Chapter 25 - Isabeau
twenty-five
Isabeau
Sleep wouldn’t come. Not with the wound on my arm still throbbing beneath the bandage and the memory of those corrupted wolves’ yellow eyes haunting the edges of my vision every time I closed my eyes.
Beast’s warmth beside me should have been comforting, but my mind raced like a trapped bird in a box too small to contain it, thoughts slamming against the walls of my skull with nowhere to go.
Especially with him already being healed from the fight.
I knew I’d never rest until I tried one more time to understand what connected us all—me, Beast, the castle, the witch, and the roses drinking my father’s blood.
Beast’s breathing had that deep, steady quality that suggested he was close to sleep, but not quite there.
I’d learned to recognize the difference.
How his muscles went loose in stages, how the rumble in his chest changed pitch as consciousness slipped away from him.
Tonight, he lingered on the edge just as I did, perhaps still alert to potential danger after our encounter with the wolves.
My fingers found his fur automatically, combing through the coarse outer layer to the soft down beneath. The texture was grounding, real in a way that my circling thoughts weren’t.
Our strange relationship had evolved so far beyond what I could have imagined when I first followed that raven to his castle door. When had fear turned to fascination? When had fascination become something else entirely?
“My father,” I began, not really expecting Beast to respond, just needing to unravel my thoughts aloud, “was always particular about questions. He said there’s power in asking the right one, that a well-formed question is already half its own answer.”
Beast’s ear twitched in my direction, a small acknowledgment that he was listening despite his near-doze. The amber of his eyes caught the dying firelight, two low flames in the darkness.
“He used to tell me that when I was struggling with one of his inventions. I’d get frustrated, ready to throw whatever gear or spring was giving me trouble across the workshop, and he’d say, ‘Isabeau, are you asking what’s wrong, or are you asking why it isn’t working?
’” I smiled at the memory. “As if there was a difference. But there was, of course. One led to blame, the other to understanding.”
I shifted, careful of my bandaged arm, to face Beast more directly. His massive head rested on paws the size of dinner plates, claws that had torn through corrupted wolves now retracted and harmless.
“I’ve been asking the wrong questions this whole time,” I continued, my voice dropping lower as if someone might overhear us in this abandoned castle.
“I keep asking what happened to you, what happened to this place. But those questions only get me so far. I need to ask why it happened. Who caused it. What they wanted because I gained part of that answer from the journal.”
A log shifted in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks that briefly illuminated the bedroom. In that flash of light, I could have sworn Beast looked almost human. Something in the set of his eyes, the way his mouth seemed poised to speak before shutting.
The thought struck me suddenly, embarrassingly obvious in retrospect. He couldn’t speak, but he could communicate!
“Can I ask you?” I sat up straighter, excitement cutting through my exhaustion. “Directly, I mean. Yes or no questions that you could answer with a nod or shake?”
Beast’s eyes widened slightly, and for a moment hope flared bright in my chest. Then, slowly, with a heaviness that felt like physical weight dropping between us, he shook his massive head. The sorrow in his gaze was unmistakable, a deep well of frustrated communication I couldn’t begin to fathom.
“Why not?” I pressed, then immediately felt foolish for asking a question that required more than yes or no. “I mean, is it the curse? Does the curse prevent you from answering questions about what happened?”
This time his nod was immediate, emphatic. Something in my chest loosened slightly. At least I wasn’t imagining things. There was indeed a specific prohibition against him telling me what I needed to know.
“Whoever did this was thorough,” I muttered, sinking back against the flat pillows. “They didn’t just take your human form. They took your voice, your ability to communicate what happened. Almost as if they knew someone would come looking for answers.”
Beast made a low sound in his throat, not quite a growl, not quite a whimper. Agreement, perhaps, or frustration that mirrored my own.
I huffed in irritation and flopped back onto my side of the bed, throwing my uninjured arm over my eyes.
