The third chapter is here! YAY! It's definitely been easier to find time to write with quarantine. How are you guys doing?

In this one I try to explore the outcome of the curse that was prefaced back in the prologue. Happy reading ;)

DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the TID or Beauty and the Beast characters, nor their stories.

Tale as Old as Time...

CHAPTER 3: CURSED

1885, London, England

The woman's voice was no longer soft and broken, but now strong and ethereal. "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."

Will gasped, his face paling rapidly. He was barely able to register the fact that he was under yet another curse when the enchantress raised her hands.

With a snap of her fingers, the Shadowhunters were plunged into darkness, the storm slowly ceasing to rage outside.

Will bolted awake from his nightmare, chest heaving; the covers were tangled around him, and a thin sheen of sweat coated his skin. He felt like he was burning.

The same vision had plagued his sleepless mind for almost ten years. The ballroom. The old woman, the enchantress. The curse.

Every waking second since that night in the Lightwoods' ballroom had been guilt-ridden.

Will was unable to face his stupidity and selfishness. And where did that leave him? Trapped in the London Institute, with everyone who had been with him cursed as well. The only members of the Institute who had not been cursed were those who had not been with Will that night; their cook, Bridget, the parlor maid, Sophie, and the carriage driver and stable boy, Thomas.

In the beginning, Will had laughed. He could remember it so clearly now. Back on the twenty-first of October, in 1875, he had awoken in his bed in the Institute, feeling particularly trodden. He had shaken his head, associating the dull pounding in his head with a probable amount of drinking from the ball the night before. The curse was not even on his mind.

It was only when he stretched out across his bed, throwing off the covers, that he gasped, too surprised to shout or even curse. His whole body was covered in matted dark fur. And he was huge.

Whereas Will had before been a generally tall and lanky young man for his age, he was definitely not this big; at a height of almost seven feet tall, Will could hardly fit in his own bed anymore.

He scrabbled for purchase as his padded paws hit the ground, and Will whirled as he turned to face himself in the mirror. And what he saw made him faint.

When Will awoke once again, he saw concerned hazel eyes hovering above him. Long, dark hair partially covered the maroon scar marring her face from the left corner of her mouth to her temple. Sophie. When Will spoke, his voice was a deep rasp so rumbly that one breath sounded like he was clearing his throat extremely loudly. "Sophie!"

Sophie startled a bit, taking a step back. Will immediately felt humiliated. "Master Will." Her clear voice sounded unafraid, but still hesitant. "Are you alright?"

Will pulled himself up with ease, noticing that he was back in his bed. When he turned back towards the mirror in his room, the only thing he recognized were his bright blue eyes, staring back at him in disbelief.

"No," he muttered, his voice once again alarming him. "No. NO! Sophie, the curse...was it real? Is it real? Am I dreaming?" The desperation in his voice was thick with fear. "By the Angel, I better be dreaming!" He slammed his fists into the mattress, just realizing that he had claws. Quadruple the size of his regular fingers, and as sharp as a sword's blade.

A look of sympathy crossed Sophie's face, and that small detail angered him more than it should have. Sophie had always despised him for his rudeness and crude mockery, so naturally, her showcasing any pity towards him meant that the situation had to be pretty awful.

"I heard about the curse from Ms. Branwell," Sophie said softly, taking a step forward again. I guess she heard enough from Will to recognize that he wasn't a different person, he just looked hideous. And as Sophie had suffered a myriad of times on account of her own scarred appearance rather than be appreciated for her personality, Will fathomed that she might understand better than anyone else.

Will held his breath, waiting for her to go on.

"She told me of the enchantress. She thinks it may have been a Greater Demon."

Will suppressed the very strong urge to punch something. He knew if he did, it would most probably break from the size of his new fists.

Sophie exhaled and continued speaking gently, like Will was a wild animal in need of taming. He may as well have been one. "After the curse was placed, you were all transported back to the Institute." She paused, then frowned. "Well, more like dropped at the front steps. Thomas was returning from the stable and saw all of you...erm...already transformed." She bit her lip.

"What do you mean, all of us?" Will frowned. "I was the only one who was cursed. She turned me into a beast. Literally."

Sophie's eyes were wide. Will obviously didn't know every part of the story. "Well...oh, Will-" Sophie sighed and plopped down into the love seat by the fireplace, as if she was troubled by a heavy burden. "You were cursed into an animal of some sort-"

"A bloody beast," Will muttered under his breath.

"-and the others were cast into...normally inanimate objects."

A heavy silence dragged between them.

"What, like...like Jem's a violin now, or something?" Will spat hysterically, reaching up to run a hand through his hair, only to be greeted with thick fur and horns instead.

"Not quite." Sophie ticked off the names of the shadowhunters on her fingers. "Jem is a clock, Charlotte is a teapot, Henry is a harpsichord, Jessamine is a feather duster, Gabriel is a candelabra...it's all quite a lot to take in. They are, of course, still able to talk...yet their forms are definitely not their own."

Of course Will had sputtered and protested at the fact that Gabriel, of all people, had also been affected by the curse. He would never hear the end of his utter idiocy from the younger Lightwood.

