest. It was less emotionally fraught than trying to puzzle out an alignment for himself before that year’s coming-out ball, as he had promised his father – a ball which Kit was rapidly realising was most likely going to end up being his official coming-out ball. The thought alone was enough to send a cold flash of dread into the pit of his stomach. Lucky for him, then, that his two-pronged approach to investigating the Beast could be relied upon to efficiently distract him when needed. 

The first and most obvious step was, of course, to simply keep meeting in the abandoned monastery. Every time Kit appeared on Jasper, the Beast was already waiting for him. He always appeared to be pacing back and forth, his large frame imposing but never impatient. Every time, he looked surprised to see Kit, blue eyes widening and face relaxing for a brief moment. At first Kit had thought it was only the relief that he had kept his promise; as the weeks passed, however, he began to suspect that there was the smallest of smiles in that instinctual reaction as well. It made Kit, who smiled as easily as he breathed, want to draw them out even further. Although the details of the Beast’s past were never discussed, Kit found he was developing a portrait of the person he was in the present. 

He seemed unused to being around new people – an off-handed reference to current servants at least proved that he wasn’t completely alone in that castle – and vascillated between silences that should have been awkward and near-monologues, like their first meeting in the monastery. He was well-educated on topics including law (both regional and national), mathematics, and music, although he had a clear passion for history. He had sharp eyes and ears, paying careful attention to whatever Kit said and bringing it up later in conversation, where relevant. They had similar senses of humour, but expressed it differently; the Beast’s dry sarcasm meant Kit usually spent half a second taking him seriously before laughing at the joke. Whatever his background was, he clearly had regrets; Kit suspected the root of the situation was some sort of impulsive decision that had led to unforeseen consequences. Given how quickly the situation with Ella’s friend had both originated and resolved, he felt reasonable assuming that impulsivity was a lasting facet of the Beast’s personality, rather than something he had outgrown. 

He could see only the vaguest shape of what sort of past the Beast must have had to shape him into the person he was today. The scant details he let slip during their conversations only made Kit hungry for more information. He was well-educated, to a similar level as most of the government officials and royals Kit knew. Despite this, there were gaps in his knowledge that spanned the last five or six years – including the fact that the incumbent king of Germany was still yet to announce his alignment. He had mentioned being a child, and having tutors. While he had extorted a young woman into living in his castle, and then released her the very next day, he not only clearly regretted it but had taken deliberate steps to meet Kit on the comparatively neutral ground of the monastery. And that, of course, only led to more questions about the castle itself, and how the Beast had come to live there with his servants. 

It was perhaps just over a fortnight into his meetings with the Beast when Kit, somewhat to his relief, found the answer to at least one of these mysteries. It was on the day he had arranged to meet up with Ella again, a cornflower-blue July sky blazing down on his head as he disappeared into the border forest – already delayed, despite his best efforts, due to a long-running meeting with the Duke first thing that morning. He was valiantly still wearing his green jacket, although he had a feeling that, lightweight as it was, he would need to lose it as the heat of the day wore on. He eased Jasper into a walk as he gained the clearing where he had first met Ella. He didn’t usually pause when riding through the clearing, and he took the time now to notice how the grass had grown taller, and that a few clusters of strawberry flowers were beginning to make way for berries. 

As he scanned the clearing, Kit noticed something unusual – what looked like a sealed letter sitting on a tree branch just below eye level, weighed down at each corner by rocks. Frowning, he dismounted Jasper and plucked the envelope out of the tree, unwrapping it gingerly. He read it quickly; there was precious little written on the notepaper inside. His head snapped up, and he looked fruitlessly around the clearing as if Ella would reappear in front of him if he just looked hard enough. 

“Oh, I can’t believe it . . .” he muttered to himself. Shaking his head, Kit rummaged in Jasper’s saddlebags for a moment before finding a pen and ink. He penned a message equally short on the reverse side of the note, although hopefully saying as much between the lines as the note from Ella had. He paused for a long moment, before adding the postscript. That done, he resealed the letter, secreted it on a different tree, with different stones, and regained his seat in the saddle. He had already missed one appointment that day; he would do his level best to keep the second. 

Difficult as it was to gain further information from his only primary source, Kit sought out the next-most reliable place he could find further data: the library. It had helped him locate the castle in the first place: it therefore should logically follow that it would contain further details on the occupants of that castle. Unfortunately, Kit found himself unable to devote as much time to this pursuit as he would have liked. Although he was able to clear enough time in his schedule to ride down to the border once or twice a week, he was still a busy man with responsibilities to his people. As such, what time he could spare to research the castle near the monastery was fragmented, and caught at odd hours. 

It was at one of those odd hours — approaching midnight, after a very long day not-quite-arguing with the Duke about municipal responsibilities over a flooded bridge in the north-west — that Captain Harker finally caught him in the middle of a pile of books, huddled in a corner table with a safety lamp as the only light. 

“Your highness,” she said in a low voice. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

Kit, who had been half-asleep in his chair before she spoke up and had instinctively jumped at the sudden noise, shook his head unconvincingly as he willed his heart rate to slow. “No, Captain.”

She shot him an unimpressed look. 

“. . . not entirely deliberately,” he conceded. 

The corner of her mouth twitched upwards in a small smile. She took a seat next to him at the table, flipping over a few of the books to read their titles as Kit rubbed his eyes. 

“French history and lineages of the past sixty years? Recent political commentaries on the borders between their country and ours? And . . . a biography of Alexandre III?” She looked at him sidelong, before replacing the books precisely where he had left them. “What is all this about?”

“I would tell you, but I don’t think you’ll be best pleased.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Kit sighed. “You remember last month, when I promised to investigate the disappearance of a young woman from France.”

“Ah yes, the one supposedly kidnapped by a fearsome Beast. The one you rather impulsively gave your word to, despite knowing nothing about the situation or how dangerous it could have been.”

“Yes. Well, since then the situation has gotten . . . a little more . . . complicated.”

Their eyes met. 

“Oh, Kit.” Captain Harker closed her eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I suppose this is where you’ve been disappearing off to, every three or four days?”

“Yes,” he said, wincing slightly. 

“And this research you’re doing now is somehow related, I assume.”

“In a way.”

“Did you at least find the missing woman?”

“She . . . was already gone when I arrived at the castle. He’d let her go without needing any external intervention.”

The captain lifted her head sharply. “He?”

Kit looked at her with the most apologetic expression he could muster, given the complete ridiculousness of the sentence he knew he was about to say. “The Beast. In the castle. It turns out he’s not so bad, once you get to know him.”

Captain Harker returned to her previous position, letting out a long, low groan. She held it for a long time – so long that Kit began to be genuinely worried about her – before exhaling sharply and resuming a professional composure. 

“You haven’t told anybody else about this, by any chance?”

“You’re the first to know the full story, although certainly people will have noticed how frequently I’m away from the castle compared to my usual habits.”

“There’s nothing I can say that’s going to make you change your mind, is there?” she asked flatly. 

“Probably not,” he agreed. “I know it’s a security risk, and you’re probably right not to trust him the way I do. But –”

“– but you gave your word,” Captain Harker sighed. “It’s a good thing you’re shrewd enough not to go around promising things to everyone you run into in a day. But out of all the people you could have given your word to, did it have to be that one?”

Despite himself, Kit smiled. “There’s something just beneath the surface of this whole thing,” he said. “I don’t know what it is I’m missing, but I just know that as soon as I figure it out, everything’s going to fall into place. This Beast, he’s –”

The captain raised her hand, palm facing him. Kit trailed off mid-sentence, a little confused at the sudden about-face.  

“Your highness,” she said. “Respectfully, I’ll have to ask you not to tell me any more. We may be friends, but I don’t serve you yet – I serve the King.”

Kit closed his mouth, before nodding to show he understood. His father trusted his judgement, but Kit had had a hard enough time justifying himself to Captain Harker. He knew that while his father would not outright ban him from these admittedly ridiculous escapades, he would at least insist he take more of a guard with him and have everything be above-board. Some instinct of Kit’s told him that he would never get to the bottom of the Beast’s mysteries, or continue the strange friendship between them, if they were continually chaperoned by an armed guard. 

“Of course, May,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask you to lie just to cover for me.”

Her mouth curved in the smallest of smiles. “Thank you for understanding.”

She clapped his shoulder, then stood up to leave. Kit waved at her one-handed as she closed the library door behind her, before diving back into his books for any insight into his mysterious – well. He wasn’t quite sure if they were friends or not, yet. 

Unfortunately for Kit, the books proved to be just as vague as the Beast himself. He had already known from his earlier research that the previous owner of the Beast’s castle had seemingly left no impact on the wider world – barely so much as an old tax form, much less a certificate of birth, marriage, or death. What truly started to confound him, however, was that the next previous owner had equally low amounts of information on record. In fact, going back over a good seventy years of that castle’s history, Kit would have assumed it was a ruin that had lain uninhabited for decades if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. There is something very strange going on here, he thought to himself in frustration, a few fruitless weeks into his research. Something that goes beyond a Beast in the woods and a missing woman. 

In the meantime, he continued juggling his responsibilities to the crown, his father, and his advisors, with his escapes to the monastery. He wasn’t naive enough to think that his absences were going entirely without comment – a pointed sneer from the Duke had been enough to confirm that suspicion – but to Kit’s relief, people seemed to think he was merely sneaking off to see some strange sweetheart who wouldn’t show their face in the castle. His father hadn’t broached the topic with him yet – perhaps remembering their argument during the portrait sitting – and Kit hoped he would continue to leave it unspoken for a while yet. The last thing Kit wanted right now was to have to come up with a convincing lie about where he was going, while also dodging the question of what his activities meant for his alignment. 

When he thought of his alignment – which he tried not to – it was with a sense of growing dread in the pit of his stomach. He knew, of course, that he would need to give an answer eventually. It just felt so impossible, when the simple truth was that he still had no idea what the right word was for what he felt – which terminology was the best way to make people understand what he was barely sure he understood himself. It irritated him to be at such a loss for words to describe his own experiences, when his vocation involved understanding and communicating topics far more complicated and far-reaching than who he did or did not want to engage with in sexual or romantic relationships. 

The day following his midnight conversation with Captain Harker was the hottest day of the year by far; Kit had woken late and consequently had to scramble to meet the Beast anywhere resembling ‘on time’. By the time Kit made it to the abandoned monastery he was rather sweaty, and even farther behind. He hauled off his jacket as soon as Jasper had stopped moving, leaving it strewn across the saddle as he loosely tethered the horse. He took a long draught from his water flask, before hurrying deeper into the ruins of the monastery. He and the Beast had taken to meeting in the large semi-circular remains of what had once been an interior garden. 

“I’m sorry I’m so late!” he called out as he navigated the stone walls. For a second, Kit thought he heard an odd scrabbling noise, although it was difficult to make out over the noise his own feet were making. “I was delayed leaving this morning – it was a late night, last night, and the roads are filled with every man and his dog trying to get their fill of the sun today –”

He stopped short in the middle of his sentence. The Beast was waiting for him in the ruins of the garden, as usual. However, instead of leaning against one of the waist-height walls, he was half-lying on a patch of sunlit grass, curled up like a dog. He was propped up on his arms, clearly in the middle of standing up – which at least explained the odd noise Kit had heard. Their eyes met. Almost instantly, the Beast dropped his gaze, ears twitching downwards and his head cringing away, as if he was – ashamed, almost, to be caught like this. 

“I kept you waiting,” Kit said. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologise,” the Beast said stiffly. “You’re a busy man. I’m . . . happy you managed to make it out here.”

They stood awkwardly for another long moment, the sounds of the forest the only thing breaking the silence. 

“Is this – pardon me if I’m overstepping – but is a position like this more comfortable for you?” Kit asked. 

The Beast’s eyes flickered. After a moment, his shoulders slumped, and he nodded. “This form was not meant to be one which walks on two legs, like a man. I find it a matter of . . . balancing comfort with dignity.”

Kit looked at him again as several thoughts ran through his head. He had been running late to their meeting today; the Beast had, previously, always met him while standing upright; he seemed like a proud man generally, and sharing that he was deliberately pushing his limits to preserve his dignity had clearly cost him something to admit.

“Well then,” Kit said, wandering over so that he was a socially acceptable distance from the Beast, “I hope you don’t mind if I join you down here.” So saying, he sat down cross-legged, thankful that he today had worn riding trousers which had been stained with far worse than a bit of damp grass. He was a careful distance away from the Beast – not so far away that it would read as a snub, and yet still close enough that they could easily talk to each other. It was one thing to stand and talk to him with Jasper in easy reach. Even Kit was aware that sitting down on the ground next to a creature several times his height and weight, with claws and fangs as thick as his fingers, was a profound show of trust. 

The Beast stared at him, before chuckling to himself. “You have to be the most unusual prince I’ve ever met, Your Highness.”

“You forget,” Kit said, even as his brain delighted over this new and unprompted piece of information, “most princes are born to their station. I’ve been elected to mine. There’s a certain . . . antiquity to courtly manners that sometimes obscure the best thing to do in a given situation.”

The Beast did laugh at that, a deep rumble in his chest that made Kit smile all the wider for having caused it. “Well,” he said after a moment, “you would certainly know better than me on that topic.” There was more than a hint of self-recrimination in his voice, although the words had been said lightly. 

Kit’s eyes darted over to the Beast. They had, by unspoken mutual agreement, carefully avoided discussing the circumstances that had brought them together beyond the strictly necessary. For the Beast to break this embargo was clearly significant. 

“I actually heard about Mademoiselle Dupont the other week – indirectly, but from someone who I trust to be honest.” 

The Beast’s eyes flickered up to meet Kit’s, ears twitching upwards. Kit quickly filled him in as to the general contents of Ella’s letter; however, remembering the manner in which it had been written, and what he had inferred about her home life, he kept his comments vague. 

“Hmm,” the Beast said. It rumbled in his chest almost as loudly as his laughter did. His leonine features had Kit wondering absently if that meant he was capable of purring, before the strangeness of the thought caused him to put it firmly to one side. “Well, I’m glad to know that she’s at least safe for now, after . . . what I put her through. Thank you for telling me, Prince Christoph.”

Kit nodded in acknowledgement, even as his brow furrowed. “You know, you don’t have to call me that all the time. Most people just call me Kit.”

“Your ministers, lords, and ladies don’t address you with your title? When you meet foreign nationals or heads of state, is their address as informal?” There was a glint in the Beast’s eye that let Kit know he was being teased, if the barely-hidden smile hadn’t been enough of a clue. 

“Alright, let me make it even plainer, then,” Kit said, unable to stop the smile spreading over his face. “My friends call me Kit. You can too, if you’d like.”

To his surprise, instead of being put at his ease, the Beast seemed to go on his guard, ears standing at attention. “Is that what we are? Friends?”

Kit stopped to think it over. “I’m not sure. It’s been a while since I made a new friend – I’ve been acquainted with most of my social circle just about since I was born. I’m a little rusty at the mechanics of getting to know a new person. But I’d certainly like to be friends.”

After a long pause, the Beast said, “It seems that we have more in common than I first thought. It has been . . . quite some time since I last met somebody new.” He turned his attention to his own hands, and the long claws that capped each finger. 

Around six years, I would guess, Kit thought. What happened to you six years ago to cut you off from the world so completely?

“Maybe we can get some practice with each other.” Kit said. 

The Beast looked back up at him, and nodded with a shyness quite unlike him. 

Acting on the same instinct that had led to them arranging these meetings in the first place, Kit reached out one hand, careful to keep it from encroaching on the Beast’s personal space. His hand shook a little, but otherwise Kit did not move his arm. 

“Shall we say friends, then?” he asked. 

The Beast’s eyes darted from Kit’s outstretched hand to his face and back again. Slowly – cautiously – he reached out one of his own massive paws, and gingerly placed it against Kit’s hand. His hand tried to close around it, but it was too large; instead, Kit ended up gripping three of his fingers and the very tip of the Beast’s thumb. 

“Friends,” the Beast agreed. Carefully, he shook their joined hands. 

As they separated, Kit said too-casually, “I don’t suppose this avowal of friendship has made you want to share your name, has it?”

The Beast looked at him, expression deadpan apart from a small half-ironic twist to his mouth. “Not a chance, Prin– Christoph.”

Kit laughed. “Ah, I thought as much. Still, it was at least worthwhile asking.” Regaining his hand, he took the opportunity to roll up his sleeves – the sun was still beating down, and he hoped to cool off at least slightly. 

The Beast relaxed back into his previous position as well. His eyes seemed to drift towards Kit’s arms; a half-second later they were firmly trained on his face, and Kit wondered if he had imagined it. “Is there a specific reason you want to know, or is it just idle curiosity?”

“Well,” Kit said, “on the one hand, I would genuinely just like to know your name. It feels strange, having to skip over it in my head.” 

“But?” the Beast prompted. 

“But . . . I would be lying if I said my curiosity hadn’t been piqued, at least a little. I know it’s stating the obvious at this point, but you and your household cut quite a mysterious figure. The few clues I can find seem to come only from you.”

“Hmm.”

More birds chirped overhead, as the clouds began to show the first hints of gold edgings. 

“Is that . . . a problem?”

“That you’re curious about the mysterious Beast in the forest?”

“That I’m looking for information about him. Trying to, anyway. Detailed records appear to be pretty scarce.”

The Beast started at his words, seemingly instinctually, and Kit realised the blunder. 

“Apologies,” he said. “I assumed, and I should really know better at this point. Is ‘he’ correct, or . . .”

“No, no, you’re correct,” the Beast said, waving his concerns aside with one large paw. “It wasn’t that, it was more – the confirmation that you are looking into things. Or at least –”

He broke off. Kit noticed a flicker of repetitive movement out of the corner of his eye: the Beast was fiddling with his shirt cuffs again. 

“What about you?” he asked. “Pronouns. Thoughts?”

The Beast seemed genuinely shaken and unsure of himself in a way that Kit hadn’t seen before. It was for that reason that Kit obliged with the sudden topic change, even as it threw him with how suddenly it had come about, instead of pressing for more details about the Beast’s past. 

“I, uh . . . ‘he’ is fine. Correct, even.” A half-second later, his words caught up to him, and he couldn’t help but huff out a laugh. 

The Beast cocked his head, clearly curious. 

“First time I’ve formally done that,” Kit explained. “Feels a bit weird to realise.”

The Beast’s eyes narrowed “Surely not your first time?”

Kit froze. In his own head, he silently cursed his blithering tongue; the Beast was right, they did have a lot in common, and apparently that included making stupid, impulsive decisions. 

“You don’t look that much younger than I am,” he continued. “Surely you must have had your coming-out ball years ago by now?”

“I –” Kit started. The Beast was still looking straight at him, head cocked to one side. There was nothing predatory or dangerous in his expression at all, and yet Kit couldn’t help but feel like a trapped animal waiting for the hunter’s cudgel to descend. 

“It was scheduled for when I turned twenty-one, as customary,” he said slowly. “But I . . . found some difficulty finding the correct alignment. I am to make my formal announcement at this year’s ball.” 

His heart pounded in his ears for what felt like an eternity, but couldn’t be more than a handful of seconds, as Kit waited for the Beast’s response. When the pause grew to a decidedly awkward length, Kit stood up, brushing off stray blades of grass from his trousers to hide his shaking hands. His sleeves fell back down to his wrists again. 

“It’s getting late. I should leave.” He took a handful of steps towards where Jasper was tethered, before turning around to face the Beast again. “I know it’s – ridiculous, to have waited four years to make an announcement everyone else seems ready to make the instant they turn twenty-one, but –” 

“Wait,” the Beast interrupted. He had manoeuvred himself into a standing position while Kit’s back had been turned, and now his paws were spread out placatingly. “Declaring one’s alignment is an important occasion for everyone regardless of their social status,” he said carefully, a weight behind each of his words. “That said, I know there is even more pressure when alignments have to mix with politics. It’s no easy matter, overcoming that difficulty and being able to communicate that to others.” He took a breath as if he wanted to say more, but held off. Instead, he met Kit’s gaze with an intensity that seemed . . . personal. 

“Thank you,” Kit said, touched despite himself. “That’s kind of you to say.”

The Beast ducked his head, as if unused to the compliment. Given everything Kit had learned about him so far, he suspected that wasn’t awfully far from the truth. 

“Until next week, then?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Kit replied. “Until then.”

He swung himself back into the saddle, leaving his jacket off for the moment – it was still too hot to even think about putting it back on. He waved goodbye to the Beast, who returned the gesture easily. Instinctually. 

Kit spent the rest of his ride back to his castle deep in thought, turning everything he had learned about the Beast over the past month over and over in his mind. By the time he had left Jasper to the comfort of his stables, ready to chair that month’s regional council meeting, he was sure that all available evidence pointed in the same direction. 

He didn’t know how the Beast had come to live in his castle. He had no idea how he had come to live in his present form, or why he had been cut off from the world for six years. But Kit was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever he was now, the Beast had once been a human being; a young man, just like him. 

Chapter Text

While the last sounds of Ella’s footsteps faded away, bookended by the faint noise of two doors swinging shut one after the other, Belle gathered her scattered clothes and swiftly dressed herself. After a moment’s hesitation, she began to make the bed as well — it felt stranger to have the sheets left akimbo than it did to potentially overstep her welcome in Ella’s bedroom and straighten the linens up herself. In fact, it was a moment of normality that she had been sorely missing over the past month in the cellar. 

