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Chapter Text

Jeanne doesn't sleep for the first time since her first night in the castle. She can't stop thinking about what Georges said. Georges, who is the most cautious and least optimistic of the castle’s inhabitants. The others must be practically hearing wedding bells.

Jeanne turns over, sighing as she reshapes her pillow. It doesn't make much of a difference. The bed is as comfortable and luxurious as it always is. The problem isn't with the accommodations. In the corner, Dominique’s deep, even breathing tries to lure Jeanne into the usual quiet sense of peace she feels in this room at night. It doesn’t work, her mind too anxious and disturbed to relax.

Jeanne gets up and pulls the thick velvet curtain to the side, looking out on the moonlit grounds. It's peaceful, and starting to look familiar, and that, more than anything else, terrifies her.

Perhaps it's better to leave now, before they start to really hope.

The thought almost startles her. She hadn't been aware of it brewing until it sprang, fully formed, to the front of her thoughts. She feels like she’s slipped out of time and left her stomach behind, for an instant, held suspended in the moment.

Does she want to leave? Not particularly. She loves the peace of this place: the garden, Georges and Albin and Eulalie and everyone else, the comfortable fire-warmed sitting room that’s always so cheery when she comes in on gloomy days. No one here thinks her odd, or silly, or too abstracted. Well, perhaps Isabeau does, but Isabeau is content enough to leave her alone. Or, she was.

Jeanne drops back into the present with a heavy thud. That is the real dilemma, isn’t it? Isabeau feels no need to get to know her, has already decided she doesn’t like Jeanne, and Jeanne isn’t bothered at all. It isn’t very firm a foundation for romance, or love. Jeanne sighs, propping her elbows on the windowsill and her chin in her hands.

She never wanted to get married, particularly. The idea of going from a petulant, domineering father to a petulant, domineering husband held no appeal for Jeanne. What she really wants, has always wanted, is freedom. This place is the closest she’s ever come. She has a garden, and friends, and leisure, and there’s no need to please anyone except herself. At least, she hadn’t thought so.

This revelation of the curse makes her feel as if she’s been living on borrowed time, failing the lot of them without even knowing it. The last thing she wants is to end up married to someone like Isabeau, who doesn’t care what Jeanne wants or what will make her happy.

Staying, apparently, means committing to at least trying to get along with Isabeau, though. She can’t continue to give everyone false hope that she might be the one to break the spell, when she knows there’s no way that could be. Isabeau may have hidden depths, Jeanne is certain that being cursed to be a beast and having the weight of the entire castle resting on her shoulders would make anyone a little cranky, but Jeanne has no reason to expect Isabeau will plumb them for her sake. Isabeau has made it clear from the beginning that she has no interest in getting to know Jeanne, and Jeanne can’t continue to hang around the castle in the hope that that will change.

There isn't much to pack. She's never put on any of the jewelry, or even really looked at it other than her initial cursory exploration. The vases of flowers won't travel well, although she runs a wistful hand down the side or her favorite: Diana and her huntresses in relief on the side. The clothes are, for the most part, much too fine for her ordinary life. She does take the sturdy gardening clothes and gloves that have magically appeared in the past week. She feels a little guilty, but reasons that they were created specifically for her and no one else has any possible use for them.

Other than that....Jeanne glances around her home of the past weeks. It has grown quickly into a favored sanctuary, a place of rest and rejuvenation in a way her room at home never was. She will miss this castle, with its wide, sweeping view of the sea, its (mostly) kind inhabitants, the pleasant leisure of days all her own. Most of all, though, she will miss the garden.

Jeanne slowly opens her door, the small pack of clothes rolled up and tied in a thin bedsheet slung over her shoulder. No one seems to be about, and the castle is dark and vast and silent around her. Jeanne closes her door, the door, she corrects herself mentally, carefully and pads down the long hall.

She’s navigated the path from her room out of the castle enough times that she can do it in the dark, but she goes slowly and carefully just in case. The last thing she needs is for a wrinkle in a carpet to trip her or for a misremembered hallway to send her clanking into a suit of armor. Jeanne tenses as she approaches the intersection of several corridors and perceives a flickering light coming from one of them. She peers around the corner as slowly as she can, frantically thinking of potential excuses should it be Albin, but slumps in relief as she gets a look down the hall.

It’s just the dying fire from the upstairs sitting room. Only that morning, it seems like a lifetime ago now, Jeanne was helping Eulalie sort out a particularly grumpy desk who had gotten bored and spewed papers and ink all over the sitting room.

Jeanne reaches the head of the stairs, slipping her shoes off to go quietly down the bare marble steps. She creeps out the side door, closing it carefully behind her. It’s much smaller and quieter than the front door, and has the additional advantage of bringing her directly out into the garden.

It’s fully dark outside, but the moon is waxing and bright in the sky overhead. Jeanne runs her hands over all the plants, giving them a final burst of energy she can only hope will sustain them through the coming winter. Perhaps Isabeau is right, and her time here has essentially amounted to nothing. She hopes, though, that there has been at least the seed of something good planted. Something that may or may not bloom in her absence, but something that couldn’t have existed without her.

“Goodbye,” Jeanne whispers, giving the bark of an apple tree one last lingering caress.

She slips around the side of the house, toward the stables. She’s never seen him, but she knows there’s a horse there. The old groom, currently an umbrella stand in the front hall, hops past her in the gardens sometimes on the way to make sure Magnifique, the horse, is fed and watered and let out for exercise.

Sure enough, she hears an inquiring whicker as she lets herself into the stable.

“Hello,” she says quietly, approaching the horse slowly. He’s absolutely enormous, but seems peaceful enough. He nibbles affectionately at her hair as she saddles him, and stands quietly in the yard by the block when she leads him out. She climbs up, throwing a leg over the horse and adjusting her pack of clothes once she’s seated securely.

She keeps Magnifique at a walk until they’re out of the castle grounds and well into the forest. Snow starts to drift down slowly, and Jeanne shivers and pulls the long sleeves of her tunic down over her hands. She should have taken a cloak, but was so focused on evading discovery that she didn’t think to get one from the cloak room downstairs.

A low mournful howl sounds in the depths of the forest, and Jeanne’s hands tighten on the reins. Perhaps this was foolish. She could go back, leave during the day time. Before she can make a decision, she hears a low rippling growl, and a wolf emerges from the trees onto the path ahead. Jeanne tugs on the reins sharply, but Magnifique has already come to a stop and is tossing his head in fear.

Three more wolves emerge from the trees, and when Jeanne tries to turn the horse she sees two more behind her. They’re closing in on her quickly, and Jeanne yanks the reins so Magnifique steps off the path and charges into the forest, away from the wolves.

His hooves pound the earth, and Jeanne hangs on for dear life as they charge around the trees. A branch nearly slams into her head; she ducks just in time. One of the wolves leaps at Magnifique’s side, and the horse turns and charges in the other direction.

She’s just starting to think they’ll manage to outrun them when a wolf suddenly leaps in front of them. Magnifique rears, and Jeanne starts to slip off his back. She scrambles for the reins, managing to break her own fall somewhat but still landing on the ground hard. The reins, released suddenly, fly up and tangle in a tree branch overhead. The wolves surround them on all sides, and fear crawls up Jeanne’s throat as they approach. She grabs a broken branch off the ground, batting one of the wolves away as two others snap at Magnifique’s heels. He kicks out behind him, scattering them briefly.

Jaws close around the branch she’s holding. The wolf jerks his head and shatters it, and Jeanne swallows hard, fear sour in the back of her throat. There is nothing between her and the wolves, now.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Isabeau surges between Jeanne and the circling wolves, baring her teeth at them in a snarl. When they don’t back off, she opens her mouth and roars, dropping into a crouch in front of Jeanne.

Three of them charge at Isabeau, and Jeanne backs up away from the fray. She tries to calm Magnifique, to untangle him from the tree, but he’s still tossing his head in panic and she’s worried he’ll kick out in fear and accidentally hit her.

There are five of them on Isabeau now, and Jeanne presses her hands over her mouth. She doesn’t know what to do, frozen in inaction as the wolves tear at Isabeau’s cloak and one of them snaps its jaws closed unnervingly close to her throat.

Isabeau rears back, finally succeeding in flinging one of the wolves off her back. It flies back and slams against a tree, and the ground shudders under Jeanne’s feet. She glances frantically around for some kind of improvised weapon, but fortunately the other wolves seem cowed by the injury to their pack mate. They tuck their ears back, yipping, and flee back into the forest. The one that hit the tree gets slowly to its feet and Jeanne backs away, toward Isabeau.

Isabeau lays one paw gently on her shoulder, low growl comforting and deep at Jeanne’s back. The injured wolf doesn’t try to attack though, it just slinks off after the others. Jeanne breathes a sigh of relief, turning to look at Isabeau.

Their eyes lock for one brief moment. Jeanne takes a shaky breath, trying to think of what to say, what to do. Before she can utter so much as a syllable, though, Isabeau whimpers and pitches to the side, collapsing full length into the snow.

Magnifique whinnies in distress, and Jeanne looks helplessly between the two of them. She has no idea how to get Isabeau back to the castle. She can hardly leave her here, especially after she was injured protecting Jeanne. She hovers over Isabeau indecisively, until the horse behind her becomes even more insistent.

“Please let this work,” Jeanne mutters, as she carefully unloops Magnifique’s reigns and starts slowly leading the horse over to Isabeau’s prone form. She is worried the horse will panic again, Isabeau looks rather like a predator at the moment, after all, but he seems to recognize her. He kneels down next to Isabeau readily enough, and stays still while Jeanne pushes her body onto the horse’s back.

She unknots the pack of clothes, twisted up in the confrontation but still intact, and uses some of the longer more substantial ones to tie Isabeau to the saddle and bridle so she doesn’t slip off.

“You can stand now,” Jeanne says, feeling a bit foolish talking to a horse, “but slowly, yeah?”

He seems to understand her, or perhaps instinctively know how to approach the situation. Magnifique stands. For one heart-stopping moment Jeanne thinks Isabeau is going to slide off, but she just slips a little and Jeanne manages to balance her in the saddle.

“We’re up!” Jeanne says. “Good horse!” Magnifique gives her a regal look that reminds Jeanne startlingly of Georges.

Slowly, they limp their way back to the castle. Jeanne is shivering and wet, and aching all over from the cold by the time they get back. Isabeau has started to come around a bit, and she dismounts from the horse herself, only stumbling a little. Jeanne helps her into the front hall, where (she groans internally) what looks like half the castle is congregated.

“Give them space,” Georges barks out, sweeping to the front. “Jeanne, take her into the parlor. I’ve lit a fire in there and Eulalie will be in with hot water in a minute. Honestly, Gérôme, did you invite the entire china cabinet? You should all be in bed. And Henri, don’t think I don’t see you skulking in the curtains!”

Jeanne gets Isabeau into the parlor, closing the door behind them and shutting out the sound of Georges roundly scolding the spoons.

Isabeau is groggy, and she collapses back into the large chair in front of the fireplace with a groan. Eulalie and Albin slip in through the parlor door, bringing a tray with a basin of hot water and several clean cloths. Jeanne wets one of the cloths, wringing it out carefully, then turns to apply it to the cut on Isabeau’s forearm.

“Don’t do that!” Jeanne says, startled into speech by the way Isabeau is hunched over the cut and licking it. Isabeau growls at her, which Jeanne generously ignores.

“I’m fine,” Isabeau grumbles, as Jeanne reaches out to press the cloth down. “I’m- OUCH!” Isabeau yowls, and Jeanne hears the clatter of either Albin or Eulalie topping over behind her.

“Stop fussing, I’ve got to get the cut clean.”

“It’s fine,” Isabeau hisses, trying to pull her arm away. Jeanne digs her nails into Isabeau’s arm and Isabeau whimpers and subsides.

“It will get infected. Now hold still.”