As soon as Sophie finished her sentence, Will had leapt up (as gracefully as an enormous beast could) and stomped out of the room. Thank the Angel for the tall ceilings of the Institute; if all the ceilings were the height of the doorframes, Will was sure that he would eventually resemble the hunchback of Notre Dame.

Barging into Jem's room across the hall felt completely different when you actually had the capacity to tear the door off its hinges.

Will couldn't help but cringe when he groaned; his frustration sounded like a predator's roar. He would even consider saying that his beast transformation was scarier than any duck could ever be.

It turned out that all of the Institute's residents were in the drawing room, huddled around the glowing fireplace. Will was no doubt the largest among the group- he was surrounded by tiny household items, it seemed. And crouching next to the group was Gideon Lightwood.

Gideon had not been in the ballroom when the curse was cast. Luckily Gabriel's the Lightwood who's now a candlestick, Will thought. Sophie hurried inside the room, ducking under Will's outstretched arm.

"Mr. Lightwood!" She exclaimed. Gideon visibly gulped as he craned his head to look up at Will; but as soon as he saw Sophie, he grinned and bent his head to kiss her hand.

"Will! Oh, Will, how are you?" It was so strange to hear Charlotte's voice coming out of a six-inch porcelain teapot. Seeing the curse Will had subjected to the closest people he could call family, he collapsed again.

Over the years of the curse, it had not been easy to adapt. In the few months after the ball, the Institute's residents spent every night in the library poring over a plethora of books and files, searching for a cure. Henry was the only one who was always left out; being a large harpsichord, he couldn't exactly fit through many doors. But as the months turned into a year, and the year turned into four, and those four turned into nine, the shadowhunters grew more and more helpless.

Gideon frequently summoned Magnus Bane, one of the most powerful and renown warlocks in the world; but even though he had relieved Will of the burden that was the fake curse placed upon him by Marbas when he was a child, Bane had no solution to the powerful malediction of the enchantress. The only way had been spoken by her words. The curse would break once someone fell in love with Will.

It wasn't that they didn't ever have hope. Even Gabriel had admitted- albeit a year after the curse had been cast- that Will had been handsome enough in human form to attract many girls, and boys. He suggested that they just ask Magnus to glamor Will back into his human form, and then have someone fall in love with him to break the curse.

But it was never that simple. No matter how hard Magnus and other warlocks- namely Ragnor Fell and Catarina Loss- tried, no shape-shifting of any sort could transform Will out of his beast form. The enchantress had struck true to her words; if someone was to fall in love with Will, they would have to love him as he was. A hideous beast, hiding a fragmented heart inside.

Now Will slowly stood up from his bed, and lumbered across his room to lean over the taller sink Thomas had helped install for him. Will welcomed the cool sensation of icy water as it ran in rivulets down his furry face. He found he had already forgotten what he used to look like. In human form, he would be almost twenty-four years of age. A full-grown man. All those years of growth, stripped away from him. From him and Jem and Jessie and Gabriel. The only comfort he found in the curse was Jem's survival; he was no longer a youthful spirit in a dying boy's body, but a youthful spirit in a wooden clock's body- he did not need to take yin fen, and secretly, Will was glad that he still had his parabatai beside him, for much longer than any of them had expected.

The Silent Brothers had helped a great deal, protecting outside shadowhunters from digging into the London Institute's business by protecting the Institute with wards and visiting often to check on the "bedridden" Jem Carstairs (all a façade, of course). Charlotte had also still managed to keep hold of the Institute; Sophie, Thomas, and Gideon became her full-time assistants as they helped her read correspondence and address the Enclave. Maybe Will had the angel Raziel to thank- their secret still had not been discovered.

Will left the washroom to pull open the curtains of the Institute, just a crack- he promised to never open them all the way or else someone with the Sight was bound to notice- but he missed London's rare sunlight, and more common rainy grey days. Today it was snowing, looking quite horrid as a layer of opaque grey fog obscured London's skyline.

Yet something, or rather someone, caught his eye.

Will's transformation had come with animal instincts; now his lucid vision narrowed in on the small figure steadily approaching the Institute's front steps. It was a young woman, leading a beautiful white horse beside her. She had plain brown hair tied back, and wore a simple winter cloak that prompted his guess that she wasn't from the city. As she drew nearer, Will had the urge to analyze every detail of her. Who was she? Did she know about the curse? Was she simply seeking refuge from the storm, as the enchantress had that dreary night years ago?

Just then, the girl looked up, her eyes seeming to marvel at the gothic grandiosity that was the London Institute. Something about her was...unique. She didn't flaunt her beauty in the fashion that city girls like Jessie did, but she had a captivating allure. Will had been so busy wondering of her character that, when she locked gazes with him, large grey eyes widening, he gasped and stumbled backwards.

He scrambled to shut the curtains as fast as he could. His heart was hammering in his chest, more than it had in a long, long time.

So that is it! I hope this chapter cleared up some more and added details about the curse...I will see you next time (very soon) for a chapter from Tessa's story and her journey to London!

I'm knocking out chapters as fast as I can...please check back for new ones soon!

Stay tuned for more, and stay safe! xoxo