Speaking (or, rather, thinking) of things she had missed over the past month – looking out of a window into the full light of day was certainly another thing Belle hadn’t done in quite some time. There was a wide gable window in the wall opposite the bed, casting the sunlight which had woken them that morning. A pair of mis-matched, patched curtains hung to either side, still tied back with ribbons – neither of them had been especially concerned with windows, last night. Belle walked over to it, unhooking the latch holding it shut so that she could get a breath of fresh air. 

The window overlooked the south-eastern side of the estate, and looking down Belle could see rows of a neatly-tilled vegetable garden. Small stone walls Belle remembered being around hip-height curved around the garden, shielding it both from the northern edge of the estate and from sight of anybody who would be approaching from the main road, up ahead. The house itself extended backwards, and Belle was fairly certain that she could see the back door of the kitchens from here. She could just make out the stables from where she was standing, and her heart ached for the briefest of moments thinking about Philippe, although she knew he was well cared-for. She could also see smaller structures, but from this height she was unsure what exactly they were. 

The kitchen door opened, and Belle shrank back against the wall, hoping she couldn’t be seen. After a collection of what felt like especially loud heartbeats, she cautiously snuck her head back around the corner, sheltered by the curtains. She instantly relaxed again upon seeing Ella’s familiar blonde hair and simple blue dress, making her way methodically around the garden while surrounded by a gaggle of chickens, geese, and ducks, all making a racket of noise. Looking closely, Belle could see her reaching into an apron pocket for something and casting it widely, which the birds then descended upon. While they were distracted, Ella ducked her head in and out of what Belle now surmised were hen houses, presumably collecting that morning’s eggs. Once she was done, she paused for a moment as a sunbeam hit her face; her head tilted back, blonde hair backlit into burning gold. She opened her eyes slowly, seemingly looking directly at Belle. 

Belle smiled a little, and waved from the window. She was unsure if Ella could see her from this distance – and even if she could, Belle doubted she would wave back if there was any chance she was being observed. She did get to see a warm smile spread over Ella’s face – whether from the sunshine, or because she had seen her, Belle couldn’t say – before she snapped back into action and headed back inside. 

Belle stood at the window a little while longer, drinking in the fresh scent of the trees and loud birdsong (both from the forest birds above and the clucking of hens below), before stepping back into the bedroom proper — she could now hear the distant sounds of bells tinkling, a sign that the ladies of the house were probably awake and moving about. Although she was careful to step away from the immediate lines of sight, she kept the window open and the curtains drawn back. Belle was immensely grateful to Ella for all that she’d done for her, but she couldn’t help missing the sun. 

Belle wandered across the room aimlessly, eventually sitting down at Ella’s bureau directly opposite the door. She felt at a bit of a loss for what to do next. Her eyes caught her own reflection in the mirror: small, cracked, and dark with age, Belle could still see that her hair needed a good brush. She opened one of the bureau drawers; inside, amongst other typical accoutrements, were a hairbrush, pins, and a book with a faded green cover. Belle made quick use of the hairbrush, pinning her hair back into a bun to keep it neat, but her real attention was captured by the book. The ones Ella had bought her from the market were still downstairs in the cellar, along with everything else Belle possessed. Under the circumstances, she strongly doubted Ella would mind her borrowing a book. 

Belle replaced the hairbrush, some of her own dark hair now nestled among Ella’s blonde ones, and took the book over to the bed. She hadn’t noticed last night, what with everything that had happened, but there were no chairs up here. There didn’t appear to be anywhere obvious Ella could relax — it seemed as if she used the space only for sleeping and getting ready. Given the hours she had to keep Belle wasn’t entirely surprised, although she was quietly furious all over again at Ella’s mistress. 

She curled up on the bed and flicked open the cover to the front pages — with some delight, Belle realised this was the book Ella had been reading when they first met. She had gushed to Belle about it during one of their late-night conversations, although Belle had never read it before so couldn’t engage in any sort of discussion like they tended to do. From what Ella said, it sounded like one that she would like, however — a far-off place, plenty of sword fights, and noblemen in disguise, all joined up in a stirring romance and characters striving for justice. Suddenly pleased, Belle flicked an errant strand of hair away from her forehead as she settled into the book. She whiled away a good portion of the morning that way, lost in a deep green forest with an unusually good archer, before something snapped her back to reality. 

Belle’s head lifted, her senses instantly on high alert in one of those moments that almost made her believe in a sixth sense. There was nothing she could hear, see, or smell to have obviously triggered her reaction. A moment later she heard two muffled thumping sounds; as if someone had opened and closed two doors one after the other, and was trying to be quiet about it. 

Belle’s eyes skittered around the room. The wardrobe was narrow and flimsy-looking; Belle doubted it would support her weight. The meagre bookshelf and bureau were stationed up against their respective walls. The curtains at the window were thin, and only barely cleared the windowsill. For a mad half-second Belle entertained the idea of scrambling out of the window itself onto the roof, before she regained her common sense. There were footsteps ascending the staircase; she had no time to be clever. 

Faced with no other option, Belle flung herself from atop the bed to directly beneath it. The only noise she made was from the whisper of her skirts sliding over the bed linen, although her hammering heart and rapid breaths felt as loud to Belle as the tolling of the church bell. She pulled her arms and legs inside the bed frame and curled herself into as small a ball as she could, her hip jammed awkwardly against the underside and the corner of a loose floorboard digging sharply into her ribs. 

There was no time for Belle to adjust and make herself more comfortable — the door burst open mere seconds after she had secreted all four limbs under the bed. High heels clicked against the floor as someone in a bright pink taffeta dress sauntered into Ella’s room as if she owned the place. 

To Belle’s relief she avoided the bed completely, making a beeline straight for the bureau. She dug through the top drawer, clearly on a mission. After a minute of this she made a high-pitched scoff of dissatisfaction, and started on the next drawer. Skirts and petticoats landed on the floor in heaps around the woman’s feet, and Belle began to seethe silently. 

“Susanna! Where are you?”

The woman stopped what she was doing at the sound of the distant voice. She let out a beleaguered sigh and turned around, her skirts swishing across Ella’s carelessly discarded laundry. “I’m in the attic!” she called back. 

“What on earth are you doing up there? Cinderella is in the kitchens already, you know you won’t find her in her room at this time of day.”

The woman – Susanna – moved closer to the door, lowering her voice a touch as she did so. “That’s rather the point, Anastasia. I can’t find my string of imitation coral anywhere, and I’m certain I saw her ogling it the last time I had it on.”

“You dolt! You let me borrow that necklace last week, it’s in my jewellery box as we speak. Now come back downstairs, we’re late for music practice.”

Susanna huffed loudly. “Well, if you had simply said that two hours ago when I was beside myself trying to find it, I wouldn’t have had to come all the way up here and make you late, would I?” She stomped back over to the drawers, Ella’s clothes disappearing from Belle’s view with sudden jerks as the woman picked them up roughly. “Sisters!” she said to herself. “Honestly!” The drawer slammed back into place and the woman left the room as abruptly as she’d entered it, muttering darkly all the time. 

Belle held her position under the bed, hardly daring to breathe as the woman’s footsteps descended the stairs. When she finally heard the two doors at the bottom of the staircase close once more, all the tension bled out of her muscles at the same time; her head drooped, limbs relaxing into the floor. The loose floorboard poked further into the space underneath her ribs, the cording of her stays strong enough to cushion the impact while doing almost nothing to dull the pain. Letting out a frustrated grunt, Belle fumbled with the floorboard until it was no longer attempting to stab her in the spleen. It popped out of place entirely, leaving a strip of the floor exposed that extended out from under the bed into the main room. 

Belle groaned, thudding her face against her forearm. She had been nothing but trouble to Ella since arriving in the clearing – breaking apart her room on an already stressful day would be worse than unhelpful. She shimmied out from under the bed on her stomach, careful to avoid elbowing the new gap in the floor she’d created. Rising to her knees, Belle grabbed the board. She was ready to slot it back in place until, looking down, she noticed that there was something in the floor; a wooden box half-hidden in the space under the floorboards and shrouded in gloom. 

Belle slowly set the board aside. She slipped her hands into the gap, fumbling around blindly until she had mapped out the edges of the box. It was small, cuboid; the grain of the wood was worn to smoothness in some places under her fingertips. Carefully, Belle lifted it out and balanced it on her knees. She had no idea how long it had been down there, or if Ella herself even knew of its existence, and the possibility of discovering what was inside it stoked the sparks of her curiosity into a flame. She lifted the front edge of the box with the edge of her thumbs, carefully easing the stiff hinges back into life. 

Inside was a sparse collection of trinkets; a leather-bound book and block of ink; three feathered quills, their brilliant colours faded with age; a small pendant on a silver chain, and a matching ring; and a golden egg around the size of Belle’s two hands clenched into fists – this last was well-polished, although it had a small dent near the top of the egg. Belle’s eyes were immediately drawn to the egg; there was something familiar about it, although she wasn’t quite sure what. Three legs extended from the base of the egg, curling back on themselves in gilded glory the same shade of gold as the egg itself; other than that, it was smooth and untarnished. 

Belle lifted it out from the box. A tiny key clattered out from the base as she did so; flipping it upside down, Belle saw an equally tiny keyhole on the underside of the egg, at the epicentre of the three legs. She picked up the key, replacing it in the keyhole, and tried to unlock it. To her surprise, the key made a full rotation, accompanied by a mechanical noise, like gears grinding on each other. Sudden understanding flooded through her, and Belle began winding the trinket in earnest, even as she felt a tug of familiarity at the sight of the egg. Before long, the key stopped in her hands. Belle held the mechanism fast for a moment, before letting go of the key and allowing it to unwind. 

The top of the egg sprang open, twisting apart like a tulip unfurling. The music box creaked to life with a tinny, tinkling rendition of Lavender’s Blue as the egg split apart to reveal a field of the flower in question. Miniscule birds and butterflies hovered over the opened segments, their wings fluttering in time to the music. In the centre of the field span a tiny ceramic figurine; a family of three, father, mother, and daughter, hands linked and dancing. The father was brunette; the mother, blonde. The little girl had golden hair. 

Shaken, Belle lowered the music box to the floor, where it continued to play its song. She had forgotten about the centrepiece of the music box she had loved so much, when she was a little girl living in Paris – but when she stopped to think about it, she could dimly remember Maurice painting flowers onto a figurine’s dress with a paintbrush as thin as her eyelash. She looked back at the box, lifting out the pendant with trembling fingers. It was oval-shaped, a layer of glass covering a flat section of braided blonde hair. The ring was square-cut, the dark hair inside the setting streaked with silver. Belle recognised mourning jewellery when she saw it – she had a locket of her own tucked safely in her drawer at home, her mother’s russet-brown hair braided into a loop between metal and glass. She glanced at the leather-bound book, but made no move to touch it – it was, most likely, a journal of some kind, and even her curiosity had limits. 

The music finally stopped, and Belle looked back at the music box as it pulled itself back into the shape of a little golden egg. Her father’s craftsmanship was truly masterful. She carefully placed everything back into the box and tucked it safely under the floorboards again. Replacing the loose floorboard was a matter of moments. Everything hidden once more, Belle climbed to her feet and began quietly but vigorously pacing the room. 

She wanted to run. She wanted to find Ella’s mistress, whatever their relationship really was, and scream at her for mistreating Ella so poorly. She wanted to charge downstairs, find Ella, and take her far, far away from this house. All of their conversations suddenly took on new meaning – her resigned acceptance at her lot in life, her determination to be kind above all else, her guilt over the smallest of things. With a sickening jolt, Belle suddenly remembered the night by the fire when Ella had started crying so hysterically – when Belle had asked if she had any family, friends, anyone to help her. It had seemed like an outstated reaction at the time. Now, with the clues to the full context beneath her feet, Belle was astounded that Ella had held on for so long with nobody to care for her – abused and mistreated, forced into servitude ( in her own home, Belle realised with another stomach-turning jolt) and all alone in the world. 

But before Belle could do any of those things, she heard two distant thunks from below – the sound of the two lower doors being closed one after the other. She sighed resignedly, before sliding back underneath the bed again. The person climbing the stairs this time sounded as if they were running upstairs as fast as they could, quite unlike the quiet, measured steps the woman in the pink dress had taken. As such, Belle wasn’t especially surprised when the door opened, and the familiar blue hem of Ella’s day dress slipped inside. 

“. . . Belle?” Ella’s feet circled around each other, as she span in a slow circle. “Where are you?”

“Under the bed,” she grunted, crawling back out again. Once she was stood up, she could see Ella’s brow was pinched the way it was after an especially stressful day. 

“I thought for a minute you had climbed onto the roof!”

“I did briefly consider it.”

They laughed together, a stolen moment of levity. 

“Things seem to have quieted down for the moment,” Ella said. “The young ladies are practising in the music room, and Madam is occupied with a visitor in her study. I think I can get you downstairs unobserved.”

“A visitor?” Belle asked. 

“An unexpected visitor, at least on our end,” Ella said with an eye roll. “The cook and I had to scramble and make up a tea trolley for him, and she’s had to run down to market to get a larger goose for lunch. Apparently he and my mistress have been exchanging letters for weeks.”

She held out her hand, and Belle took it instinctively. The two of them slipped out of the door and began their descent down the stairs – a much easier feat than it had been ascending them last night in the pitch dark. 

“Did he say what for?” Belle whispered, curious as ever. 

“No,” Ella whispered back. “I had to go up to the study and just hope that there weren’t multiple Monsieur Gastons my mistress corresponded with – Belle, are you alright?”

Belle had frozen on the stairs the moment she heard his name. A dreadful, icy-black fear filled her heart – worse than when she had ridden to the Beast’s castle, worse than when she’d run home to find Maurice gone. She could feel the blood draining from her cheeks, redirecting adrenaline to her muscles to run as far and as fast as she could. 

“Ella,” she asked. Her voice was shaking. She hated that he could make her that pathetic. “Was he – about this tall,” (gesturing to a point six feet from the ground) “with black hair? Blue eyes?”

Ella frowned, her eyes wide with concern. “Yes.”

Belle felt her stomach sink farther into the ground. “That’s the man from my village. The one who tried to marry me.”

Ella’s face began to look pale, too. “He’s followed you all the way here?”

“Like I said. He doesn’t take ‘no’ kindly.”

They stood on the steps helplessly. Only the strength of Ella’s grip on her hand kept Belle feeling anything close to calm. She rubbed her thumb against Belle’s, a soothing motion that went a little way towards making her feel better. 

“He stabled his own horse,” Ella said slowly. “Would he recognise Philippe?”

Belle nodded. Fear was beginning to subside – dread had taken its place. 

“Then he knows you’re here already.”

They stood together for another long moment – Belle could practically feel the gears of her mind whirring as she tried to think of any possible solution to the situation they were in. Eventually, she realised her only real option. 

“I need to leave.”

By the look on Ella’s face, she had come to the same conclusion. She brought their raised hands to her lips, pressing a dry kiss to Belle’s knuckles, before tugging her quickly down the stairs. Entering the main house again after so long in servant’s quarters felt like entering another realm – the lights were softer, the decor brighter, the fabric finer; everything felt like it had been enhanced ever so slightly. There was no time to take it in, however, and the two women snuck through the house on near-silent feet. The sounds of their padding feet were thankfully masked by the tuneless noises emanating from the music room, and there were no signs of either Gaston or Ella’s mistress. 

Ella led her through the kitchen – Can it have only been last night when you kissed her against that table? Belle’s thoughts whispered – and out through the garden to the stables, neatly sidestepping rogue chickens. Philippe’s ears pricked up as soon as she entered the building, and Belle rushed over to greet him. She dropped two kisses on his forehead – she hadn’t realised until this moment just how much she had missed the horse. Ella, meanwhile, was gathering tack together on the table. She started bolt upright, clearly having just remembered something. 

“Get Philippe ready to go – I’ll be back in just a moment,” she said. She ran out of the stables, and Belle quickly took her advice. She snuck glances at the other two horses in the stable – Ella’s grey Major she recognised already, Gaston’s black gelding filling the third stall. The three horses seemed to get on amicably enough, snorting contentendly as they nibbled at their hay. Major and Gaston’s horse kept their eyes on Philippe as Belle led him out to get tacked up, clearly wondering what the occasion was. 

By the time Belle had saddled and bridled the horse, Ella had ran back inside carrying a large bundle wrapped in a dark blue cloth. After a moment’s confusion, Belle recognised her own cloak. “Ella –”

“Don’t waste time saying I didn’t have to,” she said decisively. “It was the least I could do. Come on now.” She handed Belle her cloak, and as Belle did up the fastenings she saw Ella load the saddlebags with small items wrapped in cheesecloth (presumably food), and the copy of Le Morte D’Arthur they had left by the fireplace last night. In too short a time, everything was safely packed away. 

“Ella,” Belle said. “Come with me.”

“I . . .”

“Please,” she said, grasping her hands. Ella’s face softened even as the panic in her eyes remained. “You can’t stay here – it’s bad enough how she treats you, but if she ever finds out how you helped me –”

“It’s not that simple,” Ella pleaded. “You don’t understand – besides, I’m prepared to take the risk. I knew what I was getting into when I told you to stay here in the first place.”

Belle resisted the urge to smack her hands against her own forehead in frustration. “But you don’t need to stay here and take that risk. I – Ella, I didn’t mean to pry, but when I was upstairs – under the floorboards, I saw the music box my father made.”

Instantly, her face grew blank, as if the shutters had been drawn. “Belle,” she said flatly. 

“No – no, Ella, listen to me.” Belle let go of one hand to grab onto Ella’s shoulder instead. “I don’t know what happened to you between then and now, but please believe me, you don’t deserve to be treated this way – nobody deserves to be treated this way. Please, come with me.”

Ella’s eyes flickered over Belle’s face, a war of some kind clearly raging behind her eyes. Finally, her mouth straightened into a line, and she dropped her eyes from Belle’s. “We’re wasting time. You should go, now. I’ll try and stop them from finding out you’ve gone for as long as I can.”

Belle had the urge to fight further, to make Ella see reason and come with her. But she looked at her again – the determination in her jaw, the cool stubbornness in her eyes – and knew that Ella wouldn’t - couldn't, for reasons she might not even know herself - leave the house she still called home. 

She sighed. “Alright, sweetheart.” 

Those two words were enough for the warmth to melt back into Ella’s face. She took a step forwards and kissed Belle – not with the fire of last night, but a softer, sadder desperation. Her hands fitted themselves at Belle’s waist, and she tasted salt on Ella’s lips. Even as Belle kissed her back, all she could think was that it didn’t feel like a kiss goodbye, but like a farewell. They pulled away, both teary-eyed; but not before Ella pressed one last kiss against Belle’s cheek. She swung herself into the saddle, and Ella moved to hold the stable doors wide for her. 

“I’ll come back,” Belle found herself promising. “When it’s safe, Ella, I’ll come back for you.”

“Elena,” she said suddenly. “My given name is Elena. When my father remarried, my stepfamily began calling me Ella instead.”

Belle felt her heart break for Ella – Elena – even more, which she hadn’t even thought possible at this point. “Elena,” she said. “I’ll come back for you.”

Elena smiled, even as tears slid down her cheeks. Belle tugged the hood of her cloak over her head, gently easing Philippe into a brisk trot as she rode into the woods. She turned her head backwards just before she left the bounds of the estate. Elena was nowhere in sight – she had presumably already gone back inside the house. Belle took a deep breath, and turned back towards the woods. 

She had just reached the clearing when she heard a woman shouting. Although she couldn’t make out the words, Belle recognised the voice of Elena’s mistress. A man’s voice, raised in anger, joined her moments later. Belle clicked her heels, and encouraged Philippe into a gallop that made the trees blur as they passed. Elena had been exceptionally kind, and incredibly brave. The rest was up to her. 

Chapter Text

Elena could still feel hot tears coursing over her face as she closed the kitchen door firmly behind her. She had run for the house the moment Belle’s horse started moving, unwilling to waste any more of the precious seconds before Lady Tremaine discovered their subterfuge in waving goodbye. She wiped away the tears furiously with her hands, turning to the sink to splash her face with cold water and hopefully stop anybody noticing her red nose and eyes. 

As she patted her face dry with a towel, one of the bells in the house started ringing. Glancing up at the bell rack, Elena saw that it was coming from Lady Tremaine’s study. Nausea gripped her, and a chill ran down her back. So much for gaining my composure, she thought. Gathering all the courage she possessed in her chest, Elena lifted her chin with a confidence she was nowhere close to feeling and hurried up the stairs to the study. Once outside the door — the discordant wails of her stepsisters on the floor beneath them a distant, out-of-place whine — Elena took a breath and rapped smartly on the door. 

“Enter.”

She slipped inside, keeping her head downturned — not out of obedient fear, but a worry that Lady Tremaine would see the deceit on her face as plainly as her freckles. Her stepmother and the Frenchman were seated by the window; by lucky accident it faced eastwards towards the town, the forest lying to the southwest of the house. 

“I’ve been having a very interesting conversation with our guest,” Lady Tremaine said conversationally, after a long sip from the bone china teacup that had originally been meant for Ella’s dowry. 

Elena kept her face guarded. The guest in question turned to look at her without even a hint of subtlety. Lady Tremaine continued to drink, as if nothing was amiss. 

“I know that you have been hiding something from me for some time, Ella,” she said, gently replacing the cup into the saucer. “I am being generous here. I’m giving you a chance to confess.”

She took a moment to be sure her voice was steady before replying. “Confess? To what, Madam?” 

