CHAPTER 12

THE newly-transformed Beast-Prince glanced down at the young woman's unconscious form in his arms. He allowed himself the fleeting feeling of gratitude that he had not allowed his guards to kill her or harm her worse back at the castle, before…this. He gnashed his teeth together, but it hadn't been until he'd heard the woman speak that he knew it was her.

When the girl had first looked at him before she had lost consciousness, there had been an insatiable amount of curiosity in those almond-shaped brown eyes that for a moment, held him bewitched. There was a strange pressure that seeped warmth into his entire, wretched, unrecognizable body.

It was one of the strangest feelings the Beast-Prince had ever encountered, and certainly, he had experienced nothing like this when he had still been human. The Beast was skeptical of it at first, but he soon understood that it was a good feeling.

Something he wanted to experience again for himself, soon. His first urge when he realized he had found his hearth keep again was to touch her. It was again a new desire for him. He wanted to touch the girl to know that she was really real, that he had actually found her lost and wandering alone in the woods.

That she had been coming back.

This thought alone floored the Beast-Prince and plastered underneath his fur like a quiet vibration, making his skin crawl.

But why? Why had the girl come? The fact that he could not figure it out left the Beast-Prince with a feeling of amazing conflict. A brand new injury. A brand new humiliation. It was not something that he thought he could adequately articulate, though as he carried her inside the dank and dark castle, he felt his paws begin to tremble with rage. Where were they? Ever since that—that witch had cursed him, his servants had all but disappeared, as if they were never here and existed in the first place. He looked down at the young woman's face, her head lolled back and nestled against the crook of his elbow.

His paws began to tremble with rage as he looked at the stitched, horrific gash upon the girl's cheek. A permanent, ugly scar. As he looked down his nose at it, every muscle in his body became tense. Every cord pulled taught across his broad, hulking form. He kept his head bent, shoulders hunched. A bead of sweat began to drip down his neck.

The skin beneath his fur itched and was driving him mad.

The Beast-Prince did not stop until he reached her quarters, kicking open the door with his foot. His heart pounded hard in his chest as he was met with nothing but silence. Hard drumming that the creature could hear in his ears. The Beast froze when his hearth keep murmured something inaudible in her sleep and rolled off the second he set her upon the cot, hoping that a softer surface would help her heal, and then, he remembered as cold dread seeped into his belly.

With his servants having mysteriously vanished, and the sight of no other souls wandering about his halls, he would have to do it. Though even now, as he watched the slow rise and fall of her chest, the only indicator the girl was still alive, every nerve on his body was on high alert. As the Beast's blue eyes remained fixed on the grotesque slash marking on the girl's cheek that would, in time, scar, though still be quite visible, he knew he had made a mistake.

That much he realized as he took a step back. Saving the girl was a sentiment, the Beast knew.

The barest form of weakness. And his father, the late Duke, growing up, had despised any of the sorts. Mercy was something he knew he should have moved past a long time ago, but it had never stopped him before. How many people throughout his life had begged him to stop tearing skin from bone with one of his wicked knives' blades? Or to spare someone from a hanging?

Never before had it bothered him to watch someone bleed to death, to watch as the life faded from their eyes and their body became nothing more than an inanimate object that they soon buried six feet underground or they burnt.

But his prickly little hearth keep, this Belle…this unusual creature was something else. The second he had heard his ears perk up and his new heightened sense of hearing picked up on the girl's screams coming from the woods behind his property's estate's borders, his very insides had gone cold. It had sent him immediately into action, running towards the woods, almost on all fours as he embraced the savage Beast within himself, that he now reflected on the outside as well as his insides. His reeling mind raced with thoughts and unpleasant mental images of what he would find once he was able to locate the girl.

30 seconds to the clearing in the woods, maybe less. Incapacitate the bastard making the girl scream like that, fetch a doctor if needed, then if it's a human doing it, torture the person responsible. If it's a wolf, kill it, cut off its head.

Simple. It had been so simple in his mind. But then he had found her. Blood splattered against the white pristine snow, the wolf's jaws clamped around the woman's arm. And his hearth keep lying there with a horrible, gaping wound in her arm that was also sure to scar. Watching the girl bleed out ought to have been easy for him. Perhaps it would have been satisfying to watch the prickly little hearth keep that was slowly shaping up to be his newfound obsession turn into a lifeless corpse.

