Hunted(51)

The Beast paused in the doorway for a few seconds before glancing back over his shoulder. “What did you see?” he asked quietly. “In the Rusalka’s pool. What was your heart’s desire?”

Yeva’s pulse sounded quick and loud in her ears. She could still see the Firebird there, its great gold wings sweeping against the ice, calling to her. “I—I saw my family.” The lie came so haltingly she felt sure the Beast would see it.

But he only inclined his head once, eyes dropping to the floor before he vanished, leaving her alone.

Yeva crept closer to the hearth, making sure the Beast was gone before opening the blankets to let the fire warm her. She shouldn’t have had to lie. She should have seen her family, or Solmir, or her father alive again. She should have seen home, her old life, the comfort of a world without monsters and curses and Beasts. But instead, she’d seen the one thing that most symbolized the world she’d dreamed of as a child.

Instead, she’d seen magic.

As if the Beast could somehow control the weather, no sooner had Yeva recovered enough to venture outside again than the dead of winter hit like an iron fist, and it was no longer safe for Yeva to brave the woods. Blizzards howled through the castle, forcing her to shut up the doors and huddle with Doe-Eyes close to the fire. She half expected to find the Beast waiting behind her, as he did in the wood when she hunted, but he never came. She did return once from the kitchen to discover that layers of tapestry had been fixed over the high window frames, which had been letting in the cold. She could not think how the Beast could have reached them, and for an instant the image of him trying to climb a ladder with four paws and a tail made her want to laugh. But her room was much warmer, and she’d fall asleep on the rugs before the fire gazing up at the high tapestries and imagining what stories lay hidden beneath the centuries of fading and dust.

She saw very little of him during those dark weeks. For a time, the only sign he was even there was the occasional refreshed store of game in the larder. Every now and then she’d catch a flash of red-gold eyes vanishing into the shadows as she explored the castle, or a glimpse of a tail disappearing around the corner, but he never stayed or sought her out.

Doe-Eyes was her constant companion, following her everywhere. Even if the dog was dead asleep, rolled over on her back in front of the fire, if Yeva rose so much as to visit the latrines, Doe-Eyes would wake, scramble to her feet, and trot along at Yeva’s side. Her leg had healed almost as good as new, only a slight limp left behind when Yeva failed to keep the fire burning hot enough and the cold crept in. Yeva was glad Doe-Eyes had found her so miraculously in the wood that day, saving her from the ache of loneliness.

And yet, despite her dog’s warm body leaning against her as she slept, something twinged deep in her psyche, a discontent that Yeva could not—or would not—name. She’d watch the windows as she wandered the empty castle, the landscape sometimes obscured by storms, sometimes a white, crystalline stillness. Once she saw the silhouette of a distant bird of prey circling the wood—then saw it turn, and the flash of a long, forked tail made her breath catch. She is a dragon, the Beast had told her after her brief encounter with Lamya in the wood. Now, as Yeva blinked, and the silhouette stooped into a dive after some prey unseen behind the next ridgeline, she could not be sure of what she’d seen. Cooped up indoors, surrounded by snow and emptiness, her eyes could easily play tricks on her.

I miss the outdoors, she told herself, turning her back on the window. I miss hunting. I miss my family.

Only occasionally, when she let herself dwell too long on the feeling of being unsettled, incomplete, did she remind herself, He killed my father. He is a murderer. He is a Beast.

I do not miss his company.

The castle itself was enough of a mystery to keep Yeva’s mind occupied during the long, dark weeks of winter as she waited for her chance to roam outside again. With Doe-Eyes at her side, she took to exploring by lantern light the endless corridors and rooms. Some, especially on the top floor, were in such disrepair that the roof had caved in. In those places all was snow and rubble and it was impossible to tell what the room had once been used for. Others were almost entirely intact, and but for the centuries of dust and cobwebs, could have been abandoned only yesterday.

From the look of the pristine, freshly fallen snow outside the castle doors each morning, she could tell the Beast was not spending his nights in the lair beneath the castle. Yeva supposed he could be concealing his tracks, but he’d never done so before on his way to the cave, so she couldn’t think why he would now. She assumed he must be living in the castle, but the room down the long spiral stair where she’d convalesced and told her stories was empty, and the hearth cold.

She told herself she was searching for his new lair so she’d be able to keep an eye on him, monitor him, perhaps even catch him unawares while he was asleep. But as she turned each corner, stepped through each doorway, it was curiosity that drove her. And while it was a softer, gentler flame than fury, it burned far more slowly and never guttered out.

Yeva knew that the Beast was cursed in some way, and that the answer to his curse involved capturing or killing some creature that lived in the magic world of the wood. Though she imagined that he’d once been human, sometimes her certainty faltered. The ferocity in his gaze when he’d drag home the day’s dinner, the alien stare of his eyes as he surveyed the wilds, the moments of utter abandon when he ran through the trees.