“It would be fine if you hadn’t gone rushing off in the middle of the night,” Isabeau complains. Jeanne presses a little harder than strictly necessary on the cut.

“And I suppose you’d have sent me merrily on my way if I’d waited till morning?” Jeanne doesn’t bother to hide her sarcasm. Isabeau doesn’t reply.

She quickly salves and bandages the wound while Isabeau is sulking. At first, Jeanne is too irritated to pay much attention, but she slowly notices that Isabeau’s face is twisted in pain. With an internal sigh, she breaks the silence.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, “for saving my life.”

Isabeau looks at her briefly, then away.

“You’re welcome.” Her reply is brief, but the lines of her face ease a little, and Jeanne feels a little bit of the tension bleed out of her own shoulders.

She doesn’t know how to feel about the events of the night, or being back in the castle, but perhaps this will at least serve as a crack in the ice between her and Isabeau. Maybe, just maybe, things will be less difficult, now.

—-

Antoine Mercier walks into the apothecary shop several towns over. He has taken great care to insure that nothing about him is remarkable or recognizable, even going to the lengths of forgoing his heavy signet ring and renting a carriage.

“How can I assist you?” the old man behind the counter asks.

“Oh, I hope you can help,” Mercier says, with an utterly false sweetness. “It’s my poor great-aunt, you see. She’s not in her right mind, has all kinds of fits. The doctors are hopeless,” he pauses strategically, waiting for the appropriate sympathetic noises to be made. “I need something to…help her sleep,” he says, laying heavy emphasis on the words. “Just a little calming draught, you understand.”

“Of course,” the apothecary says. “So sad, when the mind starts to go. I think I have just the thing.”

“Wonderful,” Mercier says, careful not to sound too eager. “There’s only one other thing. I’m afraid she’s dreadfully stubborn, refuses to take medicines of any kind, you know the type.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the apothecary says confidently. “I can mix you up something that she won’t be able to taste. Just mix it into her tea, and she’ll be sleeping peacefully by the time you’ve tidied up the dishes.”

“I had a good feeling about this shop,” Mercier says warmly, as if he hadn’t enquired in six different towns to find the shop with the seediest reputation and the least scrupulous attendants. “Sweet Tante Berthe will finally get the rest she needs.”

“There’s only one thing,” the apothecary says, a little hesitantly. “This particular mixture, it’s of my own concoction, you know,” he brags. Mercier forces his face to look impressed, rather than impatient. “It has a few unintended effects.”

“Nothing too dreadful I hope,” Mercier says, as if he isn’t hoping for precisely that.

“No, of course not,” the apothecary says quickly. “Just a touch of fever, some hair loss, only occasionally, and the odd fainting spell.”

“Oh, well if it’s such a help as you’ve promised me,” Mercier says confidingly, “I’m sure it will be worth all the trouble.”

The apothecary grins as he names his price. Mercier, generally the most miserly of gentlemen, passes the gold over gladly.

—-

By now, winter has truly arrived and it’s too snowy outside for Jeanne to do much of anything in the garden. She’s confined to the house, not eager to risk leaving again after the incident with the wolves, and expecting a long interval of boredom.

Only two days after her return, though, she comes down to breakfast to find Isabeau at the other end of the table.

“Oh,” she says, hesitating at the door. She almost offers to go back and eat in her room, but Isabeau looks expectant rather than annoyed. Jeanne slowly makes her way over to the table. The chair pulls itself out for her politely, and Jeanne sits.

She can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound either sarcastic or insincere to say, so she just stares into her porridge for a bit. Isabeau clears her throat, and Jeanne looks up.

“I thought you might want to go for a walk,” Isabeau says. Jeanne doesn’t want to reject the offered olive branch, but,

“It’s snowing,” she says hesitantly. Isabeau awkwardly gestures to the fire in the corner of the room. Jeanne turns to see a fur-lined cloak warming on a chair nearby. She makes a snap decision. “I would love to go for a walk.”

She does feel better once they’re out of doors, even though it’s quite cold. She’s been working outside for most of the day until recently, after all. Jeanne expects it to be awkward, but the silence that settles between the two of them feels strangely comfortable. Isabeau breaks it occasionally, to point out a particularly old tree and tell her about its history, or to tell her about which walks are nicest in which seasons. Jeanne listens for the most part, until Isabeau stops under an elegant veranda and turns to her.

“I want to apologize for my behavior,” she says, formally.

“Oh, there’s no need,” Jeanne says, a bit flustered. She looks out over the grounds.

“Well,” Isabeau says, leaning her elbows on the railing next to Jeanne, “if staying here was so unpleasant you felt the need to flee in the dead of night, I’d say I probably have something to apologize for. Unless you left because Eulalie’s children make simply appalling tea cups and you’re dying without your morning tea.”

Jeanne smiles a little at that, turning her face slightly toward Isabeau.

“I will say you haven’t made things precisely easy for me,” she says carefully. “But honestly, it wasn’t you who made me leave. It was Georges.”

“Because he told you about the curse?” Isabeau says. She doesn’t sound angry or upset, but it isn’t precisely a question, either.

Jeanne sighs. “They’re getting their hopes up,” she says quietly. “I don’t…I can’t bear to disappoint all of them.”

“Rather like I’ve done, you mean?”

Jeanne turns, she’s not sure whether to object or agree, but Isabeau is smiling ruefully at her. “Well,” Jeanne sighs. “Look, I can’t imagine it’s been exactly easy, the position that you’re in. It’s hardly your fault the curse included the entire castle.”

“No, it’s not particularly easy,” Isabeau says frankly. Jeanne starts to look away, but Isabeau clears her throat and Jeanne looks back at her. “Look. Can we call a truce? You’re a decent person, Jeanne, and everyone likes you here. I just,” Isabeau’s shoulders ripple in a surprisingly graceful shrug, “I just want us to all get along, as best we can. I’m tired of being shut up alone in the west wing.”

Jeanne looks at her assessingly. Isabeau squirms a little under her appraisal but doesn’t look away. “I’m not going to put up with you snapping at me, or making nasty comments about my interests.”

Isabeau winces. “I won’t. I promise. Well, about the nasty comments, anyway. I’m rather prone to snappishness, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a terribly half-hearted apology,” Jeanne says with a little smile.

“You’re welcome to snap back,” Isabeau grins. “I might even like you better if you do.”

“I have better things to do than make you like me,” Jeanne says. Isabeau throws back her head and laughs.

—-

“I can’t believe they do this every meal,” Isabeau says, at supper a few nights later. Jeanne tucks a smile behind her napkin, who giggles in excitement.

“I think they’ve been rather bored,” she says, politely applauding as the plates take their first course….well they aren’t entirely capable of bowing but the sentiment ‘applause now please’ is amply communicated.

“How do you eat anything,” Isabeau grumbles, as a pie whisks out of her reach.

“It’s an exercise in dexterity,” Jeanne says, managing to get a forkful of soufflé as it dances by.

“Do you really have to do this any time you want any food?” Isabeau looks appalled. “No wonder you fled in the night.”

“Will you stop calling it fleeing in the night,” Jeanne complains, missing a dish of the infamous (surprisingly delicious) grey stuff by a scant centimeter. “And no, the whirling food generally settled down a few days after I arrived. They’re just excited to show off again, with you here.”

“I’d rather have supper,” Isabeau grumbles. Jeanne swats gently at her arm.

“Be nice!” she hisses, as the spoons start up a kick line. Jeanne is too busy smiling at the spoons politely to notice Isabeau looking at her a bit wistfully.

After dinner (and several encores greeted with enthusiasm from Jeanne and light mockery with an edge of fondness from Isabeau), they adjoin to the drawing room, where the fire is already crackling merrily.

“What do you generally do in the evenings?” Isabeau asks, after they’re settled in front of the fire.

“Here? Or at home?”

“At home, I assume you gossip with other young ladies about gentlemen and ball gowns. Isn’t that what everyone does?” Isabeau says it sarcastically, but there’s a real edge of curiosity underlaying her tone.

“I’m afraid you have me at rather above my station,” Jeanne says, raising an eyebrow.

“No ball gowns?”

“No dinner parties at all. My father doesn’t like to entertain.”

Isabeau tilts her head curiously. “Do you?”

Jeanne looks a bit bemused. “I never really thought about it. I suppose not. I tend to prefer my books to other people. Well,” she amends, “I like talking to everyone here.”

Including me? Isabeau wonders, but is too afraid of the answer to ask.

“I suppose we could marshal up enough for a game of bassette, should you so desire.”

Jeanne laughs. “You’ve stepped upwards rather than downwards there.”

“Not eager to lose large sums of money?”

“Do you think me rich?” Jeanne asks drily.

“Oh, incredibly.”

Jeanne snorts. “I’m afraid you are much mistaken there.”

Isabeau hums a little. “I don’t know. Rich in charm. Rich in wit. Rich in kindness. There are meaner currencies.”

Jeanne gives her an odd look. “I can’t tell if you’re mocking me or not.”

This, somewhat abruptly, jerks Isabeau back to reality. Is she really flirting with Jeanne?

“Just trying to compliment you,” Isabeau says lightly, before changing the subject to the first thing that she can think of.

Unfortunately, her mind is not so easily diverted, and it returns to its former course as soon as she and Jeanne part for the evening. It is perhaps unsurprising that being comfortable again has led her to relapse naturally into her old ways of conversation. Jeanne is that most coveted of conversational partners: quick and clever, but reserved enough that Isabeau feels that she has earned every laugh, every confidence.

But, Jeanne is not a bored rich merchant’s daughter, ready enough to dabble with a beautiful heiress and ready enough to leave her, and Isabeau is no longer beautiful. She no longer has the grace that granted her, the ability to toss a few half-hearted complements and a bit of social commentary and pass it off as charisma and vivacity.

The worst of it is, she genuinely wants Jeanne to like her. Not solely because of the curse, or because she wants to prove that there is something in her worth loving, but because she likes Jeanne. She likes how kind she is, and how that kindness does not blunt her edges but sharpens them. She likes that Jeanne is utterly herself, settled and rooted in a way that Isabeau envies. She likes that there is something in Jeanne that calls to her own wildness like the moon calls to the sea. She cannot quite define it, not yet, and that pulls her closer and closer like Jeanne is a finely-printed text that she’s desperate to read.

It is something, she thinks, in her utter indifference toward pretension, and all the grasping nasty social graces Isabeau’s mother attempted to drive into her. It is something in the way Jeanne always smells of the outdoors: the salt-spray of the sea and the earth caked under her nails. The snow melting in her hair and the careless way she dresses, too eager to be in the garden, or reading her book, or talking to Albin and Georges, to bother overmuch with clothing.

Too restless to sleep, Isabeau wanders down the path to the shoreline. Isabeau has always has loved the sea, and craved it. She misses the feel of the water on her human skin, thin and vulnerable, but even as large and as terrifying as she is now the sea is big enough to hold her.

It’s too late to swim, but Isabeau wades out a little anyway, claws digging for purchase in the loose sand. She hates almost everything about this house, did even before the curse, save this one, irreplaceable virtue: its proximity to the sea. Something about the water, too vast and audacious to ever be shut up in a garden or enclosed in the walls of the house, always running somewhere else, fascinates her. She loves the salt recklessness of it, the waves buffeting away the slow creeping poison of safety.

Reckless, her mother always called her, and too wild. Isn’t that why she was cursed, after all? Too enamored of her own wildness to look beyond that?

Isabeau had always assumed trying to break the curse, even just so much as to make friends with one of her unwilling captives, would involve a great deal of personality contortion on her own part. She is not beautiful, therefore she must be agreeable, and patient, and polite, and all the other things wives are supposed to be, things she never quite got the hang. The curse has not been particularly more effective as a goad, in this respect, than any of the many things her mother tried.

Jeanne does not seem particularly interested in politeness, or agreeableness, at least not in the sense that such virtues were taught to Isabeau. She simply wants respect, and relative peace, and grants them in the quantity that they are given.