Then she would trouble him no longer.

No longer a mystery, occupying foreign crevices of his mind that he'd never explored before.

For a second, the Beast-Prince had thought he was going to let it happen, a fitting punishment for her attempt to abandon his servitude, even toyed with the idea of helping her.

But then she had pleaded with him. His hearth keep, had begged him for her life and had cried.

And he knew, as much as she might annoy him to the nth degree, he couldn't let his lovely Belle die. The Beast-Prince listened to the sound of her now even breathing as his mind raced with new and creative ways in order to keep her here.

Though if she were smart, she would stay of her own volition once she came to realize that it was he who had saved her life, not his friend Gaston. Former, he thought to himself bitterly, a surge of unbridled anger welling in his chest, and it was all he could do to stop himself from letting out a guttural roar and risk waking this creature up.

The Beast-Prince rationalized in his mind as he watched her sleep and did what he could to mend her arm to the best of his ability that the only way to break that wretched witch's curse was to force this pretty young French Rose of a mademoiselle to fall in love with him.

A seemingly impossible task, though he would keep her locked up tight where no one, not even Gaston, would find Belle.

His hearth keep, his Belle, she was his now and there was no way he was ever giving her back.

And given enough time, she'd thank him for it.

BELLE inhaled a small gasp as her vision slowly but surely cleared. There was…a five-pronged candelabra on a table, along with a meal of what looked like it consisted of a hardened loaf of bread and a rind of Brie cheese that failed to rouse her appetite and a tin decanter of water.

She was lying on her side, on a hard surface that she could not discern, and her surroundings were mostly dark. It took a few moments for the fog of confusion the inventor's daughter found herself in to dissipate. There was always a horrible fear.

There was always fear. It wasn't an experience of Belle suddenly remembering her situation being consumed with fear after a sense of strangely comfortable confusion, no. instead, it was simply a realization of the cause of her sense of impending doom.

Everything came back to her, and suddenly, her mind felt like it was rushed by a flood of memories swimming in her consciousness. There were no holes missing. She remembered the wolf, feeling its jaws clamp down on her arm, and then that strange…creature, saving her life. She tried to think about where she might possibly be now, where it was in relation to her current location, and what Belle might be able to do to get out of this awful, painful mess.

Belle blinked once, twice, until her mind settled. The fingers of her uninjured hand moved and felt the soft pillow behind her head. She blinked again, forcefully at first, as she tried to rid her lashes from the 'sands of sleep' that had accumulated there, as her Papa was fond of calling them when she had been little. She figured she must have been asleep for quite a while, as the crusted mess did not want to be so easily removed and she had to scrub the rest away with a heel of her hand.

Though Belle immediately hissed, gritting her teeth upon discovering her hand currently in use was the one that the wolf had managed to clamp down on, and her arm was now bound in a strange contraption, sort of a sling, rendering it immobile. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach she'd not be using it for a while.

Belle as gingerly as she could, tucked the wounded appendage back underneath her bedcovers, her brow furrowing in a frown. The coverings were a mixture of blankets, and even a heavy cloak of some sort, but whose was it?

She opened her mouth to say something, to voice her concern, though her throat felt dry, her tongue thick in her mouth, and she was unable to make much any kind of sound at all other than a pitiful wheeze. She sighed and clamped her lips shut, though she wished she summoned enough strength to ask for water.

If anything, she supposed the blankets were a sign that she was safe for now. No enemy, especially that creature, she was sure, would trouble themselves to comfort their victim, yes? As she lay there, her body remained numb and uncertain and…painful. Belle's ears perked up as she caught the sound of rattling keys and the door opening. Trying and struggling to move, she heaved her shoulder in order to lie face up and the numbness in her entire body seared.

Her lungs beckoned for air, and she inhaled deep to fill in and oblige the desperate request. The sound of something shuffling across the cold cobblestone floor of this strangely familiar room, caused her ears to perk up at the noise.

"H—hello?" she managed in a raspy reedy-sounding voice that caused her to flinch at how hoarse her voice sounded. "Is someone there?"

She closed her eyes, straining her ears for more sounds. The sound of cutleries was evident. Someone was in the room with her. Frowning, she pressed her good elbow not bound in the sling against the bed and forced herself upright.

