A/N: I want to personally thank both Wanting Edward and ShinyThings6465 for reviewing the prologue! Thank you both for showing interest in this story; I honestly don't know if I would have continued this if no one had let me know if they wanted to read more or not. But all I needed was that small bit of encouragement! So this fic will go on! Muahahahaha!

Quick fact: Since the Swan family is from Italy in this story, certain family member's names are spelled differently than their English counterparts: Charlie would be Carlotto, Alice would be Alicia, and Rosalie would be Rosalia; but to keep people from getting confused, most of the time I'm just going to go ahead and call them by their original names. The only time you should hear their Italian names is if their name is spoken in dialogue. Let me know if this is too confusing and/or annoying.

'I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and Honour, but few people except perhaps the minister who had baptized all three of us remembered my given name. My father still likes to tell the story of how I acquired my odd nickname: I had come to him for further information when I first discovered that our names meant something besides you-come-here. He succeeded in explaining grace and hope, but he had some difficulty trying to make the concept of honour understandable to a five-year-old. I heard him out, but with an expression of deepening disgust; and when he was finished I said: "Huh! I'd rather be Beauty."' - Pg. 1, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty & the Beast by Robin McKinley

Beauty & the Beasts

Chapter One

One century later...

I looked up at the sky, trying to will the sun to break through the fog that had rolled in from the Mediterranean sea, then sighed and dully took in my surroundings once again when my mental plea did nothing to make the sun show. Today was a market day, a day that I usually looked forward to--but not on days like this one. When the sun was shining brightly in the sky and the breeze kept the weather cool, market day was cheery and there was no tension; but the exact opposite occurred on the market days when the sun would not break through the clouds. Days like today kept people on edge as they shopped for goods. They didn't trust the shadows.

I and my older sisters, Rosalie and Alice, were standing behind our usual booth, selling the goods produced from the villa we lived and worked at. Sacks of wheat and flax seed came from the villa's fields; cartons full of grapes, raisins, and olives came from the villa's orchards; and corked bottles of olive oil and wine were the advantageous excesses from the grape and olive fruits that were harvested at our villa.

I flicked a dark purple grape. "Do you think tha--"

"No," Rosalie answered swiftly in a bored voice.

"You didn't even let me finish," I said, feeling my cheeks turn hot in annoyance.

"No," she said, putting emphasis on the word as she turned to face me, her perfect face stoic. "You cannot run off to the library and read your books. We need you here, helping."

I pointedly looked around at the nearly empty market street, but Rosalie stubbornly refused to be bated. I sighed again and started shredding a raisin into minuscule pieces. Alice slapped my hand to make me stop abusing our goods, but her eyes were laughing. I settled into a glower and Alice's laughter bubbled out into an audible sound. "So cranky when you are denied your books, aren't you, Bella?"

I humphed; this seemed to be even more amusing to her. "Silly Bella," she said, shaking her head. She then covertly threw a raisin at me; it bounced harmlessly off my forehead. My mouth gaped open in shock. I met Alice's gaze and she gave me a challenging smile. I picked up a raisin and lobbed it at her head but she ducked to the side and it sailed passed her--only to hit Rosalie, who had been diligently rearranging sacks of flax seed, in the back of the head.

Her body stiffened and she slowly turned and glared at the both of us. "Toddlers!" she exclaimed vehemently. "You are both overgrown toddlers!"

Alice and I looked at one another; after a moment's pause we burst into giggles. Rosalie let out a frustrated screech and we laughed even harder.

"What a lively bunch we have here," a deep masculine voice suddenly said in amusement. Our little world behind the booth was instantly penetrated, and my back straightened as a rippling sensation went along my skin, raising the hair on end. I was unaware of my sisters reactions to the intruding voice, but I could imagine that they had been similar to my own. I slowly turned to face the owner of the voice and felt my breath leave me.

