Author's Note: This fic uses certain characters and elements from Serena Valentino's tie-in novel The Beast Within: A Tale of Beauty's Prince; overall it isn't a book that I particularly like and I certainly wouldn't want to wholeheartedly embrace it (the Beast considers murdering Belle at one point which just…no. I'm sorry, no) but there are a few things that I like well enough to play around with them in this story: the Odd Sisters, their complicated relationship with Circe the Enchantress, and Princess Tulip Morningstar will all be appearing sooner or later even if I take some liberties with the way I describe what happened compared to the way it is laid out in the book itself.

Prologue: A Bargain From the Past

The night was dark, and the wolves were howling.

King Francis V of Armorique urged his destrier on, ignoring the palpable nervousness of his mount as the horse quailed at the darkness of the moonless night, the sounds of the wild all around them. Though his own heart was faltering too, he tried to pay his fears as little heed as he paid to his horse as he rode down the dirt road towards the dark and empty crossroads.

King Francis was not a man much given to fear. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a lantern-jaw and a fine, muscular physique; he not only Armorique's king but one of its greatest knights, indeed one of the greatest knights in all of Christendom. At the tourney to celebrate the wedding of Prince Philip of Anjou to Princess Aurora of Aquitaine Francis had overthrown all challengers, and only been unhorsed in the final tilt by Prince Philip himself. He was not a man who feared.

But now, as he rode through the night unaccompanied by guards or escort, Francis felt more than a twinge of fear. It was a dark thing he did, with consequences he could not foresee. As the wolves howled in the woods on either side of the road, as his horse trembled with palpable nervousness, Francis felt the urge to turn away from this course, to turn from the crossroads before he reached the place and the three who waited for him there, to turn away from this.

But he did not turn away. He could not turn away. This was the only road that he could take, the only thing that he could do.

Very little would have compelled Francis to seek out the three sisters but for his queen, Mahaut, he would dare worse by far. He had been wed to her since he was seventeen years old and she was sixteen, betrothed to her since he was six and she was five; the match had been arranged for him by his father when Francis was a boy and she was a duchess whose own father had tragically passed away. But, though the match had been made to bring the crown of Armorique her lands and wealth, Francis had come to love his delicate queen, whose blue eyes shone and whose radiance drove away the shadows of the court he had inherited from his father.

Now she was nineteen, and with child, and gravely ill. The court physician had attended to her, and so had every doctor that Francis could summon to her side. None of them could help her. None of them could even tell him for certain what was wrong with her. They told him that there was nothing they could do; nothing he could do but watch helplessly as the queen he loved grew wasted away before his eyes and slipped daily further away from him, taking their child with her.

But they were wrong, the physicians and the doctors were wrong when they told him there was nothing he could do. If God and medicine alike had failed him then he could seek out older powers and see what they could do.

For Mahaut, he could not do otherwise.

Francis arrived at the crossroads. It was nothing to look at, remarkable only for the fact that there was nothing here: no inn to house the weary traveller, no incipient hamlet sprouted up at the connection between the roads, certainly no church, not even a shrine for pilgrims. There was just the X formed by the criss-crossing of two dirt roads, one heading north-south and the other east-west. The crossroads sat in a clearing, surrounded by woods on all sides, and in the woods the wolves were howling.

Francis shivered, and hoped the beasts found something else to hunt tonight.

He waited, his brown eyes scanning the darkness. He saw nothing. There was no one here but himself. He waited. The legends said that one did not need to call, to summon, to do anything to bring them here. Simply come to the crossroads, and they would appear. If they wished to do so.

He didn't know what he would do if they did not come. No other avenues remained to him.

He heard a sound, and for a moment he thought it was a scream. No, not a scream, he realised as he looked away from the crossroads and into the woods from whence the sound had come, a screech: the screeching of an owl in the night as it descended upon the hapless field mouse.

Francis cursed himself. It was just an owl. He was becoming as jumpy as frog.

When he looked back at the crossroads, he saw them there.

There were three of them, as he had known there would be. The three sisters; the odd sisters; the sister witches; they had many names and even more legends. The tales that were told of them and of their powers but terrifying, but now Francis found that what would once have frightened him now gave him hope. Surely they, with all their magic – however dark that magic might be – could save his queen?

If they could not, he did not know what he would do.

