“I lived as him for so long he will always be a part of me.”īelle couldn’t help but think back to the vision she had been shown in Paris, of the people of Aveyon rising up against them. “But I am him, Belle, don’t you understand?” His voice was frantic. “You aren’t the Beast anymore,” she tried to assure him. To dream he was a monster again must have been torture. Lio’s nightmares had always been vague shadows of the fears her carried with him every day. “I-I was him again, I felt his claws in my hands and his fangs in my mouth.” “I was the Beast.” She sat down on the carpet beside him and pulled him into her embrace. “Belle.” There was anguish layered in the way he said her name.

He reached his shaking hands up the length of her arms all the way to her face. Her touch and her voice brought part of him back to her. She rushed over and shook him, not caring in that moment that it was usually better to let him come out of the darkness gradually.

It didn’t take long to find Lio crouched in a dark corner, still in the grips of the nightmare that had taken him. The air was tinged with the metallic scent of fear, and the bed was empty, the sheets and blankets in disarray. 10, as we find Belle and Lio (the Beast in human form) newly returned from the chaos of Paris, desperate to make sure their kingdom is spared the worst of the violence they fled.Īs soon as she stepped back into the room, Belle sensed something was amiss. Now enjoy our exclusive chapter excerpt from Disney Hyperion's The Queen's Council: Rebel Rose, arriving on Nov. 'As for surprises and twists, without getting too far into spoiler territory, I will say that there is a point in the book where Belle has to contend with the possibility that the curse she fought so hard to destroy might not be as broken as she thought.' Sprinkled with the turbulent events of the French Revolution, the novel is an educational experience and Theriault encourages history nerds to follow along and anticipate some of what’s coming next.

I wanted to take Belle’s strengths (her empathy, her intelligence, her stubbornness, her outspokenness) and imagine how they would be tested in a rapidly changing world, one she needs to find her place in.' Destroying a curse that shackled a kingdom doesn’t mean someone will never make a mistake again. 'But falling in love doesn’t imbue someone with so much confidence that they will never face doubts again. The landscape of Europe is shifting, and Belle has read enough from enlightenment thinkers to know that the answer doesn’t lie in absolute monarchy. 'She is a commoner married to a prince, a fact that forces her to reside in two different worlds but feel as though she belongs to neither,' she adds. 'She is a girl who lives in a castle that was once her prison, being called to rule a kingdom she spent her life longing to leave.

Rebel rose by emma theriault