It has opened a yawning door in Isabeau that she does not quite know how to close again. In Jeanne, she glimpses both kinds of freedom. Freedom from the curse, and, perhaps more precious, freedom to remain herself. It feels impossible, and dangerous, and she wants it so badly it tastes like salt on her tongue.

Isabeau wades a little farther into the water, planting her feet and letting it sway her. She rests her front paws on the surface, calm now, and watches the reflection of the moon, distorted by the gentle motion of the waves. She can almost see her own face, but all the fear and ugliness of it are, for now, gently swallowed up in darkness.

—-

Jeanne does not give her trust easily. Since her mother passed out of her life like warm sunshine leaving the face of the earth, she has struggled to find anyone with the patience to get to know her. She likes M. Comtois, but they’re hardly intimate friends. The rest of the townspeople, including her father, treat her with indifference or irritation. Well, except Mercier, but Jeanne does not consider his brand of insidious politeness to be an improvement over indifference.

Isabeau is not particularly patient, or trustworthy, and yet Jeanne finds herself enjoying their time together. Something in their shared ugliness, perhaps, the way they both dwell on the margins of ordinary life. Isabeau is unlike anyone Jeanne has ever met. She pushes back, a little, the utter loneliness of being alive.

“You’ve gone somewhere else again,” Isabeau says gently, pulling Jeanne back to the breakfast table.

“Sorry,” Jeanne starts, but Isabeau holds up a hand.

“I hate to interrupt,” she says with a smile, “but please don’t apologize. I’m the one being rude and breaking in on your thoughts.”

Jeanne looks at her curiously. It frustrates most people, her tendency to drift off mid-conversation, to get distracted by the eighteen spinning worlds constantly whirling about her own mind. Isabeau doesn’t seem irritated, though. She simply passes Jeanne the dish of eggs and then looks out the window. Jeanne still feels the need to explain.

“I was just thinking,” she says, and Isabeau looks at her inquiringly. “I don’t get on very well, with most people. They don’t…” this feels rather pathetic to say, but what Jeanne likes about this little excursion from reality is the chance to be utterly herself. She and Isabeau are stuck together, and while it’s in both of their interests to get along, neither feels any particular need to prevaricate or pretend to be endowed with more social graces than they actually are. Between the curse and the confrontations and the wolves, they’ve moved past that. “People don’t like me,” Jeanne says bluntly. “I read too much, and get lost in my thoughts, and spend too much time in the garden for the daughter of a well-to-do craftsman.”

“And I have fangs and claws, and shed a great deal,” Isabeau says, grinning, “and that was all before the transformation.” Jeanne laughs, relaxing a little into her chair. “What would you like to do today?” Isabeau asks.

Jeanne does not trust easily, but there is something in the exquisite torment of paper-cuts intimacy, the closeness of having seen each other at the ugliest and continuing on in spite of that, because of that. It stings, being looked at by someone who knows all of her secrets and her anger and her bitter moods and likes her anyway. It stings and it pulls her even closer with the desire to keep feeling that ache.

“Honestly,” Jeanne says, with a little sigh of desire, “I feel rather like a good book.”

“Your fairy tales?” Isabeau asks. Jeanne’s surprise must show on her face because Isabeau looks slightly embarrassed. “Georges mentioned. My apologies; I shouldn’t have presumed.”

“Have you read them?”

“Ah,” Isabeau looks slightly taken aback. “Well, yes. Or, reading is a bit of a challenge with these,” she says, wriggling her thick fingers and sharp claws, “but sometimes Georges reads me what he’s reading. Or Albin.” Isabeau pauses.

“That sounds wonderful.” Jeanne looks down at her place setting. “My mother used to read aloud to me.”

Isabeau clears her throat, pushing her chair back. “Come with me.”

Jeanne looks up, a little startled, as Isabeau offers her a hand to help her up from the table. “Oh. All right.”

“What is this?” Jeanne asks, as Isabeau leads her to a broad set of double doors she hasn’t seen before.

“It’s a surprise.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“Well, then next time I’ll warn you in advance.” Isabeau smiles disarmingly at her. “Close your eyes.”

“If this is something unpleasant I won’t speak to you for several days,” Jeanne threatens, closing her eyes.

Isabeau laughs. “I will readily submit to such a punishment if you find this unpleasant, but I do not think it will be necessary.”

Jeanne closes her eyes. She hears the door open, and feels Isabeau’s paw gently brush her hand a moment later. She turns her palm up, letting Isabeau grasp her hand to lead her forward.

“Am I going to trip over anything?” Jeanne asks suspiciously, clutching Isabeau a little tighter. At least Isabeau is sturdy enough to catch her if she should fall.

“No,” Isabeau’s voice is light with amusement, which does not help Jeanne’s confidence. “Hold still a bit. Wait here.”

“All right,” Jeanne says doubtfully. She hears Isabeau striding away, nails clicking on the wooden floor, and then the sound of curtains being pulled back as light spills across her closed eyelids. “Can I open my eyes?”

“Just a second,” Isabeau calls. There’s a bit more rustling, and then stillness. “Now you can.”

Slowly, Jeanne opens her eyes. She can’t help the gasp she lets out at the sight.

A massive library is spread out before her. Almost automatically, she tilts her head back to try and see the extent of it. The ceilings are so high she can barely see the design carved into them, it’s just a blur of tiny curlicues and fleur-de-lis. The windows run from the floor to the ceiling, and the sunbeams pouring in from them highlight the dust dancing through the room. She breathes in, closing her eyes again for a moment to take in the smell, the feel of dust and light in her lungs.

There are several levels of small walks, staggered every six or seven shelves, and three moveable ladders. Jeanne has never seen this many books, can hardly comprehend the scope of it all. M. Comtois’ shop, huge to a girl with only one small shelf of books, would fit into this room ten times over.

“Do you like it?” Isabeau asks, pulling Jeanne’s attention back over to where Isabeau is standing awkwardly a few feet away.

“Oh, yes,” Jeanne sighs, drifting over to the nearest shelf. She runs a hand down the long row of titles, fingers curling over the tooled leather of a particularly beautiful volume. She isn’t ready to settle on a single book just yet, though. She wanders down the row, caressing the books, pulling the odd one out to feel its weight in her hands. She feels an almost hunger-like ache in the pit of her stomach, a craving for the cool luxury of slipping between the crisp pages of a new book, just cut. Pulling a well-thumbed green volume from the shelf, she opens it gently and holds it on both palms. She leans in, breathing the paper-sap tang it makes in the air, as familiar to her as the smell of earth, necessary as blood.

The scent of books makes her head swim. So thin and weak like hope or winter stew, so little compared to the richness of dirt, and yet somehow overpowering. It dives through her like a wild bird, the dipping swirling undulations of word after word. They press into her like flat wide palm-stones, like the horizon rushing into the sea, as her eyes take in title after title. The books call to her like sirens, like the long awaited loosening of a corset, belt, the weight of tools laid down. It feels like the scream of blissful pain that sings along the tightness in her back and shoulders after a long hard day in the garden, the dip where her arm swings too loose from her shoulder bone. It aches in her, the desire to fall down and down and down into book after book.

Behind her, Isabeau smiles and takes care of lighting the fire. Jeanne doesn’t notice, not even when she wanders over to a chair, already five pages into a novel. She doesn’t notice until the end of the book, after the light has started to go and the fire has burned itself out, and Isabeau has fallen fast asleep in the chair across from her.

—-

Over the next week, Isabeau watches Jeanne discover the library, a place long-neglected but once much loved. She expected the twisted pleasure of laying the collective efforts of generations of d’Argents at the feet of a peasant girl. She also feels a curious wistful longing that she did not anticipate. It’s addictive, watching Jeanne be fascinated by something, utterly absorbed. Isabeau finds herself wishing she were the subject of that intensity of focus, that almost palpable adoration. For now, she settles for watching Jeanne be simply, blissfully, happy.

The cut on her arm has healed enough that she no longer needs a bandage, but Isabeau skims her fingers gently over the place where it lay, thinking of Jeanne tending to her wound. Such a simple conversation it had been, after all: a thank you, and Isabeau’s acceptance of the thanks. It had served as a turning point, though, a softening between them.

Isabeau thinks about the swinging magnet-repulsion of the tide, how it manifests between people. There is another being close by in her living space, and they continue a sort of bumpy striving along forward, together. In some ways, the ease of it frightens Isabeau. How accommodating she finds herself these days. Not the forced, grimacing dance of, well. Isabeau would never call herself afraid, precisely, but there are things she did and allowed because they are expected of a girl, even one of her rank and position. Sometimes, especially one of her rank and position.

The closer she grew to womanhood, the more she hated and resented those demands: to smile, to excuse rudeness, to be pinched and prodded and trod on and then to say thank you. It made her into something sharp, guarded by thorns. It was safer, a guard against those who would destroy her for their own pleasure.

Has she lost so much worth saving in the filings of discarded bits of armor, dropped piecemeal as they’re worn away by Jeanne’s gentle kindness? Perhaps not. Still, it feels like a terrible sacrifice, risking the small certainty of loneliness on the gamble of happiness, the wild-sharp feeling of tumbling. Of leaping, sheltered by only the fragile bird-bone hope of being leapt with.

Jeanne sighs a little, biting her lip and smiling as she turns a page, and it catches Isabeau’s attention at once.

The snap of their lives aligning feels like fresh-baked bread, like wild honeycomb, like the press of fingers against her spine, barely remembered. That the two of them, with all their aches and longings, can find a little peace and happiness, even if just until the last petal falls, feels miraculous as spring to Isabeau. The thread of days spins out of her like it’s pulling something deep from in her soul, like raw ore, messy and rough.

Like something mined from the deep, Isabeau lets happiness root and shadow her, pulling her down and down into the chair by the fire. She drifts off to sleep, thinking about Jeanne when autumn comes, of the sharp hard smack of a knife carving up apple slices, and the crisp softness of eating them.

—-

Albin, Georges, and Eulalie (trailed by an eager Henri and Denis) peek in through the open library door.

“She’s just reading,” Eulalie mutters in disappointment.

“What did you expect them to be doing in a library?” Georges asks, amused. Eulalie turns slightly pink and looks at the children.

“In any case, it seems to have gone off well,” Albin says excitedly. “They’ve been there practically all day for nearly a week!”

“Yes,” Georges says. He looks a little nervously at his husband. “We shouldn’t get our expectations run away with us just yet,” sounding as though he needs to convince himself, as much as the others.

“Expectations for what?” Denis asks.

Eulalie shushes him. “Not so loud!”

“Expectations for what?” Denis repeats, more quietly this time.

“Never you mind,” Eulalie says. “It’s time you were both in bed.”

“Ten more minutes?” Henri pleads, looking at Georges. He smiles and shakes his head.

“Eulalie has a point. It’s late.”

Henri and Denis grumble, but let their parents pack them off to bed. Georges lingers behind, watching the dying firelight play over the tableau of Jeanne and Isabeau.

He does not want to hope, especially not so soon after being so abominably disappointed, but he finds it creeping in in spite of all his efforts to stifle it.

—-

“Thank you,” Jeanne says politely, as Adela and Bertrand pour milk and sugar into her porridge for her. Lea can’t quite remember the taste of her own morning porridge, but she hardly thinks she took it as sweet as Jeanne does.

Lea sits in the middle of the table, quiet and a bit sleepy in the morning light. Being a vase suits her rather well. She would prefer to be human again, of course, but her lot isn’t so bad. She would hate to be a plate or a spoon, for example. Sometimes she thinks it would be nice to be able to move around more easily, being finely cut crystal makes her extremely reluctant to hop about for fear of chipping or cracking, but Eulalie is very generous with her wheeled trays and Lea can use those to get about if she wants. With Raymond as a decanter and Christophe as one of the glasses on the sidebar, she has her family with her, and Georges and Albin and Eulalie are generally about to update her on the latest gossip around the house.