The man was definitely a Volturi, of this I was certain. Being one who lived outside the walled-city of Volterra, I had never encountered the nobility that ruled the city our village shared borders with, but I had heard stories. The Volturi were said to be the most devastatingly beautiful creatures to exist throughout all of Italy, with skin as pale as the moon and faces too beautiful to compare to any in this world. Fallen angels, some had called them. Looking at this man, I believed those stories.

Suddenly I felt one of my sisters tug my arm and I stumbled. I turned to see Rosalie and Alice poised in elegant curtsies and I managed to turn my stumble into an awkward bow. The man chuckled and I felt my face flush in embarrassment. "You may rise," he said in a voice full of humor. When I looked up again, he was not looking at me, the bumbling oaf-girl, but was instead gazing fixedly at Rosalie. His eyes were still warm from his laughter, but their focus had deepened in intensity. He looks hungry, I thought, disturbed. But then I realised that he was at a food market. Of course he may look hungry, I mentally berated myself.

"I could not help but stop by your booth when I saw all the fun you were having." He tore his gaze away from Rosalie to look around at the other vendors that were silent behind their booths and I followed his gaze. "Besides the three of you, the market is very dead today," he observed. And he was right. All of the other people selling goods from their farmlands were deathly quiet and their olive complexions were chalky pale, as if they were very ill. All of their faces were looking in different directions--but they were all steadfastly not looking in our direction. The few customers that had been milling around the market were gone. One man behind a neighboring booth covertly looked in our direction through the corner of his eye; when he noticed me staring back his eyes widened in panic and he swiftly looked away. Apparently even amongst people who lived in Volterra, seeing someone of noble birth was uncommon.

"But then again I have not frequented the market many times," the man of Volturi said in his deep hypnotic voice. "Is this the normal turnout?"

Rosalie cleared her throat. The man's probing gaze instantly zeroed in on her again and he smiled generously at her. Rosalie sounded faint as she spoke. "N-no. Usually there is a good deal of people who come to the market. It is the dreary weather that keeps them away," she ended on an apologetic note, as if she should have tried to somehow prevent the dark gray clouds from forming in the sky herself.

The man made a motion with one pale sinewy arm, as if to brush Rosalie's worry aside. "No matter. If I had known lovely ladies such as yourselves would be attending to my needs, I would have been around the market much sooner--good weather or not," he flirted, his eyes solely on Rosalie.

I exchanged a glance with Alice; sure enough her cheeks were warmed with embarrassment too. Good. I wasn't the only one who felt like I was intruding in on an intimate moment.

"I am Felix Volturi," he introduced. "And you are?"

Rosalie, who had been swaying on the spot, snapped back to attention and motioned to herself, then Alice and I individually. "I am Rosalia Swan. And these are my sisters, Alicia and Isabella Swan. We are pleased to meet you, Lord Volturi." Alice and I parroted her greeting.

Lord Felix Volturi smiled at each of us in turn as he came forward. "Please, call me Felix." My breath stuttered when I realised that he meant to kiss each of us on our cheeks, as was our custom. The thought of this man, with his fallen angel face, being so near made my heart pound with anxiety. I watched as both Rosalie and Alice delicately trembled as his lips brushed the apples of their prettily blushing cheeks--and then it was my turn. He must think me hideous after taking in the lovely features of Rosalie and Alice, I thought in vexation. As his face came closer to mine I distractedly noticed something peculiar about his dark eyes; they were not dark brown, as they had seemed from afar, but were in all actuality a dark blackish-red, like blood. I too trembled as his lips caressed my cheeks. His kisses left two spots of winter-cold on my flesh--or perhaps it felt cold because my face was overheated from blushing so profusely. He then breathed in deeply and was suddenly at a respectable distance again. "Nice to meet you all," he said with a rakish smile.

"Uhm, yes," Rosalie mumbled, the more coherent of the three of us.

"That scent," he said conversationally, looking at the assorted goods within our booth. "It's very pleasant. What is it?"

