Hunted(43)

With Yeva’s cypress salve, Doe-Eyes’s leg began to heal as the days stretched into weeks. She still hobbled, due to the splints keeping her leg straight, but she could move much faster, and no longer favored it the way she had been. Yeva could bring her along when the Beast took her hunting, and though Doe-Eyes was still too slow to catch anything herself, she delighted in galloping after the little scurrying things in the brush that caught her sight, and she slept much more soundly for the exercise. She bore up far better against the cold than Yeva would have thought, although that might have had as much to do with the dog’s loyalty as her hardiness.

Yeva tracked the days with a bit of charcoal on the wall. Though she could not know how long she’d been down in the cell, she estimated it had been at least a month. Which meant that by now, her sisters must think she’d met the same fate as their father. And Solmir must believe the same. How long would his word last? She knew him to be a good man, but if he came to understand that Yeva would never return to marry him and repay him for taking care of her family, how long would he continue to do so? Her sisters had never learned to hunt as she had, and Albe certainly knew nothing about it. How would any of them survive without her?

She remembered her sister’s words to her as she prepared to rush into the wood in search of their father, the words she’d ignored without a second thought. We need you here. And she’d abandoned them anyway.

No. No. She would not think of them. Not until it was done, and their father’s death was avenged. She couldn’t afford to. She forced her heart to harden, pushed her sisters from her mind.

It was two weeks after she’d moved into the castle above when the Beast came as usual to fetch her for the day’s work. This time, however, he stopped at the far edge of the bridge and sat down, fixing his eyes on Yeva.

She fingered the bow over her shoulder and eyed him back, uncertain at this change in their routine. “What is it, Beast?”

“Your skill at hunting in your wood is sufficient,” the Beast announced. “Now you will begin hunting in mine.”

Yeva’s brow furrowed. “Yours? I don’t understand.”

The Beast hesitated, his gaze sliding toward the forest beyond the overgrown road leading to the castle. “It is difficult to explain without—” He stopped short, as if someone had stolen his breath.

Yeva’s pulse quickened, curiosity tingling its way up her spine. “Without violating the terms of the spell?”

The Beast’s jaw fell open, and if it weren’t for the number of sharp, menacing teeth his mouth held, Yeva might have laughed at the shock written across his animal features. He went absolutely still, even the tip of his tail that was usually so expressive. For an instant he was so like one of the crumbling gargoyles on the battlements of the castle that Yeva thought maybe just speaking of his secrets had turned him to stone.

But then he heaved a breath and dropped lower to the snow, crouching like a wounded animal, forelegs bent and breath stirring the top flakes with each puff. “You are clever,” he mumbled.

“I know stories,” Yeva corrected. “The bespelled can never speak of what afflicts them—that is always part of the curse.”

The Beast’s eyes flicked up. “You believe I am cursed?”

It was Yeva’s turn to hesitate. Her mind still could not decide whether he was a man who had murdered her father or a beast who’d given in to animal instinct and torn him to pieces. And it still couldn’t decide which would be worse. Either way he would have to answer for what he’d done.

“I know you aren’t natural,” she said finally. “And you can clearly hunt far better than any human hunter could, so your need for me must mean you have a task you cannot complete on your own.”

The Beast said nothing, didn’t confirm her guesses. But neither did he deny them.

“And this existence is clearly . . .” Yeva paused, swallowing. “It’s clearly miserable.”

The Beast stayed silent.

“So, yes.” Yeva took a deep breath. “Yes, I believe you are cursed.”

Still the Beast gave no reply, which gave Yeva time to study his face. Though he’d dropped his eyes again, there was something about his features that caught her attention. He seemed different today, and not only because he’d changed their routine by halting at the end of the bridge. His muzzle seemed somehow less elongated, his eyes less bestial, his mouth more expressive and less fanged. The longer she stared at him the more it seemed, in the sun-dazzled glare, that he was somehow also a man kneeling in the snow. She blinked, and blinked again, and could not dismiss the image.

“Enough,” the Beast said abruptly, giving himself a shake that seemed to cause that humanity to fall away like shed fur. “It is enough for you to know that there is another world inside these woods, one you have not been trained to see. It is in this world that you will find your eventual quarry, so it is this world with which you must become familiar.”

“Another world?” Yeva glanced out toward the wood as the Beast had done.

“The easiest way to explain is . . . think of your stories.” The Beast’s face was turned aside, revealing only a sliver of his profile. “The stories you told of Ivan. That is the world you must learn to see.”

Yeva found herself clutching at the grip of her bow, not in fear but in a sudden thrill of excitement. Her father had mentioned seeing flashes of things that could not exist—he’d told her of spirits and demons and creatures that had no names. But all children were told such stories, and all children grew out of them. She had never imagined the things her father told her might be reality.