CHAPTER 27
THE knock came at Belle's chamber door almost the instant she returned from the library, her heart racing within her chest, not even granting her a single moment's peace. She stiffened, taking a moment to gather her strength. Belle had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach she knew who was on the other side of the wooden panel. She stood numbly in front of the hearth, staring into the flames.
Belle was sure the master of the castle understood how much he had hurt her, not only by keeping her here as a prisoner and not granting her leave but also, the scar that would serve as a constant reminder.
That reality could not be denied. However, he had shown her all that had led him to those impossible actions, and Belle felt confident that the Beast was remorseful for his actions.
Her hand drifted instinctively to the dagger she kept safely in its sheath around her waist, not soon to forget the Prince's kindness, how he'd bought it for her in the witch's book.
She wondered if the Prince would entertain the idea of returning to that marketplace again.
The knock came again, more urgent and desperate this time, effectively succeeding in pulling Belle from her musings, as her mind had drifted again, not for the first time, to thoughts of the Prince's eyes.
The man's eyes were the clearest, brightest, coldest blue that Belle had ever seen.
All the stories of those eyes she'd been told off by the villagers back home came rushing back to her in a vicious torrent, and for one wild moment, as she rushed to open the door, she feared that the Beast could see right through her. That he would know that...since then, since that day in the fantastical marketplace, she was beginning to care for him. Perhaps... Perhaps even love him.
Her eyes widened at the very thought as her chest dented, feeling hollow.
There was surely no way in God's eyes and the church's, to say nothing of the monarchy, that such a match would not be allowed to exist, and she was not about to make a harlot of herself by agreeing to become his concubine, in the unlikely event the Prince were to ever return her affections.
She opened the door wider, her face flushed, dark eyes glassy with unshed tears as she sank into a curtsy and allowed the master, perhaps inappropriately, to enter.
Belle straightened her gait as the Beast entered into her private quarters, his claws curled into fists, and he could barely meet Belle's curious, sharp gaze as he awkwardly shut the door behind him.
He was looking as though he wished the cold stones beneath his paws would open up and swallow him whole and not let him emerge.
"You're not busy, Belle, are you?" he asked, almost in a shaking voice. "I—I just…I shouldn't even be here, but I need…"
"No," Belle said flatly shaking her head and raising up a hand to stop him, cutting the master off from speaking.
It was more than enough to inspire a response from the Beast, who looked up, startled, mouth agape, as if devoid of words. Belle clenched her teeth and struggled to tear her gaze away from those bewitching bright azure eyes.
Curse this man, though he already was, no matter how angry she was with him, how hurt, how could she possibly wish to remain here alongside him, given everything? She had every reason to hate him, but she could not manage to summon up the strength to do so.
"No?" the Beast repeated, drawing back a bit. He was looked shocked at the flatness of her tone. "Why? What...?" But his voice trailed off as his resolve faltered as he looked into his servant's dark eyes.
Belle was all suspicion at his presence here, her eyes narrowed as to the reason for the master's visit.
He never ventured down this hallway that led to the servants' quarters, not once, so why the sudden shift in the man's countenance? What changed?
"Why did you come to see me?" she blurted out, watching as the Beast arched his eyebrows in surprise. "You never come down to the servants' quarters, what could you want? Is it possible that you've come for a truce, Prince?"
"A truce?" the Beast repeated, feeling certain he had misheard. "Have we reached that stage, Belle? Are the two of us at war now?"
Belle couldn't be sure, but she thought her master almost sounded disappointed with her. Belle could not help but roll her eyes. "We've been at war since the day we met, Your Highness. It is obvious."
The Beast conceded his servant's point with an incline of his head.
"Then, pretty Belle, don't you think that it's time we put this ridiculous war of ours to rest?" he asked.
Belle considered the Beast in silence for a moment, staring at him in awe with wide, almond-shaped dark eyes.
"You would grow bored, sire," she said after a while. "And…" Belle hesitated, biting down on her bottom lip, a slight twinkle forming in her eyes. "So would I." She watched him intently.
The master of the castle tried to control his facial expression to the best of his ability, but the Beast could not quite hide the upward twitch of his lips as he seemed to find her quip amusing.
"As you wish, milady," the Beast murmured in a low voice, drawing back.
Belle felt annoyance and frustration begin to bubble in her chest, for some unknown reason, the distance between the two of them annoyed her, and her sulky expression betrayed her.
"Then perhaps you would consider a short reprieve, if only for tonight, Belle?" the Beast asked.
