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THE CASTLE SEEMED much nicer since Celeste's realization. While the mood was happier just before she realized the Beast was Prince Adam, there was still tension in the air. Now that no one had to watch what they said around Celeste, essentially every enchantment in the castle gladly spoke to the girl. And, despite the start that the two had, Celeste and the Beast were almost attached at the hip. Even when eating meals, they didn't sit across from each other at the massive table anymore; ever since the Prince sat next to her one evening, being next to each other became the norm.
Much of their time was spent in the library. At first Celeste wanted Adam in the room with her strictly for his strength. It was so much easier for her to pick books off the high shelves and hand them to him rather than having to climb up and down the ladder constantly. When they weren't in the library, sleeping, or eating, they were outside keeping Betsy company. Celeste felt bad for keeping the horse from LeFou. She definitely hadn't expected to be gone more than a day, let alone weeks.
While the brunette was enjoying her time at the castle, part of her missed Villenevue. She missed spending her mornings in the church with Pere Robert. She missed going to Belle and Maurice's home with her mother, and spending her afternoons daydreaming with her friend about one day leaving the village and traveling together. She missed LeFou, the person she always went to when she was in a particularly bad mood because he always had a way of making her laugh. She even missed Gaston and his annoying schemes to get Belle to fall in love with him. When she really thought of it, Celeste wasn't sure if she would go back to the village if that meant leaving her friends at the castle. She quite enjoyed seeing how things changed from day to day.
The Prince appeared to have the biggest change of all. He had been spending much more time outside, whether Celeste was in his presence or not. That was almost shocking to everyone that had known him. Before Celeste, Prince Adam rarely left the West Wing, let alone the castle.
Meeting in the library had become routine for Celeste and the Prince. However, by midafternoon, the girl began to wonder where he was. She decided then to take a break from reading and look for him to make sure he was alright. Though Adam had been in a better mood lately, it wasn't completely unusual for Celeste to find him in his room and wishing he was human again.
After searching the entire castle, Celeste went outside. She ignored the freezing weather after seeing the Prince sitting on a bench in the garden reading. If Adam noticed her presence, he didn't acknowledge it.
"What are you reading?" Celeste questioned before standing next to him, a smile on her face.
From the look on his face, the Prince hadn't noticed Celeste. "Nothing," he said quickly as he almost threw the book out of view.
"Guinevere and Lancelot," she said before taking a seat next to Adam on the bench.
"King Arthur and the round table," he stated. "Swords, fighting..." He trailed off, trying to think of any other action in the book.
The smile on Celeste's face became a smug one. "Still, it's a romance."
"Felt like a change," was all the Prince responded with.
It was silent for a few moments after that, neither of them knowing what to say. The silence was almost awkward, and Celeste was trying to think of anything to say to keep that from happening.
Luckily, laughter from the castle got their attention. Celeste smiled at the sound, knowing that the servants were having fun, but when she turned her attention to the Prince, he was frowning.
As if sensing the question Celeste was about to ask, Adam spoke. "When I took my dinner before you came, whenever I heard their laughter I would pretend that I was eating with them."
Celeste almost hesitated before asking her question, not knowing if it would change his mood for the worst. "Why didn't you? I'm sure they would've loved it!"
The Prince almost snorted, "I've tried." He replied, sighing. "When I enter a room, laughter dies."
"Well, I seem to have the opposite effect." Celeste told the Prince, "when I enter a room the laughter gets louder, and I don't think it's because I'm funny."
"I'm sorry," Prince Adam apologized, the sincerity in his tone. "Your village sounds terrible."
"Almost as lonely as your castle."
Again, there was silence. This one was not like the first, though. This one was a comfortable silence, maybe because the two had a mutual feeling. Both in their respective homes, both surrounded by people — or in the Princes case, enchantments — and still feeling lonely. Until Celeste showed up and the two began getting along, Adam hadn't realized just how lonely he was. For Celeste, she tried her best to always be with her friends strictly because she did not want to be alone with her thoughts.
"What do you say we run away?" Prince Adam asked suddenly, looking down at the girl.
Though surprised, Celeste barely hesitated. "I've been wanting to for years."
The Prince got up without a word and began walking back to the castle. Celeste was more hesitant this time, she didn't know what to expect. Despite this, she got up and quickly caught up with the Prince. He seemed to stand straighter as he led the way down the familiar path to the library. He walked over to the small desk in the corner of the room. Celeste wondered how she didn't notice it before, then quickly remembered how large the library truly was and the desk was on the other side of the room. The Prince unlocked one of the drawers just before Celeste reached him and took out a book.