My sisters and I, I'm sorry to say, were too dazed to understand what he was talking about at first. I was the first to comprehend. "Oh! Um, yes, it's a combination of dried ingredients that we put together in a sealed pouch," I said, becoming the merchant that I was. I was more comfortable with this role; thinking of this man as a customer made him easier to talk to, and made me center all my focus on the topic at hand rather than centering my focus on how very plain I was compared to the people around me. I reached over and picked up one of the very pouches I was talking about and handed it over to him. "It's filled with flax seed, from the fields of the villa we serve at, and also some other things that you can find here at other booths," I informed him, motioning to our still-silent neighboring vendors. "This particular mixture is flax seed, coconut oil, and citrus oil. It's my favorite," I added shyly, looking down.

"Interesting," he said; I looked up to see him giving it a thoughtful look. "I'll take it." With a flick of his wrist he pulled out a money pouch from an inner pocket of his dark charcoal cloak. He set the whole pouch down on the flat surface of our booth. The clink of coins was heavy.

"I don't think--" Alice started in protest, eyeing the undoubtedly vast amount of money.

He held up a placating hand, silencing her. "Please. I want you to have it." He smiled a brilliant smile. "Besides, I think the tradeoff's fair. Now all I have to do is breathe in this fragrance and I will always be able to remember the three most beautiful ladies in all of Italy." At his words I felt something shrink inside of me: I was sure that he only included me in his complement to be courteous.

"Though I hope that I will not have to resort to reliving my memories to ever see you again," he continued, again looking at Rosalie. "How far do you live from the city? I would like to invite you all to the Volturi estate for dinner and dancing one evening. We are having a ball in about a fortnight."

I felt my eyes widen in shock.

"W-well," Rosalie said, visibly flustered at the prospect of being invited to such an elite social gathering. "Not too far. It is about an hour long journey by horse going down the main path that leads out of Volterra."

"Perfect," he said with a slight incline of his head. "Expect an invitation posthaste." Before any of us could gather our thoughts and answer him back or give him a farewell, he turned and left.

The other vendors seemed to breathe one giant sigh of relief when Felix Volturi was gone, and then suddenly all eyes were on my sisters and I. I couldn't quite figure out the emotion that seemed to be displayed on all of their faces.

My shock about being invited to a ball quickly turned to nausea. Sure enough an invitation made of rich stationery, which was inscribed with the most elegant script, was sent to the villa on the evening of the same day that my sisters and I met Felix Volturi, addressed to the 'charming daughters of Signor Carlotto Swan.'

In a fortnight I was to be amongst Italian Lords and Ladies and be expected to dance. I was dreading it as if it were the Plague.

Our father Charlie was beyond flattered that his daughters had been invited to such an important gathering, happy that we were going to experience what most lower class people could never even dream of. "If anyone is most deserving of this honor, it is my three precious ones," he said upon finding out the news.

The rest of the evening had been spent celebrating. All of the families that lived and worked on the villa joined us in our wing of the house, generously bringing dishes of delicious smelling foods and wine to keep everyone merry. I left the festivities early.

I laid in my bed, staring up at the ceiling of my and my sisters' shared room, contemplating a setting where I was among people as beautiful as fallen angels. I couldn't imagine it. I, with my mud brown eyes, equally dull-colored hair, and pale lanky body, would look like the clumsy servant girl that I was--while I could see my sisters finally flourishing given the opportunity of courting a Lord. Rosalie, with her flawless face and tumbling silk of golden wavy hair, had beauty that was already equal to that of a patrician woman, and would finally look the part with her womanly curved figure in silks and satins. And Alice, with her petite dancers body and shining raven black hair, was the epitome of grace and loveliness as she could charm anyone with her dazzling smile and playful manner.

I, on the other hand, was a shy lump who was good at cooking and making potpourri and who spent her free time with her nose in a book. I did not want to go to any ball. I resolved to tell my family that I would not go to the Volturi estate first thing the next morning.

To Be Continued...