Slowly, Belle was able to do it, and then it seemed then that everything had become lighter, except for a dull, aching throb on her right temple that caused her to shakily press a hand against her forehead. Flinching, she jerked her hand away. Her skin was searing hot to the touch. She was very clearly feverish.

"Mrs. Potts, dearie. I thought you'd like a nice cuppa tea, you've taken ill for the last couple of days," came the warbling, matronly-like voice that immediately sent a tingling warm feeling of relief flooding through Belle's body that momentarily made her forget she was ill.

"Mrs. Potts, oh thank God, I thought you were…." she breathed, letting her voice die out, not wanting to finish that unpleasant thought as she closed her eyes for a moment. She really needed a moment to herself to just process this. "I—I thought I'd never see you again, b—but…" she paused, furrowing her brows in a frown as her eyes made a quick scan of the room, and then a sinking cold feeling seeped into the pit of the stomach.

The prince. This was her room. Her eyes widened and her face drained off colors. That meant she was back at the castle, after all. But that creature, what could have saved her life from that wolf hours ago?

"Where are you?" she stammered, her stomach churning in fear and nausea as she realized that though she could hear the older woman's voice, she could not see her, which made her feel alarmed and a little bit frightened if she were being completely honest with herself right now. And then it hit her. Belle reeled backward, propping herself up against the mountain of pillow piled against the headboard as something Mrs. Potts just said stuck in her mind and left her feeling shocked.

A few days. She had been out a few days?!

"A—a few days?" Belle choked, repeating Mrs. Potts' words, feeling certain she'd misheard.

"Yes, dear," came Mrs. Potts' tired voice. When she spoke, but still, Belle could not see her, the inventor's daughter began to grow alarmed, as a fresh bout of fear wound its icy tendrils around the column of her throat and threatened to choke the very air from her burning lungs.

"Mrs. Potts?" she asked again in a small, choked voice. Tears began to stream from her eyes. "I—I can't see you. Where are you?" Belle whispered, fearing that she was hallucinating this as she whispered into the dark crevices of her room. Her skin crawled as she realized that if she were back in her master's castle, then the inevitable ill-fated confrontation with the prince himself was sure to come at some point, and sooner rather than later. This she feared.

Though perhaps the worst thought of all, was fearing that her conversing with Mrs. Potts right now, one of the few souls alongside Monsieur's Lumiere and Cogsworth, who were kind to her, was just a phantasm, a project of her feverish mind. That she was somehow imagining this.

"Down here, my dear. And to your left."

Her words piquing Belle's curiosity, it was enough for Belle to summon what little strength she still possessed, to crawl on her stomach just enough to peer over the edge of her bed's side.

And what she saw took her breath away, the startled shriek escaping her lips before she could stop herself. A delicate floral China teapot was staring back at her, with a—with a face…

But that wasn't the strangest thing at all. It was…moving.

Belle scrambled back onto the bed as much as she possibly could, though her fear intensified as the teapot managed to move of its own accord and hop onto her bed by first hopping onto the trunk of her clothes that rested at the edge of the bed. The little teapot who had somehow been magicked to possess elderly Mrs. Pott's voice shot her a slightly rueful look and pulled a face.

"Screaming like that we save for the outdoors, my dear," the little floral teapot sighed wearily.

"I—I…th—this isn't real. Witchcraft," Belle whispered, horrified, clamping her free hand over her mouth as bile rose up in her throat.

But the teapot who was assuming Mrs. Potts' voice, whether through magic or demonic possession, shook her head and smiled sadly at Belle, clucking her tongue.

"I'm afraid it is, dear. Though I wish it were not so. This new form does make moving about the master's castle difficult." The little teapot fell silent and waited.

"I…I…" Belle stammered, her breaths catching in her throat as she stared at the talking pot.

Surely, she was hallucinating, despite what the possessed teapot was telling her.

Pots didn't talk…. did they? No. Belle shook her head to herself, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to send her mind's eye's images away. She just had to be dreaming, right?

But when Belle opened her eyes again, the little teapot was staring at her sadly.

