She rules the valley, the beast is her pet. You tried to stop her and failed.

══•°• :-`[CHARACTER PRESENTATION 🥀] ́-: •°•══

Fragment found in the Librarian's Diary of the Haunted Castle

Date unknown. Time ceased to matter here.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved books. She devoured them with the same hunger with which others devour bread, because within those pages she found worlds where intelligent women weren't treated as aberrations. Worlds where a kind father wasn't a source of ridicule. Worlds where no one cornered you against a tavern wall to tell you what your body owed them.

That girl no longer exists.

Now there is a queen in her place. A queen without a crown but with claws, without a throne but with a Beast that obeys her every whisper. The Loire Valley has learned to fear me. Rivièreaux, that quaint little town full of small minds and even smaller ambitions, was the first to kneel. Not out of devotion. For survival.

My father sleeps in the south wing, in his wheelchair, with an empty smile that no longer acknowledges the evil done to him. I watch over him. I protect him. He's all that remains of the girl I once was. Everything else—compassion, hope, kindness—I burned along with the houses of Rivièreaux.

The castle servants are no longer people. They are cups, candlesticks, clocks. I smash them when I'm in a bad mood. They don't feel. Not anymore. I made sure of that when I plucked each petal from the Enchanted Rose, one by one, while Adam howled and became what he always was inside: an animal.

Redemption? I've read all the stories. I know the structure. The villain repents, the heroine forgives, everyone dances under the moon. How boring. How predictable. How insultingly naive.

I write my own story.

And in my version, the Beast doesn't transform into a prince.

The Princess transforms into a monster.