"That will, again, depend on your terms, milord," Belle fired back without missing a beat, turning away from her master, and keeping her profile turned towards the side.
The Beast offered a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, though Belle was not fooled.
The master of the castle was troubled by something that vexed his mind. It was eating away at him, she could see it in his pale blue orbs.
"They are simple enough," he remarked, suddenly sounding distant and cold. "You will quit this place as my hearth keep, Belle and return home to your village of Villeneuve effectively immediately, and resume staying by your father's side, where you have always rightfully belonged." His eyes were ablaze with a cold fury. "And if you are smart, Belle, you would stay away from me and you will take great care never to insult me or my methods ever again," he growled, grinding his teeth in utter annoyance.
Belle gaped at the Beast with wide, round eyes, feeling certain she had misheard him. She tried not to flinch away from the Beast's cold stare, going very still where she sat.
"Y—you're letting me go? B—but…why?" she whispered in a hoarse, choked voice, amazed that she could even find her voice. She felt her stomach drop and her knees go weak that caused her to grope for the back of her chair. "H-Have I done something to displease you, Your Grace?" she squeaked. "A—and the insulting you, Your Highness…I presume you mean publicly, sir?" she asked, boldly.
It was foolish of her to ask this of her monarch, but necessary. In her mind, the distinction was important.
A muscle in the Beast's jaw tightened.
"I would prefer it if you would cease to insult me entirely, Belle, I would have thought that it should have been obvious," he growled, folding his arms across his chest, and turning away from her.
Belle swallowed bitterly down past a growing lump in her throat, her chest suddenly constricting, rendering her feeling dizzy. This was all too much, too much to take in.
Nevertheless, she had to know his reasons for sending her away.
"And I would prefer it if I had never been removed from my home in the first place, Your Highness, and our kingdom free of dark and sorcerous people that could turn you into this," she growled, waving a hand toward his monstrous form, the fear welling up at his change inside of her heart. "Yet here we are. H—Have I done something to displease you, Your Grace?" Belle asked with furrowed brows, quietly and confused as she nervously wrang her hands together and bit down on her bottom lip, hard, trying to think of something to say. "I—I can assure you that any oversight on my part was completely unintentional. What did I do wrong, sir? My—my father, would he—would he still be arrested?"
And sent to the gallows for my crime of speaking out against you? This is what Belle wanted to ask of her about-to-be former master but lacked the courage to say anything else.
"No, Belle." Something like guilt flashed across the Beast's face. "I saved your life, Belle, twice now, and this is me saving you again for a third time, from me. Please."
He was almost begging her now as he closed his eyes and turned sharply away from her, his towering silhouette casting an enormous shadow, engulfing Belle in darkness.
"Don't make this any more difficult than it has to be." He paused to draw in a breath and looked at the spirited young woman out of the corner of his peripherals.
The look of heartbreak and confusion on Belle's face was almost too much for the Beast to bear, but he forced himself to carry on, regardless. He had little time to say what he wanted to.
"This is the way that it must be, Belle. There is no other way. You misunderstand my reasons for sending you away." He had been afraid Belle would misinterpret his intentions, and he could tell by the look on her face, she had.
"Which are?" Belle spat, grinding her teeth in her anger, curling her shaking hands into fists at her side, hardly daring that the two of them were arguing in this manner.
A pause in him answering her was nothing that Belle could have hoped for, she realized.
She hoped he would answer her and be honest with his words.
The Beast finally did turn to look at her then, her words enough to inspire a response.
"Does it really need saying, Belle?" he asked, his voice softer, much less gruff than usual. He let out a frustrated exhale, trying to ignore the look of surprise dawning on the beautiful brunette's face as he pointedly looked away, keeping his gaze fixated on the door. "It's done," he said, very quietly. So softly, in fact, that Belle had to lean forward in order to hear him better. "It does not matter, Belle." He turned towards the door and started for it, ducking his head. "I am sorry that I chose a terrible time to see you, and sorrier still, Belle, that I had to deliver this sort of news," he murmured. "But it cannot be helped."
As he spoke, a shiver went down Belle's spine at how cold and flat his listless tone was.
"I will leave you to it. I expect you gone within the hour. Monsieur's Lumiere and Cogsworth can see you safely to the gates. Take one of my horses, it will see you returned to the village in one piece."