“You know full well, girl,” she snapped. “If you can just be honest with me now that I have discovered the lengths of your deceit, it will go some way towards repairing my opinion of you.” Lady Tremaine leaned over towards Elena, her coiffured hair casting a stark shadow over her face. 

“I’m sorry, Madam,” Elena said after a moment’s pause. “But I’m truly not sure what you’re referring to, or how it relates to your guest, when he’s a complete stranger to me.” It was only half true, which wasn’t as useful as presenting her mistress with nothing but the truth. Still, Elena had learned over the years to take such opportunities when she could. She was so rarely given the chance to defy her stepmother while remaining perfectly obedient. 

The corners of Lady Tremaine’s mouth tightened, her eyes hard as flint. But within seconds, her face was back to looking like it’s usual pleasant mask, her body snapping back to the picture of good posture. Even with the disadvantage, Elena could tell she was discomfited by her answer, if only for a moment. 

“I do wonder, now and again, if I underestimate you at times, Ella.” Lady Tremaine took another sip of her tea. Her eyes glinted with some indiscernible emotion, as she let the moment drag out, suffocatingly heavy with the yet-unvoiced threat. 

Elena remained where she stood by the door, her hands clasped behind her back. She knew she looked the picture of docile servitude; she hoped that Lady Tremaine would not notice any marks in her palms from where her fingernails were digging in, her grip so tight she knew the skin was discoloured. 

The man, who had remained silent so far, shifted in his seat. He leaned backwards in the chair, his legs splaying outwards in a pantomime of comfort and self-satisfaction. He still said nothing, but Elena noticed a smug upturn to the corner of his mouth. 

“Unfortunately,” Lady Tremaine said eventually, “it appears that you’ve disappointed me once again. Although the fact that you have proven yourself capable of such deceit is of course surprising, I had expected a better attempt at subterfuge than bare-faced lying.” She set the china back on the table decisively. 

“Madam?” Elena asked. 

“I know that there is a woman hiding somewhere on my property.” 

Elena’s shoulders stiffened, and before she could stop herself took a quick, harsh breath. She could feel the blood drain from her face, and watched as a slow, wide grin spread over Lady Tremaine’s face. 

“Cook has informed me that someone has been stealing food from me for at least the past month,” she continued. “Possibly longer. I have noticed that you have been distracted, slovenly in the mornings and strangely energised at night. I’m not sure what I would have made of the whole affair, had I not received a very interesting letter from Monsieur Gaston a few weeks ago. It detailed how his fiancée had mysteriously disappeared a few weeks ago, leaving no note behind for her beloved. How he had been able to track her horse to the clearing near my estate, but had lost the trail soon afterwards.” 

Lady Tremaine turned towards the man, nodding an acknowledgement. “You have truly been instrumental in helping me make sense of the whole affair, monsieur.”

“And you have helped me to reunite with my future wife, my lady,” Gaston said. “It seems everything has worked out for the best. I had almost given up hope, but when I recognised my darling’s horse in your stables this morning, I knew she had to be here.”

“So,” Lady Tremaine said as she rose from the table, “there really is only one question left that I need you to answer, Ella.” She crossed the room slowly, her heels clicking on the wooden floor until she was standing almost directly in front of Elena. “Where is she?”

Elena tilted her head up to meet her stepmother’s gaze. “I don’t know, Madam.”

Lady Tremaine scoffed. “Really, Ella? This little attempt at defiance is pathetic. I know she’s here somewhere. I’m sure we’ll find her eventually, but you can save my time and simply tell me now.” Although she had tried to keep her composure, her voice had risen steadily until she had ended her sentence with a shout. 

“I can’t,” Elena said, trying not to buckle. “I have no idea where she is.”

Lady Tremaine’s eyes roamed over her face, a glare settling in as she realised Ella was telling the truth.

“The girl is lying, surely.” Gaston said after a long moment. He didn’t sound wholly certain of himself, despite the words. 

“No,” Lady Tremaine said. “When she doesn’t want to tell me something, she simply resorts to silence. She doesn’t know where she is.”

Gaston sank back in his chair, scowling. Elena’s eyes darted over to him. She began to feel the faintest stirrings of hope that she could, in fact, delay them from realising where Belle had gone. 

“Which means,” Lady Tremaine said slowly, realisation creeping over her face, “that your fiancée isn’t here anymore. Doesn’t it, Ella?”

Her fragile hopes turned leaden. Elena forced herself to look her stepmother in the eye, seeing the triumph spreading over her face the way it had so many times before. 

“Yes, Madam,” she gritted out. 

“She’s not here?”  

Gaston exploded out of his seat with such violence that he almost overturned the table; the china cup he had been drinking from slid to the floor and was dashed to pieces before Elena could do more than gasp. He crossed the room in three large, heavy strides, coming to a sharp stop in front of her. He was bristling with anger, his jaw clenched and his hands wound into tight fists beneath the lacy cuffs of his frockcoat. 

“If she’s not here, then where is she?” he demanded. Elena felt the bass of his voice resonate in her chest as he loomed over her. She kept her eyes firmly trained on the washed-out stains on his coat, determined to say nothing. His large, rough hands suddenly gripped her shoulders, and Elena cried out as he shook her violently, her head snapping backwards with the sheer force. “Answer me, damn you!”

“Monsieur!” Lady Tremaine’s voice cut through him like ice. Gaston ceased his movements, although he kept his hands on Elena’s shoulders. Elena screwed her eyes shut in an attempt to stop the room from spinning around her. If not for his grip on her, she thought she would have fallen over entirely. “I am more than capable of disciplining my servants myself. Ella will be punished for her deception hiding your fiancée, as well as the theft of my food. You managed to use your skills to track her here; what’s to stop you tracking her again?”

After a long moment, Gaston sighed. “I suppose you are right, Madame.” He released his grip on Elena’s shoulders. Her knees buckled, but to her relief held her weight. “Do you have any inkling of where I could go next, to try and find her? The forest between our countries is large and treacherous; she may have delved farther into Germany.”

Lady Tremaine began walking back to the table with an elegant sweep of her skirts. “I don’t know the character of your wife, monsieur. You will surely have a better inkling of where she might go than I do.”

Elena couldn’t bring herself to move. She was distantly aware that she was trembling, and that her mouth felt numb. It was absurd – made more so by the casual conversation happening behind her, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As if what had just happened to her could be brushed aside, dust swept underneath a rug to imitate a clean room. She could only stand, and listen to Lady Tremaine and her guest make idle conversation. 

“Although I can maintain the estate,” Lady Tremaine continued, “my influence is admittedly . . . limited. If you were to search the forests, I could raise my concerns with the Duke who represents this region at Parliament. In order for him to take it seriously, it may mean I have to lay the blame of theft at your fiancée’s feet, rather than Ella’s – but then, if his men find her before you do, all I would need to do is retract my complaint, and I’m sure the matter would be settled.”

“You would help me in such a manner?” Gaston asked. “This is surely going to more trouble than you first imagined.”

“I have a soft spot for romance.” Lady Tremaine dipped her head gracefully. “My girls came from my first marriage; the second was intended to be a love match. Unfortunately, I am now a widow twice over.”

Elena made a tiny noise of disbelief in the back of her throat. Lady Tremaine’s head snapped back up; she had clearly forgotten Elena was still in the room. 

“Don’t just stand there like a gormless fish, girl. Get a dustpan and clear up this mess.” She gestured towards the broken china. 

Elena fled.

Although his staff were too well-trained to say so, the Beast was aware he had been acting differently as of late. He had left the castle grounds more in the last month than the previous eighteen, and more often than not, came back from his meetings with Prince Christoph still smiling. Doing his usual rounds of the castle felt less like he was a caged beast testing the boundaries of its cell, and more like it had in those first few months after the curse; like he was a man striving to maintain his normal routine. He felt generally lighter, as well; the difference between seeing the world in monochrome and in soft, muted shades of grey, green, and blue. 

He was, however, still a realist, and refused to feel even the potential of hope for the end of his curse. Prince Christoph had said himself that he was unsure of his alignment. The Beast had carefully refrained from discussing the requirements to break the curse anyway, out of a masochistic desire to allow for the possibility of – the words were engraved in his mind – earning their love in return. Foolishness, really, when their alignments might not even be compatible. Nevertheless, it was a great comfort to have a friend. 

As such, he had continued to keep their rendez-vous a secret from the staff. The Beast was almost certain that the attempt was in vain. He had never been an expert at sneaking off even before the curse; becoming orders of magnitude larger and heavier would not have helped. However, he felt it only fair to shield his staff from the heavier burdens of the curse, when he could. That the castle was frozen in time was patently obvious from a glance at the eternal November weather outside. That he had already let his first chance at breaking the curse in almost six years slip away because of a crisis of conscience was, likewise, unavoidable. That the castle and its inhabitants had been forgotten by all who once knew them, however, the Beast thought he had hidden fairly well. In the first few months, he had hoped – foolishly – that somebody would just stumble across the castle. It was only when it became clear that the Enchantress had spoken truly – that nobody from his old life would come and break his curse; that Marianne had gotten her wish after all, and would never willingly set eyes on him again – that the despair had first started its insidious triumph. 

It also meant that Christoph’s sheepish confession he had been researching the Beast had come as a genuine shock. The Beast had known of the King of Germany’s son, but only in the same way he was vaguely aware the Queen of England’s niece had married a sibling of the King of Denmark. Since Christoph had let it slip, the Beast had gone back over the few formal functions he had attended before the night he was cursed. He couldn’t remember ever meeting Prince Christoph, formally or otherwise. It might be enough for him to be unaffected by this last condition of the curse – and yet, the Beast remembered, he had also said that he had been having trouble with his research. It seemed that nothing would be simple, when it came to attempting to break his curse. 

All things considered, the Beast supposed he couldn’t be too surprised when he noticed Lumière and Cogsworth taking more opportunities to hover over him in the castle. The two of them, along with Mrs Potts, had known him the longest out of all his servants. The rest of his staff may have noticed the obvious differences in his mood, but they were the best-placed of anyone to correctly guess the reasons for it changing. As such, the Beast was aware that they probably had a laundry list of questions for him regarding where he slipped off to every few days, and why he seemed so cheerful whenever he reappeared on the grounds. 

However, what the Beast lacked in stealth he made up for in stubbornness. He had never been one to get badgered into a conversation he didn’t want to have – which had caused all manner of troubles for him in childhood – and after six years he knew the castle’s nooks and crannies almost as well as the servants. Without being so rude as to shun their company entirely, the Beast made easy excuses to leave when the conversation steered towards dangerous territory, and was especially careful not to be followed when heading for the monastery. All in all, he managed to avoid Lumière and Cogsworth for the better part of a week before they finally cornered him. 

He had just returned from another meeting at the monastery, and was still shivering at the contrast in temperature from within and outwith the boundaries of the curse. While the day was not quite as hot as when they last met, on what felt like the hottest day of the year so far, it was still July. Even with his thick coat, the Beast could feel the chill penetrating the layers of his fur, and he had plans to seat himself in front of a warm fire as soon as he was inside. There was no sign of either Lumière or Cogsworth as he made his way through the castle to the receiving room where he most enjoyed sitting by the fire – a change from the last week or so, and the Beast wondered in the back of his mind if his staff had given up on their campaign to get to the bottom of his newfound secrecy. He settled down in front of the cheery fireplace and curled up like a dog with his chin resting on folded arms. The heat from the fire sank into him, slowly warming his chilled bones, and he allowed his eyes to slip shut against the bright flames. 

“Master?”

His eyes snapped open. Of course, he thought. He sighed, and said, “Yes, Cogsworth?”

He heard the cautious muffled tapping of one – no, two, which meant Lumière was most likely with him – sets of feet against the carpet behind him. They paused, clearly reluctant to approach any closer. Grumbling inwardly, the Beast shuffled around until he faced them, taking care to stay on the warmer bit of carpet he was already lying on.

“What is it?” he asked. 

Cogsworth glanced nervously at Lumière, before taking a breath. “Master, it has come to our attention – that is to say, we have noticed that you are – not yourself, as of late.”

“Not in a bad way,” Lumière interjected. 

“No, no!” Cogsworth’s hands stretched out imploringly, before he recollected himself and drew them close again. “In fact, you seem happier than you have been in quite some time.”

The Beast hummed noncommittally. Taking it as encouragement, Cogsworth went on. 

“It has also not failed to escape our attention that more often than not, you’ve been leaving the grounds – which of course, is your prerogative, Master –”

(“Of course,” Lumière echoed.)

“– but it did leave us with questions. You are, of course, entitled to your privacy, but the circumstances being what they are . . .”

The Beast sighed again. He rolled his shoulders back, feeling a faint pop in the left one, before pushing himself back up to a sitting position. “Go ahead.”

The two servants shared a look, clearly having some kind of nonverbal discussion, before Lumière hopped forwards. “Master,” he began, “there is really not a delicate way to ask this, so I must beg your pardon for asking so bluntly. Have you been meeting with the young woman who parted company with us so many weeks ago? And has she decided to change her mind and return here after all?”

The Beast stared blankly at them, for once completely surprised. However, as he cast his mind back over the past month and change, he couldn’t deny that the conclusions Lumière and Cogsworth had drawn were entirely reasonable based on the information they had. 

“I . . . no, Lumière. I haven’t seen Mlle. Dupont since she departed.” 

Lumière’s shoulders sagged, the candles where his hands should have been casting wild shadows with the movement. Cogsworth looked determinedly at the floor, the ticking of his internal mechanisms echoing loudly over the quiet sounds of the fire burning. The Beast worried at one of his sleeves with his claws, hating the disappointment, the awkwardness, the shattered hope. It was exactly what he had tried to avoid with his secrecy. With that realisation, he made a decision. 

“However, there is something I think the two of you should know.” 

In as few sentences as possible, he painted the broad strokes of his first encounter and subsequent meetings with Prince Christoph. The Beast made no mention of their discussions on alignment, mainly because the memory of his own disastrous ball was painful enough for him, let alone everyone else. However, he was also keenly aware that by being honest about his struggles with finding the right alignment, Christoph had inferred a certain degree of trust in him. God knows he had spent years proving that his word could not be counted on – a woman had all but laughed in his face each of the last three times he had tried to present himself as an honourable man. But the Beast found he wanted to live up to that trust. To try, impotent and too late as the impulse might be, to be able to stand up straight and call himself a gentleman of his word once more. 

Contrary to his expectations, Lumière and Cogsworth took the news with a far more grounded approach than he had anticipated. 

“Master, I do not wish to doubt your judgement, but – are you sure this course of action is wise?” Cogsworth asked hesitantly once the Beast was finished. “It was one thing when Mlle Dupont and her father stumbled upon the castle by chance. This man sought you out, and it’s only by his word that you know it’s not for any . . . nefarious reasons.”

“What nefarious reasons could he have for befriending something like this?” The Beast gestured at himself roughly. 

Lumière sighed, reaching one candle out as if he wanted to touch his shoulder reassuringly, but stopped himself. He had often done so when the Beast was younger, when they both had hands and shoulders. Even so, the gesture was enough for the Beast to recollect himself. 

“I understand your caution, Cogsworth,” he said with deliberate calm. “But I trust him. More than that, even – I think we might genuinely be friends by now.” His words recalled the look on Christoph’s face as he held out his hand for the Beast to shake; the way the sunlight brightened his dark hair, and was beginning to bring out freckles over his cheekbones. The warmth of his hand enveloped in the Beast’s paw. The way his forearms had looked, when he rolled his sleeves back. 

His face must have shifted in some way without his permission, because Lumière’s expression suddenly sharpened. “Master, do you . . . believe that he may prove the key to breaking this spell?” 

The Beast let out a rush of air. There was the question he had steadfastly been refusing to ask himself for the past month. He clasped his fingers together, the blunted ends of his claws digging into the meat of his paws ever so slightly. He made the mistake of glancing down to look at them. There couldn’t have been a starker contrast to Christoph’s hands, so strong and yet, between the Beast’s paws, so fragile. 

“I think,” he said eventually, “that he is a handsome and kind young man, who for some reason has seen fit to trust me. And that I am still what I always have been.” His tone brokered no argument, although he could see that both men clearly disagreed with him. “The thought alone is laughable.”

“Master,” Cogsworth stuttered, “I must protest – you have not always been –”

“No, Cogsworth,” the Beast interrupted. “I was.” He rose to his feet stiffly. The fire was comfortable, and he was still cold, but the solitude of the West Wing was vastly preferable to remaining here. “Marianne was right.”

The Beast padded out of the room, the cold keeping his joints stiff and slow. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Lumière and Cogsworth sharing a stricken glance before the door swung shut behind him. 

Chapter Text

Belle spent almost a full day on horseback before she was able to trust that nobody was following her. She had been hopelessly lost for hours, staying deep within the summer greenery of the forest and giving any hints of civilization a wide berth. Going back towards Villeneuve was no longer an option. The only other route she knew through the forest would take her, eventually, back to the castle where that . . . creature had imprisoned her father, and almost her as well. So Belle had steered Phillipe in a random direction away from Elena’s house, hoping that instinct and luck would be on her side in keeping her away from Gaston. 

The sun was perhaps halfway through the long sunsets so characteristic of July, turning the dappled foliage that summery green-gold, when Belle finally drew Phillipe to a halt in another, smaller clearing. She dismounted against the protests of her spasming legs, groaning in relief as she finally stretched out her aching muscles. There was a small brook running through the clearing, and Belle dropped to her knees to scoop water into her suddenly parched mouth. Her horse joined her, his bulk a comforting presence – indeed, the only presence Belle now had close to her. 

She rocked back on her heels as the thought came to her. While she had been riding, she had been distracted enough with the challenges of leading the horse, listening for pursuers, and even the hunger gnawing at her stomach, that she hadn’t had any time to really think through what she had done. Now that she had finally stopped, Belle felt the thoughts crash through her, like a heavy stone dropped into a pool of water. 

You have no plan – You don’t know where you’re going – You have no idea where Papa is, if he’s still sick or even worse than before – Gaston could be tracking you even now – Elena’s face when you left, she went back and distracted her stepmother for you – Why did you think this was a good idea – You’ll starve to death in these woods and then what will Papa do, he’ll never know that you escaped from the Beast and you came home – You put Elena in an impossible situation, you knew she was being mistreated in that house and you forced her to choose between protecting you and leaving her home – It’ll all be for nothing, he’s probably tracking you even now – you’re a silly, stupid, selfish girl who thinks she’s smarter than everybody else, and look where it’s gotten you now –

Belle forced herself to scoop up another handful of water and splash it over her face. The shock of cold water made her gasp, and she spluttered uselessly for a moment as she wiped her face off with her hands. Silly as it was, though, it had broken the spell of her spiralling thoughts for the moment. Belle sniffed, smoothing away the flyaway hairs around her face with her wet hands, before getting up to unpack the food from Phillipe’s saddlebags. 

She ended up making camp beneath a large, gnarled oak tree. Elena had packed her a small handful of what smelled like cold meat pies, as well as a few small cheese rounds and fresh berries in a wooden trinket box, tied shut with coarse twine. Elena had tied the knots so tightly that Belle ended up having to cut the twine apart completely. Phillipe seemed settled and happy enough to graze on the grass, one end of his reins tied loosely to the longest branch of the oak tree. Once she had eaten, stretched out her aching muscles, and quenched the rest of her thirst with more of the running water from the brook, Belle felt marginally more prepared to face some of the thoughts in her head, circling like buzzards. 

First and foremost was the importance of finding her father. Belle cast her mind back to the last words she had heard from him – the note left for the bookseller in their house. He had been planning to follow her, presumably back to the Beast’s castle he didn’t know she had escaped from. Belle’s one hope was that, as the bookseller hadn’t been at home either of the times she had tried calling on him before she fled Villeneuve, he was with her father, keeping him safe. Alone, Maurice had no horse, no plan, and nobody to take care of him as he recovered from his illness. At least if the bookseller was with him, there would be another body around to encourage his self-preservation. 

Belle’s thoughts jumped back a moment – Maurice had been planning to follow her tracks. As of four weeks ago, that must have meant he had been planning to go back to the Beast’s castle. Which she was currently at least a day’s ride away from, deep inside the labyrinthine woods of foreign country. Belle groaned, burying her head in her hands. 

“I am a fool,” she muttered. “It was hard enough to find it the first time!”

Phillipe looked up from where he was now rolling in the grass like he was a foal again, and let out a sigh. 

“I know,” Belle said, tugging on the end of her braid. “I don’t particularly want to go back either. And there’s no guarantee Papa would even be there. It’s been a month, after all.” 

Phillipe wriggled against the grass a little more forcefully, before settling on his side. His large brown eyes were looking up at Belle, and to her they seemed the only comfort she would receive for some time. 

“I just – I don’t know what to do, Phillipe,” she said. “I can’t go back to Villeneuve and see if he’s there, not with Gaston prowling around. I don’t relish the thought of being taken prisoner any more than you do, but it might be our best option for now.”

Although, a little voice in her mind murmured, he did say you were free to go less than an hour after you got there. He gave his word that you wouldn’t be kept against your will.

And what use is the word of someone who would extort a desperate father into sending his child into danger? Belle snapped back at herself. However, she also could not stop herself from remembering that whatever else the Beast had done, he had kept his promise. 

She slept uneasily that night. She kept startling herself back to consciousness, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness quickly enough to see if someone was standing over her while she slept. Every time, the only thing Belle saw was the faint outline of her horse lying a few feet away from her. A barn owl screeched at intermittent intervals, keeping out of sight aside from once, early in the night, when Belle thought she saw the very edge of its wing feathers as it settled in the oak tree. When she finally awoke to a grey pre-dawn, instead of the oppressive black of midnight, Belle knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. She waited until the sun had fully risen and Phillipe had grazed on some grass, before resaddling him and riding deeper into the forest. 

