Hunted(33)

Her mind, as it often did during these dark, silent hours, tried to turn toward thoughts of her family. Of her sisters, and how they would worry; of Solmir, and how long he would continue to care for them; of how long it would take them all to believe she was dead. But she could not afford to think of them, for she could not imagine her home without her father there too, and remembering him was a stab of pain as real as her broken ribs, her aching muscles. She refused to think of them, of any of them. There would be time for grief later, once she had killed the Beast.

A sound beyond the door of her cell brought her sharply back to the present. It was nothing more than the barest whisper, but it was a sound she knew well, from days, weeks, maybe months ago. A sound that meant it was time to resume the story she’d been telling to her invisible ally, waiting in silence just beyond the door.

Her invisible ally. Yeva could have laughed at her blindness. Ally? He was always her captor.

Yeva shivered so violently a sound escaped her lips, a tiny moan snatched up by the hungry stones of the empty room.

“You said you required rest.” The Beast’s voice was quieter, and for a moment there were two faces in Yeva’s mind: the one she’d imagined belonging to her friend, and the one she had seen snarling and roaring in front of her eyes when her blindfold fell away.

She didn’t answer.

The Beast’s footfalls came again, the soft scrape of his footpads against the stone. He was pacing in front of her door. “You require rest, and we require—” The pacing halted for a heartbeat, then resumed. “I require . . . I require talk.”

It was the first time since she’d learned what he was that he hadn’t referred to himself as “we.” Yeva had always imagined there must be others in this place, servants or perhaps other creatures out of the old stories. Someone had cooked the potatoes she’d eaten. Someone had opened her pack and sorted through the medicine bundle, prepared trays for her, lit an oil lamp. The Beast could not have done it, not with the great velvety paws now pacing back and forth before the door.

But the two faces flashed again before Yeva’s eyes, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure. She swallowed, her throat dry. “Talk?”

“Yes.”

Yeva’s head spun, and she slipped one hand free of her cloak to press her cold fingertips to her temple. “You want me to talk to you? In exchange for rest?”

The footfalls ceased, and silence spread through the stones like the cold. Then the Beast’s ferocity returned in the form of the reverberating growl that made some primitive part of Yeva’s mind recoil and send urgent commands through her body to flee, hide, defend herself.

“Never mind,” he snarled.

And the footsteps retreated, back into the silence and the dark, and Yeva was left alone.

“You may begin.”

They were the same words the Beast used every day to signal that Yeva could remove her blindfold for the day’s target practice. He always led her to the same spot, far enough from the building that held her cell that she could not see it, could see nothing but trees.

But when she pulled the silk down around her neck this time, it was different. The old, gnarled tree she’d used as a target was nowhere in sight, and the forest around her was new. She hadn’t noticed how familiar the other clearing had become. She could see her tracks leading off through the snow, and the Beast’s beside hers, the snow indistinct around his paw prints where his fur and his tail had swept it aside.

Her bow and quiver were at her feet as usual, but there was no clear target. She hesitated, turning toward the Beast, who sat watching her as he always did. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly.

“You were correct.” Only the tip of the Beast’s tail moved, flicking side to side where it curled around his haunches. “Real prey does not stand still, waiting to be shot. Today you will hunt.”

A spark jumped in Yeva’s heart. She stooped to retrieve her father’s bow from the snow without taking her eyes from the Beast. “What am I hunting?”

“Whatever you wish.”

Yeva’s fingers curled around the bow grip, feeling where the carving was suited to larger hands, hands that would never draw it again. “And what’s to stop me from running?”

“I will be watching you.”

Yeva straightened, feeling a frown crease her forehead. “You’ll drive away the game,” she protested. “They’ll smell you, hear you. They’ll know there’s a predator after them.”

The Beast’s tail stirred again, the only outward sign of any impatience. “They will not know I am there.”

“It happened when my father was hunting,” Yeva argued, hand tightening still more around the bow. The fingers of her drawing hand itched to reach for an arrow—the instinct could not be reasoned with, or convinced of the futility of trying to fire upon the creature.

“No.” The Beast’s reply was curt, the red-gold eyes the only color besides his fur in the snow-covered wood. But as he stared back at her, he seemed to soften, something about the pupils changing, the roundness of the eyes elongating into features more like a man’s. He blinked, then dropped his gaze from hers. “He drove the game away himself.”

Yeva opened her mouth to protest, but a flash of memory prevented her from speaking. She saw her father bursting into the house after weeks in the forest, shedding snow as he stomped here and there, wild-eyed and impatient. The same madness that had him shoving her to the ground could have swallowed his skill and stealth as well.