Lea doesn’t talk to Jeanne as much as some of the others, but she does like her. In the first weeks after her arrival, she brought in fresh flowers from outside for Lea. Since it’s gotten colder outside, Jeanne has fashioned a lovely fabric flower arrangement so the table isn’t bare. It’s nice, and Lea appreciates the unprompted consideration.

Isabeau, who normally gobbles up her breakfast by sticking her entire head into the bowl like a dog, has taken to politely sipping from the side of her bowl since she and Jeanne have begun breakfasting together. Utensils are difficult for her to manage with her paws, which Jeanne noticed the first day and wordlessly switched to sipping from her own bowl.

“I thought we might go for a walk after breakfast,” Jeanne says. “I’d like to feed the birds.”

Isabeau raises an eyebrow. “That might be best done without me. Smaller animals don’t like me very much.”

“I’m sure we can make you suitably nonthreatening,” Jeanne says with a smile.

Lea, curious about how this could possibly be accomplished, hops onto the waiting tea tray the second the doors close behind Jeanne and Isabeau. Several of the glasses pile on as well, Carine and Lucienne giggling in the back as the tea tray rolls sedately down the corridors.

Eulalie, Albin, and Georges are all already clustered in front of a window, looking down on the front walk. The tea tray parks itself neatly beside them, and the glasses clamor for position. Lea hushes some of the younger and more boisterous ones, making sure everyone is settled in and can see.

Jeanne, wrapped in a warm crimson fur-lined cloak, and Isabeau, who doesn’t need much additional protection from the cold thanks to her thick fur, emerge and carefully navigate down the icy stairs. Isabeau lets Jeanne lean on her arm, ensuring that they both make it down to the even white surface of the newly fallen snow unscathed. Jeanne has a small pouch of birdseed tied around her waist, and she scoops some out and lets the birds flutter in and out of her hand. Isabeau attempts the same thing, but the birds seem reluctant to land amidst her claws.

Jeanne bends down, encouraging Isabeau to cup her hands and hold them flattened and low on the ground. It takes a bit, but the birds start to briefly land and nibble at the birdseed. Isabeau turns to Jeanne, a delighted expression on her face, and Jeanne smiles back.

“So sweet,” Eulalie sighs happily. “Wait, what are they- No! Oh dear! Jeanne will think her terribly rude!”

Below, a snowball fight has broken out. Lea is fairly sure Jeanne initiated it by shoving snow down the back of Isabeau’s shirt, so she thinks Eulalie’s fears are rather unfounded.

“Don’t worry,” Albin says comfortingly. “They seem to be enjoying themselves, don’t they?”

Eulalie tuts disapprovingly, hopping off to start a fire in the sitting room with a muttered, “I’d best make sure no one takes a chill,” but Lea agrees with Albin.

“It does look fun,” one of the glasses says, sighing wistfully. “I miss being human.”

A little silence settles over the group at that. They all have things they miss about being human. It’s difficult, being trapped in this situation that is mostly outside their control. Certainly, they can all do their best to make sure Isabeau gets along with any guests, but in the end it’s really up to Isabeau and whoever her potential fiancée is at the moment. She and Jeanne have spent much more time together than Isabeau ever has with any of the others. It’s growing increasingly easy to be hopeful, and to forget the weight of the stakes, the heaviness of disappointment.

“Well,” Georges says briskly, “all we can do is try to help in whatever way we can. Does everyone know what they’re meant to do to prepare for tonight?”

“Everyone is gathering in the kitchens in,” Albin hops over to peer up at the tall grandfather clock, “ten minutes. We’d better go join them. Eulalie will keep Jeanne and Isabeau in the sitting room for a bit.”

The tea tray whizzes off to the kitchen, sending the glasses toppling into one another briefly.

“Slow down,” Lea scolds. “We have ample time, and there’s no use breaking anyone.” The tea tray slows, a little sulkily.

—-

Georges clears his throat, nodding to the fork and glass next to him to make a clear ringing sound. The kitchen falls silent.

“Tonight, we will be hosting an event the likes of which this house has not seen for twelve years. Those of you who were not too young at the time,” Georges eyes the little cluster of children, “recall the night the curse was cast over us all.” If possible, the silence grows even more defined. Of course, they all remember that night all too clearly.

Isabeau, still reeling from the sudden loss of supervision caused by the death of her controlling mother, had decided to throw a ball. This alone would perhaps have occasioned a little comment from the well-to-do families in the neighborhood. She wasn’t remotely close to out of mourning, and a ball so soon after the death of an immediate family member would be viewed as rather tasteless and gauche, no matter how tame the affair.

Isabeau has never been tame.

Instead of inviting eligible bachelors and ladies just a bit less beautiful than herself, Isabeau chose to invite no one; no one of importance, that is. The ball was held, with Isabeau’s own closets and jewelry cases thrown open, for the entirety of the house’s staff. Everyone, from the lowliest scullery maid to the (comparatively lofty) resident castoff cousin, Dominique, was invited. Isabeau herself helped with most of the preparations, flitting from kitchens to gardens to ballroom to make sure everything was ready.

It had been a lovely evening, planned neatly down to the last note of music, but it had gone rather abruptly pear-shaped when the mysterious enchantress and her rose and curse arrived.

The ballroom, although kept neat by the little flurries of magic that keep the castle clean and orderly, has been very seldom used since then. The chairs are all stacked neatly against the wall, covered by dust cloths, the grand piano languishes out of tune, and the floor is dull and unpolished.

“If we are to break the hold this curse has over us all,” Georges continues, “we must revisit that night.” Rather dramatically, to Lea’s great enjoyment, Georges sweeps a crimson cloth to the side to reveal a neat series of sketches propped on an easel. They feature the ballroom from different angles, set up and decorated. “The instruments have already agreed to provide music for the evening. Everyone,” she looks sternly at a squeaky piccolo, “is to be tuned and polished. The floors need to be buffed and gleaming. The silverware and china is already in good shape, but make sure you all stay out of trouble today.” Eulalie beams with pride at this complement to her housekeeping skills. “The chairs are to be set up in the arrangement I have indicated,” Georges nods to one of the sketches, “but only after the floors are good and dry. I don’t want polish smeared and scratched. Every chair must be checked over for damage, and I want that piano positively gleaming! The adjacent room is to be set for a multi-course dinner, the kitchen staff have the menu, and make sure Isabeau has a solid enough chair to sit in. Jeanne will be wearing something astonishingly fashionable if Dominique has her way, so her chair needs to be wide enough to accommodate a formal gown.” Georges sees that most of the staff is positively hopping with excitement at this point, so he sighs and dismisses them. “You know what needs to be done. Come find me or Albin if you have any questions or need a job, and Eulalie if it’s anything to do with dinner or music. Dismissed.”

—-

Jeanne stands in the garden, closing her eyes to soak up the last rays of sun.

She needs to get ready for dinner soon, the dress alone will take at least a half hour to get into, but she has a few minutes. A sliver of time to brace herself in, for the coming whirl. Maybe it will be easier, once she’s squeezed into the dress and has her hair powdered and hands carefully covered with fine silk gloves. Maybe she will be a different person, then, transformed into something soft and delicate, a rose.

Because, really, what she needs to brace for is the terrifying allure of being able to exist as herself. Not even necessarily to be loved for it, simply to be given space for it. Wide, breathing space. Because Jeanne knows, even in the dress that Dominique chose and the jewelry that belongs to the castle and the gloves that hide her calluses, that Isabeau will continue to see just Jeanne. This dinner isn’t really for the two of them, after all. It’s for the others, and so they are both doing it willingly, even gladly.

But Isabeau will not see a princess, or a fine lady, no matter how Jeanne dresses, and the relief of that knowledge nearly sweeps her away, if she thinks about it too closely.

It is getting harder and harder for Jeanne to remember this isn’t forever. Not the dresses, and the jewelry, not the food, which she enjoys and will set aside the enjoyment of without missing much. Not the garden, not the library, not all the corners of the castle she is coming to love. Not the others, not Isabeau, and not, and this is the part that is hardest for Jeanne to keep pressing into her own memory, not this self of hers, which will need to die and be put away with the rest of it when the last petal falls.

Jeanne thinks about earlier in the day, about reading to Isabeau in the library. Of how gentle Isabeau’s big rough hands are on the spines of the books, when Jeanne holds them out to her to show her a particularly fine illustration.

Jeanne feels sometimes as if there is something feral in her, something she smothered when she was young. It still lives, but a half-life, weak and starving. Hungry and mewling like a kitten, too small and frail to care for its own needs. To hurt anyone, even to hunt. She feels like her own hand is constantly trying to close around the handle of a knife, to rip through flesh and tear herself open, to let her ribs breathe. She hates both the weakness of the urge, that she cannot hurt, rend, tear, even into those who deserve it. And she hates that she feels the urge, at all.

Why can she not be only one: a wild beast or an ordinary person? Either would be simpler. Both, unbearable.

It feels almost astonishingly selfish, that she wishes things could stay the way they are. This peace out of time, even in winter, where Jeanne can breathe. This place, where all the weak small shriveled and shivering parts of her are given sunshine and water. Freedom. Jeanne is not a beast here, by comparison, so she can seem something resembling a woman.

Jeanne sometimes feels as if she has swallowed the sea. The wanting in her runs so deep, so wide, that nothing can fathom it. No matter how far round the boat of her mind swings it cannot compass her own longings, her fears, her desires.

Being in nature soothes her because it feels even, similarly boundless. So big that she can pour her entirety out and watch it drain into the starving soil. Being near other people has always done the opposite. Driven her deeper, farther, dug out the bottoms of her soul into cavernous wells that she can’t ever quite see all of.

There’s something terrifying in that, but wonderful. Being perched on the edge of her own dissolution, the memory of water a faint echo in her depths. It aches wonderfully, that spinning out of Jeanne into a whole universe. She feels like a great ball of glass, like a canyon, like something starving and old.

But then, inevitably, she must pack all that up into the tiny carrying case that is daily life, pull in the tendrils of her soul and sear off the edges to make them fit. She has always craved solitude for the same reason that she dreads it: being completely herself, and the attendant knowledge that really, deep down, she has no desire to change.

She slips so easily between those states, here. One moment the yawning gulf beneath the wings of a remote eagle, the next a raft coming gently to berth. She feels whole, in a way she never has before.

The thing that draws her so deeply into Isabeau is that same spinning-wide abyss. Isabeau is endless, just like Jeanne. Deep and wide and starving. She never realized, although perhaps she should have, that that kind of hunger existed anywhere except within herself. Not the selfish, nipping hunger of Mercier or Jeanne’s father, that pinches off and devours pieces of others carelessly, but something pure and burning. Something that asks from Jeanne a reciprocal respect, understanding, patience. A hugeness of being that does not offer itself entirely to her, and does not ask her to offer herself entirely to it, because of a mutual understanding of the impossibility of such an undertaking. Isabeau will not, or cannot, bend, even to the curse, and Jeanne loves her for that: her refusal to be anything but her whole, angry, impossible self.

It was never loving that was difficult for Jeanne, and it does not surprise her, the ease with which she has come to love this place, and these people. It was being loved back, that was the challenge. For the first time, Jeanne finds that she might need more than be needed. That she might, in some distant, fairy-tale ending, be allowed to have more than that.

The end she has always forseen, and feared, becomes more and more distasteful the more she has a chance to taste the opposite. Jeanne has always feared losing her freedom. Having her depths be compassed by someone else who cuts her down to a shadow, a dull flickering candle flame who only exists as background to fire.

When she was young, she thought that was what she wanted. To be understood, to be loved, to be swallowed down and becalmed. But she has grown too fond of her own wildness, and has found that, after all, owning the freedom of another is not worth the price of her own.

