"Wait! Please, wait!"

The wind roared loudly in his ears as he trudged through the blizzard towards the pink light, his body numb with cold. The field seemed to go on forever. He wished he still had the Beast's body so he could get to her faster but this was his only chance – if he couldn't reach her now, he never would.

Suddenly, he lost his footing and fell face first into the snow. When he got up again, the old woman was standing before him, the wind not even touching her as she inched her way towards him with the enchanted rose. "You called for me, my prince?" she asked in her decrepit voice.

"Please," he pleaded as he got to his knees. "Tell me how I can make my servants human again. They don't deserve this. I'm begging you!"

"But my dear, I have told you before; you already know the answer," she said, her face curling up into a smile. "It is standing right in front of you."

There was a flash of light. The prince found himself on the balcony outside the West Wing, Belle standing directly across from him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked her in disbelief. "I thought I told you to go to your father."

"I can't leave you," she replied softly.

Slowly, she placed a hand on his cheek. He wanted to tell her to leave him, only the sensation felt so wonderful against his bare, human skin that he couldn't help mirroring the gesture, brushing his fingers gently against the side of her face.

She smiled. "You love me, don't you?"

His mind turned numb. "I…"

"Kiss me."

It was an order, not a request. He leaned forward, and was inches away from meeting her lips when there was a terrible ripping noise. Belle let out a bloodcurdling scream. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that it was not his hands that held Belle but claws, large, razor sharp claws that had pierced through her small torso as blood seeped out of her bodice, her mouth opened in a silent gasp.

"Belle!" he cried. But nothing escaped his lips but terrible, beastly snarls. He was the Beast, every muscle in his body could feel himself changing, and his heart began to race with terror as he dropped her on the ground to lie in her own puddle of blood...

"No!"

The prince awoke in a cold sweat to see a circle of trees above him. It was a dream he told himself. Just a bad dream. Still, his human hands trembled as he held them over his eyes, afraid they would turn into claws at any minute. His blankets felt unpleasantly damp. When he looked under them he understood why and felt himself blush. Great. Not only was he having bad dreams, but he was having problems with his body too. Thankfully, he remembered the servants had packed another set of breeches for him in Magnifique's saddlebags. He got up from his blankets, taking one look at Belle who was sound asleep on the other side of clearing with her father before he got out his clothes and made his way into the forest.

"Is there something in your past, maybe? Some sort of chance you were afraid of taking, an opportunity you were afraid of facing?"

"Just remember one thing: you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour. And he conquers, who conquers himself."

It had been two days since they'd left Aristide's now, and the prince still couldn't stop muddling over the man's cryptic words. He felt frustrated more than anything. The enchantress had made her instructions so clear to him when she first turned him into a beast, why was she being so mysterious now? And Belle. Why couldn't he stop thinking about her? He knew the reasons why they couldn't be together yet his mind still played those dreams, over and over, like a candle he couldn't extinguish no matter how many times he tried to blow it out.

He stopped by a pond near the clearing to take off his breeches and put on the clean ones. His reflection looked eerily blank in the water. Upon closer inspection, he thought he saw a bit of stubble growing on his chin that wasn't there before. He brushed his fingers over it for a moment before making a note to learn how to shave when he returned to the castle, and pulled his hood over his face again.

Belle was the first to wake, and the first to notice Adam missing. It was likely he had gone off to relieve himself, but at the same time she felt slightly worried, wondering if a wild animal had dragged him off in the middle of the night. He'd been acting strange and reclusive lately and this was what caused her to go look for him after he hadn't reappeared in about fifteen minutes' time.

Thankfully he wasn't that hard to find due to the splashing noises he was making in the pond next to the clearing. She watched him for a moment as he tossed pebbles into the water and began to think about the discussion they had exchanged two nights earlier.

"Are you alright?" she asked, flinching as he yanked a branch off a nearby tree. They were both in the forest looking for firewood, Adam moving so quickly that she had to jog to catch up to him.

"Never better!" he snapped as he added the broken branch to the pile of wood he was holding in his arms.

"Alright. It's just you seem a bit…" she hesitated to say the word, "angry."

"Hmm…and there's a reason for that is there?" he said as he turned to face her. "Well let's look at the facts, mademoiselle. I made a promise to your bookkeeper that I would get you somewhere safe. And you're doing a fine job of helping me honour that promise by wandering around outside, unaccompanied in the middle of the night right when your fiancé is still looking for you. You knew it wasn't safe, why did you go out there?"

"I'm sorry," Belle apologized. "I just…I heard you and Aristide talking and wanted to know what was going on."

"Well you heard us didn't you? Are you satisfied with what you learned?"

"I want to understand," she replied. "Why are you looking for an enchantress?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Well maybe we can help you."