The second day of riding was worse than the first. Belle was badly saddlesore, the pain in her muscles developing from a dull ache to sharp points of agony as soon as she mounted Phillipe again. It was almost impossible to keep her eyes open after the poor night of sleep she’d had; every time they closed of their own accord, Belle felt herself swaying wildly in her seat, jerking back to alertness at the last second. Conscious that her supply of food was limited, Belle also ate little that morning; her stomach folded in on itself several times trying to find more food to sustain her hunger. 

On top of everything else, Belle soon found that she had no idea where she was going. At a loss for something better to do, she had a vague idea of retracing her steps to the general area of the forest where that Beast’s castle had been, and searching for Maurice from there. In practice, this turned into her letting Phillipe wander almost entirely without input, only redirecting him when the noises of civilisation grew too loud for Belle’s liking. By the time the sun started to set, Belle realised that she was completely and utterly lost. 

In a stroke of pure coincidence, they settled for the night in another clearing – this one even smaller than the first, although still featuring a stream and a large oak tree. When Belle dismounted, she almost fell over as soon as her feet had to carry her own weight again. It took several minutes of flexing and muttered swearing before the pins and needles in her legs subsided enough for her to eat, drink, and remove Phillipe’s tack. As soon as she lay down, her cloak standing in for a blanket, Belle was asleep. She slept soundly and dreamlessly all night, until a sensation of unrelenting anxiety woke her the next morning. 

The third day was an exercise in misery. The muscles in her lower back began spasming as soon as Belle awoke, her thighs and buttocks not faring much better. She was coming to the end of the little supply of food Elena had managed to give her, and her stomach cramps were worsening. Phillipe also looked tired, but offered no complaint to being tacked up and ridden again. It rained all day – sometimes lightening to a drizzle, but mostly the kind of heavy, clothes-soaking rain that usually followed a storm. Like the way it rained the night that Elena told me how she met the Prince of Germany, Belle remembered. Thinking of Elena – who Belle had left her with, how Belle had left her, why she had stayed behind in the first place – caused her to feel a sharp pang. She was kind. She was brave, Belle thought. Now I need to be, too, or else she did all of that for nothing.

Her food ran out on the fourth day. Belle couldn’t face another full day of riding, but fear propelled her to keep moving anyway. She led Phillipe by the reins, his soft nose bumping against her shoulder every so often when she grew too tired to keep walking. Her clothes were still soaked from yesterday’s rain, and Belle could feel the damp fabric dragging against her skin as she moved. Even though it was warmer today, she was still shivering. Once, she found herself wandering towards the sounds of a town, or possibly just a bustling village – but then a man laughed, loud and booming, and Belle half-dragged Phillipe back into the relative safety of the forest before she even fully registered what she’d heard. 

Hours later, as dusk fell, Belle finally reached her limit. She was still trudging through the forest with Phillipe, looking for a place to rest, when her foot slipped on a patch of grassy mud still slick from yesterday’s rain. She fell hard, jarring her hip against a protruding tree root as she landed in a heap on the ground. Belle cried out, both from the pain and the shock of the fall. It echoed around her, bouncing back off the trunk of the oak tree whose roots she had landed on. Phillipe nuzzled the back of her neck worriedly, his hot breath coming out in wet puffs. Still, Belle couldn’t bring herself to move. Her ankle felt like it was on fire, throbbing in time with her heartbeat. 

“No,” she rasped. Her voice was hoarse from disuse and the lack of water. “No, please don’t be broken, I can’t –” 

She cut herself off abruptly. There was a hand gently stroking her hair – a human hand. This should have frightened her. For some reason, it did not. In fact, it seemed to be calming her down even farther, easing the stabbing pain in her ankle and overworked muscles. Belle was aware, in a distant corner of her mind, that this was not a reasonable or even possible reaction to have to the touch of another human being. 

“Rest, little one,” she heard a woman say. “He will not find you here. You will be safe with me.”

“My horse –” Belle managed to croak out. 

“I will keep him safe as well,” the woman said, resting her hand on Belle’s shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, Belle could see a faint golden glow. “You’re both very weak. You need rest.”

Something clicked in Belle’s head as she made the connection. “Oh,” she said. “You’re a fairy. That explains it.”

The woman chuckled. “Something like that. You could say I’m repaying a kindness.”

“Kindness never needs to be repaid,” Belle mumbled, Elena’s words echoing in her mind as sleep approached. “It simply is.”

“Wise words,” the woman said. “Sleep now, little one. You gave me bread and jam; I can give you rest and healing.”

Before Belle could even attempt to make heads or tails of that sentence, another wave of lethargy swept over her. Certain that she would be safe, at least for now, she allowed herself to drift off as the golden woman continued to gently stroke her hair. 

“Your Highness,” the Duke said, “might I beg a moment of your time? Alone?”

Kit stifled a sigh, taking care that his facial expression was similarly inoffensive before turning to face him. The Duke had chosen his moment well – Kit had a spare fifteen minutes between the weekly parliamentary sessions that he attended in preparation for his role as monarch, and what were becoming near-daily appointments with the Master of Ceremonies to iron out the fine details of his coming-out ball. He was, evidently, banking on their conversation being more appealing to Kit than yet another half-hour frustrating the Master of Ceremonies with his refusal to give an alignment for him to work with. Kit hated to admit it, but in this one instance the Duke had read him correctly. 

“But of course,” Kit said with a polite smile. Nodding a temporary dismissal to Captain Harker, he followed the Duke into one of the offices which encircled the halls of parliament itself. It was deserted, and sparse of furniture bar a desk, two chairs, and a reference bookshelf in the corner. The Duke pulled one of the chairs around from behind the desk, settling it a short distance from the other chair before sitting down in it. He gestured for Kit to take the other one; he did so, albeit hesitantly. 

“So,” Kit said, resting his hands over his knee. “What did you wish to speak to me about, Your Grace?”

The Duke took a breath, appearing to weigh up his options. “I don’t wish to overstep, Prince Christoph,” he said. “I know that your father values my advice more than you do – although it is well and good, for a son to form his own opinions independent of his father.”

Kit gritted his teeth, hoping that the smile still on his face would hide it. He said nothing, but nodded for the Duke to go on. Kit knew from bitter experience that whenever he decided to impart his wisdom, there was very little anybody could do to stop him once he had started. 

“One might even argue,” he continued, “it’s one of the signs that he has finally come of age as a man. That he is ready to lead, and not simply to follow.” The Duke was clearly warming to his topic, his pale face beginning to flush with excitement. “That said, it would be a foolish man who dismissed the advice of his elders entirely, and turned away completely from the values of tradition.”

“You know that I have always listened to whatever you have to say, even if I disagree with it,” Kit interrupted, sitting up straighter in his chair. 

“Of course, Your Highness, of course,” the Duke said, ducking his head deferentially. “It was not my intention to suggest otherwise.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Kit said. He tacked on a belated smile, for politeness’ sake. “Please, continue.”

The Duke smiled back, just as politely. “I preface my advice with what I have just said, because I fear that you will take it as me speaking to you as a young man, rather than as our future monarch.” His tone had shifted, ever so slightly; there was a seriousness, almost a darkness, to the words. “I will speak plainly, if I may?”

Kit nodded. He suddenly knew that whatever the Duke had to say, it would, in fact, be less appealing than sitting through another half-hour-long dissection of how his undeclared alignment related to the seating plans. 

“Your Highness, your father is dying.”

Kit bit back the immediate retort that sprang to his tongue. “The physicians say he has plenty of life in him yet.” His voice, he noted, was somehow still calm. 

“That is what they say when you ask, yes,” the Duke said. “But your father has been commanding them to hide the truth of his condition from you for some months now.” He looked Kit in the eye, and he saw the Duke’s usual mask of sneers and suspicion slip for a moment. His face was grey and wan, grief sitting heavy in every line. It was the most serious Kit had seen him look since – since his mother was alive. “However long you have been told he has left, I would shorten it by half, at least. His outcomes do not look good.”

Kit sat back in his chair, exhaling hard. He ran a hand over his head, bringing it round to cover his mouth for a moment, before letting his hands loop back over his knee. “Why?”

“Because you’re his son, and he loves you.”

“No,” Kit said. “I meant, why are you telling me this? And why now, of all times?”

The mask snapped back into place. “In part, because this business with the flooding in the northwest will take me away from court for some time. As there is no one else with either the authority or the power to tell you, the duty fell to me. But also because I fear that you may become King sooner than you expected to. I have no doubt that you are ready for the challenges of leadership; even with our disagreements, I can’t deny that you are suited to the role.”

“However . . . ?”

“However,” he continued, “I’m sure I don’t need to impress upon you that certain plans must now be adjusted, timelines condensed. There is an understanding amongst the senior ministers that we are to have arrangements in place for your coronation as close to the date of your coming-out ball as possible.”

A leaden weight lined Kit’s stomach. Oddly enough, not at the thought of the coronation; he had thought that when the moment finally came, it would completely eclipse all his other worries. “And so the matter of my alignment becomes even more pressing.”

The Duke smiled again, spreading over his face like the proverbial cat with the cream. “You understand me now.” He flicked an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeves. “I would therefore advise you to reconsider the necessity of going wherever it is that you go on that horse every few days. You will need to declare an alignment imminently; and sooner rather than later, prepare yourself for courtship and marriage. This is not just about your personal feelings, Your Highness, but a matter of political prudence.”

Kit felt more than a little shaken at the Duke putting it into words so plainly. Never mind that he himself had said as much to the Beast during that first conversation at the monastery – was it only two months ago? To have his own opinions confirmed by the Duke – a man who, whatever Kit’s personal feelings towards him, was clearly an astute advisor for his father – was disquieting. Simultaneously, Kit felt everything within him balk at the idea of stopping his visits to the Beast. Without quite seeing it until now, Kit realised that they had become the highlights of his week. This, and the news that his father was – well. 

It was a lot of information to process, was the long and short of it. 

“I – yes –” Kit managed, when it became clear that the Duke was waiting for some kind of response from him. “I am – aware that my alignment will dictate marriage options. And, of course, that marriage is an important consideration. I will – I will consider what you have said.”

“That is all I ask,” the Duke said, although he was clearly put-off that Kit hadn’t responded with more assertiveness to his request about alignment. 

Kit stood up from the chair, and was almost at the door before he turned around again. “Your Grace, you do know that I am putting thought into my alignment? I appreciate that it must be frustrating for many people, including you, not to have a straight answer. I’m not ignorant of that fact, I just – need more time.”

The Duke, to his credit, looked a little chagrined. “Of course, Your Highness. It is, at the end of the day, still a deeply personal matter.”

Of course you say that now, Kit thought uncharitably. After you just stressed to me the political implications of a reigning monarch’s alignment.  

“If you will excuse me,” he said. 

He turned back towards the door, glancing at his pocket watch to see that his allotted fifteen minutes had passed. Captain Harker was a short distance down the hallway; reading whatever was on his face, hers shifted to mirror his darker expression. 

“Captain,” Kit said once in speaking distance, “please give my apologies to the Master of Ceremonies, but I’ll have to miss this meeting.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” she said, confusion evident in her voice but otherwise hidden in her expression. “Are you . . . well, after your talk with the Duke?”

“As well as can be expected.” Kit answered, practically vibrating. “We were meant to fence after this, weren’t we?”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind terribly if I abandoned you for today? I feel the need to be in the open air for a while, get rid of some of this energy. And then I have my standing appointment for the rest of the afternoon as usual.”

Captain Harker glanced around surreptitiously at Kit’s coded mention of his meetings with the Beast, but there was nobody around to eavesdrop. “Kit, are you sure everything is alright? You seem . . . off.”

“As I said,” Kit said. “I’m as well as can be expected, I think. I’ll be back for the usual time.”

He began walking towards the stables, his hands shaking slightly where they swung by his sides. It was early, and a small part of him did feel guilty for abandoning the Master of Ceremonies. Every other part of him was screaming, as loudly as it could, for him to get out of the palace and ride until the pounding of his heart drowned out the clamouring thoughts spinning in his head. 

When Belle finally returned to consciousness, it was with a series of slow starts. She first became aware that she was wrapped in her own cloak again. It was the smell she recognised first; the same smell of home, tinged a little by the time in Ella’s cellar and her nights sleeping rough. After she had recognised the cloak, she became aware that something was poking her face, scratching it slightly as she breathed. It was only an annoyance, and not a source of pain, and so Belle didn’t focus on it much. 

With her mind on pain, she remembered her broken ankle, and her stomach sank. Gingerly – still keeping her eyes shut, as if she could remain in her half-dream forever that way – Belle rolled her foot in a slow, tight circle. Her eyes snapped open when she realised there was no pain at all – not even stiffness from sleeping overnight. 

She sat bolt upright, sending a small avalanche of green leaves falling in every direction. She brushed at where the leaves had been tickling her cheek, before pushing aside the ones covering her lap to look at her ankle. Belle grasped it firmly with her hands, poking her fingers all around the joint. There was no indication that it had ever been broken; not even any swelling to show it had recently healed. Belle sat back, shaking her head a little in disbelief, as she took in the rest of her surroundings. 

She was sitting beneath a large oak tree. While sleeping, she had been covered in a thick blanket of leaves and moss which was now scattered all around her. The sky peeked in from between the canopy of leaves above, a brilliant cerulean blue. It was maybe around midday, but not oppressively warm, and Belle couldn’t help but smile as the golden sunlight dappled her skin. She turned her head to see Phillipe happily grazing next to a pile of his tack. He lifted his head as soon as she saw him, his ears twitching with happiness when their eyes met. 

Belle got to her feet, noting that her muscles felt strong and healthy again. She also realised, almost as an afterthought, that she was no longer hungry. She carefully picked her way over to the horse, burying her face in his mane once he was in reach. 

“There, boy,” she said, reaching up to scratch behind his ears. He nickered softly, and Belle couldn't stop the smile spreading over her face. 

“You’re awake! That’s good.”

Belle turned around, keeping one hand on Phillipe’s neck. Behind her was an old woman, knitting what looked like a scarf as she perched on a fallen log. Her grey hair hung loosely around her face, her body mostly obscured by a large, forest-green cloak that looked more suitable for winter weather. 

“You were certainly in a sorry state when I found you,” she said, her needles clicking together as she continued to knit. “But youth and health were on your side, and as long as you take care of yourself you should be no worse for wear.”

Belle blinked. “You – before I fell asleep, I thought there was somebody stroking my hair.”

Belle caught a glimpse of a smile between the strands of hair. “You called me a fairy. Not quite right, but a very good guess. You’re a smart girl.” 

“Who are you, then?” Belle asked, unnerved by that smile despite herself. 

The woman chuckled, and oddly enough it set Belle at her ease again. “You could call me an enchantress, although there are others who would call me a witch instead.” This was said so plainly that Belle didn’t even feel a flicker of unease. 

“Well, whichever one you are – thank you. You saved my life.”

The old woman smiled again. “You’re quite welcome. Now,” she said, setting aside her needles, “I really must get going. I have business to attend to.” She tucked the knitting into an inner pocket of the cloak, before hopping to her feet and shuffling back towards the trees. 

“Wait!” Belle cried out in sudden desperation. 

Obligingly, the woman paused. She turned to look over her shoulder at Belle, the hood of her cloak keeping her face in shadow. “Yes, little one?”

“I – I’m trying to find my father. I haven’t seen him in weeks, and I have no idea where to start looking.” Belle brushed the loose hair away from her face nervously, Phillipe a comforting warmth behind her. “I know you’ve already helped me so much – and I am so grateful to you for that – but . . .” 

She trailed off limply. Belle might not have known magic existed until six weeks ago, but she had been trading and bartering since she was a child. She knew her only hope was for the witch to have pity on her. 

The old woman walked back towards her. Beneath her hood and her hair, Belle caught only a glimpse of her eyes, a pale green that was almost grey. She laid a hand on Phillipe’s rump, stroking her thumb over his hip for several long moments. Eventually, she drew her hand back under the folds of her cloak, and tilted her head towards Belle. 

“Let the horse lead you until you reach the ruins. You’ll find what you need waiting there.” She looked at Belle sharply. “That is all I can promise. The rest is up to you.”

“Thank you,” Belle said. She reached out futilely to lay a hand on the witch’s arm, but she was already walking away; much faster and steadier than she had at the start of their conversation. Within seconds she had disappeared into the forest, her footsteps dying away as soon as she had faded from view. It was only once she was gone that Belle realised the hand she’d laid on Phillipe hadn’t been one of an old woman, but as smooth and young as her own. 

Despite the heat, a shiver ran down her spine. Belle shook it off, gathering Phillipe’s tack and strapping everything back onto the horse again. Phillipe took this placidly enough, with no indication that he had been altered at all by the witch’s touch. He nuzzled her shoulder once she had finished fiddling with his bridle, and Belle scratched his ears affectionately. 

“Well,” she sighed, “I suppose there’s nothing else to do but see where you take me.” Belle mounted the horse, using the fallen log as a box, and set them off with a click of her teeth.

If Belle had been relying on her own navigational skills, she would’ve soon found herself hopelessly lost once again. One part of the forest looked so much like the next, and she had never in her life even attempted tracking any kind of path through the woods. Thankfully, whatever the witch had told Phillipe seemed to hold true; the horse never wavered in his step, taking Belle through the forest as sure-footed as if he was walking the streets of Villeneuve. 

By the time afternoon had started in earnest, Belle found that whatever spell the witch had cast to save her life was wearing off. Her legs were getting a little stiff, her stomach letting out little growls to indicate that she would be ready for a proper meal within the next few hours. She rolled her shoulders back, savouring the stretch. As she did so, Belle noticed that the trees were beginning to clear out again — not in the way they would for a clearing, but the way they did around Villeneuve, deliberately felled to make room for human beings. 

Sure enough, after a few more minutes of riding Belle saw a tall, grey building appear from amongst the trees. It had clearly once been an imposing sight, although it was now a dilapidated ruin of itself. If she concentrated, Belle could trace the lines of where towers clearly used to be, and the walls bordering the site which now barely brushed her ankles in the saddle. Phillipe continued his approach, slowing to a walk, and she realised with a start that these were the ruins the witch had spoken about. 

She dismounted, leading Phillipe over the collapsed ruin of the border wall. Anticipation sent goosebumps all over her body, the hair at the back of her neck standing on end. She could hear a man’s voice coming from the centre of the ruins, but was too far away to make out the words. He was concealed by the remains of the structural walls, which were still largely intact and casting deep shadows in the golden afternoon light. Belle glanced around – spotting a young tree which had begun growing through one of the walls, she looped Phillipe’s reins around the thickest branch, stroking his neck a few times before quietly walking closer to the centre of the ruins. 

“He’s been ailing for a long time,” she heard the man say as she wove through the skeleton of what had once been a narrow hallway. “I knew this was coming, just . . .” The man sighed. “I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

She heard another voice hum sympathetically in response as she rounded the final corner of the hallway. It opened up to a wide expanse of overgrown grass and wildflowers, bordered by a semi-circular stone wall. Belle’s eyes darted over the scene, and then froze in disbelief. A man was sitting with his back against the wall, a fine green jacket draped over his legs. Seeing her approach, he scrambled to his feet, narrowly avoiding dropping his jacket on the floor as he did so. 

“Good afternoon, Fräulein,” he said in German. “I – uh – please, don’t be alarmed –”

Belle wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, her eyes were magnetically trained on the last person she had ever expected to see again, her mind shocked into perfect stillness for once in her life. He looked equally taken aback to see her, his ears flat against his skull and his blue eyes wide, one massive arm extended to settle his friend.

“Mademoiselle Dupont,” said the Beast who had blackmailed her father, imprisoned her, and freed her all in the same night. “I have to say. I never thought I’d see you again.”

Chapter Text

Nobody moved. Isabelle looked like a ghost where she stood in the decayed archway of the old corridor, her eyes and hair both dark as night against her pallid face. Her gaze was trained on the Beast, who still had one arm idiotically extended towards Christoph like he was trying to soothe a spooked horse. The Beast felt pinned underneath the weight of that piercing gaze, methodically taking in every part of him as if to confirm what she was seeing. His eyes darted over her face in turn, seeing shock swiftly fade into disbelief and confusion. Her cheekbones were more prominent than they had been two months ago, her hair no longer neatly tied back but loose over her shoulders, and she looked . . . different, was all he could come up with. 

Their eyes met. It was as if a wall sprung up between them; her eyes hardened, her jaw clenching a little. Now she looked more similar to the woman he had met before. 

A flash of green in his peripheral vision reminded the Beast that Christoph was still standing beside him. He turned his head; whatever momentary lull that had been holding them all in place suddenly broken. Christoph had pulled his jacket on, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them. 

“Mademoiselle Dupont?” he repeated. “You wouldn’t be Isabelle Dupont, by any chance?”

Isabelle snapped her eyes from the Beast to Christoph. She shifted her feet, looking suddenly wary. “What of it?” she asked. 

“So you’re the friend Miss Ella was looking for,” he said. “I promised her I’d help to find you – that was before you found her yourself, of course.”

The Beast, to whom this was new information, found himself doing a double-take before looking back for Isabelle’s reaction. 

Her mouth dropped open in surprise, forming several unvoiced words before she finally settled on, “So – so you’re the Prince of Germany?”

