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Armel’s eyes flew open with a start, and he lay in the dark, panting. He could hear Beauty breathing evenly beside him, and he reached out a hand to brush her arm, feeling her smooth, soft skin, as he continued to listen to her breathe. With his other hand he reached up to brush his own nose, and relaxed slightly to find that his own skin, too, was soft and smooth, with no trace of the coarse, thick fur it had worn for years.
Beauty shifted and her hand slipped into his, squeezing gently. He looked over at her, but her breathing was still deep and even and her eyes closed. He watched her for a long moment, wanting to wake her, wanting her to reassure him even more than her presence and his restored appearance had been able to, that the curse was well and truly passed, and all that remained was their happiness together. But she looked so peaceful that he could not bring himself to do it, and so he slipped out of bed, as gently as he could. He staggered slightly, still not quite used to his suddenly diminished bulk, and made his way to the gardens.
It was still dark, though dawn was not far off, and he settled himself in a secluded corner of the garden, where the single rose bush left in them remained.
It had pained him to ask such a terrible thing of the old man and his daughters, but the enchantress had told him that his opportunity would be near when a strange man stole from him a rose, and so he must always be kind to strange men until such an opportunity blossomed. That promise had kept him from despair, and from bitterness, the long lonely years he had lived with the curse. He had known the servants were still there, of course, for food was still cooked and linens washed and the gardens weeded, but he could neither see nor speak with them. And then a rose such as the ones he now looked upon had brought him Beauty, and he strove to be kind to her, too. When he let her go to visit her family, he had not truly expected her to return, but he had lived as a beast for so long, and he had truly learned to love her, and if he had not been able to earn her love, well, perhaps death was not so terrible a fate, if it meant that his Beauty was happy.
The roses had always been his hope, and when Beauty had returned, when he had awoken from the brink of death to see her face framed by the rosebushes in the garden, they had seemed to be his salvation, too. But he had seen the shadows in her eyes when he had suggested roses for the wedding. She was happy with him, she had assured him, and grateful for all of the circumstances that had brought them together, but the rose for her had been for a long time, if not for as long as it had been a symbol for Armel, a symbol of despair, of guilt, of a fate she had considered a curse, if of a different kind than his. And so the wedding had been decked with daffodils though, seeing his dismay, she had insisted on a red rose at the centre of her bouquet. But he had quietly given orders to the servants—the servants who were blissfully, magnificently, visible and conversable again, and Armel wondered at his own arrogance that he had never even learned most of their names before, and was striving to learn them all and their histories now—to trim the roses in the garden back to a single bush, out of the way of the main path. He was not willing to abandon his own sign of hope, yet, but nor did he want it to cause his Beauty distress.
“You didn’t have to hide them,” she said, and Armel was startled to realize she had come up beside him.
He looked at her, and knew from her face that she meant it, that if he wanted the whole palace covered in roses she would not say a word against it. “They distress you,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” Beauty said, and she settled beside him on the bench and slipped her hand into his. “But they comfort you.”
“You comfort me,” Armel said, turning towards her. “I no longer need such trite joys.”
“No joy is trite,” Beauty chided, though she smiled at him. “And I should be very selfish if I wished to be your only comfort.” She sighed. “There is joy in them for me too, I think, but it is yet buried beneath fears and despair and grief, and even though I know I no longer have anything to fear from you or your home, and have hope in abundance for our future together, and can see freely the family I once mourned never seeing again…”
“They echo still, and smother the joy,” Armel said.
“Not smother,” Beauty said thoughtfully. “But…entangle it, so that I cannot feel the joy without such shadows.” She took a deep breath. “But I think, if I sit by the roses with you, the shadows may begin to soften, and if we let the roses grow, then perhaps by the time they are back to their old abundance they will be pure joy for us both.”
Armel considered her, and she reached a hand up to cup his face. He leaned down to kiss her, slow and sweet, and her eyes fluttered as they parted. “I should like that,” Armel said. “But I have sat here long enough for today.” He stood and offered her his arm. “And if no joy is trite, then let us find more joys together.”
Beauty smiled at him and took his arm, and they walked through the garden, Armel feeling Beauty relax as the roses faded from her attention. He glanced back before the path turned to hide the brush from view, and thought he saw a shoot that had not been there before on the ground beside the bush, and he wondered at it, but then he turned back to Beauty, who had leaned into him as they walked. Her eyes were alight as birds fluttered across their path,and her arm was looped warmly through his, and the shadows of the dream that awakened him seemed to vanish with the morning dew, and if they were bound to return again that night, well, his Beauty would be there to face them with him.