"NO!" he exclaimed, so loudly that she felt herself jump. "I have to do this on my own. Besides, you're helpless enough, even with me there to save you. Just think if I hadn't come for you when I did you'd be scrubbing floors for your husband back in Molyneaux right now. You're so..."

"So what?"

"DIFFICULT! You just don't understand when to leave things alone and stay put!"

"Well," she said, putting her hands on her hips, "Maybe I'm not comfortable with the fact that my escort has never shown me his face once since he rescued me."

"I like to keep my identity a secret, mademoiselle. For personal reasons."

"Why? Are you a thief? Is someone after you?

"It's none of your business!" he snapped. He walked away fuming as Belle brush a stray hair away from her face. Just because he didn't want to talk about his identity didn't mean that the discussion was over.

"Just tell me one thing, Adam," she called out to him. "Why are you so determined to undo this curse if you're not involved in it anymore?"

At that he paused. She half expected him to throw a fit and start yelling at her again but when he turned around his voice was surprisingly calm. "Because I'm the reason it happened. I made a mistake once. And…I'd do anything to change it."

There was silence as he stepped forward and passed her the branches. "Take these to the clearing," he told her. "I'll be with you shortly."

The last thing she could see was the strange silver tool glistening under his cloak before the darkness of the forest swallowed him up completely.

Whether he intended it or not, Adam was becoming more and more interesting to Belle with every passing day. True, he was far from a gentleman, but beneath that rough exterior there was a whole layer of melancholy to him that reminded her of one other person; the Beast. They did seem to have a lot in common, both withdrawn, both temperamental, both extremely secretive...

Or maybe you're just imagining it, she thought. The Beast hadn't even been dead for a week after all. And as much as she'd been trying her best to focus on her father and getting away from Gaston, the Beast was always there; in her thoughts, her dreams, and maybe in her desperation she was starting to project him on to the enigmatic Adam too. Still, she had to admit that there was something special about the traveller that she couldn't ignore, as hard as she tried. She didn't know what the nature of this curse was, or what he was hiding from them exactly but she was determined to find out.

"Adam?" she said presently as she took a step forward.

"Mmm?"

"I was wondering if we could visit a town today? My father and I only brought enough food for a few days and could get some more supplies before we continue."

Adam chucked another stone into the water before he answered her. "Very well."

"Thank you," she replied. She watched him throw another rock into the water before she decided to break the silence and join him. "Here," she said as she picked up a flat rock, "Try skipping them like this."

She flicked her wrist out, letting the stone bounce in a graceful arc across the pond. Their reflection warped together under the ripples and Adam found himself thinking about how much simpler things would be right now if Belle had just confessed her love when she still had the chance, how they could be celebrating back at the castle right now, not reduced to tossing pebbles in a pond in the middle of a forest.

The problem was that this was all the doing of an enchantress. She had been the master over them all, the one who had put him and Belle together in this emotional sphere so they could learn to love each other and he could become human again. After all that, how did he know that those things he felt for Belle were actually real? How could he know that he wasn't a puppet to the whims of magic spell that this love wasn't just a manifestation of something desperate, something bad?

The answer was lost to him, fading as quickly as ripples on the surface of a pond. After a minute he turned around and told Belle he was going back to the campsite.

It was mid-afternoon when Belle stopped Philippe on the middle of the trail they were riding on, picking up a strange smell in the air. "What is that?" she asked, concerned.

"It smells like smoke," Adam answered.

"Maybe someone's having a bonfire," Maurice suggested.

"It's too early for a bonfire, Papa," Belle replied with a frown.

The smell only seemed to grow stronger as they rode down the trail. A grey cloud began to rise from the east side of the forest and Belle exchanged worried looks with her father. They had seen that kind of cloud in a village they had once lived in some years before and it could only mean one thing: something was burning, something big.

The next minute Belle urged Philippe off the trail and into the forest.

"Wait, where are you going?!" Adam called out to them.

"Follow me!" Belle shouted back.

It was just as she feared. Past the woods, at the centre of a large field was a burning farmhouse; smoke rising from the roof and the windows like a giant steaming tea pot. No sooner had Adam stopped his horse next to the two of them when a man and woman came bursting through the front door, the woman carrying a crying toddler in her arms.

"No, NO!" she screamed as the man pushed her away from the house. "Francis, we have to go back!"

"There's no use Irène," Francis said, clutching at his chest as he knelt down in the grass. It's...too dangerous."

"But Edgar is still in there! We can't just leave him!"

"What happened? Are you alright?" Belle asked.

Upon hearing her voice, Irène spun around, looking both surprised and relieved to see the three travellers who had come to their rescue. "Oh mademoiselle, it was terrible," she explained in hysterical sobs. "I turned my back on the stove just for one minute, and the next moment the whole kitchen was on fire! I got my husband and our daughter out but our son - he went back for his spinning top and we couldn't find him."

