AN: I'm moving my Cogsworth-Maurice-Gaston part for the next chapter but I wanted to give you guys this to read. Hope you enjoy

Chapter Seventeen

Adam looked towards the library as he stared at the parchment in his paws. He wasn't smart like Belle. He had been fairly interested in the world around him until he was about six and that was when the comments about him being stupid and pathetic and worthless had started being made. He had held an interest in nature, plants and birds and things…until he was told that he only liked those things because he was weak and powerless and….and then it didn't seem worth it.

So, when he had admitted to having been taught to read, that teaching had mainly been because Adam had sought it out. He was a spare. He wasn't even the second brother and if family history could teach them things then people like him and his aunt could easily be disposed of. If Belle had never come to him, if those birds had never flown to him then he wouldn't have ever taken an interest in learning ever again and it was because of those very painful years that Adam knew he would never be as clever as Belle.

Maurice was literate. There weren't that many from Belle's village who had been fully literate when she had come and despite the progress made, there still weren't a lot of people who fit in that group. Still, Belle had told him that she had been reading since the age of six or even before that. She read everything and managed to learn new concepts the first time she covered them. She was always able to help him explain things that he hadn't before. He wasn't intelligent like she was.

And that's why he hadn't been given the task of learning magic. Belle was special but he was worried that this was too much on her…on them…and that he had hurt her by bringing her into this world. He looked at the parchment again and bowed his head nervously. Maybe Belle would have ideas on this but he wouldn't bother her if she was in the middle of something.

He went to the library and managed to take deep breaths before knocking and slightly opening the door. He grinned as he saw her sitting there with books before her but a flower before her, a tulip that appeared to be glowing. As she turned to him, her concentration shifted and the tulip drooped back down.

"Hi, darling," Belle whispered as she reached out a hand to him. "Are you okay?" She started to stand but Adam quickly came in, closing the door behind his larger form.

"Just…you just sit…" he said as he stared at the tulip. "Wow…were you…you were…" Adam looked at the flower as he placed the parchment on the table and admired the flower. It had been so full of life, so full of beauty. She had done this in this gothic-styled place. "That's incredible. You're incredible," he grinned to her as she placed her hand on the vase and made it glow again. "What does it…do?"

"It's meant to be a healing spell," Belle said and placed her hand around the side of his paw. She turned to the parchment and saw Adam's focus shift. His writing was always so skillful when human but now it looked like the scrawled scribbles of a child. Still, content was important, not style. The inside was more important than what was on the outside.

Looking over the document, Belle's eyes widened. She turned to Adam who was obviously obsessing more about the way his writing looked and the trouble he had with his paws. "This is….this is what you were trying to figure out, this is how we can help by providing more work for the farmers to balance with the taxes your father buried them under. This means that people can start to earn a decent wage again and have the money to sustain themselves."

"It would be," Adam replied, "If…you could read it."

Belle kissed his forehead and then his snout before wrapping her arms around him fully. "We can work on what it looks like but this is brilliant, this shows that passionate, caring man whom I married. You're always thinking of others."

Adam rolled his eyes, "You give me far too much credit," he told her before looking at the tulip. "This though…that's really amazing, that's real power. I'm sure that you'd come up with much better ways of helping people, you're more -"

"I don't give you enough credit," Belle replied and placed her hand over his mouth. He stopped speaking and looked at her a little embarrassed. "I know your handwriting well enough, I'll copy it for you then we can send it to your brother. Nobody will know."

Adam laughed and nodded before sitting down beside the books. He looked over what he could read, many of the spells were in Latin with a few in French. He could see that Belle was looking at protection spells, good health spells, beginner spells. "You know," Adam said as his eyes caught onto one that would be helpful to know – a way to reverse a spell. He stared at it. It looked different from the others, there was more written there, it was a longer spell, more difficult.

"Belle," he said as he looked at it nervously. He turned to her. "What does this one do?" he asked her as he stared at it. "All of these other spells are….they're shorter, simpler, what does this one do?"