The curse was clever in its cruelty. Beast’s body transformed, his voice silenced, his ability to directly explain anything about his situation stripped away.
It left us both floundering in the dark, grasping at fragments of truth without any way to assemble them into a whole.
“I wish I at least knew thy name,” I said softly into the crook of my elbow. “It feels wrong to keep calling you Beast, like I’m agreeing with whoever did this to you, letting them erase who you really are.”
Something nudged my arm. Beast’s paw, gentle but insistent.
I peeked out from my self-imposed darkness to find him watching me with an intensity that made my breath catch.
He jerked his head toward the bedside table where Queen Charlotte’s journal lay, its leather binding catching the last of the firelight.
“The journal?” I asked, sitting up again. “You think there’s something in there that could help me understand?”
He nodded, then used his snout to flip open the journal to its earliest pages, where Charlotte had written about her husband and children with such clear affection.
“Are you in here?” I whispered, a new kind of excitement threading through my voice. “Is your name in these pages?”
Another nod, more eager this time. I pulled the journal into my lap, skimming the passages I’d already read with fresh purpose. The queen had written extensively about her family—King Henri, her husband, and their three sons, the princes who had apparently been the light of her life.
I looked up at Beast, his eyes so like my own, and felt my heart skip in my chest. A wild hope took root, spreading its tendrils through me before I could think to guard against it.
“Are you King Henri?” I asked, though even as the words left my mouth, I knew it couldn’t be true. Charlotte’s journal had described her husband as tall and lean with eyes like a summer sky. Nothing like Beast’s amber gaze.
As expected, Beast shook his head firmly.
“But you are someone from the royal family?” I pressed, needing to be certain.
His nod was immediate, almost eager.
“One of the princes, then?” My voice rose with excitement. “One of Charlotte’s sons?”
This time his nod was accompanied by a soft sound, almost like a sigh. Relief, perhaps, at finally being recognized for who he truly was. Not just a beast, but a prince. A man with a name, a history, a life before the curse turned him into something else.
“Oh my,” I breathed, sitting up straighter. “All this time... I’ve been sharing a bed with a prince.”
The absurdity of it struck me suddenly, and a slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up from my chest. Here I was, a village girl accused of witchcraft, the daughter of an inventor who’d been sacrificed to blood-drinking roses, and I’d somehow ended up as the mate of a cursed royal.
It was like one of Papa’s fairy tales, only darker and stranger and infinitely more complicated.
“Well, Your Highness,” I said, unable to keep a hint of teasing from my voice despite the gravity of our discovery, “I suppose I should be more respectful now that I know you’re of noble birth.”
Beast made that rumbling sound that I’d come to recognize as laughter, then nudged the journal again with his snout, clearly wanting me to continue my questioning.
I returned to the pages, scanning until I found the passage where Charlotte had named her three sons.
“Let’s see... Queen Charlotte and King Henri had three sons—Prince Marcel, the eldest, with his diplomatic nature.
Prince Laurent, the middle child, serious and studious with his mother’s amber eyes.
And Prince Bastien, the youngest, always getting into mischief. ”
I looked up at Beast, studying his amber eyes with new understanding. “You’re not Prince Marcel, are you?”
Beast shook his head.
“I thought not.” I felt a strange fluttering in my chest, like birds taking wing. The one I believed him to be was the second son based on how he communicated with compassion. “Prince Laurent, then? The middle son serious and studious?”
His whole body seemed to come alive with his nod, shifting closer to me on the bed, those intelligent eyes burning with something that might have been joy or relief or both.
A sound emerged from his throat. Not quite a word, but something that strained toward speech, as if he was pushing against the very boundaries of the curse.
“Laurent,” I whispered, testing the name on my tongue, feeling its shape in my mouth. “Your name is Laurent.”
The simple act of naming him felt profound, like removing the first stone from a wall that had seemed impenetrable.
He wasn’t just Beast anymore. He was Laurent.
Prince Laurent, who had once walked these halls as a man, who had studied and learned and lived a human life before the curse had stolen it from him.
