No, no, no, he thought, and while he managed to keep from saying it she could certainly have read it on his face. His brow furrowed and his mouth curled in anguish.

Victor did not recall having made any conscious choice to stay at the moment of his death, but he recognized that if he had, at that moment he would have chosen to linger. He couldn't have left Beatrice like that, left the family to clean up his death without him. It was a sense of duty that had kept him past death... but that didn't mean he hadn't had plenty of time to think it through and regret it since. His family had needed him for maybe forty-eight hours, and he was going to be here forever, long after they had all died. It had been ten months since his death, but he was still wrestling with that — not that there was anything he could do about it. His fate was sealed, whether he regretted it or not.

And now Belle had been doomed to the same eternity, lingering here while loved ones rotted and buildings fell to disrepair, and she was here for him. She had done this for his sake, and she couldn't have known the magnitude of what had happened — he hadn't, until the dread of it crept into his mind in pieces over the months after his death. Their marriage had condemned her to this. He had ruined her.

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