So she breathes in the last of the sunlight, and presses the memory hard into her own heart. What it is like, to be known as wild, and to not be asked to be tame.

At least, not yet, not for a little while longer.

—-

The most difficult part will be the beginning, Mercier thinks. It would not normally present much of a challenge, to sit down to tea with someone. He is welcomed, or at least tolerated, at all the houses in the neighborhood, save one. He could make a morning call to any of them, slip a few drops of the apothecary’s potion into a cup under the guise of pouring the tea. Unfortunately, Arsène Vincent’s house is the one exception to this rule of hospitality.

Still, Mercier can be patient when it comes to getting what he wants, and in some ways this plan is much easier with Jeanne from home. Her father lacks a daughter’s attentiveness, having to make due with a woman from the village who comes in to do the cooking and tidy up in the evenings. She is easy enough to recruit as an ally. She does not like Vincent much, because he pays very little and complains a great deal. Mercier purchases her allegiance to himself quite cheaply, half in coin and half in false solicitude for Jeanne.

No one in the village can be precisely worked up to concern about Jeanne’s captivity, much to her father’s indignity. He considers himself ill-used and much inconvenienced, but the general consensus, no matter how often or how bitterly Vincent complains in the tavern, is that he must simply wait another week or two, just like all the other fathers before him. If there is no concern for Jeanne’s safety, though, there is the increasingly hearty wish for her return, if only to stop her father being such a nuisance to everyone else. Mercier, with a little artfulness and some light falsehood, casts himself as the patiently waiting lover in the eyes of the village. It’s not as if there is anyone else who wants to marry Jeanne, why shouldn’t it be him?

The strands of his plan slowly begin to come together: the first three doses of potion, slipped into Vincent’s cup at the tavern, which make Vincent shaky and tired; Mercier’s allegiance with his housekeeper; the general consensus the village is reaching that it would really be best for Jeanne to return soon.

Vincent still hates Mercier, but his resistance is greatly broken down by querulous illness and a lack of sympathy. He is enough of a fool to believe Mercier’s interest in his health to be, if not entirely genuine, at least on behalf of Jeanne. Vincent, urged by his housekeeper, allows Mercier to visit a few days, to sit with him in his sickroom and listen to his complaints. He allows Mercier to pour his tea, and solicitously offer to send for a doctor, and from there, it is simplicity itself.

—-

Jeanne is, admittedly, much distracted during the first course. A letter came while she was dressing, left pinned to the castle gate this morning with her name on the outside. She is not quite ready to fully examine the contents within her own head, let alone to air them to Isabeau.

Isabeau is used to Jeanne’s habitual abstraction, at this point, and generally doesn’t make much fuss over it. She simply leaves Jeanne to her thoughts. This, in turn, has made Jeanne a little more conscious of her attention. It is much easier, she finds, to set aside her thoughts for conversation when she can do so at her own leisure, and with ample time for herself besides.

It takes her a while, therefore, to notice that Isabeau is also distracted. They have gotten into the habit of dining en famille, chairs pushed almost together, but tonight a formal table has been set in the ballroom. Isabeau is too far away for much practical conversation, even without enthusiastic accompaniment from the musical instruments. The food is good, as usual, and the music is lovely, but Isabeau seems absorbed in her own thoughts. They do not look like they are necessarily pleasing thoughts.

Abruptly, Jeanne pushes her chair back. The music does not falter, but Isabeau looks at her, startled, when Jeanne makes her way around the table. They are nearly of a height, with Isabeau seated, and Jeanne does not need to crane her neck so much as she usually does to look at Isabeau.

“Dance with me?” Jeanne’s voice wobbles a little, on the question, and she flushes with embarrassment. She isn’t sure what prompted her sudden forwardness, beyond the strangeness of being so far away from Isabeau, and having her look so unhappy.

Isabeau smiles, though, the big, toothy one that she only began with once it became clear that Jeanne wasn’t afraid of her, and stands. “If you like,” she says. “I’m very out of practice, and never was particularly good at following the steps.”

“And I never learned them at all,” Jeanne says, calmer now that Isabeau is standing next to her. She puts a hand on Isabeau’s arm. “The instruments are too well-bred to laugh at us, so I think we shall be safe.”

Jeanne has never danced much, her father does not like assemblies, so she has Isabeau walk her through a few figures. Jeanne is not graceful, though, even without the wine at dinner, and she leans more and more heavily on a laughing Isabeau to bear her around the room. She is not much of a burden to Isabeau’s strength, even with the heaviness of her clothing, and they devolve slowly into merely spinning about the room. Jeanne tilts her head back, watching the lights and the ceiling whirl above her. Her wig falls off, and Isabeau laughs harder, and Jeanne smiles and lets her head fall onto Isabeau’s chest. She feels so much lighter without the wig, and she can feel the rumble of Isabeau’s laughter, and she feels warm and borne aloft.

Isabeau stops whirling her around, eventually, setting her gently back on her feet.

“Thank you,” Jeanne says, smiling up at her. They’ve moved almost to the edge of the ballroom, by the huge windows thrown open to let in the night air. Jeanne drifts out onto the balcony, leaning on the railing and tilting her head back.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Isabeau says, and Jeanne smiles over her shoulder in acknowledgement, and looks back up at the stars. The moon is high and thin in the sky, like the discarded fingernail of a remote goddess, precious and finite.

Isabeau joins her shortly, with a tray of their wine glasses and some beautiful little cakes. She pours for Jeanne, holding her own glass carefully in one paw so they can clink them together. The cakes are delicious, and the night is luckily mild, and Jeanne feels briefly, wonderfully happy.

Jeanne thinks about the letter, on her dressing table upstairs, from Mme Laure at the tavern, lines floating through her memory.

Your father is taken very ill, and we fear for him despite the attentions of the doctor...

...uncertain what the cause of this malady is...

I know the last petal must not yet have fallen, but perhaps there is some scrap of kindness in the heart of that monster you can appeal to.

Jeanne swallows around a lump in her throat. Surely, tomorrow is soon enough? She can ask tomorrow, to return home. She does not fear Isabeau’s reaction, or particularly expect opposition, and she is worried for her father, of course. But mostly, Jeanne feels, selfishly, that she wants one more night, here. One more night of happiness, or at least the pretense of it.

“This is a beautiful room,” Jeanne says finally, pulling her thoughts back to the present.

Isabeau hums a little, looking back at the ballroom behind them. “I hate this room,” she says. There’s no heat in it, just a kind of resignation. It makes Jeanne shiver a little, the loneliness of it. The kind where you won’t even call out, you’re that certain no one is there to hear you, or would care if they could.

“In that case,” Jeanne says evenly, “it is a very ugly room, and should be repurposed immediately.” Isabeau laughs, and it pinches tight in Jeanne’s stomach, painful and precious.

One more night, she thinks, almost pleading with herself. Just one more night.

—-

As expected, Isabeau takes the news calmly at breakfast the next morning.

“If he is ill, you must go to him,” Isabeau agrees immediately.

“What about the curse?” Jeanne asks. This is the one aspect she’s uncertain on. The curse certainly allowed her to leave the house last time, although there is a chance the wolves were not entirely natural in origin. Still, there does not seem to be a force keeping her here.

Isabeau shrugs. “You will forfeit your right to break the curse, by leaving early, but no harm will come to you.”

“I’ll try to be back in time,” Jeanne says. Stupidly, her heart twists a little, at how calmly Isabeau is taking this. “We have over a week left.” She is not certain of this timeline, is merely guessing from her experience observing the castle and the curse from a distance, but Isabeau does not contradict her.

“If you wish. You are always welcome here.” Isabeau is already rising, calling for Albin to see about the carriage, and everything happens in a whirl from there. Jeanne’s possessions, and then Jeanne herself, are packed into the enchanted carriage, which bears her swiftly and safely home.

It looks smaller than I remember, Jeanne thinks, alighting from the carriage, and then scolds herself for her snobbishness. She thanks the carriage, unsure if it understands her or not but leaning toward politeness anyway, and then pulls out her latch-key to let herself in the door.

Jeanne comes in quietly, reluctant to disturb her father if he is sleeping, and leaves her things by the door. She makes her way almost silently through the familiar house, letting herself into her father’s room.

To her utter astonishment, there are two people sitting with him. One, Mme Chausson, a woman from the village who does some cooking and light housework for many of the richer townsfolk, is not such a surprise. The other, M. Mercier, is a shock, and an unpleasant one at that.

“Oh, Jeanne!” Mme Chausson cries, jumping to her feet. “You’re free!” Jeanne’s father moans weakly, turning his head toward the noise. Jeanne looks down at him in concern. He looks very ill indeed, his hair thin and stringy and his cheeks sunken.

“I had a letter from Mme Laure about father’s health,” Jeanne says quietly. “I came right away.” She feels guilty for the slight lie, and guiltier still for her own delay. In truth, she finds, she did not expect to find him so ill, although Mme Laure is not prone to exaggeration. Her father is so robust, so full of life, that she could not picture him in such a state.

“Jeanne,” her father whispers, and Jeanne goes to his side at once, sitting so she can take his hand. “You’ve come back to me.”

“Father,” Jeanne says, distressed. She looks up at Mme Chausson. “Will you please send for the doctor, if he has not already been here today? I would hear from him anything I can do to ease my father’s suffering.”

“Of course,” Mme Chausson says, leaving the room at once.

“I’m certain it will be a great comfort for your father to have you back,” Mercier says. There is something a little strained in his tone, and Jeanne glances over at him sharply. He quickly forces a smile, but is clearly not entirely pleased to see her.

“Thank you,” Jeanne says stiffly. She wants to ask what he’s doing here, what possible interest he has in this case, but cannot think of a way to do so remotely politely.

In any case, Mercier takes his leave before the arrival of the doctor, so Jeanne sets that problem aside for the moment to focus on her father’s health.

Unfortunately, the doctor has little to tell her. He is utterly baffled, both by the sudden appearance of the symptoms and the complete lack of efficacy of any treatment. “Perhaps the return of his daughter will help where medicine cannot,” he tells her.

Jeanne takes this claim rather dubiously, but strangely it seems, at first, that the doctor is right. Her father does begin to improve, almost immediately. His appetite returns, he is less tired, and he regains enough energy within the space of two days that he can sit up in his sickbed.

This is a relief to Jeanne, and she thinks to Arsène as well, although he complains about the enforced inactivity. Partly for something to distract him with, the doctor has strictly forbidden any activity that taxes his brain overmuch, Jeanne brings up Mercier’s presence.

“Have you resolved your quarrel with M. Mercier, then, father?” she asks.

“Hmph,” her father says. “Still think the man is an idiot, but he made himself useful around here, at least.”

“It is good you had someone with you, until I could return,” Jeanne says. Although I wish it had been anyone else, she adds silently. Her grasp on spinsterhood is tenuous enough as it is, without a resolution between her father and Mercier.

Her father furrows his brows. “It’s a bit strange he’s taken off the way he has. I would think it would be quite the opposite, with you back at home.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” Jeanne says, forcing calmness into her tone. Her father looks as if he intends to continue the conversation, but Jeanne redirects his attention by offering to read to him, and is greatly relieved when he allows the subject of Mercier to drop.

Still, it preys on her mind. It is not just that the presence of Mercier around her father is unwelcome, or that it is surprising. There is something about the whole situation that strikes Jeanne as strange. From the near-raptures Mme Chausson goes into about Mercier, when she and Jeanne are in the kitchen and Jeanne has a moment to ask about him, it becomes clear Mercier has been there a great deal. He has been, according to Mme Chausson, devoted to her father’s care, to the extent of preparing the tinctures the doctor left and administering them himself. That he should so quickly absent himself seems odd indeed.