"H—how? T—this isn't possible, Mrs. Potts," she whispered, as the teapot hopped closer to her, followed by a tiny, chipped teacup, this one also with a face and smiling up at her. It looked young, that was the first thing Belle noticed.

"Hullo," it chirped at her in the voice of a young boy, sounding no older than maybe six or seven, she noticed. "You're Belle, aren't you? Mum's told me all about you, of course. Name's Chip."

Belle raised her eyebrows in shock and alarm, and it was only when her inquisitive eyes made a quick scan of the teacup filled with hot herbal tea did she notice the tiny chip at the corner.

Belle blinked owlishly at the talking teapot and teacup, still feeling one hundred percent certain she was dreaming. "Wh—who's your mother?" she stammered, feeling bile rise up in her throat. Surely, it had finally happened to her.

She had gone mad like all the villagers had believed she would after years of listening to them whisper and gossip about her behind their backs. It was done, there was no going back.

The chipped teacup so appropriately named, whether by coincidence or on purpose, giggled. "You're lookin' at her, mum. Why, Mrs. Potts, of course!" the little teacup giggled. "You really are as funny as the other servants say, lady!"

"Chip," scolded Mrs. Potts sternly, causing the teacup that Belle now knew to be her son, harshly. Belle blinked in disbelief at the strange scene. This was all too much for her to take in.

"Oh." She whispered. Then it finally hit her. Mrs. Potts' warm smile was all that she needed. "I—I have died, haven't I?" Belle asked, confused. In Belle's growing feverish state, her overactive imagination was going into overdrive, deprived of her books to read, she was inventing fanciful touches like talking teapots and teacups in order to ease the passing of her painful death.

She must have succumbed to her wounds, or perhaps an infection, maybe the creature, oh—the CREATURE!

Belle's eyes went wide with alarm as she jolted upright, and instantly, the room around her started to spin as she dry-heaved while her stomach lurched, though nothing was coming up, and Belle remembered, she'd not eaten, not since a few nights before at LeFou's parents when Mary had made the stew.

Squeezing her eyes shut as a wave of dizziness and nausea overcame her, Belle shakily pressed a trembling hand to her burning forehead and breathed in and out slowly through her nose, until the worst of the sick feeling had passed.

"Where is it?" she gasped out in a choked voice when she'd regained the power of speech. "Mrs. Potts, where is it? The—the thing that brought me back here, it—it's dangerous. Your—our master," she quickly corrected herself, "could be in danger. The prince has to be warned…I…"

Her voice trailed off, her words forming ahead of her thoughts as she looked at Mrs. Potts's expression. Suddenly, Belle feared for the worst, not at all liking the dark but knowing expression that Mrs. Potts shared with her little son, Chip.

"No," Mrs. Potts faltered in a stammering voice. "I am very much alive, and so are you, Belle." She needed her to believe, for her to understand, that she might be his only hope.

"Where is it?" Belle begged Mrs. Potts desperately, hating hearing the faltering crack and dip of hesitancy in her shy, reserved tone.

Mrs. Potts inwardly balked at telling the poor sweet thing the truth.

Though the longer Mrs. Potts looked at her master's hearth keep, the newly-transformed servant, the more Mrs. Potts could read the depths of fear and heartbreak upon Belle's beautiful features, though not so beautiful anymore, at least one half of her face wasn't. Mrs. Potts tried not to stare at the stitched-up gash on the poor thing's cheek, feeling a surge of anger churn up inside of her, accidentally causing the tea within her to bubble and almost spilled over through her lid.

Mrs. Potts shot a look towards Chip, who instantly read the stern look on his mother's face and hobbled off the bed to join his brothers and sisters upon the tea tray just outside the door, though he shot the lady Belle a look of longing, clearly wanting to stay and be kept in the thick of things, though he guessed he would just have to ask her later and hope she told him.

Only when Chip had quit the room did Mrs. Potts turn to look towards the young woman.

Mrs. Potts realized that Belle was no longer sure she was alive. That in her clearly fevered state as her cheeks were clammy and red, sweat causing strands of her dark hair to stick to her forehead, that she was hallucinating.

What was she to think? To come back to the master's castle and find a talking teapot and a teacup? To say nothing of what her reaction would be when she took in the sight of Lumiere and Cogsworth for the first time.

Mrs. Potts almost let herself smile at that but stopped herself. Anyone in their right mind would be left reeling and questioning.

