Hunted(31)

For the briefest of moments Yeva forgot her fury, stumbling along through the snow and breathing the sharp freshness of the air as someone who’d been suffocating to death. But her relief faded with each step, as she struggled blindly in shin-deep snow. She focused on each breath, the stabbing of air in her lungs, trying to memorize how far they were going, what turns they made.

“Remove your blindfold.”

Yeva halted, reality slamming back into her and jarring loose her half-formed mental image of where they were. She forced her hands to steady as they pulled the blindfold from her eyes. She stood, blinking, half blinded. The sky was overcast but the snow was brilliant enough that she could barely see.

At her feet she made out a familiar shape. Her father’s bow, and next to it her quiver.

“That is your target.” The Beast sat on its haunches like a huge wolf some distance from her, its immense body in no way diminished now that it was outside instead of in the confines of the corridors. Its thick, shaggy tail wrapped neatly around its body like a cat’s.

“You will shoot the target, and if you succeed we will try at a farther distance.”

Yeva reached down for the bow, not bothering to shift her gaze from the creature long enough to see what target it was indicating. She ought to have felt relief and triumph that it had provided her with a weapon—but she felt only ice. She fitted the grip to her palm, and though she turned her eyes toward the target, she saw nothing but a red mist descend over her vision.

“Shoot when you are ready.”

Yeva drew in a deep breath as she nocked an arrow, mind calculating the arc between the target she was meant to hit and the Beast to the side. Not far. She blinked the haze from her eyes, the bloodlust rising in anticipation. Releasing the breath she was holding, she drew and twisted to the side to aim at the Beast, then released the arrow in one smooth motion.

The Beast barely moved. It lifted one paw and flicked the arrow aside in midair, where it buried itself in a tree.

Yeva stood staring and panting, the hands holding the bow suddenly nerveless. It was impossible. Nothing could move that fast, animal or man. The Beast stared back at her, the red-gold of its eyes unperturbed.

“Again,” it said, with no sign of the fury it had displayed when she’d pulled the blindfold away by the hearth.

For all its power, the bow would not help her. She let her arms fall and dropped the weapon into the snow at her feet.

“No.”

The tip of the Beast’s tail flicked. Irritation. “You will try it again, or die.”

“Kill me, then.” Yeva knew she ought to be afraid, but there was only room inside her for anger.

With careful deliberation the Beast rose to its feet, the size of it once again robbing Yeva of breath. It came toward her, each paw landing so softly that it made no sound in the snow. Yeva stood her ground, even when the Beast halted only inches from her face.

“You will do it again,” it said in its low, dangerous growl, “or we will kill your family.”

Yeva froze.

The Beast sat back down, the musky-sweet smell of its fur nearly overpowering in the frigid cold. “Ah,” it said, bitter satisfaction coloring its otherwise emotionless voice. “Yes. You will do as we order from now on, or we will kill them all.”

She had told him about each of them, about Lena’s scolding and Asenka’s twisted foot, Albe’s clumsiness and well-intentioned gestures. She had described the trees around the cabin, how it nestled at the fork of a stream that ran to either side of it. She had described the house.

“Pick up the weapon.” The Beast’s eyes bored into hers.

Yeva’s began to water from strain and cold, burning in the freezing air. She stooped, not taking her gaze off the monster as she retrieved the bow. She pulled another arrow from the quiver at her feet, fingers closing around its shaft like she was clinging to her last hope of survival in a howling blizzard.

The Beast rose and turned its back, moving toward where it had been sitting when she removed her blindfold. Yeva lifted her arm to stab the arrow down into its spine.

“If you try to kill us again,” said the Beast without turning around, “make certain you succeed.”

Yeva froze again, her arm suddenly heavy as lead.

“For if you try and fail, your sisters will pay the price. You we will keep alive long enough to watch.”

“Again.”

The Beast’s voice had become so familiar that Yeva’s ears almost didn’t register it. She felt it like a vibration deep in her chest, a stirring of the fury still surging through her veins. He brought her outside day after day to shoot at the same target, an old, gnarled tree with a blackened spot of rot the size of her fist. First he made her shoot at thirty paces, then forty, fifty. Her accuracy with her father’s stiffer bow was not what it had been with her own, but she’d abandoned her lighter bow when she took up her father’s weapons to pursue the Beast that killed him. As her strength improved, though, so did her aim with the old, heavy bow. Each day she was made to practice, and each night she was returned to the frigid, dark cell to eat cold rations and sleep. At first she stayed wakeful and restless, pacing, thoughts thrashing against the confines of this prison, seeking a way out—but as the days passed she could not help but fall into exhausted, dreamless sleep.

Instead of loosing the arrow she’d drawn in numb response to the command, she lowered her bow and closed her eyes.