BELLE looked up at the Prince's shining and magnificent castle with no small amount of trepidation in her bones. As she looked up at the sharp unforgiving iron gates and the domineering towers of various sizes that jutted out at unconventional angles, she pondered why the Prince had never left home before, until now.
The villagers already thought her crazy, a beauty but a funny girl, they called her, but the royal family of these lands had been famously reclusive for the last few years.
The young Prince rarely left the castle to make a public appearance unless it was to the French courts in Paris and when he did leave, it was said that he went to great lengths to remain inconspicuous.
But she could not help but wonder what it was he was doing within his village. Belle's eyes widened as they slipped in through the bars of the gates with ease, as though they were bandits coming to rob the place instead of the Prince exercising his authority and commanding the gates be properly opened.
The act was so strange that she wondered if the Prince had snuck out of the castle without any of the servants who likely tended him to know the truth.
When a man seemingly in his early thirties walked out of a side door as they approached the castle, his brows furrowed together in worry, she felt her stomach drop.
Belle's eyes went to the Prince who did not bother to stop his stride and seemed content to ignore the handsome golden-haired man as he approached.
The man called out to the Prince in rapid-fire French and it was enough to make the Prince pause.
"Master, forgive me, we could not find you, there has been an incident. A beggar woman arrived at the castle's gates not but a moment ago. She refuses to leave and is asking for an audience with you, Your Highness," the man stammered, his voice holding a slight stutter to it, likely due to his growing nervousness, as he spared a quick glance to Belle. "Ah, Master, who is this, if I may ask, sir? Is she a new maid? She is…not one of our castle staff I recognize…" His voice trailed off as his kind hazel eyes took notice of how cracked and red-rimmed Belle's eyes were and frowned at seeing the tears welling within. He turned questioning eyes towards the young master of the castle.
"The lady Belle is my guest, Lumiere, for the morning, I would like a tray of breakfast prepared and sent to the West Wing, but this…vagabond you spoke of, she has a name?" he grunted, sounding and looking thoroughly less than pleased.
The man called Lumiere suddenly looked uncomfortable and began to wring his hands together in front of him, awkwardly shifting his weight from one foot to the next.
"She uh, didn't want to say, Your Highness," the man muttered, sounding thoroughly embarrassed and perhaps afraid.
Belle noticed this Monsieur Lumiere seemed to have trouble meeting the Prince's gaze. She frowned. She wondered if all of the man's servants who tended to his every beck and call were terrified of him. She thought she was beginning to see why. She was jolted out of her thoughts by the sound of the Prince's voice. He sounded impatient.
"Send her away," the Prince commanded in a dismissive tone and made to grab Belle's hand and began to pull her forward.
Miraculously, somehow Belle kept herself from letting herself cry but lowered her head and actively averted her gaze.
Though before the Prince could whisk her away inside the sprawling castle, there came the sound of a startled shout from somewhere behind them, near the iron-wrought gates.
Prince Adam let out a frustrated growl and without a word began to storm off toward the gates, still never once letting go of Belle's wrist in his painful vice, leaving the servant Monsieur Lumiere to stare after them, worried.
The moment the Prince appeared, the small crowd of servants tittering amongst themselves that were surrounding the gate immediately parted to make way for their master.
He shoved past his curious maids and guards, however, and the unflinching manner in which the Prince pulled Belle alongside him left no room for misinterpretation. His message was quite clear.
The pretty girl was his and his alone, no one else's. The Prince and Belle came to a halt in front of the beggar woman standing in front of the gates, and Belle drew in a sharp gasp that pained her lungs.
She knew this woman, it was Agathe.
Agathe was a kind widow who had lost her husband to the wars and now depended upon scraps of the villagers' charity for measly scraps of loaves of bread or hunks of cheese that were just bordering on going moldy and bad.
Her lips were chapped and cracked and her skin was badly dehydrated. Her golden curls which were still quite lovely despite her otherwise ragged appearance in terms of her tattered dress were hidden by her hair scarf.
The moment Agathe's curious catlike green eyes landed on Belle, her cheeks flushed red at seeing the tears that were starting to slip out the edges of Belle's eyes.
