Beauty’s Beast Chapter 7

Welcome to Beauty’s Beast, book 3 in the Black Trans Fairy Tales series. This novella is releasing one chapter/week on the blog ahead of publication.

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Belle didn’t leave her father’s room until late that afternoon. When she did, it was on quiet feet and with considerable distance from the arboretum. She explored in the other direction, deeper into the castle where the dust and neglect lay heavy in the air. The whole castle seemed to be dark with disregard and Belle left footprints on the stone and carpets behind her.

She found room after room, the windows shuttered and curtains drawn, the door stiff in its frame, the air still and cold.

Belle closed another door behind her, shaking her head. What was she looking for? A cure? A little vial of self-assurance tucked under a chair? She wasn’t likely to find anything in these forgotten halls that the staff hadn’t already seen.

She didn’t expect to come across a shattered pair of doors at the end of the longest hall. One had been torn in half and the other hung on a single lower hinge. Wood shavings and splinters littered the doorway. The missing half of the door lay astray across the hall as if whatever had shredded it happened just yesterday.

Belle stalled in the hallway, breathing dusty air and forgotten memories. The rest of the castle was neglected, yes, but it was organized and tidy. Decaying, but not destroyed.

She stepped over the fractured wood and found a room full of wreckage. The door’s splinters fanned across the carpet, leading to a massive wooden desk that had been crushed in the middle, broken in half by some incredible force. The chair behind it had been snapped in two and its plush velvet pillow shredded to ribbons. Fragments of stone littered the edges, whole books had been torn in half and their pages scattered, some furniture pieces were too fragmented to identify. Porcelain pieces, still sharp as glass, dotted the window bench where the curtain rod had been torn out of the wall and bent. Orange afternoon light cast the wreckage in dream-like stillness, dots of dust in the air catching like fireflies.

Belle disturbed the silence. She picked her way across the detritus to what might have been a fainting couch against the wall. A framed painting sagged out of square, dangling by a corner hook. Belle shifted the frame back into place and realized the painting had been shredded like the chair’s pillow. Four massive claw marks ripped through the canvas and left grooves in the stone wall behind. The person in the painting had blond hair and when Belle pieced the curled canvas together they had an arrogant smile.
A brass nameplate on the bottom of the frame was scratched into oblivion. An erased name. But maybe if she imagined giant antlers, they looked a bit like Quinn.

Perhaps.

The door creaked as someone joined her.

Belle spun, letting the frame fall back out of square, feeling like a child caught looking where she didn’t belong.

Quinn stood in the doorway, their eyes sad as they looked over the office that had once been a feature of the house.

“I’m sorry if I’ve intruded,” Belle said.

Quinn blinked at her, then stepped delicately into the room. Despite having hooves larger than Belle’s palm, they didn’t crunch any of the wooden splinters or kick the stone pieces—Belle was starting to think they might have been statues once. They ducked their antlers under the remains of a hanging chandelier Belle hadn’t noticed in the mess.

Then they signed, slowly and with care so Belle could follow.

“I used to enjoy working here.”

Only it wasn’t exact words, more like a series of concepts. In the past, work, love, here.

Belle put the pieces together and nodded. “I wish I could have seen all your books…” She gestured at the now-empty and broken bookcase that covered one wall, its contents a pile of kindling across the carpet.
Quinn avoided looking at the painting and instead faced the window opposite. There was nothing to see, the glass was so grimy, but their eyes traveled across the wall regardless.

Quinn signed, “I’m sorry for frightening you this morning.”

Belle dared to step closer despite her fluttering heart. “I shouldn’t have pushed where I wasn’t invited.” She looked up at Quinn, finding their eyes closed and their ears drooping low. She put her hand on their arm, surprised to find the fur soft and warm.

She didn’t know what to say. Quinn didn’t look angry and she didn’t sense the animal rage that had scared her out of the arboretum that morning. Instead they looked sad. Exhausted by sadness.
There wasn’t enough sleep in the world to fix that kind of tired. Belle knew. She’d been there once, so heavy with grief that the whole world seemed gray.

Belle slid her hand down Quinn’s arm slowly so they could pull away if they wanted. Down the wrist where the fur gently faded to their large hand, mostly human, but ending in long, sharp claws. Claws that had once torn up this room in a rage. Belle squeezed Quinn’s hand and stood there silently, just being.
For a long time they said nothing. Belle let them.

Slowly Quinn closed their hand over Belle’s small fingers, then lifted their palm to look at Belle’s hand as if it were unique and new. They met her eyes for a brief, startled moment, then looked away again, at the room. The destruction.

Quinn’s hand tightened a fraction and they turned toward the doorway, tugging Belle behind them.
“Come with me,” they signed one-handed. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Belle jogged to keep up with Quinn’s sudden burst of activity, delighted to see more of the castle that Quinn felt important to share.

They lead her to a flight of stairs.