Mrs. Potts felt a pit inside of her grow deeper when she thought that she could put an end to this. With one word, she could reveal the truth that she knew, that they all knew. The servants had all borne witness to their master escorting the girl back to the castle. The teapot feared that just a few more minutes in the presence of the lady Belle's haunting, sad eyes and she might very well do just that. However, she knew that she could not tell her.

If the master held any hope of breaking the curse, it was on his shoulders and his alone.

The girl in the bed currently staring at her would have to accept the master's transformation for herself. Mrs. Potts did not know all of the details, but she and Monsieur's Lumiere and Cogsworth had been able to work out a few details of the witch's spell placed upon them all. They were able to learn a few things.

One. The Beast was to tend to an enchanted rose. Two. The rose would bloom until his twenty-first year, though that was approaching in another eight months, so they were running frantically short on time. Three. She and the others did not know exactly what the master could see, but the prince seemed able not to sense their presence, for he had roared and stalked his way up and down the corridor an hour ago, bellowing at the top of his lungs like an enraged dragon would for his doctor on site.

And Mrs. Potts and Lumiere had been right by the prince's side, struggling to calm him down, but he seemed not to be able to see or hear them. Which made her wonder why Belle could.

Mrs. Potts could only guess why the witch had saved this last aspect of her witch's curse for the young prince. Perhaps to teach him humility of sorts by tricking him into thinking his servants were gone, of the value of hard work, perhaps.

In the end, however, Mrs. Potts decided to tell herself that the witch must have had her reasons for this and was going to have to put her faith in the young mademoiselle in the bed in front of her. That in time, everything would work out. They could only hope. Their lives depended on it. Mrs. Potts heaved a heavy sigh as she lifted her beady eyes to face Belle, whose face was wrought with confusion.

"Where is it?" Belle pleaded frantically, her voice trembling as her one hand, though bandaged, clutched onto a fistful of the blankets. "Where is the creature, Mrs. Potts?"

Her skittish eyes looked to the left and right and all corners of the room, as though fearing the monstrous 'creature' that actually happened to be her master, would appear from the shadows. When Mrs. Potts did not immediately reply, Belle began to grow even more frantic.

"There was a—a creature, a beast, it—it pulled the wolf that held onto my arm off of me, killed it, it saved my life, Mrs. Potts," Belle spoke slowly in a shaking voice as she remembered.

Mrs. Potts inwardly cringed, hating that she had to lie to the poor child in this way, as she narrowed her eyes.

"Why would a beast save you, Belle?" she questioned as she inhaled. This was a time she had best be cautious. "Saved you? Belle—pray to tell me truly what happened. From your escape to the castle until this so-called beast saved your life, please talk."

Belle recounted her tales, this simple farm girl. By the time she had finished, Mrs. Potts saw a swallow cascade down her throat as she blinked back salty tears that threatened to escape then.

"You said that it saved you?" Mrs. Potts gingerly prodded, feigning ignorance to the situation as she tried to gauge Belle's reaction.

"I would like to think it that way, yes," Belle stammered as she slowly nodded her head.

"How would a beast save you, Belle?"

Belle could only purse her lips and shake her head feebly. "I don't know…luck, maybe, then."

She shivered and attempted to curl her lips upward into a smile, meant to calm Mrs. Potts and reassure her, if this was all really real, that she was going to be alright, though she grimaced, her face twisting, as pain shot all throughout her face, searing her, burning her. Belle gingerly lifted her good hand not bound in its arm sling and just barely grazed the injury, much to Mrs. Pott's pleading protests.

"Oh no, dearie, you—you mustn't touch it!"

But her pleas fell on deaf ears as Belle brushed two fingers against her cheek. Felt the now-ruined skin and knots of what felt like a fishing line that held it together.

She traced the stitches from just below her left cheekbone, to where it stopped at the edge of her mouth.

For one sweet, blessed moment in time, she'd believed her new scar to be nothing but a horrible nightmare, but now, there was no denying it. Beneath shaking fingers, she could feel the damning evidence of the prince's ordered attack against her, the scar she would never be rid of, a reminder of the savage prince's cruelty towards her. Something she was not entirely sure she could forgive him of.