But Belle ran and unceremoniously threw herself in front of him, blocking the door and his only exit all at once. "No! Don't you dare!" Belle cried furiously, glowering at the Beast, and stomping her foot, a temporary release of the frustrations mounting within her at what was happening. "Don't you dare do this to me without telling me why I'm being sent away? What have I done to displease you, Your Grace? What transgression have I committed that's so terrible that warrants my dismissal?" Belle demanded.
The Beast closed his eyes as Belle pressed her back firmly against the wooden oak panel of the door, preventing his escape. He drew out a shuddering breath before summoning enough strength to answer Belle, though he did not want to answer his hearth keep.
He wanted to contain his honesty, but he was not able to.
"I…never meant for it to happen like this, Belle," he said, his expression hardening the longer he looked at the young woman, who he heard inhale a sharp breath of air at his words.
By the time he had regained some courage enough to open his eyes long enough to look at Belle, she was practically heaving with fury, her shoulders shaking.
"Are you trying to prove how foolish I am to try to think kindly of you, Your Highness? Because if you are, sire, it's working. You are wrong, wrong to do this to me without giving me any explanation!" Belle breathed in an incredulous-sounding voice.
She was looking at the Beast as though he had sprouted another pair of antlers atop his head, her mouth agape and looking almost devoid of words.
God, she knew exactly what sort of venom would wound him the most. But her words which spewed forth out of her mouth in her own anger only served to anger him further. Curse her for making this more difficult for him than it already was, and Belle did not even know his reasons why.
Belle stood in her silent fury. God, even in her rancor, she was still so beautiful as he heard her emanate a loathing sigh. She continued to stand her ground, blocking his exit.
"And yet…here you still are," the Beast angrily retorted, his voice sharp and cold as a blade.
Now it was his turn to cut her, he realized, flinching as Belle shirked away in an antagonizing hurt look of betrayal as she glowered at him.
She sagged against the wooden panel of the door, her shoulders slumping forward in a look of defeat.
"Here I am," she could only agree with her master's statement. She then proceeded to fold her arms across her chest and looked away. "I suppose….you have changed, Highness, somewhat. Or are trying," Belle admitted, sounding hurt.
Though almost as quickly as the mask of calm flitted across her face in Belle's quietly seething anger, the furrow of confusion between her brows deepened as she craned her neck to look up at the Beast, searching his eyes for any hint of the truth, any hint that her master was lying to her.
"Why?" It was all she could ask, and she felt that she did not need to elaborate. She swallowed down hard past a lump in her throat, and when she did, it felt like she was swallowing knives. Belle furiously blinked back the onset of tears and tried to refocus her attention on that of the master.
The Beast laughed, a bitter, disgusting laugh with himself as he turned away sharply from Belle.
"You are a smart woman, Belle. I am surprised you've not been able to figure it out for yourself since…that." He paused and let his gaze drift down towards the dagger around her waist that he'd gifted her. Belle parted her lips to speak, but he did not give her a chance. "I wish that I had not. It would make this easier on you. On both of us, Belle, I think, were that the case here, but I'm sad to say that it isn't. I wish that I had been so fortunate that the witch who did this to me would have killed me the night she changed me. The whole country of France would be the happier for it," the Beast snarled, the edges of his lips turning downward as his mouth pinched in a feral snarl.
Belle's eyes widened, glassy and frightened as she vehemently shook her head to disagree with his words.
"Don't talk like that about yourself!" she pleaded, biting down on her bottom lip, and looking up at him, fearfully.
His words were really starting to frighten her, causing her chest to dent with fear and a shiver to run down her back.
"Why not?" the Beast growled through clenched teeth. "It's the truth, Belle, isn't it? And since you have so longed to hear the truth from me, haven't you? The monster that I am."
The words were pouring out of his mouth unchecked and in a vicious black torrent, spilling from his lips before the master of the castle could even think to stop himself.
"Well, then, since I'm here now, then you've been so good as to give the truth to me in the form of your honest opinion, have mine, then: I am not strong, Belle. I never was, and I don't think that I would ever be, not really. Since Mother died, I've always been afraid, and always have been. I fought for every single inch of life I've lived, every breath, every moment, and I have hated myself far more than you could possibly even begin to comprehend. I gambled everything I had in order to assuage my fears, and these days, I still lose. I lost back then, and I lose right now. I have nothing left to show for my efforts, Belle. I have nothing. What do I have? A young woman who will never love me back in return, who has turned on me before I ever had the chance to make up for my past mistakes," the Beast shouted, his voice reverberating of all corners of the room, causing Belle to flinch and shrink away from her master.
