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With glassy eyes she looks up at me. “He’ll be okay, I think. I just need him to wake.”
I answer, my voice rough. “I could have killed him.”
“But you didn’t.” Elle smiles weakly. “You are not only a beast. You are also the prince, and when it mattered most, you knew that.”
I do not dare glance down at my body. I do not know if what my own eyes see matters anymore.
“Please”—she looks up at me—“will you help me get him to bed?”
I can only nod, not understanding her demeanor. She is not angry or afraid. For a moment a spark of hope goes through me.
“What do you see when you look at me now?” I ask.
Her eyes travel over my body but quickly return to my face. “You are a tall, handsome man with wavy dark brown hair and blue eyes. I can see your blue eyes.” Elle stands and leaving her father for only a moment, she steps closer as if to make sure they are blue. She nods to herself, her shoulders relaxing. “I can see you just as you were when I came into the tower. That is not how you look when you…when you are the beast. You are taller, with gold eyes, and you have a wolf’s features.” She looks down my chest and then blushes.
“Your clothes have torn,” she tells me, though I know they have. The beast tears them from me. It is not the first time. “When you…change, they tear.”
“When I change?”
“Your body…I wish you could see what I see.”
That is what I have seen in the mirror every day since the witch laid the curse on me. I almost step to the mirror to prove Elle wrong, but after all that has happened and with almost all the petals from the rose fallen off the stem, I no longer want to look. The beast has retreated. He is not fully gone, but he seems to recognize that this man from the village—Elle’s father—is alone and harmless. Even if he wanted to steal her away, he could not do it. Even if he wanted to hurt me, he could not do that either. He tried to fight me with his bare hands. That is no way to confront a beast such as myself.
“You do not have the beast’s features now,” Elle says, even more determinedly. “You are the prince.”
My mind reels. I put a hand to my hair and draw it away before I can truly register what I feel under my palm.
“When I touch you,” Elle says softly, “I feel the shape of the man. You have the body of the prince whenever we are together. I would know if I kissed you when you had the form of a beast, and I never have. I know you see something else when you look into the mirror, but that is not what I see. A beast is not all I have come to know at the castle. You are not just the beast. You are both.”
I open my mouth, but I cannot think of the words I need to reply. Exhaustion betrays my strength.
“Let me help,” I offer and kneel by her father. “He is a foolish man to come here.” It is then that I look up to the window and out to the gate to see it closed, and no one else with him. “I could have killed him.”
“You didn’t.”
I almost killed Elle’s father. If I had not heard her voice at that moment, it would have been nothing for me to end his life. The beast considered him a threat to both of us, as he would anyone who breached the castle walls and came inside and climbed the highest floor of this remote tower.
“I cannot always control the beast.”
Elle kneels down beside me next to her father, shaking his shoulder gently. I swallow thickly, hoping the old man will be all right.
“Father,” she says. “Father, it’s me. Wake up.”
Her father lets out a low groan.
“Father,” Elle says, more insistently. “Wake up. It’s time to wake up.”
“My head.” Her father grunts and his body stirs.
“I know. I will help you.”
There is a strange fear that grips me. The unknown of Elle knowing more of me than I do. And of her father being here. Surely he will take her away. And I do know that I can stop him.
I watch her help her father to an upright position, leaning against the wall. Elle pushes herself into his arms and they embrace for a few minutes, his eyes squeezed closed and his arms tight around his daughter. There is a trickle of blood down his face, either from one of my claws or from hitting the stone wall. Guilt and shame run through me.
It is only by a miracle that the man lives. The beast has never shown mercy before.
Finally, Elle straightens up again and looks into her father’s eyes. She brushes his hair out of his face, whispering to him. It is then I gather enough wits about me to cover myself with a shred of the trousers.