Christoph’s eyes grew wide. “She mentioned that, did she?”

“It came up in conversation.”

He laughed, to the Beast’s eyes a little self-consciously, shaking his head before meeting her gaze again. “But what are you doing here alone? The last I had heard from her, you were both settled at her house for the time being – of course I had offered my services again if required, but I never received an answer to that letter.” 

“Circumstances changed,” she replied. “I had to leave suddenly, and she couldn’t come with me.” Her tone made it clear that the separation was not entirely a willing one. “I didn’t actually mean to come here at all, actually.”

“Then – how did you?” the Beast asked. 

She glanced at him with more than a little exasperation in her expression, but the Beast supposed she had a right to dislike him. She took a moment before replying, and the Beast wondered if she was deciding how much information she could trust him with, given their last meeting. Once again, he supposed that she was fairly justified. 

  “I was pointed in this direction by a . . . an old woman, who called herself a witch. She said that I would find what I needed waiting here.”

The Beast felt his ears stand to attention, as a chill ran underneath his fur. “What did she look like?” he asked urgently. 

“I don’t know – I never saw her face.”

“Mlle. Dupont — I need you to describe her for me; her face, her voice, anything,” he said. 

Christoph looked at him sharply, but the Beast only had eyes for Isabelle. He knew his words were coming too quickly, his desperation too clear on his face, but couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Isabelle frowned. “I already told you –”

“Please,” the Beast said. It was the first time he could remember saying the word since he was a child. “Anything you remember, anything at all.”

Isabelle looked at him. She was clearly taken aback by him; whether because of the intensity of his request, or because he had made it at all, he wasn’t sure. Something shifted in her face; her expression opened up, and her eyes softened. “Her hair was loose, so I couldn’t see her face. I could tell that her eyes were green, though – and she was wearing a green cloak, as well. And I thought . . .” She trailed off. 

“What?” he asked. 

“I couldn’t tell if she was old or young, by the time she left,” she said. Her dark eyes fixed on the Beast. “But when I first met her – I was half-dead, and she was standing behind me the whole time – but I could have sworn that she was letting out this . . . golden glow.” Her hands fanned outwards, like she was mimicking the sun. 

The Beast was suddenly glad that he was still sitting down. He buried his head in his hands. “Did she say anything else?” he managed. 

“Just that she had business to attend to,” Isabelle said. “Are – are you alright?” she tacked on, a little awkwardly. 

The Beast heard himself making a very long, drawn out noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. He dragged his face upwards underneath his hands, mindful of the fangs which now protruded from his mouth. He glanced up at Christoph and Isabelle, who were looking at him with varying degrees of concern. 

“She said you’d find what you need here?” the Beast asked. 

Isabelle nodded. 

“Well,” he sighed, slowly pulling himself to his feet, “who am I to disagree with an Enchantress?”

Christoph took a step towards him, while Isabelle stayed at the far corner of the old garden wall. The Beast glanced up, noticing that the sky was beginning to turn slightly peach in the west. He felt the gentle touch of Christoph’s hand on his forearm, over his shirtsleeve. It brought him back to himself; the ache in his hips, the slight edge in his stomach that told him dinner was approaching soon. He turned his massive head to look at Christoph, and offered a tiny smile. Faint lines of tension around Christoph’s eyes relaxed. The Beast felt a small jolt of surprise; he hadn’t realised that Christoph had been so worried about his reaction to hearing about the Enchantress. 

“I don’t know how the two of you feel,” he said. “But I for one think that there are far too many chance connections between the three of us. Four, if we include Miss Ella.”

“Now that you mention it, it is a little odd,” Christoph said. 

“Do you think it’s the enchantress’s doing?” Isabelle asked. “Drawing us together?”

The Beast shook his head, then reconsidered, cocking his head to one side. “Maybe she influenced matters so that you would find me again, although I'd be surprised if she orchestrated everything else that’s happened,” he said. “But I went six years without seeing another human being, and in a matter of weeks both of you appeared on my doorstep independently of each other.”

The other two shared a glance, and the Beast could feel the shift in the air as they both reached the same conclusion. 

“That . . . is definitely one hell of a coincidence,” Christoph said. 

“It’s not the only connection, either,” Isabelle said. “The day I left Elena’s house, I found a music box her father had bought from my father, back when we lived in Paris. I recognised it as soon as I saw it; it was definitely the same one.”

An unseasonably sharp wind blew through the cracks of the half-standing walls; Isabelle and Christoph both shivered, and the Beast felt his fur stand on end. In his peripheral vision, he noticed that the sun was slowly heading towards the western horizon.

“It’s getting late, and I have a feeling the three of us still have more to discuss,” he said. “If the two of you are agreeable, I would suggest that we have that discussion in my castle. It will be more comfortable than the ground, at any rate. The two of you would be welcome guests.”

Isabelle raised an eyebrow. 

The Beast abruptly wished, not for the first time since he had met Mademoiselle Isabelle Dupont, that his idiot tongue would allow his brain a moment’s input before leading him into ill-advised and awful situations of his own making. “I – that is, I only thought – Mmlle. Dupont, I meant what I said the last time we met. You would be under no obligation to remain there. It was only a suggestion.”

She tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear, carefully studying his face once again. “I believe you,” Isabelle said quietly. “Besides which, I was told I would find what I needed here, and I found the two of you.” She crossed her arms, casually leaning one hip against the stone archway. The shadow of the arch fell across her face on a deep diagonal; but not enough to conceal the curve of her mouth as she half-smiled. “And who am I to disagree with an Enchantress?”

Given the logistical difficulties of having enchanted servants taking the form of household objects, the Beast was forced to let his etiquette slide and have Isabelle and Christoph stable their own horses when the three of them returned to the castle. While they were occupied, he slipped back inside and quickly flagged down Lumière, who was thankfully in the entrance hall. 

“Master?”

“Lumière, we have guests,” the Beast said quickly. “Can you prepare the dining room with a meal and a fire, as soon as possible?”

Lumière blinked at him, for once in his life speechless. His faculties reawakened a moment later, and he said, “Yes, of course Master. It will be done.”

“Thank you,” the Beast said. “I’ll explain everything later.”

“I will be all ears, Master,” Lumière said, in a tone that brokered no wriggling out of his promise, before hopping off towards the kitchen. The Beast hovered awkwardly in the hall for another moment, before suddenly remembering his guests were still outside. He padded back to the stables, where he was met with a silence at once stony (Isabelle, jaw clenched as she looked up at the castle) and bewildered (Christoph, staring at the enchanted servants as they brushed down the horses). 

The Beast cleared his throat, and they both turned to him expectantly. 

“If you’ll follow me inside, I believe refreshments will be in the dining room soon,” he said. 

“I never thought I’d be asking for a fire in the middle of summer,” Christoph said in a light-hearted tone as he followed the Beast inside, “but I certainly hope there’s something inside to keep out the chill.”

Isabelle bobbed a half-curtesy at the prince as he held the door for her. “It was warm enough the last time I was here,” she said. 

“We’re fairly diligent about the fires; in this kind of weather, we have to be,” the Beast said. “If you’ll follow me.”

He led them into the dining room, where a fire was indeed burning merrily in the grate. The few snowflakes which had settled on his guests began to melt on their shoulders, and the Beast felt his muscles relax slightly in the heat. He took a seat at the foot of the table, his knees and hips grateful for the reprieve from the bipedal gait he had kept up for most of the afternoon. Christoph and Isabelle spent an extra moment to warm themselves at the fire, before joining the Beast at the table just as a small army of serving spoons, plates, and tureens appeared with soup, bread, and cold meat for the three of them. 

There was another heavily awkward silence, broken only by the murmured thanks from them as they were each served. As the last of the soup ladles bundled themselves on the dinner trolley, wheeling back to the kitchen with alacrity, Christoph turned to look at the Beast with an extremely polite look of strained terror. 

“May I ask . . . are all of the objects in this room your servants?”

The Beast let out a nervous chuckle. “Only the ones that move and talk of their own volition. You can rest assured, I wouldn’t use them to eat my dinner.”

On his other side, Isabelle relaxed a tiny fraction, before picking up her knife and buttering the bread. 

“It might be expedient if we had a complete picture of what’s been going on over the last few weeks,” the Beast suggested. “If there are any other connections or coincidences that would link the three of us – four of us – together.”

Christoph looked at the two of them expectantly. The Beast glanced at Isabelle, only to see that her eyebrows had knitted together again. His stomach gave a guilty stab when he realised why. Still, he had told Christoph the story once before and the prince had agreed to meet with him at the monastery; he was unlikely to change his mind now, after weeks of friendship. 

“Well,” the Beast sighed, “I suppose it all started when Mmlle. Dupont’s father stumbled upon the castle.”

It took a long time for them to tell the tale in full. The tall candles in the centrepiece of the table had burned almost halfway down by the time the three of them had eventually laid out the full order of events, beginning with Isabelle’s father leaving for the fair and Christoph’s disagreement with his father, and ending with her being directed by the Enchantress to the abandoned monastery. Their plates had long since been scraped clean, and the three of them were still sitting at the table, their attitudes and manner far more relaxed than earlier in the evening. 

“I knew there was something more to her story than what she told me,” Christoph murmured eventually. “I’ve heard harrowing stories from mistreated servants over the years, but I never thought that it could be her own family mistreating her like that.”

“I just . . . I want to help her,” Isabelle said miserably. “She’s such a wonderful person. It’s not fair that this has happened to her – she doesn’t deserve it.”

The Beast, who had become self-aware enough over the last six years to discern that he probably deserved what had happened to him, hummed in agreement. Even so, he experienced a flash of empathy with this woman he had never met; trapped in a childhood home, both transformed from what they used to be into what they were now. “Did she say why she wouldn’t leave?” he asked. 

“No,” Isabelle said. She ran her fingers through the loose parts of her hair, smoothing them back into place as best she could. “But put yourself in her shoes for a moment. If it was your family who had made you a servant in your own home – mistreated you, taken every opportunity to berate you, made certain that you had nobody else to rely on aside from them – would leaving such a place even seem possible?”

The Beast considered her words. In the end, he found he could do nothing but nod in agreement, twisting his paws in the cuffs of his sleeves. 

“I promised her that I would come back, when it was safe,” Isabelle said. “Once Gaston wasn’t threatening to drag me back to Villeneuve to marry him.” She sighed, fiddling with a napkin. “Of course, now I have no idea if it’s safe or not – for all I know, he could have decided to remain at her stepmother’s estate after he couldn’t find me in the woods.”

“Maybe I can be of assistance,” Christoph said. “She has no quarrel with me, and I’ve never met this Gaston in my life. I could get the Duke to intervene – it’s his municipality, after all – or I could ask one of the local magistrates to show up to the house and ask for her release –”

“Are you certain that would work, though?” Isabelle interrupted. “That they would see it through to the end, and not be manipulated by Madam Tremaine? I don’t even know if she’d be able to trust them; Elena does go to the village on occasion to run errands, and she never mentioned anybody taking any notice of her or offering to help in the entire time I stayed with her.” 

“If one woman has managed to blackmail multiple figures of authority into overlooking the deliberate mistreatment of one of their constituents, that immediately points to larger problems within my government,” Christoph said, running his own hands through his hair now. 

“I don’t mean to imply that’s definitely what’s going on,” Isabelle said. “Just that since her parents died, by Elena’s own admission the only two people to treat her with any kindness are you and I.”

“I could go myself, in person,” he said. “I may not be King yet, but my authority still holds weight.”

“She could lie,” Isabelle said grimly. “I have no real evidence that she and Elena are related, just a music box. And – if for some reason it didn’t work, and you had to leave without her . . . I’m frightened of what she might do to Elena if her authority is challenged.”

Christoph buried his head in his hands. 

There was a long moment of silence. Isabelle lowered her head to gaze at the table, sighing heavily. And yet, despite the overall mood of dejection, the Beast felt the stirrings of an idea coming to mind. He looked at Isabelle. 

“If you think it’s unsafe for you to go back, and the only other person you think she would trust is Prince Christoph –”

“I’ve told you before, you can call me Kit,” he interjected from beneath his hands. 

“– then the way I see it, we have two options. Either, he goes in to rescue Elena himself – which, as the two of you pointed out, may have unintended consequences if for some reason he is unsuccessful.”

“Or?” Isabelle asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Or,” the Beast said, “we try a less direct approach.”

Both Kit and Isabelle sat up slightly taller in their seats, giving the Beast their full attention. He took a short breath to fortify himself, his idea now beginning to solidify in his mind. 

“You mentioned that Elena’s family are gentlewomen,” he said to Isabelle. “Would they have received invitations to Christoph – Kit’s – coming-out ball?”

The Beast didn’t miss the flicker of a smile over Kit’s face at the use of his name, even though his attention was on Isabelle. 

“Yes – I remember hearing the sisters talking about the ball dresses they had ordered from the dressmaker, and how excited they were for the ball,” Isabelle said. “They’re definitely going.”

“Is the ball open to all, or only the landed gentry?” the Beast asked, now switching back to Kit. 

“Theoretically it’s open to everyone, like all of our coming-out balls,” Kit said. “In practice, however . . .”

“Based on what I saw while living there, I would be very surprised if they would allow Elena to attend,” Isabelle said. 

“So,” the Beast said, his words coming more quickly as his idea coalesced, “her stepmother and stepsisters would be at the ball, and she would be left alone, at home.” 

He caught eyes with Isabelle. A smile was growing on her face, and her brown eyes were shining brightly. A quiet thought grew in the back of his mind; she was really quite beautiful. 

“I like it,” Kit said warmly. “It’s simple, and avoids any dramatic confrontations that could end badly.”

“They’ll be out for hours, surely; it gives plenty of time for me to go back and rescue her,” Isabelle said. She bristled, ever so slightly, at the surprised reactions of the Beast and Kit. “Well, you can’t exactly leave your own ball to get Elena yourself, can you?”

“And I suspect that if I showed up at her doorstep, that would lead to . . . difficulties,” the Beast said, as his ear twitched self-consciously. “The only snag I can think of is – how would you know when they were gone, and it was safe to go to Elena’s?”

Isabelle took a breath to refute him, but stopped before the words even formed on her mouth. Her shoulders sagged a little, and she pushed the stubborn strands of hair away from her face again. “That’s a good point. They already know what I look like; if I’m hanging around the estate waiting for their carriages to leave they would notice me pretty quickly.”

“Well,” Kit said after a moments’ pause, “I suppose there is one way you could tell that they’re not at home. Nobody can be in two places at once. As soon as they’re at the ball, you would know that the coast was clear.”

“Are you suggesting that I should attend your coming-out ball as well?” Isabelle asked, her eyebrows shooting up to heights hitherto unseen. “A French peasant attending the coming-out ball of the incumbent King of Germany to rescue her lover?”

“Stranger things have happened,” the Beast chimed in. 

He had deliberately said it to be funny, but he was still surprised to see Isabelle break into a short, hastily-stifled laugh. 

“So, that’s our plan?” Kit asked, also chuckling a little. “Where would you and Elena go once you rescued her?”

“Philippe is strong, but he’s also a cart horse,” Isabelle said thoughtfully. “Ideally it would be somewhere not too far from her home, but still safe enough to lie low.”

“You could . . . stay here?” the Beast offered. “If the events of the last few months have proved anything, it’s that this castle is in a surprisingly handy location.”

Isabelle looked at him, her lips thinning out as she thought. During the exchange of their stories, when the Beast had repeated the claim that he had forced Maurice to stay because of all he had seen in the castle, Isabelle had shot a cold look at him but otherwise said nothing. It was plain that she didn’t believe him, although he doubted that she guessed the real reason he’d wanted a young, unmarried person in the castle. 

“Once again, mademoiselle,” he said quietly, “you would be under no obligation to remain.”

Her expression shifted reluctantly to one less calculating. “I’ll . . . consider it,” she said. “It’s a kind offer, though. Thank you.”

He nodded in response. “Where will you go in the meantime? Your ball isn’t until . . . October?” He directed the question to Kit. 

“The eleventh,” he clarified. “Just over two months left to get everything organised.”

“Well,” Isabelle said, “I still need to find my father. I know he was searching these woods two months ago, but I have no idea where he could be now.”

Kit’s eyebrows settled in a line over his face, his expression serious. “I would be happy to offer my resources to help you, Miss Dupont,” he said. “It’s clearly not safe for you to return home at present. I trust my Captain of the Guard with my life, and she is . . . aware of the situation, albeit vaguely. We could arrange some form of accommodation for you in the capital while we searched – if that would be acceptable?” His tone had been naturally authoritative while laying out his plan, and suddenly switched back to a more mild-mannered and courteous tone mid-sentence. The Beast had almost forgotten that outside of their meetings, Kit likely spent the majority of his time as a man always making decisions and enforcing policy. 

“I – I don’t even know what to say,” Isabelle said, looking distinctly pole-axed. “I – thank you. I’d be very grateful for your help. Both of you,” she said, looking between him and the Beast. Kit smiled gently. The Beast, still guiltily aware of how little he deserved her gratitude, did his best to smile as well. 

With their plans settled, and the evening now settling in earnest, Isabelle and Kit made to leave the castle. The Beast escorted them and their horses (giving both of the horses a wide berth; although Jasper was fairly acclimated to him by now, Phillippe was very clearly on-edge) to the large gates that bordered the castle. 

“It’s later than I thought,” Kit said, glancing anxiously up at the pitch-black sky. 

“As soon as you cross the border, it’ll be summer again,” the Beast reminded him. “The sun shouldn’t set for a few hours still, if my almanac is correct.” 

He looked at the Beast, a question clearly on his mind. The Beast could see the moment that he decided not to ask it, instead leaning over to fiddle with his saddle. “I hope I’ll still be seeing you at the monastery next week,” he said instead. 

“Wouldn’t miss it,” the Beast said, too honestly. 

He held the gate open for the two of them as they passed through it. They both mounted their horses, Isabelle shivering a little in her thin cloak. He stayed there until the horses had turned the corner, Kit twisting in his saddle at the last moment to wave goodbye. With a smile and a flick of his tail, the Beast shut the gates with a heavy metal clang. He trudged back through the newly-fallen snow to the castle, only to be met in the hall by Mrs Potts, Lumière, and Cogsworth; arms crossed, the ticking of Cogsworth’s mechanism sounding for all the world like an impatiently-tapping foot. 

The Beast sighed. “You know, when I said ‘later’, I didn’t think I would be cornered as soon as I had shown them off the grounds.”

Lumière shrugged eloquently. “And I did not think this morning that I would need to set places and provide a meal for three people.”

“You’ve got a fair bit of explaining to do, Master,” Mrs Potts said lightly. “So sit yourself down by the fire and tell us the whole story. It’s high time we knew what’s been going on around here.”

Chapter Text

Kit and Isabelle spent the first part of their journey home in silence, both taking in everything they had seen and heard in the Beast’s castle. The change in temperature when they crossed the border between cursed winter and July afternoon was startling, and enough to make Kit break out in a mild sweat instantly. He shrugged back out of his green riding jacket again; as he’d discovered at the monastery that afternoon, it was far too hot to wear. Glancing back to ensure Isabelle hadn’t lost her way, he saw that she had also shed her outerwear, folding her cloak across her lap. They rode on, the sounds of forest wildlife slowly beginning to dwindle as they drew closer to civilisation. 

As they passed the clearing where he and Elena had first met, Kit eased Jasper into a slower walk. 

“What are you doing?” Isbelle asked, her voice high and anxious. “This is still very close to Elena’s house – I don’t think –”

“I’m not proposing we wait for her to appear,” he reassured her. “Just that it might be prudent to leave a note, so that Miss Elena knows what we’re planning.”

Isabelle sat motionless in the saddle for the briefest of seconds, before rifling through her saddlebags for paper and pencil. Kit kept his ears metaphorically pricked for any signs of people approaching as she wrote. However, the only sounds were that of leaves rustling in the wind, and Isabelle’s pencil scratching against the paper. She finished quickly, folding the note up and hiding it underneath a rock. He was hit with an unmistakable sense of deja-vu, and when he caught sight of her red eyes as she remounted her horse, Kit knew to say nothing. 

After ten or fifteen minutes of silently riding through the woods, Isabelle cleared her throat and said, “I must thank you again for all of your help, Your Highness. You’re truly going . . . far above and beyond what would be expected of you.”

Kit half-turned in the saddle, drawing Jasper in step with her horse so they could talk more easily. “I know,” he said quietly. “But anything less would feel . . . wrong, somehow. I promised Miss Elena that I would help her, and everything I’ve learned about her life since then has only confirmed that doing so was the right decision.”

Isabelle hummed thoughtfully. “I hope your word is as discerning as it is honourable. The wrong people could easily take advantage of that, or see it as a weakness to be exploited.”

“Funnily enough, you are not the first person to tell me that,” he laughed. “Although Captain Harker was considerably less diplomatic with her phrasing.”

Her mouth curved in the smallest of smiles, and Kit couldn’t help but count it a victory. He was struck by the same urge as when he had first met the Beast — that the person in front of him was dreadfully lonely. He suspected she would be far more reluctant to admit it than the Beast had been. 

“I was wondering . . .” 

When Isabelle left her sentence unfinished, Kit looked over at her. Her hands were twisting the reins of her horse back and forth, although providing enough slack that he wouldn’t confuse them for direction. 

“Yes, mademoiselle?” he prompted. 

She looked over to him, her serious brown eyes locking on his. “What is your opinion of the Beast? Do you . . . trust him?” 