He tried to urge his horse closer to them, but the creature would not budge. In fact it seemed as though it wanted to bolt from this place; the poor creature was quivering in fear, and a sound that was almost like a whimper echoed from the horse's mouth.

Francis patted it on the neck as he dismounted. With his free hand he briefly touched the cross engraved in the pommel of his sword he before he began to walk forward, his footsteps soft upon the dirt, towards the sister witches.

They were strange and eerie things to look upon. They did not look old, in fact rather he would have said that there was something ageless about their faces as though time's touch did not ravage them as it did mere mortals. Their hair was black, arranged in perfect ringlets that framed their faces and decorated with the feathers of ravens and crows; feathers too adorned the rich black gowns of silk and velvet that clung to their bodices before flowing out extravagantly at the skirt. But their faces…he found he could not look at their faces for too long; it was better for him to look at their hair or at their bodies garbed in black than it was for Francis to try and look at those haunting faces, with mouths that were far too small and gleaming green eyes that were far, far too large. They were the like a terrible artist's representation of a human face, all sense of proportion fled, all understanding gone; they had women's faces as depicted by someone who had never seen a woman in their lives but only heard them described in the tales of travellers returned from distant lands.

And he would carry them in his mind for the rest of his days.

He did not know their names, nor would he have had any way of telling them apart if he had known them, but it seemed to matter not to the three sisters for they began to speak without waiting for anything so banal or mundane as introductions.

"Hail, Francis, that are the King of Armorique," one said.

"Hail, Francis, most puissant knight and warrior," said another.

"Hail, Francis, that are husband to Queen Mahaut…for the moment," said the last. Their tones were high-pitched, and rich with an undercurrent of bitter mockery that all his titles and his martial prowess was not enough to save his wife; for that he must come to them.

"Tell us, Francis, king and knight and husband, what business do you have with us this night?" one asked.

Angels and ministers of grace defend me, Francis prayed. He swallowed. "My wife is sick."

"We know," said one.

"We see all," said another.

"This is not news to us," said the third.

Francis breathed out. His breath turned to mist in the cold air. He shivered. "Will she…will Mahaut die?"

The three witches hummed, and though the sound they made was concordant it also sent a shiver down Francis' spine.

"The Queen of Armorique will perish ere her child is born," said the first witch. "Unless something is done."

"Can something be done?" Francis asked. "Can…can you save her?"

They laughed, all three of them throwing back their heads and letting their cackling rise into the starry shroud that lay above them.

"Can we save her?" repeated the first as though the question was the best joke she had heard all year.

"Foolish mortal!" scolded the second. "We are the sisters three!"

"We are the most powerful of witches," declared the third. "Now that Maleficent is no more."

"We can save the queen, of course we can," said the first witch. "The question you should be asking, King of Armorique, is not can we save her…but will we?"

Francis' mouth was dry. Of course they would come to this. He had not expected these creatures to help Mahaut out of the goodness of their hearts, if they even had hearts. "What would you have of me?"

Silence hung in the night air for a moment, as the odd sisters stared at him with their over-large eyes and said nothing.

"A child," said the first witch. "We will save Queen Mahaut, and if she is delivered of a little girl, then that girl you shall deliver up to us to be our property hereafter."

"A child," Francis repeated. "What do you want with a baby girl?"

"It is not for you to question us, our whims or our desires!" the first witch snarled, her eyes flashing with anger. "This is our bargain, King of Armorique; accept its terms, or build a tomb and find another wife to bear you heirs!"

Francis hesitated, his breath misting in front of his face as he considered…if Mahaut lived then he might have to rip her babe from her breast…but she would never bear a child if she perished of this mysterious illness. "What if the child is a boy? What then?"

"Then all the kings who follow in your footsteps shall be bound to this fate," the first witch declared. The winds began to rise around them, blowing in Francis' face while the hair and gowns of the three witches were untouched.

"Our bargain shall endure with every first-born son of the line of kings," cried the second witch.

"And the first to be blessed with a daughter shall give them up to us, in fulfilment of this pact," said the third.

"Do you accept these terms, Francis, king and knight and husband?" they demanded, speaking in unison now. "Do you accept, and by accepting save your wife?"