It hurt him to breathe. It hurt to speak. It hurt to be standing here, alive, standing in the middle of the floor in Belle's private quarters, in front of his hearth keep, crumbling right before the young woman's very eyes, now having confessed his feelings to her in the rawest way possible.
She deserved someone stronger, he knew that. She always had. The Prince knew he had never been worthy of Belle's affections or her love, and he had been stupid and blind to believe that anything else could come of his forcing her into his servitude to make up for her mistake.
"You would have been better off, Belle, never to have known me, and I would be better dead than to live in this cursed, monstrous form, to see all my frailties and mistakes thrown back in my face by a woman whom I love! I cannot ask you to stay here with me for the rest of your life, Belle, for to do so, would surely kill your spirit, that is why you have to leave!" he shouted, curling his shaking claws into fists.
His words trailed away into a half-choked sob as he sharply turned his head away and averted his gaze from her. The noise sounded harsh and ugly and broke in his roaring eardrums, which were pounding with the sound of his own blood flow.
The Beast curled his fists even more tightly and leant against the cold stone wall of the room as he staggered backward a few paces, eager to put distance between himself and his hearth keep, who was still standing in front of the doorway. He did not immediately see her expression, but he felt her piercing stare boring a hole right through him, piercing his heart like an arrow.
The Beast felt his entire body start to shake, like the grass in the plains of the countryside on a windy day, trembling from head to toe. He wanted nothing more than to let himself suffer. He wanted to die, for the witch who had done this to him to end his wretched, miserable existence.
Every sense of coherent thought was leaving him, slinking away, and drowning in despair, hiding in the darkness.
"You…love…me…?" Belle repeated his words in a breathless voice, sounding incredulous, as though she could not quite believe what she was hearing.
Hearing the shock in the young mademoiselle's voice caused the Beast to look up, fear clutching at his heart as his eyes searched Belle's face, trying to discern what her reaction would be.
She straightened and regarded him coldly, causing the Beast's heart to sink to the pit of his churning stomach. She tried to appear brave, all the while her heart was breaking.
"I...I do not understand," Belle stammered in a small and meek sounding voice, the furrow between her brows deepening as she scoffed at his admission of his feelings for her.
She lifted her chin out slightly defiantly and glared at him.
"You love me, then why are you sending me away? This does not sound like the actions of someone who loves!" she shouted, her voice rising as her anger mounted within her while she glared threateningly at the Beast. "I am no one's second chance, Your Highness, and especially not yours!" she swore protectively and ferociously. "Perhaps I would have died rather than live to be your wife, Your Highness!"
The minute the words left her mouth, Belle could tell they had hit their mark.
She immediately flinched away from her own words, hating herself, hating the master for doing this to her and putting her once more in a precarious spot, regretting him, and finding herself…wanting the Beast. Belle knew at that moment that she did not want the master of the castle to send her away, despite her heart soaring at the thought of seeing her father again after all these months apart.
But it was already too late for her to take back her words.
The Beast recoiled, drawing back as if he had been stabbed in the gut. His blue eyes were wide and wounded, though anger and disbelief were quickly flooding back into him again, that same cold fury that Belle had become accustomed to seeing with the man prior to his curse.
"Well," he spoke in a dangerously low and quiet voice that instantly set the fine hairs on the back of her neck upright.
Belle flinched. She almost wished he would shout at her. To rant and rave, scream, hit her even if it allowed him this release of his feelings, but this quiet disappointment was almost too much for her to handle.
But the Beast continued before Belle could apologize. A feral snarl of rage pulled his lips back in a growl. Perhaps for the first time, since knowing him, even in this monstrous form, he looked, well...beastly.
It made Belle's skin crawl as she gritted her teeth and tried not to shiver in front of him.
"If that is truly how you feel, milady, then perhaps a reprieve in our…relationship, if we can even call it that at this point, is unnecessary. Clearly, you are happier without me troubling you with my presence. And I did swear the moment you came into my service as my personal hearth keep, that I would place your happiness forever above my own, yes?"
"Well, you've done a poor job of it, Your Highness!" Belle snapped, her anger and guilt getting the better of her.
The muscles in the Beast's jaw clenched and tighten.
"Fine, Belle," he murmured in a low growl, turning away from his about-to-be-former servant in one swift gesture, his cloak swirling about him. "Have it your way, then. Be alone, if that is what you want, pretty Belle, if that is what would truly make you the happiest," he snarled meanly.