Kit sucked in a breath, more taken aback by her question than he cared to admit. That was, really, the central question around which his life had revolved for the past month and a half. Did he trust the Beast? 

“Yes,” he said eventually. He could see her eyes carefully taking in each movement he made, the lack of fidgeting and the flicker of his own eyes as he met hers. “I can tell that he’s concealing things about his past. Probably about the motivations behind some of his actions as well. But I do trust him; I’d trust him with my life, if it ever came to it.” He was half surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth, and yet there was a truthful conviction behind all of them. 

Isabelle rode along in silence. 

“I take it you don’t share these feelings?” he said, doing his best to keep judgement away from his tone. Their interactions with the Beast had been about as different as it was possible to be, he reminded himself strictly. 

She sighed, brushing a strand of fallen brown hair away from her face as she faced him. “You could say that, yes. Especially around his motivations. He told you the truth about how he met my father, but I know there’s more to it than Papa being forced to stay because he saw an enchanted castle.” With short, precise sentences, Isabelle told him of what her father had shared of the encounter – and the gifts he had returned with. The bread. The rose. The book. Most damningly, the saddlebag filled with gold. 

Kit found himself staring distractedly ahead at the green-and-gold colour of the late afternoon woods once she had finished. He had known this – hadn’t he read Isabelle’s letter to Elena where she said as much with his own two eyes? But in the heady rush of finding friendship with the Beast, and his own curiosity to solve the various mysteries that surrounded him, Kit had allowed himself to forget. Now, it had all come crashing back, sending ripples through what he knew of the Beast, and what he had begun to suspect about him. His mind felt like it was tripping over itself with how fast it was moving. Jasper, thankfully, trotted along without needing direction from him; Kit could just about keep his posture in the saddle, but knew anything further was beyond him at present.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you all this,” Isabelle said gently. “I can tell the two of you are close.” 

Kit nodded stiffly. They rode on together in a deepening silence, broken only by the drumming of their horses' hoofbeats and the distant clamour of the main thoroughfare over to the west. The afternoon sun was casting a warm, golden hue over the forest, and as Kit began to recognise landmarks again he could tell that they were drawing close to his castle.

“But he let you go.” His voice turned the statement into a question. 

Isabelle sighed. “He let me go. I had barely been there half an hour.” She glanced back over to him, the edges of her hair catching the light. “You see how it doesn’t make sense?”

He hummed in noncommittal agreement. “When we first met,” he said after a moment, “he told me that he had behaved dishonourably towards you.”

Isabelle scoffed. “It’s funny he mentioned that. When he told me I could go, he promised on ‘his honour as a gentleman’ that I wouldn’t be forced to stay.”

“As my word is my bond, on my honour . . .” Kit muttered under his breath.

“Yes – that’s exactly what he said!” Isabelle twisted in the saddle, her eyes wide. “How did you know that?”

“It’s the traditional way of phrasing such oaths in the French court,” he replied easily, before suddenly realising what he had just implied. “I mean –” he started, hoping to deflect Isabelle from following the path he had laid down.

“The court,” she said slowly, and yet too quick for Kit to attempt to control the damage. “I had wondered – and the way that his servants spoke to me, as if they all knew how guests were cared for – you don’t think –?” Her mouth dropped open in surprise, a faint light in her eyes as the pieces dropped into place. 

“That he used to be human?” Kit finished her sentence. Guilt pooled in his stomach for a moment, before he answered the question. “Yes. I do.”

“Well,” Isabelle said after a long moment. “That certainly puts things in a new light.” She glanced sideways at him. “Does he –?”

“No,” Kit interrupted. “I haven’t shared my suspicions with him. And I would appreciate it greatly, if news about all of this” — he waved his arm, vaguely encompassing the entire situation — “was kept quiet at court.”

“You mean you weren’t planning on telling people that you had dinner at an enchanted castle this evening?” She lifted an eyebrow in disbelief, even as the smile on her mouth widened. 

“Well, when you put it like that,” he said, blowing out air as he pretended to think. He was gratified when Isabelle laughed, low and hearty. “Genuinely, though,” he said, “Captain Harker knows the bare essentials and nothing more. If anybody knew the full extent of what had been going on . . .”

“I can imagine,” she said, serious once more. “Your secret is safe with me, Your Highness.”

“Thank you, Miss Isabelle,” he replied, his voice warm. He nodded his head to her, smiling, before urging Jasper in front to lead her horse; they were, at long last, approaching the castle, and he wanted to avoid as many crowds as he feasibly could. “Although I must insist that you call me Kit. Everyone does.”

“I sincerely doubt that, Your Highness,” she called out from behind him. 

He couldn’t help but laugh. “I mean – my friends all call me Kit. I know we only met today, but given the circumstances which have thrown us together I feel very comfortable counting you as a friend.”

“Well, in that case,” she said, “it feels rather formal of you to keep calling me Isabelle. If you’re to be Kit, then you can call me Belle.”

“A fitting name,” he laughed. “It’s nice to meet you, Belle.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your – Kit.” 

He chuckled, and then began guiding them more deliberately towards the stables. He took as many back roads as he could, but Kit knew that smuggling Belle in undetected would be impossible; a knowledge confirmed only a few minutes later, as he heard the curious whispers and felt the keen eyes of his subjects on their backs. Stabling the horses passed without incident, with the help of a particularly forbidding glare on Kit’s part; he grew more suspicious when the two of them made it to his office completely unaccosted. As such, he couldn’t even summon up the will to be surprised when he opened the door to find Captain Harker standing to attention at his desk, her lips pressed together in a thin line and her eyebrows struggling not to disappear into her braids with how high they were raised. 

“Your Highness,” she said, her words clipped and tense.

“Captain Harker—” he started. 

“Would you care to explain what the hell is going on? Who is this woman? What possessed the two of you to come back like this on horseback together, without so much as a servant to chaperone?”

Belle shot an alarmed glance at him, her cheeks flushed, but Kit held firm as he walked towards the windows. “It’s not what you think, Captain.” They were already shut — of course they were, if the captain had been here waiting for them. She’d always had the better head for strategy. 

“Isn’t it?” she challenged. “I’m not sure I know what to think today. Do you even realise what this looks like, K- Your Highness?” The captain’s eyes caught on Belle as she stumbled over his name, and she drew herself up half an inch further. 

“Mademoiselle Dupont is my guest, Captain,” Kit said. “It’s . . . a complicated story, but not necessarily a long one; you already know how it began.”

She looked at Belle again, a faint dread overlining her expression. “Oh, no. Please, Your Highness, for the sake of my sanity, tell me that this is not the woman from the woods.”

“No, I’m not,” Belle shot out before he could reply. “But she’s part of the reason why Kit brought me back with him today.”

The dread on Captain Harker’s face had been replaced by confusion. With minimal input from Belle where necessary, Kit stumbled through a version of the story which involved neither key members of his government potentially being in the pockets of a corrupt gentlewoman, nor the probability that the same woman was abusing her own stepdaughter. The captain was reluctant enough to allow Kit to keep visiting the Beast sans his guard; he had a feeling that any hints of further conspiracy would not be conducive to them continuing. 

“I can understand the logic of how each event led to the one following it,” the captain said once they had finished. “But you do understand that an outside observer, lacking this context, can and will come up with a completely different explanation for your behaviour over the last few weeks? One which – with respect, Your Highness – I’m not convinced will best serve either your personal or political motives?”

Kit folded his arms. “I’m listening,” he said. 

The captain straightened her shoulders, her face a dispassionate mask akin to the one she wore when giving official report in court. “Your absences have been noted; while not completely out of character, their regularity and the fact that each is longer than the preceding one have both drawn attention. You’ve frequently stayed up late in the library. It is . . . known, although often left unsaid, that the Duke has put pressure on you regarding the issue of your alignment. The date of the ball drawing nearer with no definitive answer in sight does not help this line of thinking. And today,” she sighed, with an apologetic look in her eyes, “after a private conversation with the Duke, you left ahead of schedule and returned late, joined by a woman on her own horse that nobody has ever seen before.”

“Oh, my god,” Kit groaned after a long moment. His head dropped into his hands for the second time that afternoon. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yes,” the captain snapped. “You are my friend, and my future king, and generally a wise man, but sometimes you really are.”

The three of them sat with the implications, before Belle piped up. “How many people saw us coming in?”

“Taking the back roads helped, and I was only alerted to your presence by the other guards,” the captain said. “They’re good men; if you manage to avoid arousing further suspicion, then with any luck the gossip dies here, and we can prevent this from becoming more complicated than it already is.”

Belle laughed hollowly, presumably thinking – as Kit was – of their plans for the immediate future. Complicated, indeed, he thought to himself. 

“I know you’re right, May, but I can’t just stop visiting the Beast all of a sudden,” Kit said eventually. “That would only confirm the idea that Belle and I were . . . involved. But,” he added, seeing Captain Harker’s eyes narrow, “I will be . . . more conscious of time. And I don’t foresee any more visits lasting as long as today’s did.”

The captain nodded. “And did you have any plans for Mademoiselle Dupont, once she had arrived in the castle? Or was her general wellbeing also to become my responsibility?” Her tone was as sharp and dry as her rapier, and Kit winced reflexively. He knew he deserved it for springing so many unforeseen complications on her head, but it didn’t make it easier to sit through. 

“No,” he said. “I thought perhaps a room in one of the local hotels could be arranged. Personally, if necessary; you’ve got enough on your plate as it is, what with everything else going on.”

“I thought we were trying to avoid the implication that she was your kept woman?” Captain Harker said. She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“Captain Harker – I would never – of course we’re trying to avoid –!” Kit spluttered, knowing that his cheeks were burning bright red but unable to do anything to prevent it.

Belle let out a burst of laughter, seemingly against her own will, before her own hand slapped over her mouth and her eyes went wide. “I’m so sorry,” she said, slightly muffled behind her hand. “This is a very serious situation, I know, but –”

She trailed off when Captain Harker, whose expression had up until now brokered strict professionalism if not outright disapproval, practically collapsed into a fit of giggles. 

“You’re right, Mademoiselle – completely correct –” the captain wheezed out between laughs “– but oh, Kit, your face!” She shook her head helplessly, the beads at the ends of her braids catching the light as they bounced over her shoulder. At her words, Belle started laughing again as well, still attempting to stifle the sounds behind her hand. “You couldn’t have looked more horrified at the idea if you’d tried!”

Kit felt their laughter begin to catch, an edge of hysteria in his voice as he too caught a fit of giggles. “I just – it’s so absurd – and that renting a room would be enough to make people think –” The rest of his sentence was lost to his own laughter, sweet relief after a very long, tense day. 

“Well, then,” Captain Harker said once she began to calm down, neat white teeth still gleaming in her bright smile. “Since your plan, well-intentioned as it was, Your Highness, is sure to backfire – I suggest that you stay with me for a few days, Mademoiselle.” She clapped a steady hand on Belle’s shoulder. “I have a spare room and a door that locks; with any luck, my men will find your father and his friend soon, and then the three of you can settle your own affairs together.”

“Thank you,” Belle said, her voice shaking a little. She clasped Captain Harker’s hand between hers, half-curtseying before releasing her hold. “Both of you,” she said, turning back towards Kit. “I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for your kindness – and I don’t know how I can ever repay you for it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of asking you to,” Kit said earnestly. He did an odd thing then; when pressed later by Captain Harker, he couldn't say why other than that it felt like the right thing to do. He took her hand and pressed a dry kiss to the back of it – as quick and chaste as if she had been his sister. It was not a gesture he usually performed on anybody except visiting royalty. 

When he straightened back up, he saw that Belle’s eyes were soft and her lips parted by a gentle smile. Her face appeared quite transformed; he could see why everyone called her a name that meant ‘beauty’. He pressed her hand once more before relinquishing it to her. 

“I’ll see you in the morning, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I sense we will have much to discuss over the coming weeks.”

After the dramatic events that had unfolded during their last meeting, Kit arriving at the monastery at precisely his usual hour felt almost like an anticlimax. The Beast was already there, waiting for him, also as usual. Un usually, he was still standing bipedally, fiddling absently with his cuffs in what Kit had come to recognise as nervousness. 

“Hello,” he smiled as he dismounted from Jasper. 

“Hello,” the Beast replied warmly. His ears slumped back to a more neutral position, while his fingers no longer wound themselves quite as tightly in the lace. “I trust your journey was well?”

“It’s always a pleasant ride, but even more so now,” Kit said, making his way through the hip-height ruins to the central garden. “It feels like the heat is finally starting to dissipate as well; hopefully August will be less muggy than July ended up being.”

“Here’s hoping,” the Beast said with a wry smile. “The summer is beautiful, but I’m finding that this fur wasn’t meant to withstand the heat.” 

Kit made a casual noise of interest. “This year’s weather is fairly typical for the season. I take it that you don’t spend much time away from the castle grounds?”

The Beast’s eyes narrowed, as if he knew what Kit was really asking. But his ears were still relaxed and his stance easy when he replied, “Not typically. It’s been lovely to rediscover the forest after so long with an eternal winter.”

Kit’s tongue burned with a hundred questions based on that sentence. Every time he thought he had finally reached the last of the mysteries surrounding him, the Beast would mention something offhand that revealed another handful, seemingly without even realising he’d done so. 

“I can only imagine,” Kit said instead, leaning back against one of the ruined walls. “I have a fondness for the season, but I’m more than ready for spring by the time it’s three months have passed.”

The Beast smiled wistfully. “I haven’t seen a spring since . . .” His voice trailed off, as he clearly counted backwards in his head. “I can’t recall. Quite some time ago, by now.” He looked up at the trees, rich with summer foliage, which had overtaken the old boundaries of the garden. “These have beautiful blossoms in the springtime.”

“Perhaps we’ll see them next year.”

The Beast’s head pivoted to face Kit; a moment later, he realised just what he’d implied. He instinctively wanted to look away, deflect his words to something less presumptuous. But his gaze was arrested by the force of the Beast’s eyes meeting his. There was a complex swell of emotions playing over his face, only some of which Kit felt confident guessing; jaw slack with surprise, ears standing up to attention. But his eyes were the most confounding – the corners crinkling with the hint of a smile, at odds with the deep sadness welling up from their centres. 

“Perhaps,” was all he said in reply. “That would be – nice.”

They stood in a silence more companionable than awkward. From somewhere deeper in the woods, Kit could hear birds loudly squabbling; in the open space of the ruins, a fresh breeze sending the tall grass rustling, it sounded almost peaceful. He tipped his head back, eyes sinking shut as he basked in the warm sunlight. It was a simple comfort, and one he couldn’t have imagined taking the first time he’d met the Beast all those weeks ago – to not only let his guard down and close his eyes, but allow his face and neck to remain exposed while doing so. He was the son of a king – soon to be a king himself. There were precautions that had to be taken, even with people whose humanity wasn’t concealed by fur and fangs.

He could hear when the Beast took the opportunity to sit down, punctuated by a low sigh of relief. Kit dropped his head back down reluctantly; he’d once again allowed himself to be distracted by their blossoming friendship, when he’d ridden here with a series of questions derived from his conversation with Belle the other day. He blinked his eyes open slowly; it took a few seconds for them to adjust, during which the lighter brown fur on the Beast’s head appeared almost blonde in the sunlight. 

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said. “It sprang from a conversation I had with Belle – Isabelle – on our ride back to the castle.”

As clearly as he’d been able to read the Beast’s smile and surprise, Kit could now see his wariness. It was written in the tensing of his shoulders, his ears pricking up against his horns, even though the rest of him was stock still. 

“Yes?” he asked, his voice a low rumble of bass. 

“What were your real reasons for making her promise to stay at your castle?” Kit felt pinned to the wall he was leaning against, as strongly as he was tied to the direction of the conversation. “You said, when we first met, that it was because her father had seen you and you couldn’t allow him to leave. But that’s not the whole truth, is it?”

The Beast was silent for a long moment – gathering his courage, or preparing a lie, it was impossible to say. “I can’t tell you.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Kit.” He met his gaze, eyes serious beneath his deep, furrowed brow. “I can’t tell you. I know I should never have forced those promises out of him in the first place – should never have kept Isabelle here against her will, even if it was only for one night –” He broke off, running one of his massive paws over his mane. 

“If you knew, then what possessed you to do it in the first place?” Kit asked. He kept his voice deliberately calm as the Beast grew more agitated. 

He laughed tonelessly, a touch of mania taking over as his eyes stared into the middle distance. “There’s the question that sums up the last seven years of my life,” he said. “What possessed me to do – any of it? Why can’t I ever just stop and think?”  

He sighed, deflating suddenly; shoulders, ears, eyes all downcast. He buried his head in his paws, letting out a low groan. 

Kit remained perched on the wall, unsure what to do next. Eventually, he shuffled over through the long grass, laying one hand on his shoulder with a hesitant, “Beast?”

The Beast turned his head up to look at him. He looked exhausted. 

“I can’t tell you why I made her stay,” he said. “But I can tell you why I let her go.”

Kit sat on the grass next to him. His hand slipped down the Beast’s great arm, eventually landing on his sleeve cuff. The tips of his fingers brushed against the Beast’s dew claw, hidden beneath the linen. He smiled encouragingly at the Beast. He returned the smile, a little sadly, and took a breath. 

“This was a long time ago,” he started. “I was younger then – and more stupid, if that’s even possible. Or perhaps, less stupid and more impulsive. But . . . well, there was a woman I used to know. Her name was Marianne. We had been friends for years, and it was in a way only inevitable that it developed into something . . . more.”

“I take it that this occurred . . . prior to your current state?” Kit asked. Upon the Beast’s look of slack-jawed surprise, Kit hastily said, “I told you, I’ve been – looking for information. If you were trying to hide the fact that you used to be human, frankly you’ve been doing terribly.”

“There’s a difference between knowing something and hearing it said outright,” the Beast said, a little affronted. “But – yes, you’re correct. I was just shy of twenty when we became lovers.” 

Kit was surprised when a very small, quiet part of himself felt stung hearing those words. It was, however, easily shrugged aside in favour of hearing the rest of the Beast’s story. 

“Quite frankly, I was an ass,” he said. “I’m not proud of the way I behaved towards her. Her position was relatively precarious, and I only cared for her inasmuch as I liked having her on my arm.” He was staring fixedly at the grass now, his voice low. “In addition to which, I was . . . well, as I said, I was young, stupid, and impulsive. She had implicitly promised me fidelity which I did not do her the favour of returning.”

“Other women, you mean?” Kit asked, cutting through his florid language. 

The Beast sighed, but reluctantly nodded. “And men.” Kit blinked in mild surprise. “It made things difficult for her, in ways which I only began to appreciate over the past few years.” He started picking at his cuffs again, although he was careful to give Kit’s fingers a wide berth. 

After half a minute of silence, Kit knocked his knee against the Beast’s. “So? What happened?”

He exhaled sharply through his nose. “My coming-out ball was approaching that autumn. I told her, in private, that I was going to declare my alignment as bisexual. She didn’t . . . She said . . .” He huffed a strong breath out through his nose, his ears now standing fully at attention. Out of the corner of his eye, Kit could see the Beast’s tail whipping back and forth through the grass. A tendon jumped against Kit’s fingers as the Beast clenched his fist. 

“It was her opinion,” the Beast continued, his voice trying so clearly to remain calm and measured, “that this was merely the latest in a long line of attention-seeking behaviours designed to annoy my father and humiliate her. Worse, even – because I was going to do this publicly, when any decent heir would do as Alexandre III and at least wait until marriage and children had been taken care of – which, in retrospect . . . I can see would have been of concern to her. Especially as our courtship had been very public.” 

“But not at the time,” Kit said carefully, both question and assumption rolled into one. 

“Of course not,” he replied, dry and resigned. “I was young, and idiotic. And spiteful. So even though we put on a show of mending our grievances, I was still furious at her, the day of the ball.” He glanced at Kit, his head slowly but surely sinking under its own weight again. A guilty air hung over his face. “I – God knows I’m not proud of what I did, Kit. I’ve had time enough to relive it over and over in all the years since that day.”

Kit wordlessly pressed his hand over the Beast’s paw. It seemed to fortify him; his great, rounded shoulders straightened out a touch, even as he shifted those piercing blue eyes away from Kit’s again. 

“In essence, I did a bait-and-switch. I arranged the order of events so everybody thought that I was about to publicly propose to her and announce a heterosexual alignment . . . and then instead declared myself bisexual.” 

Kit couldn’t stop himself from involuntarily sucking a breath in through his teeth, and the Beast winced. 

“For some reason, I hadn’t put much thought into what would happen afterwards. I had assumed Marianne would just . . . disappear quietly into the night, too ashamed to pick any sort of a fight.” The Beast shook his head ruefully. “Instead, she held her ground. Called me a selfish fool so blinded by my own over-inflated sense of importance I hadn’t even noticed that she no longer cared for me. And that I was such a miserable, acerbic, self-absorbed beast that she knew I was incapable of loving anybody but myself.” 

“. . . That’s . . .” Kit said slowly, after several seconds scrambling to find something to say in response. 

The Beast said nothing; there was only a smile tight as a grimace on his face. “That was the last time I saw Marianne.” He dropped both his gaze and his smile; his eyes appeared to be staring aimlessly into the middle distance, and Kit wondered if he was replaying the memory even now. “We had been – we did love each other, once. But by the time of the ball it had all dried up, and she had nothing but contempt for me. I often wondered if saying something – anything – to own up to the hurt I caused her, instead of just being paralysed by my own shame and insulted pride, could have changed that.” He sighed deeply. “That’s why I let Isabelle go.”

