Beauty and the Fae Curse
Twist on Beauty and the Beast:
Belle loves two things: to tinker and to read, and both have taught her that even a curse has moving parts if you are stubborn enough to look. When her father disappears on the road, the trail pulls her past the edge of the mortal world and into the path of Kael, a broken Fae king whose own magic is slowly devouring him.
Forced into a bargain that binds her to his crumbling court, Belle trades quiet nights in her workshop for a realm of scheming nobles, dangerous enchantments, and a curse that has already taken everyone Kael ever loved. Armed with ink smudged books, half finished inventions, and the infuriating belief that monsters are rarely what the stories say, she begins prying at every secret she can find. As Belle digs deeper, she realizes that breaking the Fae curse will cost more than clever hands and a good library, and that saving a doomed king might mean risking herself and the world she thought she understood.