His words cut her, wounded her more deeply than Belle could have ever thought possible as they hit her squarely in the heart. They were more painful than she could have imagined, coming from him, seeing him so vulnerable.
Belle grimaced, her face beginning to crumble, as she thought of the dark nights ahead of her as winter came, the nightmares that would trouble her forever of this argument, and what his confession of his feelings meant. Despite returning home to her Papa, the aching loneliness would consume her.
Without her duties as the Prince's hearth keep keeping her busy, the library as her distraction, what was she to do when the painful memories came back?
She quickly decided that she hated the master of the castle, Prince Adam du Barreau, and reviled him. Hated him, reviled him, wanted him, was terrified by the Prince
But more importantly than that…she needed the Beast. Needed him as her lungs needed air. He was all she had left next to her Papa to call hers, even if that meant she would have to forever call him 'Master.'
The Beast gingerly brushed past her shoulder, jostling Belle out of the way, and started towards her room's door to open it and despair crashed over Belle in a dark wave.
"Don't!" she blurted out, leaping once more in front of the door, and trying to prevent the master of the castle from leaving her on such poor terms. "Don't!" she cried again. "Please, sir—just—"
"Just—what, Belle?" the Beast snarled, barely glancing over his shoulder at the young woman. "Stay here, with you? I think not," he growled, turning to bare his fangs at her. "It will merely make you unhappy, pretty belle, to be in my presence, and as you yourself have just admitted, I have shown a remarkable aptitude for making you unhappy. A thing which I intend to correct. So, go, go home, go back to your village and be happy, go and be with a man who could provide for you, give you a good life, like Gaston," he blurted out with no semblance of tact, his words clumsy and blunt, to say nothing of jealous the moment the mention of his former friend's name rolled off of his tongue.
"Then don't go!" Belle cried, her voice cracking as her vision began to blur at the edges as tears misted in her eyes. "Please—don't go—" she begged, but he cut her off.
The Beast turned very suddenly. So suddenly, as it happened, that Belle very nearly barreled into him and let out a squeak as she felt herself pitch forward and her hands accidentally splayed against his chest in an effort to right her fall. Stumbling backward with a light pink blush scorching her cheeks, she clamped a hand over her mouth and apologized. Though her apology was muffled by her hands.
Gasping, Belle pulled up short and almost tripped over the hem of her gown as her boot heel threatened to snag on it as she attempted to back away, though the Beast caught her wrist in a vice grip and squeezed, preventing her from making her escape, though she squirmed in his iron hold.
"What is it you want of me, Belle?" the Beast demanded, almost sounding angry with his hearth keep. "What would you have me say to you? That I regret what happened to you? I do, of course, I do, but if you would have me say it again every day for the rest of my life, then I would do it."
So powerful was his love for this young woman in front of him that had Belle asked him to give her the world just now, the Beast would have found a way to make it happen.
"I value your life far more than that of my own. I think that I have paid the ultimate price to learn what it means to care for another, and hope to earn her love in return, and the cost is your freedom, Belle. I will not see this castle be your prison for another day," he vowed to her, passionately.
Belle angrily pursed her lips and shook her head vehemently at his words, trying to send his words away.
"But as you have just said, Your Highness, this cannot continue. I—I cannot continue here like this, I am unacceptable to you, but can you not realize that by sending me away, you are as good as killing me! It is the truth!" she protested hotly. "I will be just as dead, if I return home, if you force me to leave and make my sacrifice of integrity and my pride to save my father, worth nothing?" Belle shouted angrily.
"Don't you mean…my integrity and pride?" the Beast asked, meaning to correct her, his voice was very soft.
Belle cut herself off with a sharp inhale and stopped, swallowing hard.
He was partially right, of course, but then Belle thought she was beginning to understand, with a wrench of her gut as a coil in her gut twisted and lurched, that she was talking about herself, too.
For what else has she given up to the master of the castle, if not for her own integrity and pride? What else has she tossed aside to accept him as her master, to think she might love him too?
"I meant…" Belle stammered, her voice breaking. "Ours." She swallowed down hard and looked at the ground, suddenly shy, eyeing him bashfully out of the corner of her gaze. "I—I don't…want to deny how I feel anymore," Belle confessed, her voice soft and distant.
He frowned for an instant as his mind struggled to process Belle's unexpected words.
The Beast raised his brow and looked down his nose at her.