They sat together in the silence that followed. They were still closely entwined together –  knees knocking against each other, Kit’s hand laid over the Beast’s paw – when the Beast eventually stirred. 

“I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life,” he said quietly. “But if anything can be said in my defence, it’s that I rarely make the same one twice. And,” he continued, turning his head to Kit’s, “I suppose it proves your point about the powerful having incentive to remain heterosexually-aligned. There were plenty of queer noblemen and women there, but the instant it was a –” he mumbled something, too indistinct for Kit to make out “– it became an issue.”

Not for the first time, Kit was thankful that he was in a constitutional monarchy. “I suppose it does,” he said. “And – thank you for answering my question. Part of it, anyway.”

The Beast bobbed his head in acknowledgement. “If I could tell you the truth of it all . . . believe me, Kit, I would. I think you would understand. But as it stands, all I can do is ask you to trust me.”

Kit looked at him; at how close they were sitting together, his proximity to claws and fangs and the sheer animal bulk of the Beast. At all they had shared together over the past months – hopes, histories, fears and secrets. At what had been said, and carefully left unsaid. 

“I think you already know the answer to that question,” Kit said quietly. 

The Beast glanced at him. A surprised but pleased smile spread gently across his features. He laid his other paw on top of Kit’s hand, as his bright eyes softened amongst the fur. 

Kit realised three things near-simultaneously. First; the Beast trusted him, just as implicitly and wholeheartedly as he did. Second; there was a strong possibility, which Kit had only just recognised, that the Beast had feelings for him. And third; he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. 

Chapter Text

The house had always been hostile, but Elena found it became oppressively so in the days that followed Belle’s escape. Nobody spoke to her, unless it was to be berated and mocked by her stepfamily. The cook, who had always been – if not kind, at least neutral towards her, was now firmly displeased. Elena supposed she couldn’t really be too surprised; messing around with a cook’s kitchen was one of the first things she had learned not to do in service. The other hired servants similarly avoided her, whereas before Elena had been able to count on at least a smile or the odd conversation about what was happening in the village. She dreaded to think what, exactly, they’d been told by Lady Tremaine. 

Her punishment, as promised by Lady Tremaine to the Frenchman, was delivered in two parts. The first, a formal docking of her non-existent wages to cover the costs of the food she had given to Belle, was an expected annoyance. The second was as bizarre as it was demoralising. When Elena returned to sweep up the broken teacup, she was ordered to remove her shoes and give them to Lady Tremaine; she had done so with trepidation, wondering what further indignities she had planned. It was only the next day, when there was no sign of them being returned, that Elena realised the scope of Lady Tremaine’s punishment; she was to perform all her duties – in the house and outside, on the estate and off – completely barefoot. 

She hadn’t thought it possible to lose more of her non-existent dignity, but the loss of her shoes proved Elena wrong. In the gardens and stableyard she was slow and clumsy, every footstep judged in case she was about to step on a misplaced nail or loose stone. She’d never thought of her feet as especially sensitive; then again, she’d never had to navigate gravel paths barefoot. Inside the house, there was less danger of damaging her feet — but her stepsisters, who seemed to find the whole matter hilarious, were never too far away to spare a screeching laugh or cutting barb. Her soles soon became blackened with dirt from outside and ashes from the fires, and no matter how hard she scrubbed, Elena couldn’t shift the colour.

The one saving grace — the silver lining, making everything bearable — was Belle and the Prince’s plan. Elena had read Belle’s letter until she knew it by heart, both words and handwriting. She should have burned it, but sentimentality kept it folded into a tiny stub, tucked between her stays and her chemise where she knew Belle’s crabbed letters would be safe. She had never trusted her stepmother, but now Elena felt the necessity of secrecy even more. For the same reason, she didn’t dare leave anything in writing acknowledging the letter. Elena hoped that removing it from the clearing and placing the rock on a different tree would send the desired message to the prince and Belle. She didn’t like the idea of waiting for so long, but was hard-pressed to come up with another opportunity for running away that would have both her stepmother and stepsisters out of the house. Anybody who was anyone would be at the prince’s ball — even the other servants would have the night off. She would be left completely alone. It was almost too perfect. Elena couldn’t bring herself to hope that it would work as seamlessly as Belle promised. Instead, she put her head down, intent on surviving the situation at hand. 

Talk of the ball seemed to be everywhere she turned these days. She had expected as much at home; Susanna was understandably ecstatic at the thought of declaring her alignment, and the sounds of her stepsisters twittering on in excitement echoed upstairs and down for hours at a time. In the servants quarters, the cook and hired servants reminisced about their own declarations, or looked forwards to the evening off — never engaging Elena in conversation, and coldly rebuffing any attempts on her part to do so. The mood was similarly abuzz in the village. Every stall at the market was full of people speculating – about what they would wear, what the prince would wear, the expected alignments of their undeclared relatives – but most intensely, of course, about what Prince Christoph would finally come out as. 

Having now met the man in question, Elena couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable participating in the speculation. When forced into town by Lady Tremaine – which seemed perversely to be a more frequent occurrence than ever before – Elena simply tried to draw as little attention to herself and her bare feet as possible. In fact, the only person in the village who didn’t seem to care about the prince’s alignment, much less Elena’s feet, was the now thoroughly overworked dressmaker. 

“Your mistress is lucky that she got here first,” she grumbled to Elena over her treadle sewing machine, roughly a week after she had received Belle’s note. “And that she’s by far my best customer. If I get one more woman entering this shop expecting a gown with six week’s notice –” She paused to remove some pins from the fabric, stabbing them into the pincushion with enough force to drive a nail into the wall. Elena was suddenly very glad that she was on the opposite side of the shop counter. 

“I have another list of requests from Miss Susanna,” she said apologetically. “I have tried to tell her how busy you are –”

“Good, because it’s far too late for any further structural alterations,” the dressmaker snapped. “I’ll visit the estate at the start of September to make sure it fits her like a glove, but no more! There’s enough flounces and ruffles on it as is; your little miss will be as primped and pinked as a China tea rose.”

“I’ll pass the message on,” Elena said. “I’m sure she’s just – excited. It’s her year to declare her alignment.” She was unsure why she was being so charitable to her stepsister, when the same courtesy had never been extended back to her. You don’t deserve to be treated this way, Belle’s voice echoed in her head. 

The dressmaker’s sour expression softened a little at her words. “Well, no wonder she’s in such a tizzy about it. Doesn’t make either of our lives any easier, of course – but then, coming out is such a special time in a young person’s life. I remember mine – I was so nervous, I almost turned tail and ran straight out the door again! Let me see . . . that must have been the year the King married. Yes, I remember now – and the Queen was such a picture, with her golden hair and her blue dress!”

Elena politely backed her way out of the shop again as the dressmaker restarted the treadle, half-monologuing about dresses and balls from years gone by. The familiar bitter pill that she had never been allowed to attend a coming-out ball was settling in her stomach like a stone, the way it did every year. She thought longingly of the bolt of blue satin, tucked safely away in her wardrobe, that she had bought all those months ago. She was under no illusions that her stepmother would allow her to attend the ball now – certainly not when she was still holding Elena’s shoes hostage. Still, if she left the fabric without using it for a dress, it would be nothing but a waste of money. Over the last ten years, Elena had acquired a low-lying horror of becoming as much of a spendthrift as Lady Tremaine and her daughters. 

Later that evening, when the August night had finally turned dark, she laid out the fabric on her bed. Buried in her wardrobe was a book of dress patterns her mother had bought the year she died. Elena had flicked through them many times over the years. Although the fashions had moved on rapidly since then, she still found the lines and silhouettes on the pages timelessly elegant. She turned the pages carefully now, looking for  something slightly more formal than the day dress pattern she used for her work clothes. Every option she saw was far too elaborate; ruches at the bodice, ruffles at the hem, sleeves too impractical for the few social events Elena had been allowed to attend over the years. She let the book fall closed with a sigh. 

What am I doing? she wondered. This is not a book of patterns for a housemaid. 

Besides, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered, you’ll need to pack light when Belle comes to rescue you.  

The thought made her still. Elena had grown accustomed to the turn her life had taken over the years. She’d had no other option. Belle’s presence in the house had been a glittering moment of selfishness, the first she’d had in years. When she left, it had simply adhered to the same pattern as every other good thing in her life since her father’s death; a momentary presence, defined by the manner in which Lady Tremaine had withdrawn it. Elena was used to such temporary joys. She hung her happiness upon them and mourned the loss when it came, but ultimately accepted it as the way things were. The way they had always been. 

Except, of course, that was not the way things had always been. Elena rolled the blue satin up again loosely, placing it back in the wardrobe with the pattern book on top. She laid down on her stomach, prying up the loose floorboard underneath the bed and gathering her treasures onto her lap like the magpies that so pestered the estate. The peacock-feather quills and block of India ink; a Christmas gift from her mother, never used. The journal she had kept as a child, half diary and half landing-place for the stories she loved to make up about the animals on the estate. The jewellery with her parents’ hair. And the golden music box she had received for her seventh birthday, just as beautiful as when she first saw it. 

For so long, the thought of remaining in the house that had seen her parents’ marriage and her birth had been a comfort to Elena. Even on the coldest of nights, and after the worst humiliations Lady Tremaine could rain down upon her, she could take solace in the fact that these walls had also seen all of the love she’d ever received. That her remaining here was a testament to her mother’s life, and her usefulness to (and sometimes defiance of) her stepmother a reflection of the values she had taught Elena. She had been living with those false assurances for too long. 

She brushed one fingertip over the glass protecting her mother’s ash-blonde plait. You wouldn’t have wanted this for me, she thought. Why did I ever think you would put a higher price on obedience and fealty, than happiness and love? 

She didn’t know. One thing was certain, though. Whenever it came, she would seize the next opportunity to leave the Tremaine estate with both hands, and never look back.

Much to her surprise, Belle found herself almost in tears at the sight of Captain Harker’s guest bedroom. Although the Beast’s enchantress had both healed and rejuvenated her, it had still been almost two months since she last slept in a bed. That night she had spent in the attic with Elena, they had both been more concerned with more pressing matters than sleep, and the panicked flight she had taken the following morning hadn’t allowed much time for her to enjoy sleeping on a real mattress after weeks on a straw pallet. 

The Captain had excused herself almost immediately, perhaps sensing the emotions threatening to overflow Belle’s cool exterior. She couldn’t help feeling grateful towards her for helping preserve that small shred of dignity. Belle had promptly removed her boots and travelling cloak and clambered onto the bed. She had had vague intentions of sitting and reading, or at least taking in her surroundings before going back out to speak to Captain Harker as a guest should. Instead, she found herself lurching awake with a disoriented start, the sounds of somebody in the kitchen having woken her from her unintended slumber. 

Belle rose from the bed with all the grace of a new foal. Her hip bumped the end table, and she winced; it was almost the same spot that had been bruised when she hid underneath Elena’s bed. Even though the bruise was no longer there, she was surprised that the instinct to flinch remained. She yawned, blinking heavily as she took in her cheery surroundings. It was perhaps twice the size of her room at home, with a large armoire and a sturdy-looking bureau in opposite corners. Books lined almost every available surface, a dormer window behind the bureau offering some light through thick rose-coloured curtains. Although every inch was clean, an air of disuse hung over the space. 

A quick investigation revealed a set of brushes and a mirror in the end table’s drawer, and Belle made herself presentable. She had no idea how long she had slept for, and hoped that Captain Harker didn’t think her rude. As soon as she opened the door, a wave of scent cascaded through; whoever was next door had been roasting meat. Her stomach clamoured for food again, and Belle wondered how long it had been since her meal at the Beast’s castle. 

“There you are, Mademoiselle,” the Captain said with a warm smile, one hand raised as if she was about to knock on her door. She folded it behind her back, as if it was more comfortable there than at her side. “You’re just in time for lunch.” 

Belle grasped frantically for a smile. “Lunch! I didn’t realise I had slept for so long – my apologies, Captain –”

“Not at all,” she replied, waving away Belle’s politenesses with an easy gesture. “Please, come through and join me. Kirsten set the table assuming you would be awake, but I don’t grudge you the sleep.”

Belle chuckled half-heartedly, following Captain Harker’s easy strides. She barely remembered what the house had looked like last night, and was surprised to find it rather small – at least, compared to what she had imagined a captain of the guard might call home. It was still easily twice the size of her and Maurice’s farmhouse. The warm tones of her bedroom continued throughout the rest of the interior, although the rather floral pinks were replaced with yellow and peach tones. 

The dining room was dominated by a large teak table, a caramel vein running up the centre almost like a bolt of lightning. It was laid with much less formal cutlery than the Beast’s table – Belle thanked her stars – and various dishes of golden-toned vegetables complemented the roast joint a servant laid down just as she and the Captain entered. 

“Thank you, Kirsten,” the Captain said. “We’ll ring when we’ve finished.”

“Yes, Sir,” the servant said, bobbing a curtsey to both women before closing the door behind her with a soft click. At another easy gesture from the Captain, Belle took a seat opposite her. For several minutes, neither spoke as they both partook of the meal. 

“Thank you once again for taking me in,” Belle said eventually. “I know it was rather sprung upon you, but I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“So you both keep saying,” the Captain said. In response to Belle’s confused frown, she said, “Kit came by asking after you this morning, but left after we realised you were still asleep.”

Belle chewed her food slowly, unclear on the wisest thing to say. 

“I have my men on the lookout for your father,” she added. “It’s early days, but signs look promising that he may actually be within our borders.”

“Really?” Belle asked, all instincts to keep her emotions to herself forgotten. “Oh, Captain Harker – you’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear that.”

She lifted her fingers, deflecting Belle’s gratitude with an easy grace. “I won’t make a promise I can’t keep, mademoiselle. If he has returned to your village after all, there’s nothing I can do outwith the German border.” She paused to take a sip of wine. “And speaking of borders and promises,” she said, her tone remaining even and firm, “I need to talk with you about the circumstances under which you met the Prince.”

Belle frowned. “Kit explained it all last night. This . . . Enchantress, whoever she is – after she saved my life, she essentially pointed me in the right direction. Kit and I put the rest of it together ourselves.”

“I wasn’t referring to him,” she said. “I meant the other prince – the Beast who held you captive.”

A shiver ran down her spine. Kit’s promise from yesterday flashed through her mind, and Belle found herself searching for something to say while maintaining his trust.  “I’m  . . . not sure what you mean, Captain?” 

“Would you read this, and let me know what it says?” The Captain produced a small, yet carefully ornamented book; a glance at the cover told Belle it was a biography following the lineage of a minor French dynasty over the past sixty years. She was unable to stop her eyes narrowing at the other woman before lowering them to read the words on the page. The language was very dry; a long list of dates and places of birth, marriages and the dowries bestowed upon the incumbent brides, and the numerous children begotten in each generation. Belle skimmed the page for as long as she could stand before her curiosity got the better of her. 

“It’s just a biography,” she said eventually. “Well-researched, certainly, with a meticulous eye for detail, but nothing otherwise remarkable in itself.” Despite this, she was confused to see Captain Harker’s face light up. 

“You’re quite right,” the Captain said. “Which is why I find it so interesting that when Kit read this, while trying to research the Beast, he complained that the historical record was unusually — and almost suspiciously — lacking.” 

Belle straightened up. Her skin was almost prickling, with how electric she suddenly felt. “This must be the enchantress’ doing,” she said breathlessly. 

“My thoughts precisely, mademoiselle. And for some reason, Kit can’t see it — I couldn’t say why. After he mentioned it, I went through and reread all the books he had studied myself; some I could read easily, and others left me at the same stumbling blocks as him. That one” — she gestured at the biography — “was one of the ones I couldn’t parse.”

“But I can,” Belle said slowly. She couldn’t stop the smile spreading over her face. “If you’re agreeable, Captain, I have an experiment I’d like to propose.”

Captain Harker nodded, a twin smile lighting up her face in return. “I knew there was a reason Kit liked you so much.”

Things came to a head for Elena on the day Susanna received her final dress fitting. 

Her stepmother had already been displeased once that morning by news that the Duke of their province had been called away to attend the flooded bridge in the north west. Unfortunately, it was not one of the moods that let Elena escape her ire; she had instead been rung for constantly all morning. In Elena’s opinion, the most irritating aspect of her life was that little perversity in Lady Tremaine’s nature. It required her to admonish Elena constantly while also keeping her nearby, allowing neither of them to get any peace. 

As such, a knock at the door came as a welcome reprieve. Seeing the dressmaker herself made it even sweeter; Susanna and Anastasia would be busy, and doubtless call their mother in to observe the final fittings, meaning Elena would be free. 

“I’m so glad you're here,” she said, too honestly. 

“And I’m glad to be almost done with this business,” the dressmaker replied. “You would not believe the backlog I’m dealing with.”

Elena showed her to the designated fitting room (normally the music room), letting the monologue of woes wash over her like it was a chattering bird. Her feet ached badly. There was a new sharp, stabbing pain in her right toe. She wondered if she had stepped on a splinter on the uncarpeted part of the floor. She was snapped back to reality when the dressmaker said, “Help me set up, won’t you? My Saturday girl isn’t with me today, and it’d save me some time.”

With a smile and a nod, Elena helped to unpack her dress forms and display the two dresses on them. With some effort, they also managed to move one of the smaller full-length mirrors from the hall into the fitting room. While the dressmaker faffed about with her sewing box and various accoutrements, Elena moved the couches against the wall and rolled up the rugs, until the room looked the way it did the last time the dressmaker had arrived, just after Easter. She could feel the sweat building under her clothes by the time they were finished, and knew her face would be flushed from the exertion. Sighing, she straightened up and brushed at her forehead. A twin movement in the corner of her eye snagged her attention; her reflection, caught in the mirror they had moved. She was stood between two perfect constructions of rose-pink and forest-green silk, the proverbial sow’s ear. Her work dress was layered with soot and grease stains, her unwashed hair trying desperately to escape the scarf she had tied around it. Her feet were filthy. There was even a small spatter of mud on her ankle bone. 

Elena turned away sharply, now flushed for a different reason. The dressmaker lifted her head up, her eyes also catching on the mirror. “Oh, now isn’t that lovely,” she said. “This room looks a treat. I’m ready for your mistresses; go ahead and show them right in.”

Elena nodded, leaving the room without another word. Did she even see that I’ve got no shoes on? she thought to herself dizzily. Dreamlike, she wandered downstairs to the parlour where she had left her stepfamily. “Madam,” she said without even choking on the honorific, “the dressmaker is here for final fittings.”

The three of them jostled past her on their way upstairs; Elena was brought back to herself sharply by one of them treading on her toes. She gasped in pain, raising her knee up in a pantomime of a child stamping its foot as if that would help it ease. Floating down from up above came the sound of her stepsisters gushing over the dresses. 

“My thanks again for giving us a house call,” Lady Tremaine’s voice said warmly. 

“Not at all, my lady,” said the dressmaker, in a much more courteous tone than Elena usually heard. “For my best customer, it is the least I could do.”

Lady Tremaine’s cold laugh in response, at odds with how otherwise congenial she could make her voice sound. 

Elena’s foot settled back on the ground. She remembered how Anastasia’s fitting had gone two years before; any moment now, they would ring for tea and cakes to tide them over. 

Instead, she heard Lady Tremaine say, “Wait a moment.”

Instantly, the constant low-lying dread in Elena’s stomach transformed into a quickening of the heart and a prickle of fear at the small of her back. She knew that tone of voice intimately; without fail, it spelled trouble for her. 

“Where is the third dress?”

“Pardon, madame?”

“I ordered three dresses à la mode Parisienne; one for each of my daughters, and one for me. I see only two here.”

In an instant, Elena realised the arrogance of the mistake she had made back in June. Of course the third dress had never been meant for her. Expecting a kindness of that much grandeur from Lady Tremaine had been a monumental lapse of judgement, and she would pay for it with interest now. Habit kept her feet frozen to the ground. She wondered absently if finding the bolt of silk in her wardrobe would finally be the catalyst for the beating Lady Tremaine had been threatening to give for the last year. 

At that thought, Elena suddenly came to her senses. If she stayed, she would be punished, and severely. But there was another option; one that had always been there, but only now felt she had the courage to take. 

As her stepmother’s argument with the dressmaker rose in volume, Elena silently scrambled for the front door. She slipped the latch, closing the grand front door to the house as quietly as she could, and ran for the stables. Major lifted his great, grey head from the manger with a slow blink as she burst through the archway. He had no tack on, safely tucked away inside his stall. Fortunately for Elena, she had no issue riding bareback. 

“Cinderella!” 

The usual call from inside the house, projected outside by an open window. Elena mounted the horse, pressing low against his neck as she urged him forwards with a dig of her heels. 

“Cinderella, come here at once!”

With any luck, they wouldn’t realise she was gone at first. Lady Tremaine knew that she knew her routine; they probably thought she was downstairs in the kitchen, preparing tea. Elena squeezed her thighs against the horse’s ribcage, spurring a faster walk. Once they were in the forest, there would be plenty of places to hide. They just had to get there first. 

“You greedy, lecherous little traitor, what have you done? Get up here and face me this instant!”

Elena spurred Major again, her fingers white with how tightly she was gripping his mane. The grass thankfully muffled his hooves as he trotted towards the forest, and they were beneath the trees in a matter of moments. 

“Cinderella! Cinderella!”

