Hunted(54)

“You live here,” she whispered, turning in a slow circle as her gaze flew about the round tower room. “This is where you stay when you don’t stay in the cave.”

The Beast’s eyes fell to the floor. “Yes.”

“But . . . why show me this now? These books, the trinkets . . . they’re yours. Why keep it from me before?”

The Beast didn’t answer. She could not see his eyes, for his head was dropped down and gaze fixed to the floor. The Beast remained silent for a time, and if it weren’t for the way his chest rose and fell with increasing speed, Yeva would think he was ignoring her. But his emotions were rising, his breathing quickening, and she waited.

“You would not have cared,” he burst out in a snarl. “We have no desire to change your opinion of us. You are our weapon. Nothing more. That you stay because you are waiting for the chance to kill us only serves our ends, to keep you here for our task.”

Once, Yeva would have shrunk from his temper. Once, that snarl would have made her tremble. Now she just stared at him, a thousand questions spinning in her mind. Though her lips kept trying to shape the questions into words, there were too many for her to sort through, and she could only stand there, mouth opening and closing.

The Beast looked up finally to see her dumbfounded expression, and the too-human eyes faltered for an instant, brows lifting from fury into pain. Then he turned on his heels and stalked toward the door.

“Beast!” Yeva tore her feet from the ground and ran to throw herself between him and the door. “Wait.”

The Beast paused, head dropping low, so low his muzzle nearly brushed the carpet. Yeva knew the body language from years of caring for Doe-Eyes and Pelei—shame. He regretted his outburst.

“Thank you . . . for showing me this,” Yeva said.

The Beast’s head swung round until he could fix those staring eyes on her, and this time they were round with surprise. Yeva had never thanked him for anything before, not since learning the truth of what he was. “You—” His voice deepened. “You may come here to read whenever you wish. I will leave the door unlocked.”

Yeva’s heart pounded as the Beast made his departure, his paw pads whispering against the stone as he went. She was wrong—she had thanked him once before, when he’d brought her a deer and called her Beauty.

She’d meant it then.

She meant it now, too. And that, more than the Beast’s temper, more than the snarl of his fangs and the snap of his jaws, made her shiver. The reason he’d never shown her this room before was because he had no reason to do so. She was his captive, kept for his purpose. And he’d revealed this room now, this part of himself, simply because she had been sad . . . because he’d seen, in the way she looked at the ruined library, how much a room like this would mean to her.

Her vision blurred and she swiped angrily at her eyes. She ought to throw every one of these cared-for books into the fire. She ought to smash every keepsake and memento in this room. She ought to want to hurt the Beast in any way she could.

She crouched on the floor, burying her face in her arms. She couldn’t stay here any longer. Each answer she found led her further from destroying this creature, this murderer, this thing that had killed her father. He was the reason she’d never hear her father read to her again. He was the reason her sisters must believe she was dead. He was the reason for everything. She could not let a place like this change any of that.

Doe-Eyes nuzzled at her elbow until she lifted her head, stroking absently behind her dog’s ears. Her eyes fell upon the hearth, on the rug before it and its coating of fine hairs from the Beast’s coat. She gazed at it for a long time, enough time for her thoughts to still and her pulse to quiet. The pieces were slow to connect, and she felt them sliding into place with something almost like dread.

For in showing her this room, the Beast had given her exactly what she’d been trying to find all these long months.

She’d known from the lack of tracks outside that he was not spending his nights in the dark den below the foundation. But she knew now where he slept in the castle, where he was at his most vulnerable.

She wasn’t fast enough or skilled enough to kill him, not when he was awake and watching her, alert to her every movement. But if he were asleep . . .

Yeva forced herself to remember that moment in the forest all those weeks and months ago when she’d found her father’s body. She forced herself to remember the surge of nausea when she realized that the Beast had killed him, that the blood spattered around that clearing was her father’s. She made her mind flood with images of blood, and revenge, and hatred. She’d never hear her father read to her again, and the Beast had reminded her of it. Perhaps he felt guilty, and that was what prompted these little kindnesses, and there was a part of Yeva that needled her to think of using them against him—but she was stronger than the Beast, and she was harder, and she could outlast his guilt without caving to her own sympathy for his plight. She let the needles stab at her, again and again, until she felt numbed to their sting.

Because now she had the means to make everything right. She’d be able to go home, to her sisters and to Albe and to Solmir, though she could not think of them, not yet, not until it was done. It would not be tonight, nor tomorrow, but soon.

Soon she’d be able to kill the Beast.





BEAST