Jeanne does not think Mercier stupid, or kind, and his behavior really only makes sense in one light. For whatever reason, he has decided he wants to marry Jeanne. He must have seen her father’s sudden illness as a doorway, an opportunity to allow him to mend fences. This makes sense as far as it goes. Jeanne has relied rather heavily on the excuse of her father’s objection to refuse Mercier in the past, and she easily thinks him clever enough to come up with the plan and even to dupe her father. Her father is a very intelligent man, but with machines, not with people.

The portion of the problem that resists interpretation, no matter how many different angles Jeanne looks at it from, is his sudden absence. With her father softened, and Jeanne back at home, why not press his advantage? Were Mercier a different kind of man, Jeanne might think it shame at the blatant way he’s insinuated himself with her father in her absence. Perhaps he has merely changed his mind, whatever reason he had for suddenly taking an interest in Jeanne vanishing as quickly as it came.

Mercier returns on the third day, all solicitude, and Jeanne reluctantly discards the hope that he has given up the scheme of marrying her.

“I hope I am not intruding,” Mercier says, bending to smile condescendingly at Jeanne. “I wanted to give you time to settle in at home before trespassing upon you.”

“You’re very kind,” Jeanne says mechanically, leading him into the sick room.

“So you’re back again,” her father says rudely.

Mercier looks truly, frighteningly angry for a second, before his face smooths back into polite lines. “I heard from our mutual friend Mme Chausson that you are feeling better, sir. I was glad to hear it. Surely all the credit is due to your amiable nurse,” he adds, with a nod to Jeanne.

Her father takes the invitation to complain about being confined to his room, and Jeanne leaves them alone for a few moments to get the tea things together. She looks down at the familiar cups and saucers, thinking of Denis and Euphrasie and Eulalie’s other children. Jeanne has tried to keep her thoughts here, as much as possible. It hurts less, that way.

She quickly finishes setting everything on a tray, making certain everything is set up securely and easy to carry, and then pauses. An idea begins to glimmer in the back of her mind. Jeanne isn’t certain that Mercier really is up to something, but it can’t hurt to do a little investigation of her own. Jeanne bites her lip, thinking. It might be a little suspicious, but she thinks Mercier will assume carelessness or laziness on her part, rather than artifice. Jeanne takes the teacups from their saucers, turning them upright, and then fills them with tea before setting them back on the tray. It’s a foolish way to carry a tea tray, increasing the danger of spills by a needless degree, which Jeanne is counting on.

She carries the tray to the room, pretending to stumble a little as she approaches the bed. It is not difficult at all, notching a finger under one of the teacups and making certain it spills all over Mercier, all while looking as though she is trying to steady the tray.

“Oh no,” Jeanne gasps, as Mercier shoots to his feet and begins yanking off his coat. “Oh, I’m so clumsy! Please forgive me monsieur!” She sets aside the tea tray, holding out her hands and trying to look mortified. Her father starts laughing.

“That is quite all right,” Mercier says, his eyes glittering with anger.

“Let me have your coat. I’ll wash it right away so the stain doesn’t set.”

“Fine,” Mercier says, dismissively. He’s distracted, half glaring at her father, and Jeanne feels a flash of triumph at the success of her plan.

She takes Mercier’s coat into the kitchen, standing over the washbasin and blocking any view of what she is doing with her body. She doesn’t think either man will follow her, but takes the extra precaution regardless. Her fingers dive quickly into the pockets on the inside of the coat. She isn’t certain what she’s looking for, only hopes there will be something that begins to explain Mercier’s odd behavior.

She finds a handkerchief, a small handwritten book, a bit of stained blotting paper, the end of a broken pen, and a vial. She examines the book first. It appears to be some kind of record of expenses, mostly small amounts with names of recipients Jeanne recognizes from around town: the butcher, a produce seller, the tavern. Those she does not recognize have no further detail, although they are all mostly small numbers, save one. The recipient listed appears again, twice, the same amount each time. She examines the vial next. It has a label, stained and much worn, but Jeanne can make out the name of the apothecary shop it has come from. It’s the same name that is in the account book.

Jeanne realizes her heart is racing, and that she has been standing frozen over the sink for nearly a minute. She returns the items to Mercier’s pockets quickly, before patting at and drying the stain. She doesn’t have time to think about what this might mean now. She’ll wait until Mercier leaves.

—-

Isabeau has many regrets, in life. She doesn’t like to dwell on them, both because to do so is unpleasant and because to do so gives her a strange feeling of being unmoored in time, which is also unpleasant.

For a long time, she refused to be sorry for anything at all. Not her hemlines, or her tendency to bite her nails, or her lack of interest in either pleasing or using men, or her waspish temperament. All grave flaws, in her mother’s eyes.

She never wanted to regret the curse, either, because regretting it felt like admitting that it was her fault, that she caused it, which felt like admitting that her mother was right all along. That there is something rotting in her, deep, something broken and unloveable because it is not fixable, and love is fixing yourself, not expecting anyone else to do it for you.

She doesn’t regret letting Jeanne go, and she does.

Isabeau didn’t even hesitate to send her away, in the moment, because it felt like there was finally something she could do. Something that felt right, however briefly. Something that let her feel like a good person, an unselfish person.

And why make a fuss, after all? On some level, she always knew how it would end, because Jeanne is a good person, but doesn’t love Isabeau. She can’t love Isabeau, for the same reason she is kind to Isabeau. Because Jeanne is a good person, truly, and an unselfish person, and Isabeau will never be that, however much she pretends.

The wind whips Isabeau’s carefully combed mane into a tangle, blowing it into her eyes. They didn’t change, stayed grey and eerie-human. The few people she’s met since this whole thing started avoid looking at them, careful to watch the claws and the fur and the teeth that mark her out as animal, as thing.

Jeanne always looked at her, into her eyes, into her face, unflinching.

Isabeau thinks about that, and about Jeanne’s hands, which did not hesitate to touch her, once granted permission. Jeanne’s hands are red and chapped, callused and swollen, and they both liked the look of their hands together, Isabeau thinks. Jeanne’s hands are not the soft manicured perfection of Isabeau’s hands before, a ladies’ hands even with the nails bitten down. Jeanne’s are hands that Isabeau can hold in her own, and not be afraid to spoil them. They are everyday hands, solid and reliable.

These are the things she regrets.

What she does not regret, not even with the uncertainty gathering in the house like a storm, is sending Jeanne away.

The curse doesn’t like it, but Isabeau had half-accepted that, even before Jeanne was out of the house. No one has left before the rose drops its last petal. The rules are clear.

“You’re an idiot,” Georges had said that morning, when Isabeau collapsed trying to walk from the breakfast table to the door, the tightness in his voice trying to hide real fear. “You know the rules, better than anyone.”

“She was needed at home,” Isabeau replied.

The weakness in her limbs has gotten steadily worse, in the days since Jeanne left. Her vision has gone strange around the edges, white spots dancing just out of view. The rose under its bell jar continues to wilt, only a few petals left.

Isabeau sits on the balcony in the west wing, breathing labored in the thin air even though it has been nearly an hour since she stood. For all the weakness of her body, life feels sharper, now, more immediate, even as it flees.

She has forbidden everyone in the castle from contacting Jeanne in any way, and that resolution feels solid, as the rest of her crumbles and erodes.

It’s her curse, to be unloveable and unsaveable, and there is some peace in accepting that, in taking the full brunt of it, at long last. To know herself to be dying of it, coming to an end. No more uncertainty, no more pain, no more bracing for a blow that may yet come. The blow has landed, finally and for the last time.

—-

Jeanne watches Mercier like a hawk, for the entirety of his visit. She has her suspicions about the vial, and his proximity to her father, and perhaps it would be wiser to simply confirm them. To pretend inattentiveness, to actually see him put whatever is in the vial into her father’s tea. She cannot bring herself to risk that. She does not think Mercier would actually kill her father, but she is beginning to seriously suspect that he might be behind the sudden illness, and only Mercier himself knows precisely how dangerous whatever is in the vial is.

Once she and her father are left alone again, Jeanne begins with some careful questions. Her father, still amused by the incident with the tea and eager to tease her for her clumsiness, happily tells her about the beginning of this thaw with Mercier. He confirms, rather carelessly, that Mercier had been in charge of his medicines from the doctor, before Jeanne’s return. The illness apparently began before Mercier’s visits, but well after the appearance of Mme Chausson. The woman seems kindly enough, but she could possibly be an accomplice of Mercier’s, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Jeanne considers what to do about her suspicions. She needs to raise them in the right way, with her father. He will accept, she thinks, the premise that Mercier might be betraying him, and probably even that Mme Chausson is involved. The difficulty is that her father does not like to be made to feel stupid, or foolish, and his pride is prodigious.

She begins with the doctor’s next visit, pulling him aside to speak to him privately after he’s finished seeing to her father.

“I wanted to ask you about a certain apothecary shop,” Jeanne begins. “One of my acquaintances, who lives in,” Jeanne names the town, “spoke of it. She claims their treatment was wonderfully effective for her aunt, who suffered from a similar condition to father’s.”

“Ah, yes,” the doctor says nodding. “What was the name of the place?” He immediately frowns, when Jeanne names the shop, and something in her stomach turns icy. The doctor clears his throat. “I’m certain your friend is well intentioned,” he begins, “but I’m afraid I must inform you that shop has a very poor reputation indeed. I would advise you to look elsewhere.”

“I thank you for your council,” Jeanne says. She pauses. She does not know the doctor well, but his reputation in the town is good, and honorable, including from those who are not rich enough to pay him his usual wage. Besides, he is someone her father respects, and will listen to. Perhaps he will dismiss her suspicions immediately, but Jeanne does not suspect him, at least, of being in league with Mercier.

She tells him about the vial, and about her concerns, trying to avoid words like ‘poison’ or anything that makes it sound as if Jeanne reads too many novels about the court. She simply says that it fell out of Mercier’s coat while she was treating a stain, and that she noted the label. Because the doctor is frowning still, and looks very solemn indeed, she admits that the statement about her friend was a fiction, and that she merely wished to gauge the reputation of the shop in question.

“This is a very serious allegation,” the doctor says slowly.

“I do not make it lightly,” Jeanne says, remaining calm. After a few moments, the doctor looks at her, and nods thoughtfully.

“I will go to visit this apothecary, to see if I can determine what Mercier might have purchased there, and if the effects could be similar to your father’s condition. I would urge you to keep close watch over him in the meantime.”

“Of course,” Jeanne says, relieved. She cannot travel to the apothecary herself, even if her father could be left safely alone, but that would have been her course of action as well.

—-

As Jeanne expected, her father is reluctant to believe her, even with the doctor’s corroboration.

“It does you credit to be so loyal to a man you thought a friend,” the doctor says, “but unfortunately I have little doubt about the matter. The man recognized my description of Mercier, and told me he had been in several times to purchase a medicine for his great-aunt. The mixture is a noxious one, and explains many aspects of your condition that have puzzled me for some time.”

“It can’t be true,” Arsène exclaims, although he shows more willingness to be convinced after the doctor’s repeated protestations about how kind-hearted and true a friend Arsène is, and how terribly he has been treated in response to this kindness.

By the end of the doctor’s visit, her father has thoroughly come round to the idea, even muttering something about a court case and writing to a contact of his in the law profession.

“In any respect,” the doctor says, “you are lucky to have such an intelligent daughter.”

“Oh, Jeanne?” Arsène says vaguely. “Yes she’s very good at these sorts of things. Taking care of people, you know.”

“I encourage you to stay strictly to the course of medicines I have left with her, and to take them only from Jeanne herself,” the doctor cautions. Her father being distracted with rummaging through his card case, Jeanne assures the doctor that everything is well in hand, and sees him out.

When she comes back, her father is demanding writing paper and his desk, but she merely sits and waits for him to frown at her and stop speaking.

“Father,” Jeanne says. “Why do you think Mercier would go to such lengths?”

“Clearly he’s deranged,” her father says.

“On the contrary,” Jeanne says, “this seems a very logical and methodical plan.”

“Logical! To...to poison a man!”

