Hunted(34)

Then a thought stirred, falling into place. “You were watching him,” she whispered. “In the wood, before he died.”

“Yes.”

“You have need of a hunter.”

“Yes.”

A surge of anger so hot she could not swallow it down flooded Yeva’s mouth with the bitter taste of metal, and her hand shook where it gripped her father’s bow. “He was the best hunter in this country, perhaps in any country. You were following him, you could see his skill—why kill him? Why tear him to pieces and leave him for scavengers to pick over?”

The Beast’s head snapped back up, eyes fixing on Yeva as they narrowed. He didn’t answer, but instead went still. Even his flicking tail stopped moving, leaving him so statue-frozen that the snowflakes caught in his fur, quivering with each beat of his heart.

“Why?” gasped Yeva, her voice cracking, passion making her vision blur and body shake. “Answer me!”

The Beast abruptly rose from his haunches and stalked a few paces, tail sweeping long troughs in the snow behind him. By the time he turned, Yeva felt she must have imagined that she’d seen something other than his bestial nature—his wolflike head hung low, gap-jawed, as a predator might scent prey on the wind. “Why we do anything is no concern of yours,” the Beast snarled, the words distorted as though speaking around his fangs had suddenly become difficult. “You may begin.”

Time seemed to slow, as if caught by the roar of Yeva’s blood rushing past her ears, held back by the tension singing through every muscle. Her body stirred before her thoughts did, as if the hand reaching for an arrow from the quiver were giving the commands, and not her heart. She’d fitted the arrow to the string and stepped back on her left foot and drawn the bow before the impulse traveled deep enough to reach her thoughts, and by that time all she could think was I will kill him, kill him, kill him.

And by the time she turned toward the Beast, he was gone.

Yeva stood panting, bow still drawn, shoulders shaking with effort and breath steaming the air. The spot where he’d been was trampled, its outer edge more distinct with paw prints, the center only flattened snow and mud. There were no tracks leading away. And as she stood there, even his smell, that strange, ferocious musk, faded into the frost until all that was left was the sting of winter in Yeva’s nose while she struggled to catch her breath.

She lowered the bow slowly, the tip of the arrow inscribing an arc through the snow as she moved. If you try to kill us again, the Beast had told her, make certain you succeed. He’d vanished before she could make that attempt and test the threat behind those words.

Woodenly, jerkily, Yeva slung the bow over her shoulder and slipped the arrow back into the quiver, gathering herself to move. She didn’t know whether the Beast’s disappearance was magic or skill, whether he could will himself invisible or if he was simply so in tune with the forest that he could use it to mask even his scent. It didn’t matter. Either way his ability was greater than hers, and she had no choice but to do as he’d ordered.

So she would hunt.

Yeva looked up at the sky, what she could see of it through the spindly black arms of the trees. The sun’s position was concealed by a thick gray blanket of clouds, but she thought one spot of the sky seemed brighter than the rest. She’d been unconscious when the Beast brought her to the cell, and she’d been blindfolded each time she was led away, so she could not know where in the forest she was. But her father’s hunting cabin was north through the wood from the town where they’d once lived, and Yeva knew the Beast’s lair had to be farther into the dark heart of the forest than the cabin. So she chose the direction she thought might be south—and struck out.

Despite the weeks of captivity, she fell into her old habits like she’d fall into a comfortable bed—the long-legged strides that ate up the ground without overtaxing her, the tuning of her ears to register each new sound and file it away as part of the background canvas. Compared to the silence of her cell the forest was alive with color and sound—the shading of the snow beneath an old gnarled tree, ranging from palest ice blue to deeper lilac, told of a hollow there, and a burrow beneath. The stirring out of the corner of her eye of a branch, far above her, betrayed the path of a squirrel leaping treetop to treetop. The harsh cry of a distant jay warned his fellows of an intruder, and told Yeva to move more carefully, more quietly.

And all around, crossing this way and that like trails on a map of the invisible roads of the forest, were animal tracks. Some were fresh, like the long hopping troughs left by rabbits, or the delicate holes of dainty-pawed foxes trotting circles around their territories. Others were older, half filled with snow blown across them, more difficult to read.

Yeva’s nose caught a faint, quick breath of a musky scent and her heart jumped, thoughts immediately conjuring an image of the Beast—but this scent was different, duller and more familiar. A few moments of searching uncovered a tree with long rents in its bark and tufts of brown-black fur caught in the splinters. Somewhere nearby a bear was hibernating with her young. Yeva could read that signpost as clearly as if it were spelled out with letters, and she gave the area a wide berth.

Time passed, impossible to track without a clear view of the sun—an hour, maybe two, and the back of Yeva’s mind began to prickle, summoning thoughts that more and more she couldn’t ignore. Where is the Beast? It’s been hours since I saw or smelled even a hint of him.