"Calm down," Belle said reassuringly. "Do you have a well or anything we can use to douse the fire with?"

"Are you mad girl?" said Francis. "There's no way we can put the fire out now, it's huge! I'd go back if I could, but my heart..." he winced as he clutched at his chest.

Adam bit his lip with worry. He knew Belle had good intentions in wanting to put out the fire first, but the father was right. The boy might be dead before they even got enough water to extinguish the flames, and his father looked just as terrible as Maurice did when he was sick. He might die if he tried to go back in there to find him!

The next moment, he dismounted his horse and ran towards the burning building. Belle didn't even have time to shout out his name before he ran through the front door and disappeared into the smoke.

The prince would never exactly know what possessed him to run into that fire without considering his odds of survival first. He was no longer a Beast he realized, capable of throwing away wolves with his bare hands and swimming into strong currents of water to save Belle from drowning, he was a human being and he was vulnerable. One look at his surroundings and it occurred to him he might just die from this. A muddy veil of smoke obscured his vision. The only things he could see were dark shapes and flames popping out from his surroundings.

"Hello?" he said with a cough as he put a hand over his mouth. "Hello!?"

"Who are you?" the prince asked as he shielded his eyes from the blinding light.

"I am the same woman who you cast away but a moment ago, or do you not remember?"

The prince realized his fault and knelt down in terror. "Please! Forgive me. Take whatever you want, the castle the servants, I'll do anything!"

"It is too late for forgiveness, dear prince. I have been watching your actions for a long time now and I know that there is no love in your heart."

A piece of the ceiling collapsed beside him. He jumped to the side as red embers went flying, the heat so intense that he could feel it burning holes in the side of his cloak. He wondered if he should leave now before it was too late. But then he heard it, a faint voice against the roaring fire.

"Help me!"

"Where are you?" he shouted back.

"Over here!"

He turned around to see the shape of a boy peering behind the corner of what may have been a table once. "I'm coming!" he said to him. He was only a few feet away from him when a huge beam from the ceiling came crashing down; the impact was so intense it sent him flying backwards.

"You have been deceived by your own cold heart. You exploit your servants and look only outside and not within. And so dear prince, I place a curse upon your house and all within it. Until you have found someone to love you as you are, you shall remain forever a beast."

The light was making his eyes water. He heard himself scream. It felt like his whole body was burning...burning away into something terrifying, something otherworldly.

"Monsieur? Monsieur! It hurts, help!" the boy shouted.

It took a while for the prince to lift his head up. The smoke was making him drowsy and he had to shield his eyes from the surrounding flames in order to see the hole in the floor in front of him. At the edge of the hole he could just make out the boy holding on to the edge of a broken floorboard to save himself from falling into the cellar. He crawled forward to reach for him, and that was when he heard a terrible snapping noise above him - the ceiling was about to collapse!

"Come on!" he shouted to the boy. His grabbed his wrist but his hands were too sweaty, he was going to slip! With one mighty tug he pulled him out of the hole and rolled to the side just as the ceiling crashed down behind them. The boy whimpered, and the prince gently put a hand on his shoulder trying his best to calm him. "I'm going to get you out of here," he told him. "Understand?"

The boy bit his lip and nodded. The prince picked him up and looked around frantically before spotting a window beyond the fire just large enough for him to jump through. "Look away," he told the boy. He furrowed his eyebrows in concentration, took a few large steps backwards and then sprinted towards the window, dodging a passing flame and jumping through the pane, on to the grass.

And the outside air had never felt so sweet.

I did it, he thought with relief, as he gasped for air. I actually did it! He gently touched the shoulder of the boy who was lying beside him. "Are you alright?"

"I...I think so," he replied.

The prince heard footsteps coming towards them and sat up to throw his hood over his face as the boy ran to meet his parents. "Maman! Papa!"

"Oh Edgar!" Irène exclaimed as she fixed her son in a tight embrace. "Thank goodness you're alright! Don't you ever run back for your toys like that again, do you hear? And you -" She turned to Adam, "You saved our son's life! How can we ever repay you?"

Before the prince could answer a large bang resounded from inside the house. Everyone cringed. When they turned around again they could see that the west wall of the house had collapsed, taking a large chunk of the roof and the fence along with it.

"How about we get you and your children somewhere safe," Adam said as the baby started to cry from the blast. "We can discuss compensations later."

"My brother's farm is just next door, they can take us," Francis said, "With any luck they'll have seen the smoke already and are on their way to us right now."

They all agreed that this was the best thing to do. Maurice had to give Belle a nudge before they made their way across the field, because she could not take her eyes off Adam the entire time.