Tears pricked my eyes unexpectedly, hot and sudden. “Laurent,” I said again, reaching out to touch his face, running my fingers along the ridge of his brow where a man’s eyebrows would be. “It suits you better than Beast ever did.”
He leaned into my touch, his eyes closing briefly in what could only be described as contentment.
When they opened again, something had shifted in their glowing depths.
The constant wariness, the wild alertness that had been there since I’d known him, had softened into something more vulnerable, more human.
“I’ve been so unfair to you,” I admitted, my voice catching. “I’ve been thinking of you as two separate beings—the beast who claimed me and the man trapped inside him. But you’re one person, aren’t you? Laurent. Just Laurent, trying to survive whatever was done to you.”
He made a low sound of acknowledgment, pressing his forehead against mine in that gesture of intimacy I’d come to treasure.
His fur was warm against my skin, his breath gentle on my face.
For the first time, I tried to imagine the man beneath.
Not as a separate entity, but as the true nature of the being I’d come to love.
Prince Laurent, with amber eyes like mine, serious and studious as his mother had described.
“Do you remember?” I asked softly, pulling back just enough to see his eyes. “Being human, I mean. Does the curse let you remember who you were before?”
His nod was hesitant this time, qualified by a tilting motion of his head that suggested complexity beyond yes or no.
“Some things but not others?” I guessed. “Or maybe the memories are there but... faded? Distant?”
That earned me a nod, more definite this time.
“That’s why you can still read,” I realized aloud. “In the library, when I was reading to you. You were following along with the words, weren’t you?”
Laurent look puzzled at my words, but he pawed the journal to motion yes to reading.
His stare was suddenly bright with an emotion I couldn’t quite name.
Pride, perhaps, at being recognized for more than the beast he appeared to be.
Or maybe just gratitude that someone was finally seeing him—truly seeing him—after who knew how long trapped in this form.
“Laurent,” I said a third time, just because I could, because his name was a gift I’d been given and I wanted to honor it. “Prince Laurent. I will find a way to break this curse. I swear it. Whatever it takes, I will find a way to bring you back.”
I wasn’t sure where the vow came from, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were true.
I would break this curse or die trying. Not just for Laurent, though the thought of restoring him to his human form made my heart race with possibilities I didn’t dare examine too closely.
But for Papa too, and for myself, and for whatever connection bound us all together through our amber eyes and the magic that seemed to recognize me as its own.
Laurent’s massive paw came to rest on my hand where it lay against his cheek. The gesture was so human, so deliberate in its tenderness, that I had to blink back tears again.
“We’re going to figure this out,” I promised him. “Now that I know who you are, now that I know what questions to ask... we’re going to piece this puzzle together, Laurent. I feel it in my bones.”
He made a sound of agreement, low and resonant in the quiet room.
Then, with the same gentle insistence he’d shown me since the beginning, he nudged me back against the pillows, clearly suggesting I should rest. My wounded arm throbbed in agreement, reminding me that I was still very much human, still vulnerable to the forest’s dangers despite whatever magic might run in my veins.
“Fine,” I conceded, settling back but keeping my hand buried in his fur. “But tomorrow, we start fresh. No more calling you Beast. No more treating you like you’re two separate entities. Just Laurent. A prince under a curse that we’re going to break, together.”
He settled beside me, his massive form curving protectively around mine as it had so many nights before. But now, knowing his name, knowing who he truly was beneath the fur and fangs, the gesture felt different. More deliberate. More precious.
Just before sleep claimed me, I murmured his name one more time, like a talisman against the darkness outside. “Goodnight, Laurent.”
And for the first time since I’d come to this castle, I slept without dreaming of wolves or ghosts or blood-drinking roses.
Instead, I dreamed of a man with amber eyes who walked these halls as their rightful prince, who looked at me the way Beast—no, Laurent—did, with that same intensity of focus and depth of feeling that had become as necessary to me as breath.