"Yes!" the word leapt out of Francis' mouth; it was a monstrous thing to agree to, to either give up his daughter to these sisters or else bind his descendants to a deal from which they had gained nothing, but he had no choice. He could not lose Mahaut, without her he would as like to perish himself. "Yes," he repeated, as the wind died down once more. "I agree."

"Then return to your castle," the first witch said. "Your wife will be saved by the time you return."

"So soon?"

"A bargain is a bargain," the second witch said.

"But one more thing," added the third. "The ring upon your finger. Give it to me, as a token of a bargain well struck."

Francis glanced down at his right hand. He wore a ring upon his little finger, with a small sapphire upon it; it was no great thing, but it had been a gift from his wife…she might be upset that he had given it away, but at least she would be alive to be upset.

He plucked the ring from his finger and tossed it to the witch who had demanded it. She caught it with one hand.

"Much obliged, my king," she said, before she began to giggle as though she had made a great jest.

The owl screeched in the trees once more, and by the time the sound faded the sisters had vanished from his sight.

King Francis mounted his horse and galloped home in all haste, and when he returned to his windswept castle by the sea he was told that the Queen had begun to suddenly recover from his sickness; it was inexplicable, they said; miraculous, they said.

And Francis said nothing, though the truth gnawed at him like a beast in his stomach devouring him from the inside out.

Only to one person did he confess what he had done on that night: good Queen Aurora of Aquitaine. The old kings, Stefan and Hubert, had vested themselves of crowns and thrones, conveying them on the younger strengths of their two children, hastening the union of the realms of Aquitaine and Anjou while they – and Queen Leah – crawled towards death in comfortable idleness, attended by retainers, visited frequently by their loving children and retaining the titles and dignities of kings and queen even if they had cast off the accompanying cares and responsibilities. And so King Francis rode to Aquitaine, the heart of chivalry and romance, where Queen Aurora presided over the Courts of Love and adjudged all matters of the heart with a fair hand and a keen insight.

"I apologise that my husband is not here to receive you, my lord," Aurora said, as she and Francis walked together through the luxurious gardens of her castle. "But King Philip is away in Anjou; as much as it pains us both to be separated, he must return to his own lands from time to time." She sighed, as if even to be apart from her consort was a suffering difficult for her to bear, before she said, "Forgive me, King Francis, I doubt that you have come so far only to suffer my melancholy over such a thing, especially after your own ordeal. May I congratulate you on Queen Mahaut's recovery?"

"I…thank you, my lady," Francis said, as her words struck his heart like a dagger. "But I fear I do not deserve to be congratulated."

He poured out his heart to Aquitaine's gentle queen, confessing to her where he had gone and what he had done and to what he might have bound his descendants if Mahaut gave him a son instead of a daughter.

"My lady, you are renowned for judging questions of the heart," Francis said. "And so, I ask you, did I do right? Had I the right to do what I did? Can you forgive me?"

"You have done nothing that I could forgive you for."

"You are the only person I can confess this too to ask forgiveness."

Aurora looked at him for a moment. "King Francis, do you love your wife."

"With all my heart."

"Then you did the right thing," Aurora said. "You saved the one you loved. Nothing is more important than that."

"But what of the cost?"

Aurora smiled. "The bargain you have struck may seem a cruel one; it is a cruel one, as my own could tell you and I…if anyone demanded that I give up Eleanor to them…but it is only cruel if it is fulfilled."

"What do you mean, my lady?"

Aurora continued, "My lord, although it may seem a little thing, I beg you to take me seriously when I tell you to have faith. Please, believe me when I say that even the direst-seeming curse can be broken, and even the most powerful witch can be thwarted in her will. Take heart, King Francis; take heart and trust that those who come after you will fight for their children, just as you have fought for your wife."

It was not long after that Queen Mahaut of Armorique was taken to the birthing bed and delivered of a healthy son, whom his parents named Louis. Although the marriage of Francis and Mahaut was long and happy, Prince Louis was their only child before they died, peacefully and of old age. It was a curious fact of history that for centuries after no king or crown prince of Armorique ever had aught but sons. Daughters would spring from lesser branches of the line, but never from the direct succession to the throne. Only boys sprung from the loins of Armorique until Eugene, Prince of Rennes and heir to the throne, was given twin girls, the princesses Isabelle and Annabelle, by his wife and princess Cinderella.