"I…I found that one because I…I wanted to show it to you," Belle whispered and Adam froze as he saw hope in her eyes. He knew how dangerous hope was. Hope was something he had had when he was ten and not for very long after that. The only time when he had been okay with lost hope was when he had let her go from the castle, when he had released her because he knew that lost hope meant nothing if you saw the person you love in pain.

"Don't," he told her firmly. "Belle, you said you'd be careful but -"

Belle took his arm and smiled to him with such love, "You can trust me. I can take care of all of us," she said and Adam shook his head. He could understand restoring the flower. He could understand small charms that took away pain. The enchantress had said that she couldn't reverse this curse on him. Before Adam had said anything, he heard Belle start to whisper and saw that there was a light around his wrist and he could see where the rose was. The words which she was saying were in Latin but Adam couldn't concentrate. After a moment, he started to see the fur coming off of his paw but he saw Belle's hand start to change.

What was going on? He tried to release his hand but as he saw his human form come out, he saw Belle start to take on the beastly form and despite how he knew he would always love her he couldn't do this to her.

He tried to break free but the curse was too strong, almost like a magnet and he found his eyes to close. Please, Please stop her. I'll do anything. Please, I have a feeling you can hea-

All of a sudden, Adam felt that the world around him had gone black. He looked at his wrist and felt that he saw the glass shard shimmer and then he blinked, he could feel his own beastly form and more importantly he could see the soft skin of Belle's body and then nothing. His body sank to the floor. He just hoped that she was okay.

Belle felt a pain through her as she found herself to grow weaker. She didn't know whether she was to take on the curse for him but giving Adam what he truly wanted was what she was hoping for. He wanted to be human again. She knew that. She knew the pain which went through him every day and she could see that pain when he showed her the plan to help the peasants and farmhands.

"I see that you're taking to these gifts well," Belle heard the enchantress say and she felt a loss of connection. She blinked, it was as if she was in a completely clean shining silver place. "You don't have the skills that I do but you're getting there."

"You mean that Adam…" Belle asked, "Why am I here? I did the spell the way the book -"

"The truest form of love has two sides, a beginning and an end, sometimes the return is too strong. Sometimes people can love us too much," the enchantress said. "Sometimes we tamper with things that we should leave well enough alone but everyone makes mistakes."

"You mean -" Belle whispered.

"Don't worry," the enchantress replied. "Your prince has already chosen to pay for your mistake. I'll speak to you soon," she said and Belle froze.

After she blinked, Belle looked around her. The castle felt different again. The Gothic features seemed to have disappeared and been restored to the purity of the beautiful castle. There didn't seem the same darkness but there was also protection. She felt protected still. However, as she looked up she froze. There was nobody sitting there with her.

"Adam?" she asked before feeling something wet by her foot. She stood and felt it warm, sticky. He heart pounded in her chest as she went and saw that on the other side of the table was Adam's body surrounded by blood. There was a tear through his back and there was a deep stab wound that had been there the night he had transformed back into his princely state. Yet, this time he was in the form in which they had met.

"No, no, no," Belle whispered as she started to panic. She touched his chest but he wasn't breathing. She tried to shake him but he remained limp, his face showed such pain. She couldn't feel his warmth or feel his heart or his lungs. "Adam?" she whispered as she shook him and felt the floor covered with his blood.

"Adam, Adam," she sobbed painfully as he just lay there limp. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She heard the sound of glass breaking and looked to his wrist. The glass shard had come out but this time as she held it up, she couldn't see anything in it. She couldn't even see a glimmer of a reflection.

She just wanted someone there, anyone there to tell her that they were finding help for him and that he was okay. She loved him. He just had to be okay. She heard a knock on the door and didn't know what to say, she didn't know who it was. Maybe they knew a way to prove to her that Adam wasn't dead, that all of this blood didn't come from him.

They just had to know how to do that.

End of Chapter Seventeen

Thank you for reading

Thankyou to the reviewers of Chapter Sixteen

DarthLeia19, KathyMesser