“I’m not arguing the morality of it,” Jeanne says, trying to sound gentle rather than impatient. “I’m merely saying, he must have had some aim in mind, to take such desperate measures.”

“To marry you, surely. I know he’s spoken to you on such matters before.”

“And I have refused him,” Jeanne points out.

“Quite sensibly,” her father says. “As he is clearly some kind of-“

“But why?” Jeanne breaks in. “Why is he so determined to marry me?” Her father pauses, pursing his lips, and Jeanne presses forward. “You have always refused to speak on the subject of your falling out with Mercier,” she says, “and I have respected your silence. But I really think, with all that has happened, it is better that I know.”

Arsène sighs. “You’re a very good sort of girl, Jeanne,” he says. “But some things are beyond your understanding.”

“I trust your ability to explain,” Jeanne says, inexorably. She has never pushed her father before, never resisted his authority, not really. She never felt she really had a choice. He is her only protection from the rest of the world. Or, he was. He may still be, the rose that brought her to the castle may have died, but Jeanne thinks, perhaps, that there is another path open to her still. You are always welcome here, Isabeau had said. And why not return, once her father is safe? Why not go back, even if only to work in the gardens and keep out of sight with the rest of the servants?

So Jeanne sits, and waits, and eventually her father sighs and consents to explain.

It is a simple story, as it turns out. Some five years ago, Arsène had an idea. An invention. He needed materials and time, though, and had no capital to pay for such things. He had enough to convince investors, with the notable exception of Antoine Mercier.

Jeanne sits in silent astonishment as her father details the large return made for all his investors, the extent of his own profits, nearly all sitting securely in a bank. Her father misinterprets her shock.

“You know my inventions are good ideas,” he says, a little mulishly. “Why are you so startled that others might think so as well?”

“I did not realize that you had such wealth,” Jeanne says, voice a little strained. She finds, to her own astonishment, that she is angry. Really, truly, angry. Not just at her father’s deception, motivated by thinking her either stupid or greedy or both, and not just at the shame she has felt bargaining for food in the village, or at the way that even a small amount of the money her father apparently has could have eased not only their lives, but the lives of the other tradespeople in the village. “So that is what Mercier wants,” Jeanne says. “Money.”

“I suppose that may be the case,” Arsène says reluctantly.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Well, you’d hardly have married Mercier! I would have told you, if there had been any danger of that.”

“I could have married someone else, though,” Jeanne points out. “I could have a dowry.”

Arsène grimaces. “Of course, if things had come to that, I would have given you a dowry,” he says stiffly.

Jeanne wonders, distantly, if that is true. It seems rather beside the point, as dowries only really work if people know about them. There is a part of her that wants to press the point, to try and explain to her father that which he will never understand. He cannot feel the fear that has followed her all her life, of domineering husbands, of poverty, of hunger, a fear that he could have alleviated, and chose not to, because he did not consider it important.

Arsène has never understood or cared about Jeanne’s fears, not of the dark, not of her mother’s ghost, not of being alone, or hungry. He loves her, but he does not understand her, and he does not want to understand her. He wants her to stay simply a dependent, reliable and placid, there to ease his life.

So Jeanne does not argue. She helps him ready for bed, and vows to engage a new housekeeper, someone from the village she can trust, the next day. Her father will make a fuss about the expense, and Jeanne will insist on setting the terms of engagement generously, but she thinks this event has shaken him enough that she will gain the day.

—-

All in all, it has been nearly eight days since Jeanne left the castle. Things are a muddle in the village, although at least the new housekeeper has been hired and her wages set, as Jeanne resolved. She expects a greater battle for the sympathies of the town than ultimately results. No one liked Mercier much, and the news that Monsieur Vincent is secretly very wealthy and may be in need of more household help, in addition to the drama of the scandal, quickly leads to Mercier’s ostracism from the village. There is still the potential of a court case looming over him, too, and Jeanne is satisfied that her father is safe and Mercier unlikely to make more trouble for anyone else.

“I must return to the castle,” Jeanne says, at breakfast the next day.

“What?” her father asks, shocked.

“I gave my word I would do so,” Jeanne says.

“But, surely,” he begins, and then trails off. Jeanne waits, but no further argument seems forthcoming.

“I will start there after breakfast,” Jeanne says.

Her father looks at her, but advances no further argument besides a doubtful, “Take Philippe. I suppose he will find his way back, readily enough.”

“Very well,” Jeanne says, and applies herself to her toast.

—-

Isabeau has lost track of time, of the rest of the castle, of the last time she’s eaten, of her own body, of anything except the rose on the table. It’s down to the last petal, and she’s half-tempted to rip it off herself and just get it over with. She would, if she thought it would work.

Distantly, she hears a door open. She thinks Georges, or maybe Eulalie, has been bringing her food, the past few days when she’s been too weak to leave the chair. She hasn’t eaten much of it, which has a pleasing quality of drama to it that Isabeau likes, even though it’s mostly because she simply doesn’t have an appetite.

“Isabeau,” someone says, distantly, and Isabeau starts to make the slow, bobbing journey back into her own body. Whoever it is sounds upset; she thinks she hears crying.

“Don’t cry,” Isabeau thinks she says. She hopes it isn’t one of the children, or worse, one of the adults. Isabeau stirs feebly, trying to make her eyes focus. She’s so tired, she just wants to go to sleep.

“What’s wrong?” And, no that can’t be right. Isabeau frowns a little, squeezing her eyes shut and then opening them again, because she thinks she sees Jeanne. “Isabeau.” Someone pushes her shoulder, hard, and Isabeau snaps briefly, wonderfully into focus.

“Jeanne?” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“I came back.” Jeanne is crying, and Isabeau feebly tries to wipe away her tears. Her hand mostly just flops uselessly, but hopefully the sentiment is appreciated. “I came back. How do I fix this? How do I make it stop?”

“Make it stop?”

“Georges says you’re dying! That that’s what the curse did, because I left. You said it would be fine!”

“It is fine,” Isabeau says, with prickly dignity. She is trying to make a gesture here, and die all nobly, and Jeanne has to show up and cry all over her and make her feel guilty.

“Why did you let me leave?” Jeanne’s face is very red, and her eyes and nose are streaming, and she looks absolutely furious, and Isabeau thinks it might be the nicest thing she’s ever seen, anyway.

“You had to, your father,” Isabeau tries to explain. She wants to explain everything, but she’s so, so tired. “It’s better like this,” she says slowly. “You’re free, everyone is free, once I’m gone.”

“No,” Jeanne says, and tries to shake her. It isn’t very effective. “They need you. You have to get better.” Jeanne gets up, is moving away, and Isabeau feels so much colder, somehow. She starts to close her eyes again, but Jeanne is back already, brandishing the rose. “Look, there’s still one petal left. And I’m back. I came back.”

Jeanne glares between Isabeau and the rose fiercely, as if she will bring both of them back to full bloom by will alone.

Isabeau laughs, or tries to. It comes out rusty, and horrible, and makes Jeanne start crying again. “Don’t cry,” Isabeau says again. “It’s alright, really.

“You can’t die,” Jeanne says again. “They need you.” She might say something else, but Isabeau is drifting again, floating away. “Isabeau, no!” She hears, very faintly. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.” Isabeau stirs faintly, turning her head toward the sound of Jeanne’s voice, but her body is getting heavier and heavier, and she’s drifting out of it again.

—-

Jeanne pounds on Isabeau’s chest, but she doesn’t respond, doesn’t move at all. Jeanne is crying so hard she can barely see, and her hands are numb and cold where they’re tangled in Isabeau’s fur. “Don’t leave me,” she keeps saying, over and over, because she can’t think of anything else to say.

Why does it feel like the sun has set in my chest? Jeanne wonders, distantly.

She was ready to face anything, coming back: scorn, rejection, anger, even rage. She was ready to be placid in the face of it, because she knows Isabeau, and knows that however Isabeau might storm and howl, she is kind and her heart is soft. She knows Isabeau will not turn her away from the castle, and Jeanne hoped that, over time, they would be friends again.

She feels like she’s being torn in half, with the suddenness of the shock and grief. It is shattering, unbearable, the horrible stillness of it. That Jeanne has to be in a world where Isabeau is unmoving, not breathing, all the life and animation and brightness of her gone out, she can’t stand it. She feels like a child again, helpless, like her world is being ripped out from under her and there’s nothing she can do.

Jeanne clutches the stem of the rose, bare now. The morning she left flashes across her memory. Isabeau seemed so calm, so certain everything would be fine. It made Jeanne certain, too, that everything would work out. She was afraid, afraid of what she would find at home, afraid of what would come after the last petal fell, but she also felt, somewhere deep in her heart, settled.

She can admit to herself, now that it’s too late to matter, that some of that calm was cowardice. It was easier, to leave with things still unspoken. To not take the chance of trying to break the curse, of confirming, definitely and finally, that Isabeau does not love her. It was easier, to not say any of it. Not how much Jeanne has loved her time in the castle, not how much she cares for Isabeau, not how happy she’s been. Not the complicated knot of it: Jeanne’s conviction both that she could remain here, happily, forever, and the knowledge that such a thing is impossible.

Her presence here serves a theoretical purpose, that of breaking the curse, and if she is not breaking the curse, then why is she here? Besides, for all the mortification and risk of speaking her feelings, and having them not returned, even more terrifying to contemplate was the curse actually breaking.

Jeanne does not know how to be loved in a way that is not transactional, contingent upon usefulness, a purpose yet to be served. If the curse is broken, what is Jeanne’s use, in the aftermath?

“I should have told you I love you,” Jeanne says, her face pressed into the awful stillness of Isabeau’s chest. “I should have told you, anyway,” she says, choking it out around tears. It hurts to say, burns coming out, as if she is speaking in sparks. It’s too late, and it doesn’t matter, but she says it anyway, because she can’t keep it locked up and silent any longer.

—-

Something sinks into Isabeau’s chest, burning, hot and searing like an ember being pressed into her skin. She jerks from it, body twisting around the pain.

Isabeau gasps, opening her eyes. Or, she thinks she opens her eyes, but she must not, because this is all wrong. The sky above her is rent open, the dawn running full bore through the night, trailing sparkbright whispers of red, gold, orange, black, cream, splashed across the blue.

It’s all so bright, she is burning with it, her limbs stinging, her eyes watering. She feels wild with it, feral, but also oddly helpless. She is thrashing against the sea again, the endlessness of it, soaking up all her fury and hurt and every twisting ache of her heart.

There has never been a bit of Isabeau that has ever been tame, and her bones break under her skin in their surge toward freedom.

She does not drop back into life like the lost-petal late-summer roses. No. She blooms like an erupting tidal wave of growth, barely sketched out and then so hard and deep and snapping sudden that you’re bowled over and drowning before you can say two words.

Isabeau’s hip aches as her body lands hard on the marble of the balcony, hands scrabbling through the explosion of rose petals and too much cloth and-

Isabeau stops. Her hands. She shoves the long tangle of dark hair out of her eyes, trying to get a closer look. She stares down at her hands, shaking slightly, in wonder. They look strange and unfamiliar, after so much time.

She gets to her feet slowly, body sore and aching and too light, and looks around. There, pressed back against the railing of the balcony with her hand over her mouth, is Jeanne. Her face is still blotchy and tear-stained, and she looks frightened. The expression is familiar to Isabeau, but she is unused to seeing it on Jeanne’s face. She doesn’t like it, and takes a step toward her automatically. She wants to fix it, whatever it is.

Jeanne shrinks back further against the railing, though, and Isabeau realizes, through the slow sludge of her returning senses, that Jeanne is afraid of her. A laugh bubbles in her throat, hysterical and senseless. Why is Jeanne afraid now, when she never was before? Isabeau can’t hurt her, now. She never could, truly, but now she looks just as harmless as she is. This realization is a relief, even if Jeanne still looks inexplicably afraid.

