Hunted(39)

The Beast halted in front of a door a few down from the staircase, and lifted one paw for the latch. Yeva raised the lantern, determined this time to see the trick of it, how he mastered human tasks with nothing but his claws—but despite the light on him and the door latch, her eyes couldn’t quite grasp what they were seeing. Her gaze kept trying to slide from what was happening. However he managed it, he opened the latch as easily as she would have done, and pushed the door open.

Beyond, the room was dim and cold. But as Yeva stepped forward, her boots hit carpet. She paused. Below her feet was a lush red rug, and as she looked around, she realized it was the room the Beast had brought her to when she was ill. It was furnished with dilapidated, mismatched furniture, obviously from various rooms of the castle. Some of it seemed in better care, if faded, while other items, like a crooked, battered table that stood on three legs and a stack of moldering books in place of its fourth leg, wouldn’t have been fit for a hovel. The floor was covered by overlapping rugs of clashing colors. Along one wall was a fireplace, and though it held only ashes and blackened charcoal, next to its hearth was a stack of feathers and hafts—Yeva’s arrow-making supplies. And there, some distance from them, was her fletching knife. Its blade was stained rusty brown, and with a jolt, Yeva remembered stabbing it down into the Beast’s shoulder as he railed at her for removing her blindfold.

You gave us your word, he’d roared. At the time, she’d been too terrified to think. But now, as the Beast stood aside while she explored the room, she wondered at the depth of his fury. He scarcely seemed to notice her stabbing him, but the betrayal, the breaking of her word, sent him into such a fury that the memory of it made Yeva’s body grow colder still.

Yeva halted in the center of the room, trying not to think of the faded blue divan a few paces away, and how easy and lovely it’d be to drop onto its moldering cushions and close her eyes. But the Beast was still there, and as exhausted as she was, that primitive part of her brain would never be able to dismiss the presence of a predator in the room with her.

“You may remain here,” the Beast said coolly, “as long as you give your word that you will not try to escape, and that you will not try again to kill us. Remember that we know where your family lives, that we have watched them, that we could kill them at any time.”

Yeva swallowed hard, this time forcing her hand to still. “I give you my word,” she said slowly, “that I will not run away.”

“You lied to us once,” the Beast said softly.

“Perhaps I regret doing so.” Yeva’s own voice quieted. For it was true. Maybe, if she had not let curiosity get the better of her, she would never have learned the identity of her captor, and she could have gone on in ignorance, telling stories to her friend by the fire.

The Beast was silent for a long time, so long that Yeva’s eyes began to play tricks on her. His form melted back into the shadows cast by the lantern, and she began to wonder if he was even still there. When he spoke again, she nearly jumped.

“You promised not to run,” he murmured. “You did not promise not to try to kill me.”

“No,” Yeva agreed. “I didn’t.”

The Beast stood in silence again for a few seconds. Then came the oddest, most unexpected of sounds—a bass rumble, a quick burst of rich velvet, lacking the somber chill his voice usually carried.

He was laughing.

Before Yeva could react, the Beast was gone.





BEAST


She believes she can kill us. She wants to avenge her father’s death, letting hatred and fury fuel her. Her word not to run comes easily because she has no desire to flee—not until we are dead.

She has a fire to her that we have not seen, have not felt, in a long time. That the fire wants to consume us makes no difference—that passion will make her stronger, faster. More useful to us. That is all that matters. Fire cannot hurt us.

And yet, when we light her a lantern, there is a moment as we watch the wick flare in the darkness—a moment in which I want to touch the flame.

Just to see if I can still be burned.





TWELVE


YEVA DID WHAT SHE could for Doe-Eyes. After lighting a fire in the cold hearth from the flame of the oil lamp, she broke an arrow haft in two for splints, which she bound to the broken leg with strips torn from her tunic. If she’d had the medicines she’d brought with her, she could use the cypress salve she’d applied on her own ribs, but she had no way of summoning the Beast to return. Nor did she feel like pressing her luck with him further.

As Doe-Eyes heaved a noisy sigh and rolled onto her back, all four paws in the air and belly exposed to the fire, Yeva leaned against the edge of the divan and closed her eyes.

That laugh.

Beasts did not laugh. True, Doe-Eyes smiled at her—but it was not a smile the way most humans would recognize it. Yeva knew she was seeing happiness when her dog’s mouth fell open and the tongue lolled out, and it translated into a smile in her mind because she knew Doe-Eyes, knew each twitch of her tail or flick of her ears, and what they meant. But the laugh from the Beast required no translation, no learned interpretation of his body language.

The laugh was human.

It was one thing to wish to hunt down and destroy the animal that killed her father. It was entirely another to think that what had killed him was, in some small way, human. It made his death something else.