"What do you want, wench? Why are you at my castle's gates?" Prince Adam's threatening tone merely spurred an indifferent shrug from the beggar woman. She took two steps closer and wound her hands around the gates' bars.
"Food and shelter, Your Highness, from this bitter cold. It will only continue to get colder as winter approaches, but…" Agathe hesitated and trailed off, looking concerned as she looked into Belle's terrified eyes. "Why do you have her?" she asked the Prince in slightly a defiant tone as she raised her chin and jutted it out at the man, defiantly.
Something akin to anger flashed across the woman's eyes as she returned her gaze to the Prince on the other side of the gates in front of her, his icy blue eyes waiting for a remark on what the hells she was doing here at this hour.
The Prince angrily clenched his teeth, noticing the way the ragged beggar woman was curiously eyeing Belle.
He spared a quick glance towards the young woman whose hand he held in a vice and then back to the woman asking for shelter with seemingly nothing to offer him in exchange.
"The wench is none of your concern, woman. She is my guest and is here with me today willingly, of her own accord," he snapped, an edge of a knife to his voice that suggested to the beggar woman Agathe that she would be wise not to argue with him. "I suggest you leave now, or I will have you forcefully removed from the property and you won't like how this ends," he snarled.
For reasons the Prince did not understand, he felt a strange surge of possessiveness well within his chest as he noticed the strange woman eyeing Belle with familiarity that caused jealousy to ignite within him like raging wildfire.
The Prince felt his mouth turn down in a scowl as he moved to hold Belle by the shoulders as the woman parted her windburnt lips to speak.
There was an unhinging effect to this woman. The Prince allowed himself the fleeting feeling of gratitude that he was not like Father. That he was merciful and gave her this chance to flee.
He hoped the vagabond would prove she wasn't stupid.
But if she did not move away within the next two seconds and quit eyeing his lovely belle of a prize, then he was of a mind to have her imprisoned in his dungeons and hanged.
"Is this true, Belle?" Agathe spoke to Belle in hushed tones, though just enough that the Prince could hear her words. "Did you willingly come with this man? Does Maurice know that you are with him?" she questioned, raising a brow at the Prince in disbelief, clearly not impressed.
She did not seem to believe the Prince's lies that Belle had come willingly with the man of her own accord.
Belle had always liked Agathe, always stopping whenever she found her seated on the stoop of their village's small chapel, with Belle always having some small crust of bread or jar of jam for the lonely widow to slip into her apron's pocket. Belle quickly shook her head, feeling a surge of hope ignite within her chest.
"N-no, he...he doesn't," she whispered. "He took me, Agathe. There was no choice," Belle snapped angrily.
She was sure she would come to regret her words, judging by the way she felt the Prince stiffen, but it was too late to take back her words. If there was a chance that Agathe could convince the Prince to let her go, then she'd take it.
Agathe, for all she knew, might be the only help that would come for her, and at this rate, she would do anything.
Agathe, just as her father did, and Monsieur Levi, the owner of the only bookstore and library in their village, knew the sort of boy Belle would marry one day eventually, if she married, and it certainly was not Gaston.
Whatever intents the Prince had in mind when he'd brought her here to his shining castle, it certainly was not to marry her. There were hushed whispers among some of the more simple-headed villagers that Agathe was said to be a witch, practiced in the arts of dark magic, though Agathe had never given Belle any reason to believe the lies.
But now, as she looked upon Agathe, silently trying to plead to her father's dear friend for her help with just a look, she began to wish that Agathe was indeed a witch who possessed the gift of magic.
Belle had always seen her beauty as something of a curse, and more than once, she had found herself wishing that a wise fairy crone, someone with magic, would come and take away her beauty.
Take it all and keep it for forever, if it meant it would stop Gaston from leering at her backside whenever she went about her errands in the marketplace. She looked to Agathe.
