“I could help,” she said in a light, cheerful voice, as if they were playing a game and she wanted to be included. But deep down, she felt the pressing need to protect herself. “If you have another hammer—”

“No, no, no,” Edwin said, checking the window to see if it would open. It didn’t. In the briefest span of time, he’d nailed the window to the sill. Now Belle couldn’t slide it open and curl up inside it, letting the breeze tickle her dark hair. She couldn’t fall asleep there, her eyelids growing heavy after watching the stars appear in the sky.

“You’d hurt yourself.” Edwin hurried to the second window. “If you hurt yourself, I’ve failed.”

“Failed… what?” Belle asked. There was something she was missing, something important, and her mind trickled to the chains wrapped around the attic handle, locking her out. What was up there? She hadn’t cared before, but she cared in the moment the second window was nailed to the sill.

Only one window remained.

“You could leave one,” Belle said when Edwin didn’t answer her question. “I’m on the second floor. Nobody could climb up here.”

“They can find you anywhere.” Edwin returned to the bed. He crouched down, taking her hands in his. “They have ladders and they have vans. They could pull up beside you when you’re walking home from school, and you wouldn’t be able to fight them off. They’d be too strong and you’d be too small. Especially someone like you. The second I saw you, I knew I had to take you home. You’re too beautiful.”

“I am?” Belle’s nose wrinkled, the word sounding funny in his mouth. It didn’t sound like a compliment at all. It sounded like an insult, like something a witch would curse you with, making your days fraught with danger and peril. If that’s what beauty was, Belle didn’t want it.

“We could chop off my hair,” she offered, holding out a strand. She could see her reflection in the mirror on the other side of the room, could see her big dark eyes and olive skin. “Dress me in rags, like a princess before she meets the prince.”

Edwin smiled then, a bright, genuine grin that made his eyes crinkle. Belle wanted to like him. She wanted to trust him, and as he moved to the final window, she wondered if maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe the world was filled with monsters and he was doing everything he could to keep her out of their clutches.

As a nail slid into the third window, her heartbeat calmed.