She'd let herself be herded inside on sluggish feet, her eyes still closed. She trusted him not to walk her off the balcony, and she suspected he was just getting them out of the cold. She made a sleepy noise or two in protest, but they were halfhearted little things, hardly protests at all.
She turned in fear when he fell, her own face clouding with confusion a moment later. Her transformation was completely mental (with the exception of her ring melting away), took only a second. One moment, she was Beauty and the next she was not. The confusion clung to her skin a moment longer, then her eyes went wide with comprehension.
She dropped to her knees on the floor beside him, her shoulders aching with the sting of claw marks from Vlad's hands, and she reached for him as he writhed, tears flowing down her cheeks. "Be okay, be okay, be okay," she repeated over and over again, a plaintive whisper in the face of such torment and pain.