Surely, it was too much to hope that she harbored the same feelings for him as he did for her, and yet, he found himself doing just that. He thought, the longer he looked at Belle, that he was beginning to understand, and it was this, she thought, that hurt her most of all. That of all the people whom Belle has ever loved in her life, the only one aside from her father who has ever taken the time to truly understand her is the one who was now betraying her by daring to send her away.
Belle squeezed her eyes tightly shut, hating herself for the tears that began to spill unbidden down the graceful slope of her temple.
The sight of her tears quickly drove any remaining vestiges of anger from within the Beast.
"I am…sorry for everything, Belle. For every wrong I've committed against you, for every single time that I've saddened or hurt you—a thousand times over, I beg your forgiveness, Belle," he apologized.
The master's pledge slammed against Belle with so much force that she almost staggered backward and likely would have if he'd not literally advanced on her until her back was pressed against the door.
"I will not let you leave this castle without knowing the truth of me, Belle," the Beast declared as Belle's eyes widened in shock. "If this is what is best for you, then so be it. At least…let me have this. Let me confess the words I should have been brave enough to declare a few days ago," he told her, watching Belle's astonishing dark eyes peer back at him in wonder and awe. "I love you, with what little heart I still do possess, and my soul, if I've any left, which is why...I cannot keep you. This kills me, I cannot keep you, and I cannot bear to send you away," he swore. "All I ask of you is that you believe me when I tell you that I love you. More than anything. With all that I am, though I am not much at all." As he spoke, he swallowed down past the lump in his throat and almost reverted his gaze from Belle.
Belle regarded the Beast uncertainly. For a moment, he thought he saw a look of empathy find her eyes, only to watch it pass as quickly as the emotion had appeared, to be replaced with shock and confusion.
Belle guardedly studied the Beast as he continued to cling to her wrist, holding onto the appendage as though he were afraid that if he were to let her go, he would never have her. She met his gaze unflinchingly. It took her several moments to find her voice, and when she did, it was soft.
"I believe you when you say that you love me," she conceded, and the Beast felt his heart swell with the beginnings of hope as he thought her tone sounded eager. "I think that I can understand your reasons, and…" She hesitated, sighing helplessly as he moved in even closer. "I think that I might…that I...I..."
Her voice cracked as she spoke and faltered off for a minute, causing Belle to turn her head for a moment to regain control of her emotions. Slowly, once she thought she'd regained at least some small semblance of control over herself, she turned back around to fully look him square in the eyes.
"I think that I love you too," she whispered, suddenly shy, and unable to meet her master's gaze.
He felt as if the sun had finally risen after a year spent in darkness as he felt the beginnings of his first genuine smile in years creep onto his face at her confession of her feelings.
The Beast opened his mouth to speak, though as he began to take a timid step towards the woman he loved, a sharp twisting pain contorted through his entire body. He winced and staggered backward, reaching out a hand to steady his gait against the walls as a wave of dizziness and nausea swept through him. Belle was by his side in an instant, bracing her master against the worst of his pains.
"Sir?" she cried in a frantic and panicked tone. "What—what do I do? What's happening, what's wrong?"
The Beast could only let out a low guttural growl of pain in response, doubling over and sinking to the ground, on his knees in front of Belle. He felt as though the darkness were closing in around him as a scorching tingling heat began to burn his entire insides, twisting, warping, changing him from the inside out, pulling him under. He had thought he had known pain before this, but never quite like this. This agony was far worse than any he had ever experienced, far more urgent, more significant.
He could hear Belle screaming his name—his real name—though her voice sounded faint, muffled, and distant as if the young woman were speaking to him from underwater.
His world had now shrunk to the small sphere of overwhelming torment that now fully engulfed him.
From somewhere, he felt Belle's hand grasping onto his own as an excruciatingly blinding golden light flooded the room. It was agonizing.
The air shocked his lungs as he gasped for the taste of it as he felt his body start to change. The force of it snapped his eyes wide open as he was finally able to stagger to his feet. His chest heaved as his heart tried to find its rhythm. He battled to keep his eyes open and move his body.
The effort took all he had left within him. He tried again. He just had to know what this all meant, why he felt this bad. The Prince widened his eyes, and their torture was met by the burning, harrowing pain of the light yet again. His hoarse throat cried out against it, shouting the only name he wanted to say.
"Belle!" he cried, raising an arm to shield his face from the light, not able to see a damned bloody thing.
She said something in response, but he missed it.
He tested his body, lifting his shaking hands, and very nearly screamed in shock and staggered backward, almost losing his footing and colliding into the wall due to his weakened, uneven equilibrium.
He was human again.