“Don’t you recognize me?” Isabeau asks.

—-

“Don’t you recognize me?”

And Jeanne knows, logically, that this must be Isabeau. That the curse has broken. That Isabeau is still alive. She can feel relief, distant and beating against her mind like rain, but she can’t seem to reach it.

She steps slowly toward Isabeau, as if she is approaching a wild beast. She moves more carefully than she ever did when Isabeau was, by all appearances, a wild beast.

Isabeau’s voice is a little lighter, less rich, but still with the same deep huskiness that Jeanne is familiar with. It’s comforting, the familiarity. And when Jeanne steps a little closer, barely needing to look up at all, now, to meet Isabeau’s gaze, her eyes are the same. Grey and stormy, like the sea, and like coming home.

“You’re alive?” Jeanne whispers, through numb lips. “Truly?”

“Truly,” Isabeau says. She holds perfectly still, letting Jeanne move closer to her. Jeanne reaches out, hesitantly, laying a hand over Isabeau’s heart. Her palms still remember that awful stillness; she wants to drive the feeling out.

Isabeau’s heart beats under her palm, strong and steady, and Jeanne heaves a broken, shuddering sigh of relief. Her composure shatters, suddenly and entirely, and she’s wrapping her arms around Isabeau’s neck and crying, again, and pressing kisses to every part of her she can reach.

And then everyone is bursting out onto the balcony, a milling confusion of people, pressing into and around them, and Isabeau is laughing and running from person to person, embracing them all. It starts to sink in. They’re truly free, now, all of them.

—-

Jeanne slips away in the chaos, feeling a bit like an intruder and also needing a moment to herself. Her room is a mess; clearly the transition from wardrobe to human was not a neat one. Dominique is gone, Jeanne is fairly sure she was the tall thin one with eyes like Isabeau, and the wardrobe is merely wooden, now. All the drawers are open and clothes have spilled all across the floor, a strange profusion of styles and sizes that must be discards from past inhabitants of the castle.

Jeanne isn’t entirely certain where she left her own bag, she thinks it might be down in the entrance hall still. She abandoned it without thought, in a rush to get to Isabeau as quickly as possible.

Isabeau.

Jeanne clears the small chair in front of the vanity so she can collapse into it, propping her head on her chin in exhaustion. She still feels shaken, the whole experience so sudden and terrifying that she can’t seem to quite process it.

Lifting a petticoat out of the way so she can see the mirror to the vanity, Jeanne studies her own reflection. Her eyes are red from crying, and her face looks even harsher and sharper than usual. Jeanne sighs, letting the petticoat drop back into place.

A wave of exhaustion sweeps over her, now that she’s sitting still, and Jeanne doesn’t try to fight it. She just crawls into bed, curls up among the discarded clothes, and lets herself drift off to sleep.

—-

The children, especially, are excited and difficult to quiet.

In many ways, the scene that follows the breaking of the curse is the inverse of Isabeau’s earlier experience, of trying to calm everyone after the curse, but with devastation replaced with riotous joy. Isabeau has to admit she encourages the children's rambunctiousness, rather than curtailing it. It's nice, to see them wild and happy, and loved for it, by their parents.

The absence of Jeanne is a point immediately in her conciousness. She notices her slip away, and it preys on her mind, and yet. Perhaps it is nothing. Perhaps she is simply fatigued, or needs time to think.

Isabeau is starting to trust that Jeanne needing space, or Isabeau needing space, is not a threat to their established closeness, but long habit is still hard to break. And, a separation is peculiarly difficult to endure now, so soon after she feared such a breach was permanent.

Still, Isabeau tells herself, they will sort things, between them. The two of them will speak what has been unspoken, and Jeanne will be what she has been: an object of high gravity, steady, an island in the midst of the ocean. They will find a new equilibrium together.

“Walk with me,” Georges says, catching her by the elbow. Isabeau leans into the contact, half consciously. She has missed them all so much.

“You look troubled,” Georges begins, once they are a little away from the others. Isabeau sighs, letting it gust through the slightness of her new frame.

“Jeanne left so soon.” Isabeau half-turns her face when she says it, afraid of being laughed at.

“I think the change has overwhelmed her a little,” Georges says gently, “but that will pass.”

“You think it is only that?” Isabeau presses. Georges is not such a romantic as Albin, nor has Isabeau known him as long, but she trusts him with the longings of her heart in a way she trusts none other, save Jeanne. Georges came into the house as her maid, before he began living publicly as a man, and they retain an intimacy from that time that Isabeau cherishes.

“Yes,” Georges says. “Give her a little time, Isabeau. But she loves you, I truly believe that.” Indeed, Jeanne must, for the curse to be broken, but Isabeau finds, still, that she needs reassurance. “You did not see her when she heard of your illness,” Georges adds, with quiet certainty. “I am convinced of her devotion.”

Something settles, under Isabeau’s skin, and she sighs and leans more fully into Georges. She will not be entirely easy, until she speaks to Jeanne, but for now she lets herself be comforted. The others are safe, the curse broken, and now she is left with the task of reassembling her life.

—-

The castle is dark and quiet, when Jeanne wakes. It was early evening, she thinks, it’s difficult to tell this deep into winter, when the curse broke. She must not have slept through the whole night; perhaps it was earlier than she thought when she crawled into bed.

Jeanne climbs out of bed, padding barefoot to the door and opening it slightly. The halls are empty, everyone either in bed or elsewhere in the castle.

She is curious, both about the changes to the castle that breaking the curse must have brought and about what all the people who live here are going to do, now. Things are bound to change, in many ways. There is one place that Jeanne is most curious about, though, so she slips on some sturdy walking boots and takes a wrap and goes out to the garden.

There are rose petals everywhere. They exploded out from the balcony when Isabeau transformed, and tumbled down into the garden. The winter-bare rose bushes have bloomed again, roses of all colors and description, crowding together. Jeanne wonders if they will last, or if they will fade over the next few days, the enchantment over the garden dropping away, no longer needed.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” someone says, and Jeanne starts and turns around.

Isabeau is sitting on one of the delicate benches that circle the fountain in the middle of the garden. Jeanne must have walked right past her and not noticed.

“I did sleep,” Jeanne says. Isabeau stands, moving towards her, and Jeanne fights the urge to retreat.

Isabeau stops, a few feet away. “I don’t understand,” she says. Isabeau’s voice is always so expressive, and she sounds hurt, and lost, and it breaks Jeanne’s heart. “At first I thought it was just that you didn’t recognize me, or were merely startled, but it’s not that. You are. You’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jeanne lies, but it’s thick and awkward on her tongue.

“What’s wrong with me?” Isabeau asks, her eyes flashing. She folds her arms over her stomach, all sharp elbows and jutting chin. “Well?” she demands angrily, when Jeanne doesn’t reply.

The anger is easier to meet with equanimity than the hurt, although not by much, and Jeanne forces herself to speak. “I thought you were dead,” she says, and her voice comes out quiet and small.

“I’m not dead.” Isabeau is moving towards her again, and Jeanne makes herself hold still. Isabeau charges right into her space and grabs Jeanne’s hand, pressing it over her heart. “I’m alive,” she says, voice still wavering between anger and hurt.

Jeanne closes her eyes, overwhelmed, but doesn’t pull away. “It was easier to say when I thought you were gone,” Jeanne says. Isabeau doesn’t respond. When Jeanne opens her eyes, Isabeau is frowning down at her.

“Easier to say or easier to mean?” Isabeau asks, finally, cold.

“What?” It is Jeanne’s turn for confusion.

“You’re disappointed.” It’s not a question. Isabeau presses closer, although Jeanne’s hand still on her chest keeps them apart. “You wish you hadn’t come back, is that it? That I’d died after all? Well too late for that, Jeanne, because-“

“Wait,” Jeanne breaks in mildly. “I don’t know what you-“

“-you’re stuck with me now! You can’t just break the curse and then run off-“

“I’m not going to run off,” Jeanne says, still in a tone she thinks is quite reasonable, given the Isabeau is essentially yelling at this point.

“-and expect that I’ll just let you leave again, and-“

“Isabeau!” Jeanne snaps, since clearly a reasonable tone isn’t getting her anywhere. “If you’d just listen.” Isabeau quiets, at that, but her eyes are still fiery and her jaw is set. “I simply meant,” Jeanne starts, but now that she has a chance to speak she doesn’t know what to say. Isabeau seems finished with interrupting, though, just glaring down into Jeanne’s face like she’s daring her to do something. “I don’t know what you want from me,” Jeanne says finally, frankly. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, now that the curse is broken.”

“Do?” Isabeau asks, wrinkling her delicate nose. All her features are so tiny, perfectly formed miniatures, too small for the storm of expression crowding across them. She looks like a wildfire captured in a hand-mirror, too-bright and impossible to look away from at the same time. “You can do whatever you like, just as before.”

“But I’m in love with you?” Jeanne says, and it comes out like a question.

Isabeau blinks down at her, brow furrowing. “That’s what broke the spell, yes,” she says slowly.

“And you’re in love with me?”

Isabeau heaves an impatient sigh. “Yes, of course. We established this already!” Jeanne wants to take her hand back, feels silly having this whole conversation with it pressed over Isabeau’s heart, but she’s worried pulling back will communicate something she doesn’t intend to say.

“I wasn’t certain,” Jeanne says.

“You weren’t- Well you shouldn’t have said it if you weren’t certain!” And Isabeau is jerking away from her now, whirling and turning to pace the length of the garden.

“I wasn’t certain that you were in love with me,” Jeanne clarifies.

“Oh.” Isabeau stops pacing, looking at her. “Well. I am. As I said, previously,” she says stiffly.

“You don’t sound very happy about it,” Jeanne points out, throat tight.

“How am I supposed to be happy about it when you’re being impossible!” Isabeau explodes. “Darting away from me like I’m about to eat your liver, and coming out to the garden in the middle of the night, probably to flee again, and-“ Jeanne sighs, and Isabeau unexpectedly interrupts her own tirade, frowning down at the ground. “If you’re in love with me why aren’t you happy?” she asks, voice small. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Wrong with you?” Jeanne sighs. She supposes she’s just going to have to come out and say it. “Isabeau, you’re beautiful, and rich, and not cursed now, and you have a castle, and servants. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“It’s half your castle,” Isabeau says mulishly. Jeanne laughs, in spite of herself, and buries her head in her hands. “Do you know how many people have been here, in twelve years?”

“No.”

“Well I don’t either. Georges probably does. But it’s a lot.” Jeanne looks up at Isabeau, not sure where she’s going with this. Isabeau makes an impatient hand gesture. “Jeanne, there was a whole curse about how difficult to get along with I am. And lots of people confirmed it, all right? Lots of them. So if you have some stupid idea about you being the difficult to love one, here...” Isabeau trails off.

Jeanne feels, abruptly, like an idiot. “This is a silly argument,” she says.

“I’ve been saying!” Isabeau flings up her hands. Jeanne smiles a little.

The curse feels clearer in hindsight, like everything should be solved now, but Jeanne realizes they’re both nervous because they don’t know where to go from here. Realizing she’s in love with Isabeau, and that Isabeau loves her back is just, choosing to be together. To do things together. And, just like before, some things about it will be easy, and some will be hard, but it will be worth it, because they’re happier together.

“I think you’re very loveable,” Jeanne says, and moves toward Isabeau. Isabeau holds still, not pulling back but letting Jeanne be the one to approach. It’s terrifying, but Jeanne takes a deep breath and does it anyway. “I love you,” she says, letting her hands come to rest on Isabeau’s shoulder and waist.

“I love you, too,” Isabeau says, smiling a little. Jeanne tucks her head into Isabeau’s shoulder.

It’s still dark outside, the new moon lightless, and Isabeau extinguishes the torches in the garden so they can watch the stars over the sea together, the edge of dawn. A peace settles over them both, and in the dim, unseeing light their hands reach for each other, simultaneous.