Belle wanted to free the Beast from his curse, but she did not know a single rule that bound him. She had lived in his castle three weeks now. He left her books outside her door. She left a candle at his. Neither of them spoke of what he was, or how he had become it. Tonight she found him in the library, staring at the cold fireplace. His clawed hands rested on his knees. His yellow eyes did not turn to her. "Tell me how it happened," Belle said. "The curse. I can't help you if I'm guessing." He growled low. "There is no helping it." "Then let me try and fail. That's mine to spend." He stood. For a moment she thought he would leave. Instead he crossed the room and pulled a cloth from a tall shape near the window. Beneath it stood a mirror in a gold frame, roses carved at its top and base. "Ask it," he said. "It shows what you wish to see. It is how she watches me." "She?" "The one who did this." Belle stepped close. Her own face looked back, then blurred. The glass cleared on an elegant castle crowned with blue towers. Roses climbed its white walls. A woman stood in a hidden garden among them, watching a single rose lose its petals. "The enchantress," the Beast said. "She counts my time by that flower. When the last petal falls, the curse holds forever. I stay this." Belle's hands went cold. "How long?" "I stopped counting." In the glass, the woman lifted her head. She looked straight out, as if she saw Belle looking back. Her mouth moved. Belle heard the words inside her own skull, quiet and clear. "He must love, and be loved in return. Before the rose is bare. There is no other door." The garden faded. The glass showed only Belle's face again. She turned to the Beast. He had backed away, shoulders low, watching her the way an animal watches a raised hand. "So that's the rule," she said. "Not a spell to unwind. Not a riddle. You have to be loved." "Now you know," he said. "And now you know it's hopeless. Look at me." Belle looked. She saw the horns and the claws and the tired eyes. She did not look away. "It isn't a book I can read to you," she said. "It isn't a task I can finish and be done. It's you and me. That's harder." He said nothing. But he did not cover the mirror again. Belle understood now what breaking the curse would cost. Not cleverness. Time she could not measure, spent on a heart that hid behind a locked west wing. She had wanted knowledge. She had it. It frightened her more than her ignorance ever had.

The rule frightened Belle, but a rule was not a person. To love the Beast, she had to know who he had been before the horns. He would not say. So she went to his library alone. The room was tall and dark. Shelves climbed past the second floor. She lit a lamp and walked between them. Most books were old and untouched. Dust covered the spines. She looked for something the Beast had held, something that was his. On a low shelf near the cold fireplace, she found a gap. One book had been pulled out and shoved back crooked. She drew it free. Not a book. A leather folder, tied with string. Inside were drawings. A boy on a horse. A garden in summer. A grand hall full of people dancing. Each drawing was signed in a small careful hand. The name was Adam. She turned the pages. The boy grew older. The last drawing showed a young man with a proud mouth and cold eyes, alone. Belle heard the door. The Beast filled it, watching her hands. "Put that down," he said. "Adam," she said. "That was your name." He crossed the room fast. She did not step back. She held the folder open between them. "You drew these," she said. "The garden. The people." "I burned everything else." His voice was low. "I missed that one." "Why burn it?" "Because that man let a cold woman freeze at his door and turned her away." His claws opened and closed. "She was the enchantress. I laughed at her. Then I was this." Belle looked at the proud face in the drawing, then at the tired one before her. "So you were cruel." "Yes." "And you know it now." She closed the folder gently. "The cruel man wouldn't have kept this to look at. He wouldn't leave books at my door." The Beast said nothing. His breath was loud in the quiet room. "You want to be him again," Belle said. "Not the proud one. The boy on the horse. Before." "That boy is gone." "He signed his name Adam," she said. "So do I know you now. That's a start." He reached out. She thought he would take the folder and burn it too. Instead his clawed hand rested over hers on the leather, careful, as if she might break. "No one has said that name in years," he said. "Then I'll say it," Belle answered. "Adam." He pulled his hand back. He did not leave. He sat by the cold fireplace, the way she had first found him. But this time he watched her, not the ashes. Belle held the drawings. She knew him now, at least the shape of the wound. It was not enough to break the curse. It was enough to reach for. And she understood the harder thing waited behind a locked west wing, where the man had done the deed he could not forgive.

Belle stayed in the library long after Adam left. She kept the folder of drawings on her knees and turned the pages again. The boy on the horse. The summer garden. She lost the morning in them. Sunlight crossed the floor and faded. She did not notice how the day slipped away. A sharp click broke the quiet. Belle looked up. A brass clock stood on a low shelf near her, round and polished. Its face turned toward her, and its hands twitched. She had passed it a hundred times and thought it only a clock. "Forgive me, miss," it said. Its voice was stiff and careful. "But you have been sitting here since dawn." Belle nearly dropped the folder. "You speak." "I am Cogsworth. I keep the time in this house." The clock's hands snapped to the hour. "And I fear you are spending it poorly." "I'm learning who he was," Belle said. She held up a drawing. "Learning." Cogsworth ticked, loud and impatient. "Yes. Very slow work, learning. Come with me." He would say no more. Belle set the folder down and followed the small clock as he rocked across the floor. He led her out of the library and down a cold hall she rarely walked. A tea cart rolled behind them on its own, its teapot silent, its candles unlit. No one pushed it. Belle stopped questioning what moved in this castle. Cogsworth halted before a tall door. "He keeps it in there. He watches it every night. He would not want you to see. But someone must." Belle pushed the door open. On a table under a glass dome sat a single red rose. It glowed faintly. Three petals lay on the wood beneath it. As she watched, a fourth loosened at the edge. It trembled. Then it fell. Belle's stomach dropped. "How many are left?" "Fewer than yesterday," Cogsworth said. "Fewer than the day before." His hands ticked forward. "Each petal is a day, miss. Perhaps less. When the last one falls, he stays a beast forever." Belle counted the petals still clinging to the rose. She stopped at eleven. Her hands went cold. She had spent whole days on old drawings while the flower emptied itself, petal by petal, and no one had told her. "I didn't know," she said. "He never showed me this." "He is proud," the clock answered. "And ashamed. He would rather lose than beg. But you can still act." Belle looked at the glass dome, then at the dark hall behind her. She knew now what the rose measured. Eleven petals. Eleven days, if she was lucky. Reaching for Adam slowly was no longer enough. She left the tea cart and the clock behind. Somewhere in this castle waited the locked wing he could not open, the deed he could not name. If she meant to save him, she had to go there. And she had eleven days to do it.