The hag’s rose is wilting. If it’s even hers at all. The flower could have come from anywhere, and the Beast’s memories of that night are so distorted he no longer knows what is real and what isn’t. It’s beyond tempting to simply pretend it was all a bad dream, a figment of Bastien’s crazed mind.
But Angelique is real. Was real. Jacques and some of the women moved her body to the ice room and scrubbed the floors of her blood. The Beast can still smell it there, anyway. It is obvious no one will be coming to claim her. The bastard Lafarge probably didn’t even tell anyone she is dead. It would be just like him to feign ignorance. All he needs to do is wait long enough for everyone to assume she ran away. After a while, if she doesn’t turn up, he’ll be able to annul the union and take another wife.
There is only one thing the Beast can do about it.
He has Angelique buried in the garden next to his parents. Though his memory of them is all but nonexistent, he knows they would have welcomed Angelique as their own. The Beast couldn’t save the young woman, but perhaps he can give her, in death, the peace she deserved while she was alive.
“You say the hag showed him the woman?” Jacques asks.
“For all I know, it was a hallucination.”
“But what if it wasn’t?” Jacques says eagerly. “Surely she wouldn’t have appeared without reason. It must mean something. She must be close by. If we could just—”
The Beast laughs. “It’s been almost three hundred years, Jacques. How much longer will you cling to your hope before you realize it’s nothing but an illusion? This is it. This is what our lives will be like for all of eternity.”
“There is always a way out of a difficult situation.”
“Absolutely,” he says. “And it’s quite easy. Go and fetch one of the villagers here and watch how quickly he’ll find something to skewer me with. Go on, what are you waiting for? Only someone unaffected by the curse can break it, so the solution should be obvious.” He shudders as he says the words. His death would break the curse, true, but it would also kill the woman. That surety is there whether he wants to believe it or not. Bastien believes it and that taints the Beast’s own perception.
“We don’t know what it would do to the rest of us. It might kill us all if you were to die.” Apparently, this is something Jacques has considered before.
“Haven’t you lived long enough?” The Beast sounds weary saying it.
“I have existed far too long,” Jacques agrees. “But it is a state not to be confused with living. None of us have been living these three centuries. We haven’t changed, aged, grown up, had children, or died. That, Master, is not life. And, while I would be most content to... cease, I would not presume to make that choice for the others. Would you?”
He leaves before the Beast can think of anything to say.
The library is in the middle of repairs, all the books neatly packed out of harm’s way. With nothing to do, the Beast strolls aimlessly through his castle. He knows each stone, each tapestry and every painting by heart. While the west wing where he resides is bursting with life, the east wing is dusty and abandoned; there is no one to use these rooms anymore. The Beast himself hardly ever has reason to venture here.
Some faint fragment of a memory takes him to one of the south-facing rooms. The door is stuck from disuse and everything inside is covered with white sheets. A balcony, easily twice as large as his own, opens off the south wall. Glass doors let in all the best light and frame a magnificent view of the forests and mountains.
This used to be Bastien’s studio. In the absence of his parents to oversee his education, Jacques hired tutors and prescribed a wide range of subjects for the young prince to study. Art used to be one of his favorites.
The Beast tugs on a white sheet and it slides off an easel. Another reveals a table laden with dried, cracked paints. In the corner is a stack of canvases, darkened with age, but still usable. The Beast mounts one on the easel. His paw is too big to hold a delicate brush, but he can just manage to grasp a piece of coal.
He draws a curve, then another, and another, until a shape begins to appear. It’s rough, clumsy. He knows he can do better. Setting the canvas aside, he takes another and starts over. A face appears, the curve of one shoulder, but the features elude him.
Another canvas replaces that one. He takes his time, conjures his subject in his thoughts as vividly as he can before he traces what he sees in his mind’s eye onto the canvas. Yes, that’s it. The blank space fills with an outline, then shading. It’s imperfect. Black and gray could never hope to capture what he is trying to draw.
Frustrated, he reaches for the final canvas. There won’t be any more chances unless he sends his driver to the fairs. Eyeing the dried paints and rotted bushes, the Beast drops the piece of coal and bounds out of the east wing, shouting for Jacques. “Canvas,” he tells the startled butler. “As much of it as you can find. And paints and brushes, the best money can buy. Quickly! Before the merchants leave.”
He waits around only long enough to make certain his orders are being followed and then returns to the studio and the coal.
It’s harder now, he is unsure of his dexterity. Only the lightest of strokes will do, and his heavy paw almost crushes the coal to dust in an effort to keep the lines as delicate as possible. His concentration is so absolute he almost doesn’t notice when Bastien rouses within him. His human side can see the subject on the square of canvas as easily as the Beast.
Bastien moves the Beast’s hand over the surface, slowly tracing her eyes and nose. The waves of her hair cascade in a graceful fall around her face, caressing the line of her throat. The mouth takes them the longest. It’s soft when the coal would have it appear hard. The lower lip is fuller than the upper, lush and enticing. She is smiling just a little, with just a hint of a secret tucked into the corners of her mouth as she looks over her bare shoulder at something to Beast’s left.
It’s her...