"Please, Agathe, help me, please," Belle whispered and Agathe stepped even closer to the gates and raised a hand through the bars for hers. Without thinking, before the Prince could pull her back or smack her hand away, Belle stretched her hand to hold onto the beggar woman's, and stared in awe as a strange golden light began to emanate from the tips of Agathe's fingers and seeped its way into Belle's skin. Belle could only stare, wide-eyed, in shock.
"Fear not, Belle. It won't be pleasant, but there is a way to perhaps dissuade this Prince's...intentions towards you, though you will be...much changed, in the coming days...I can see into this man's heart. It is black and vile, Belle. He desires you only for your physical beauty and cares not for the beauty that lies within. For your good heart."
Belle stared in awe and confusion as she realized the rumors of Agathe were true. That she did, at least to some extent, practice the Dark Arts. The warmth seeping into her skin caused by that strange light caused her stomach to drop and Belle let out a less-than-dignified whimper as she quickly pulled her hand back and stared at it. The delicate appendage had started to shake and her hands were becoming clammy, something she'd not anticipated.
"Wh-what...?" she stammered, her tongue suddenly feeling thick in her mouth as Belle turned questioning eyes towards her father's friend just as the Prince violently wrenched her away from the gate, looking utterly disgusted.
"Witchcraft, Gods. I will not have this paganism and un-heathen unchristian nonsense practiced on the grounds of my home. Guards, arrest her," the Prince hissed through gritted teeth, snapped his fingers and motioned with a wave of his arm for a pair of guards standing closest to him to arrest her.
Though before the guards could open the gates, Agathe turned on her heels and in a twist of her tattered and grimy skirts and bolted into a sprint. Agathe moved with surprising speed for one who looked so physically frail.
Agathe disappeared into the thick dense forest before the guards so much as had a chance to grab her.
Belle froze as she watched the woods as the guards gave chase and prayed to God that Agathe would make it back to the village unscathed, that she could tell her father, Gaston, or anyone.
At this rate, she found herself hoping that Gaston would come.
It might redeem the arrogant man in her eyes if he were to whisk her away from here, and perhaps she would even entertain the idea of reconsidering his proposal of marriage.
However, a sudden blast of nausea caused her skin to erupt into goosebumps.
Whatever the Prince said to her just now, she couldn't hear it. Her brows twitched and she turned her head to look at him. The Prince's shoulders were hunched as he was facing her, watching her, teeming with anticipation.
"I…" she tried to say, but she was struck with another wave of queasiness that cut off her next words, as the Prince tilted his head to one side and eyed her.
"What?" he asked curiously.
The ringing that now filled her ears with the sound was so loud that she could barely hear anything else, and her knees trembled until one of them gave out and she jerked forward and fell to the ground in an ungainly heap, a cry of pain escaping her lips.
"Are you ill, pretty Belle?" she heard the Prince purr.
But his voice was muffled, as though the man were speaking to her underwater.
Belle rested her palms flat on the ground and tried to push herself to her knees. She was not sure what Agathe had just done to her, what magic spell she had cast upon her, but if it would do as she had said it would and render the Prince disinterested in her, then she was willing to suffer this…whatever 'this' happened to be that was happening.
She shook her head, little beads of sweat starting to glitter on her scalp as Belle struggled to gather enough strength in her throat to manage to answer, "No, I-I'm fine." But she wasn't fine. Far from it, in fact.
Her stomach heaved a pressure Belle was so unfamiliar with that it took everything within herself not to vomit as heat spasms began to drag across her body, wave after wave and she was struck with a horrible aching pounding on her temples and at the top of her head. Her vision blurred and the castle ground seemed to spin.
She could not even hear herself or the Prince as he spoke, just the ringing on her head. She just wanted it to stop.
The crowd of servants erupted into questions, but Belle could make none of them out. She felt dizzy. Her ears continued to buzz and she saw black spots as the pain in her head worsened. If she didn't know any better, she would almost say that it felt as though something was threatening to burst forth, a pair of horns or antlers, even.
The Prince did not catch her as she fell, nor did he order any of his servants to break her fall, and the last thing Belle heard was the sound of her skull smacking against the cold hard stones of the ground of the man's Courtyard.
Then, she slipped into sleep.