Elena’s heart hammered against her breastbone as she steered Major through the clearing where she had first met Belle. Only yesterday, she'd finally gotten the courage to leave a note expressing her acknowledgement of the plan, and a shyly-worded sentence regarding her ongoing affection for her. There was no time to stop and look for a reply, not when she could still hear her stepmother calling her name. She urged the horse onwards; where, exactly, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she could no longer stay in the place she’d called a home her entire life. 

Without so much as a backwards glance, she rode off deeper into the woods. Her heart did not stop racing until she could no longer hear Lady Tremaine’s voice echoing anywhere but in her own head. 

Chapter Text

Belle, to her great shame, almost burst into tears when she first saw the library in Kit’s castle. 

“I’ve never seen so many books in my entire life!” she gasped. 

“Oh it’s — a modest collection, really,” Kit said. He half-laughed, ruefully. “Neither of my parents were particularly avid readers, so this is really all the work of my great-uncle. He always badgered my mother for new imports from foreign printing presses; half for the fiction, and half to see what they thought of us.” 

“It’s wonderful,” Belle said fervently. “The bookshop in Villeneuve is so small — when we first moved there, it used to operate out of the church vestry.” She glanced back at him, almost embarrassed at how overcome she was at the sight of the books. “May I?”

“Of course,” he said with a welcoming gesture. “You’re more than welcome to borrow anything you like.”

“Thank you,” she said fervently. As she took a shaking step towards the shelves, she tried valiantly to recall the list of books Captain Harker had signposted to her underneath the whirring giddiness of her excitement. 

“I have another meeting I must attend,” Kit said, sounding as if he’d rather tread over a basket of overturned wing nuts. “If you need anything, the servants know to attend you. Either Captain Harker or myself will be back soon.”

“Thank you, Kit,” she said again, turning back to him. “This is . . . very generous of you.”

“It was the least I could do,” he said. “Let me know what you pick out — I could do with some new recommendations.” With another smile, he backed away and disappeared down out the door. 

Belle spun around on the spot, taking in the hundreds — no, it must be thousands — of books in front of her. “I hope your great-uncle used a coherent filing system,” she said to herself. “Otherwise this is going to take quite some time.”

To her relief, Belle found the organisational system used in the library to be both intuitive and comprehensive. With minimal head-scratching, she found the non-fiction books the Captain had indicated, as well as the handful of fairy stories included on her short list. While perusing the fiction, she couldn’t quite stop herself from picking up a few old favourites, transformed into new treasures by their beautiful, jewel-toned bindings; Romeo and Juliet, Peau d'Âne, and Notre Dame de Paris. With a sigh, Belle hefted her stack of books on the nearest table; the resulting impact could have shaken mountains. 

“Well,” Belle said to herself. “I suppose I’d better get started.”

It took three days of on-and-off study before Belle had completely finished with the books Kit had read. She made careful notes in a flimsy paper-bound notebook that the Captain picked up for her from a stockroom, being sure not to smudge the books with any stray ink left on the side of her hand. Belle suspected that she could have finished the work even sooner, had it not been for Kit and the Captain dragging her away from the library at several intervals for meals, or even just to socialise. She was a little surprised at how easily she seemed to slot into their dynamic. It might just have been due to their impeccable manners, but she never felt like a burden, or a dull oddity making references they didn’t understand. Even when one or both of them didn’t recognise the wordplay behind a pun or joke she made, they simply smiled and asked her to explain. Nobody, besides her father and Elena, had ever done that for her before. 

The project in and of itself also helped to keep her sane. Despite living in a farmhouse, Maurice had stayed far away from any sort of animal husbandry. Belle had been the one tending their kitchen garden and raising the chickens on her own initiative. Simultaneously, she had taught herself rudimentary English and German, read everything she could get her hands on, and valiantly struggled with household sewing. She was not accustomed to idleness. Once or twice, Belle wondered if the Captain wouldn’t have tried to find some task for her regardless. The fact that the research would hopefully further uncover the mystery of the connection between the four of them was simply serendipitous. 

That evening, over two cups of sweet, steaming tea, she presented Captain Harker with her findings. She had spent the afternoon transferring her notes from the flimsy notebook to her personal one, arranging the relevant information under subdivided tables and headings. She was quietly proud of the work she’d done – which was why she was so surprised when the Captain, after flicking through the pages, casually dropped the notebook on the dining table. 

“What do you make of it, then?” Belle asked cautiously. 

After a long pause, the Captain said, “Make of what?”

“My findings; the family trees and genealogies, transfers of ownership of that castle. I even found references to when that family intersected with the King’s immediate predecessor.”

Captain Harker frowned. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I don’t think I heard you right.”

Belle couldn’t stop a small smile from growing over her face. “I know – I couldn’t believe it either. Especially since there was no mention of it in Kit’s notes. Look, I have my notes about it here.” She leaned over the table, flicking through her notebook until she found the relevant pages, and set it down in front of the Captain again. “There – you see?”

The Captain looked down at the notebook again, before looking at Belle with a guarded apprehension in her dark eyes. “Belle – there’s nothing written down here.”

Belle’s eyes darted down to the notebook, even though she already knew what she would find; two pages, both filled end to end with her own handwriting. She could feel the smile fading away, as her spine tingled with something that felt uncomfortably like fear. “But – but there is,” she said in a small voice. “You really can’t see it?”

Captain Harker shook her head slowly. 

“Well,” she said, sliding the notebook away from the Captain and back to herself, “that certainly explains why Kit was having trouble.”

“Indeed.” 

They sat for a long moment in contemplative silence. Belle took a slow sip of her tea. She felt slightly fortified, even if it was far sweeter than anything she had the opportunity to drink at home. 

“I eventually hit a stumbling block, too,” she said. “Maybe thirty years before the present day, the trail just . . . stops.” She took another drink. “It’s just the same as what Kit described; the trail goes cold, with no records to show so much as a birth or death.”

“Well,” the Captain said, brushing her braids back over one shoulder, “thirty years is progress on seventy. Whatever information this spell doesn’t want us to uncover, it seems you have more access to it than we do.”

Belle hummed noncommittally. She wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with Captain Harker’s assessment of the situation. On the other hand, she had no evidence to support her guess; just a hunch, much like the ones that told her what tools Maurice wanted handed to him. Still, she couldn’t quite ignore the feeling that Captain Harker had it backwards. Whatever the reason she could read and interpret the books in Kit’s library, she suspected it was precisely because she was more removed from royal intrigue than the future King of Germany.

The Duke’s words weighed heavily on Kit’s mind in his absence. He had not seen his father since being told he was lying about the severity of his current condition. Following  Belle’s arrival to the castle, he had seen his father only in passing; sitting in the back row of parliamentary debates, or dropping into yet another meeting with the Master of Ceremonies to protest half-jokingly that a coming-out ball did not necessitate reinventing the wheel. The doors to his chambers were shut to Kit, under the excuse of needing to rest; he was rarely at the breakfast table. If he didn’t know better, he would have said that his father was avoiding him. 

Two weeks after his conversation with the Duke – after confiding in the Beast, meeting Belle, and everything that had come afterwards – Kit was met by a servant immediately outside the library, where Belle was going at her research with renewed vigour. 

“Your father wishes your presence in his chamber, Your Highness,” the footman said. “He said he wished to discuss a matter of pressing importance.”

“Of course,” Kit said, even as a terrible fear struck him, right underneath his breastbone. “I’ll be there shortly.” 

The footman bowed sharply and left. Kit took one rattling breath, before his rational mind managed to kick in. His father might be seriously ill, but he wasn’t on death’s door quite yet – and if he was, the footman would have been a lot less casual in his delivery of the summons. He hurried towards his father’s chambers. A soft rap at the door produced another footman, who was obviously expecting him. Kit walked into the room with measured steps, as the footman quietly showed himself out. The door clicked shut behind him softly. 

“Father? You wished to see me?” 

It was unclear where he was. Of an evening, his father was usually found in one of the easy chairs by the fire, or else sitting at his bureau when in his private chambers. There was no sign of him anywhere in the parlour, and it was uncharacteristically dark. Even the fire in the grate was burning low, embers glowing a deep red. 

“Kit.” 

The voice came from his adjoining bedroom, the door left half-open. A spill of flickering candlelight caught Kit’s eye; presumably, his father lifting the bedside lamp. 

“Coming, Father,” he replied. He picked his way across the room, managing not to knock his shins against any of the furniture before walking through the bedroom door. 

His father sat on the left-hand side of the bed. Even though his mother had been gone for years, Kit had never seen him on her side. He couldn’t say what it was — perhaps the dim candlelight, making his pale face look waxy and dun, the shadows under his eyes deeper and darker. The pyjamas which had once fitted him neatly, now drooping over his shoulders and collarbone. The fact that he looked so very small in that big, lonely bed. All Kit knew was that within a split second, he saw his father as he was — a dying man. 

His father met his eyes. Kit could tell the exact moment he realised that Kit knew the full extent of the situation. 

His face crumpled. “Kit,” he said quietly. “My boy. I tried to keep it from you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Kit said through a tight throat. “I had a right to know.”

His father nodded miserably. “I ask your forgiveness. I didn’t want to burden you.”

Kit sniffed loudly. “You are not a burden. You’re my father. I knew — I knew it was bad, but I think … I didn’t want to know how bad, until the Duke told me himself.”

His father sighed. “Of course the Duke told you.”

“It hurt him to do it,” Kit said, somewhat perversely defending the man. “Almost as much as it hurt me to listen to it — to see how blind I had become, when I could have guessed the same if only I’d opened my eyes.”

His father smiled tightly, his eyes suspiciously bright in the lamplight. “I cannot blame you, Kit. In this, you’re much like I was, when I first heard about your mother.”

At this, Kit could no longer deny the fact that he was crying. 

“Come here,” his father said through sniffs of his own. “Sit with me. I know you’re a man now, but let me hold my boy again.”

Kit crossed the room in a moment, curling beneath his father’s arm just as he had when he was a child. He cried bitterly into his father’s side, until the fabric of his pyjamas was faintly translucent with his tears. He hadn’t cried like this in years — not since his mother had died. All the while, his father stroked his shoulder with the tips of his fingers. Only the rapid hitching of his chest betrayed that he, too, was in tears. 

Eventually, the pain was replaced by a calm so complete it was almost numbing. Kit was unsure how much time had passed; the curtains had been drawn when he first entered the room, and the candle was outside his field of vision. There was one further thing he knew he had to say to his father; one final burden deep in his core. Three months hadn’t changed that, even if everything else had. 

“I still don’t know my alignment,” he confessed in a small voice. 

After a long moment, his father’s voice rumbled softly, “You will.”

Kit nodded silently. The confidence in his father’s voice was almost enough to make him believe it. 

“A shame that the pretty young woman in our library hasn’t helped to clarify the situation for you in one direction or the other, though,” his father teased. 

Kit couldn’t help the shocked laugh that burst from his chest. “Father! How did you know that she –”

“I’m not so infirm and feeble that I don’t know what goes on in my own castle, you know,” he said, also laughing. He settled down a moment later, continuing, “I’m only joking, Kit. I know you would have told me if you had met somebody that important to you.”

For some reason, warm blue eyes and a smile framed by fangs flashed across his mind. Kit sat up, perturbed. 

“. . . Have you met somebody?” his father asked, brows drawing together in curiosity. 

“I . . . it’s not like that,” Kit said cautiously. “Well – I mean – it’s difficult to explain, right now –”

“Then don’t,” his father said. “I know how long a process this has been for you. Don’t try and rush into explanations just for my sake. Sit with it, for now. Let it confuse.”

Kit felt a smile dart over his face at the family in-joke. His mother had often tripped over her words in private without speeches to recite from; more than once she asked to have the tea leaves left confusing in the pot. 

“And you know,” his father said slowly. “It would be unorthodox. But I am led to believe that among the common folk, it is not unheard of for a person to think they know their alignment at one point in time, and then change it later on.”

Kit smiled, although it was tight around the eyes. At this point, he had spent years trying to find the right words for himself. He knew his father was only trying to help, especially now that there was no more time to be bought. Whatever he declared his alignment as, it would have a profound influence over potential marriages or treaties for the kingdom. He wanted — badly — to get it right. And yet the Duke’s suggestion to identify as bisexual, and not have any potential alliances ruled out, was tempting in its simplicity. It was an easy identity to understand. Politically expedient. And it would stop all the incessant questions about what was arguably the least interesting aspect of Kit’s personal qualities. 

“I’ll consider it,” he said reluctantly.

The conversation with his father continued to weigh on Kit’s mind. Captain Harker could plainly see that he was distracted; so, to a certain extent, could Belle in the few encounters they shared in the days afterwards. Their twin dark eyes, both filled with concern, seemed to shadow him from one end of the palace to the other. To his relief, the Captain knew him too well, and Belle too little, to seek him out and directly ask him what was wrong. Instead, he spent more time fencing with the Captain, finding solace in the wordless exertion, until the Master of Ceremonies hesitantly asked that he refrain from any activities that would potentially injure him until after the ball. His uncharacteristic tact was further proof that word had spread. Kit was merely thankful that nobody was asking him to make a formal statement about his father’s health, or the future of the nation. 

When the day came for his regularly scheduled visit to the monastery, Kit felt it as the desperate gasp following a long-held breath. For at least a few short hours, there would be no prying questions about his father; no courtiers vying for a hint about his alignment – in fact, nobody caring about his alignment at all. As he and Jasper rode off from the castle, he noticed a chill in the breeze. Autumn was being heralded, long before any changes came to the leaves. He wondered absently how long he could keep wearing his green jacket out to meet the Beast, before his winter cloak would become absolutely necessary. Perhaps, he thought, by the time it’s winter both within and outwith the area marked by his curse, we’ll be talking inside the castle. He tried not to linger on the thought that by the time winter began, he would likely be King, and have no opportunity to see the Beast at all. 

Passing by the clearing where he had first met Elena, Kit cast his eye over the branches for a note. There had been no word from her since Belle had left her letter. He could only hope that Elena had found the letter herself, rather than it being blown away unopened by the wind before she had the chance to read it, and know there were plans for her rescue. He was almost ready to continue onwards to the Beast, when a flash of white on a yew tree caught his attention. He steered Jasper into the clearing to investigate further – and sure enough, right where the bough split into branches, there was a scrap of paper folded into itself and stashed underneath a smooth rock. Kit plucked it up; he would have read it there and then, had it not been addressed to Belle alone in Elena’s neat handwriting. He tucked it into an inner pocket of his jacket, relieved that at least one thing was going right. 

In slightly higher spirits, he arrived at the monastery, looping Jasper’s reins around a tree branch before leaving him to rest and nibble at the grass to his heart’s content. He rounded the corner eagerly to see the Beast already waiting for him. He was leaning against one of the half-walls, his head dipped back in the golden warmth of the sun. The brightness caused Kit’s eyes to screw up, and he stubbornly blinked through the discomfort rather than raise his hand as a shield. To his surprise, his feet stopped themselves on the last verge of grass before the paved walkway. With his head tipped back, the Beast’s horns were less visible; his breeches and banyan covered most of his fur, hands and legs disappearing into the shadows beneath the half-wall. All his edges became soft and hazy behind the tight-locked gaze of Kit’s eyelashes. For a moment, Kit could almost see the man the Beast had been – still was – enjoying the heat of the late summer sun. 

He walked up to the Beast slowly, not wanting to disturb him. His boots thudded softly over the paved stones, before padding gently over the grass. Only when Kit was almost beside the Beast did he slowly bring his head back down and blink open his eyes. 

“I hope you’re stealthier when you hunt,” he rumbled. “Otherwise the forest will be overrun with deer and foxes within a matter of months.”

With a sigh, Kit flopped down onto the grass. “You looked peaceful. I was trying to be quiet.”

“Appreciated, but unnecessary.” The Beast glanced at him side-on. “You, on the other hand, look . . . disquieted.”

Kit snorted derisively. “You could say that.”

The Beast raised an eyebrow. “I would offer to help, but the only thing I can truly offer you is an ear for your troubles.”

“Troubles,” Kit muttered. “They’re trifles. There are people with – with real problems, true hardship in their lives. And yet, for some reason, all anybody in the palace can talk about is my bloody alignment! The topic’s practically inescapable.”

“You still don’t have an answer?” The Beast’s eyes narrowed, as the tip of his tail flicked. “You said the ball was in October — surely that doesn’t give you much time?”

Kit felt his nerves flicker back on edge. “I am aware of that, yes.” 

“Isn’t there anything else you can do to stall them? Or even think back on your own experiences again — try and . . . draw some kind of meaningful conclusion?”

Kit clenched his jaw. “I can’t stall them any longer. October may be pushing it as is.” 

The Beast let out a breath, fast and close through his nose. His brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth again — but before he could speak the words of disparagement and annoyance that were surely behind his harsh expression, Kit’s frustration finally burst out. 

“Don’t! Please, just — it’s honestly infuriating how it’s all anyone wants to talk about.”

The Beast’s ears flattened against his head. “I’m trying to help in the only meaningful way I can.” 

“When your advice is the same as everybody else’s, it’s not much of a help,” Kit snapped. “I’m sick to the back teeth of thinking over the few experiences I’ve had ad nauseam. Prolonged navel-gazing never helped anyone come to a personal epiphany before — it certainly won’t now.”

“Isn’t there anything that can take your mind off it?” the Beast asked in a carefully flat tone. “You said yourself it was merely a trifle.”

“A trifle that does have some consequence on the rest of my life!” Kit shuffled backwards on the grass, caring little for the stains it would leave on his clothes, to stare incredulously at the Beast. “My father’s advisor thinks I should just declare myself bisexually aligned and be done with it.”

The Beast went very still. Kit, almost vibrating with nervous energy, did not notice.

“It would be — unorthodox. And it’s — I know in myself it’s not . . . strictly speaking correct. But it makes sense, regarding any future marriages.” His voice trembled on the last word. Marriage had always been a rather abstract concept. Now, between his father and his coming-out ball, it had suddenly become a concrete reality. “At least this way, all my options remain open. And it – it may do some good, to be the first sitting monarch to declare a non-heterosexual alignment.”

“Kit,” the Beast said, his voice rumbling low and dangerous, “let me be sure I understand you. You’ve delayed declaring an alignment for four years because none of them have felt right – you still don’t know which one is right, even after all this time. And now, because of – what, political convenience? You’ve decided to glibly commit to an alignment so you don’t have to do the hard work of figuring it out for yourself?” He sneered as the last two sentences left his mouth; an ugly, boorish expression that raised his hackles.

“What exactly do you think I’ve been doing for those past four years if not trying to figure it out?” Kit swivelled around on the grass to fully face the Beast. “It’s – I don’t understand how everyone just – knows already! How some people can know from childhood, or earliest adolescence, even! And meanwhile here I am a man grown, never having so much as –” a last, desperate inch of self-preservation kicked in, and Kit swallowed the confession lying at the root of the whole matter “– as an inkling of what the right direction is!”

“How?” the Beast asked, voice scraping upwards with incredulity. “I just – I don’t understand how that can possibly be true. You must have had some sort of feeling one way or the other, growing up – if you know that bisexuality is wrong, then logically you must know one way or the other which of the remaining options is right? You can’t just – just hide behind an alignment as an excuse for not –”

“Don’t you understand? I’m going to be King!” Kit interrupted. “At some point, my responsibilities have to take priority over my personal feelings.”

“And it’s your responsibility to lie to the world?”

“Why do I owe it to ‘the world’ to tell them the truth?!” Kit scrambled to his feet, wanting to put some distance between himself and the Beast. “In very real terms, the only thing that they need to know is if they should push their daughters for a marriage alliance or their sons.”

The Beast stared at him in slack-jawed disbelief. “What are you talking about? When have you ever cared about – about dynasty-making marriages? Every time we’ve discussed alignments –”

“You are not the only person I discuss my alignment with!” Kit shouted. “I don’t even know why it matters so much to you – it’s not like it’s ever going to be relevant to you whether or not I’m attracted to men!”

The Beast recoiled. 

Kit froze, the words running round and around in his head like some twisted echo. He felt faintly sick, almost light-headed. “I . . .” he said lamely, in a much quieter, subdued voice.

The Beast stood up slowly, the loose folds of his banyan falling heavily around his hulking form as he stood to his full height. “Don’t,” he spat, with such venom that Kit felt himself go pale. 

“Wait – please – I shouldn’t have said that,” Kit said desperately. He reached for the Beast’s elbow, in an attempt to make him stay. 

The moment his fingers brushed against the fabric, the Beast flinched; his arm swung out violently, catching Kit in the chest and almost sending him sprawling with the force behind it. He stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet. 

“I said,” the Beast roared, fangs on full display, “don’t!” His booming voice echoed against the cold stone, a spooked flock of birds rising from out of the forest behind him. Kit shrank back even more, ears ringing, one arm up in a posture of self-defence. One of the ruined half walls dug into the small of his back. He was acutely aware that he didn’t have his sword with him – and then, a moment later, ashamed that the thought had crossed his mind. 

For a long moment, the two of them stood immobile in a terrible tableau. Before Kit could bring himself to try and speak again, the Beast turned away with a flick of his banyan. 

He wanted to plead with him to wait – to call his name and beg forgiveness for his stupid, impulsive, untimely words. But Kit realised, with another twist of stabbing guilt, that he had no name to call after the Beast. He had asked only once, and allowed himself to be distracted by tales of history, art, and his own nebulous attempts at self-relfection thereafter. So instead he stayed mute, staring helplessly at the ruined doorway through which the Beast had disappeared, faced with the grim realisation that their meetings in the monastery had come to an end, and it was all his fault.