"The Enchantress gave me this." Adam said, turning his attention to Celeste. "Another one of her many curses, possibly the cruelest of all."
Celeste wanted to defend her mother, knowing that she was the one that cursed the castle. But she thought better of it, knowing that nothing about this was easy for him or the servants.
Adam opened the book, the spine cracking from not being open for so long. Celeste's brows furrowed in confusion when she looked at the pages. There were no words or pictures, just completely blank pages. It didn't last long, eventually the Prince turned to a page that had what looked like the world map on it, but there were no labels, just land and sea. "A book that truly allows you to escape."
The brunette looked more closely, seeing the water actually move against the beaches in the book. She was almost speechless. "This is amazing," she said, barely looking away from the book.
"The outside world has no place for a monster like me. But it can for you." The Prince took Celeste's hand, almost hesitantly, and placed it on the page with his hand on top. "Think of the place you've most wanted to see. First see it in your mind's eye. Now feel it in your heart."
Celeste closed her eyes and thought. What place did she want to see more than anything? All she ever knew was Villenevue and the castle. There was so much that she wanted to see, she didn't know if she could focus on just one. Out of everything, there was just one thing Celeste wanted to know, and she wasn't sure if it would work, but she thought of it anyway.
When she opened her eyes, Celeste was in a log cabin, Prince Adam right beside her. She looked around, nothing looking even remotely familiar. There was little to no furniture in the room besides two wooden chairs and a small table in the corner next to a door. There was a brown fur rug under her feet and antlers over the fireplace.
"It looks as though we are in the woods," the Prince stated, looking out the only window in the small living space. "I didn't think this would be somewhere you would want to go, but to each their own."
Celeste could hear his voice, but she was not listening to the Prince. She was too focused on the painting on the wall opposite her. She took a step closer to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. The artwork almost looked too realistic, almost like it was a picture frozen in time. In it was no doubt Agathe, who couldn't have been more than eighteen, which was only a year older than Celeste currently was. Next to her was a tall man, he had to have been at least a foot taller. The painting was not the shocking part, not even close to it. The shocking part was the fact that the man looked identical to Gaston, so much so that Celeste thought it was him until she really looked at it. But it couldn't have been him, Gaston wasn't that much older than she, so it clearly couldn't have been him. Plus, there were a few small differences that she could see the more she looked at it. Like the fact that this man had a cleft chin and a wider mouth.
"It can't be," the girl muttered to herself. She looked at the painting, the rug, the antlers, and did it repeatedly.
"What is it?" In all the time spent together, the Prince had come to know Celeste and her moods fairly quick, and yet he had never seen someone go through such a range of emotions in just a few seconds. "What's wrong, Celeste?"
"Gaston is my brother." She said to herself, stepping even closer to the art to make sure she wasn't just imagining it. She had met Gaston's parents on a few occasions but they were all so terrible it wasn't something she liked to think about. Compared to them Gaston was a saint.
"There is a note here." The Prince told Celeste, holding the piece of paper out to her. He wanted to read it out of curiosity but knew this was a personal matter and that the girl would share with him in due time.
Celeste stared at the paper for a moment before going to retrieve it, she had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. It was so bad she almost wanted to set the paper on fire and leave, but she needed to know if her suspicions were true.
The letter almost brought tears to her eyes. She felt them well up with every paragraph she read, each one getting worse and worse. The entire thing was essentially Gaston's father saying how terrible Agathe was and how Celeste, who had just been born hours ago at the time, was already a disappointment because she wasn't a boy. He even went as far to say that Agathe tricked him into falling in love and wanted to have a baby girl just to ruin his life.
"He's the one that had an affair and my mother is to blame for it?" She thought out loud with a scoff. She didn't understand how her father could hate her so much without even knowing her. Celeste was so frustrated that she wanted to scream. She wanted to hit something, preferably the pathetic excuse of a man that was her father. That would be impossible, however, because he and his wife died from the plague just after Gaston went to war all those years ago.
So, instead of letting her frustrations out, a few tears fell from Celeste's she's as she looked at the Prince. She almost found comfort in the sympathetic smile he gave her. "Let's go home."
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as always, so so so sorry for taking forever to update omg