Belle's gaze drifted to her left, to a small wooden night table where she located a small handheld mirror. Her hand had a mind of its own as her trembling outstretched fingers groped for the mirror. She lifted the mirror.

And immediately, her heart sank to her stomach as she stared at her ruined cheek.

So much time spent ignoring her wound, not daring to picture the damage that had been done, but it had left her ill-prepared for this fated moment that she knew was to come.

She'd known it was going to be ugly, she'd been able to tell by the way LeFou and Claire, and even Gaston had trouble looking her in the eyes, but it hurt far too much to be anything other than grotesque. Still. She wasn't ready. Not for this.

For the deep laceration that started by her browbone and went diagonally down her cheek, just barely ending at her lip.

The knotted fishing line in even little stitches that cut across her skin, Claire's handiwork.

Without them, Belle could only imagine how horrifying this gash would be, how deep it was.

She remembered Gaston's face after it happened, the moment he'd pulled her to her feet. How the absolute panic and horror and disgust at what the prince's man had done to her had lit up the handsome soldier's face before they glazed over, and he'd sprung into action in order to save her life. Because…he'd saved her. It was unclear to both Belle and Mrs. Potts just when she had started crying as tears poured down her cheeks, but suddenly violent sobs were shaking her shoulders, causing them to heave in the release of her life's situation of anguish and misery and pain, making her body weak.

She was only vaguely aware of Mrs. Potts saying something to her in an attempt to calm her down, though whatever it was, she didn't hear. Though her screams tapered off to sniffles and half-choked, gasping sobs as bile rose in her throat as she dropped the mirror she'd been holding as the door to her chambers opened and she heard a pair of heavy footfalls echo off the stone. Grimacing, she forced herself to lift her chin and look upon the face of the newcomer.

And immediately wished she had not done it. She froze abruptly, her breaths catching in her throat as her hands instinctively wound around Mrs. Potts for protection, who had hopped onto her lap on top of the blanket to try to comfort her as she had screamed and sobbed upon catching sight of her reflection for the first time.

A dark, looming figure stood in her open doorway, a huge, hulking monstrosity of a creature, though those winding, twisting grotesque horns atop its head were unmistakable. Belle's eyes went wide with alarm.

The creature from the woods stood there, shoulders broad and strong, heaving slightly as he breathed heavily, and his head tilted to the side again, much like it had back in the woods when the creature had first laid its eyes on her.

"You," she whispered, her voice a hoarse croak.

"Me," the creature answered her back in a deep, rumbling baritone, its voice hoarse, rough, and coarse, and…and…familiar to her, almost. Like she'd heard it somewhere before, this creature's voice that was the literal embodiment of the grave.

Belle would have screamed at the revelation that the monstrous shadow standing in front of her door could talk, but when she tried to open her mouth to scream for help, all that came out were a bunch of strangled attempts at speech.

The creature made no move to enter the room, preferring to cling to the darkness, to the shadows, where she suspected it was more comfortable, nor did he speak to her. Tears left her eyes as it started to approach.

Though the moment the creature lifted its gaze to study her face, Belle was stricken with a horrifying realization that she had seen those same shade of electrifying blue eyes before.

The prince had the same color eyes as this beast. Belle's eyes widened. Things were slowly beginning to add up, she realized.

Is this…no, surely, it's not the prince…is it?! Tears spilled down her cheeks as her face and arm suddenly hurt more than she could comprehend. She felt as though someone had doused her in a bucket of ice-cold water just then.

This monster was the prince, and this monstrous Beast-Prince had saved her life. And now that he had brought her back, Belle felt confident that he was going to punish her, perhaps make good on his threat to kill her, send her to the gallows for betraying him by fleeing with Gaston and effectively breaking her word. Her brain began to turn foggy, and her lungs continued to burn as the Beast approached, swift and silent in his movements like a phantom clinging to the shadows of night.

She was sure she was going to die.

This was it. She'd failed her papa, but she only wished that before she passed from this realm into the next, what was going to happen to her father. If he w would be OK. She wondered if she should have insisted on Gaston bringing her home and then convincing her father to flee France with her. But what good could she have done her papa?

She had failed her father, and now, she and her father were both as good as dead.

The last thing Belle felt before her world went blank as she fainted was a sickening, unending shame.