Hunted(59)

She could not eat, so in time she slept again. This time hunger woke her, and Doe-Eyes’s nosing at her elbow. Yeva stumbled toward the bowl of stew the Beast had left for her. It was cold now when she uncovered it, but she ate it anyway, ate until she forced herself to stop so she could offer the rest of it to Doe-Eyes, who sat at her feet trying not to stare longingly at the food in Yeva’s hands.

Yeva sank back down onto the divan to the sounds of Doe-Eyes noisily cleaning out the rest of the bowl. Her eyes fell once more upon that book, the one the Beast had been reading where he slept, the one whose pages were stained with his blood. Her mind felt numb with the truth.

The Beast had not killed her father.

She had no more reason to stay, for each time the Beast had repeated his threat to punish her family if she escaped, she had believed it less and less. Now, as she thought of the pain in his eyes as he finally told her the truth, she knew he would not harm them, as surely as she knew the rhythm of her own heartbeat. She could leave. She could walk now out the door and down the bridge and out of the valley and never look back. She could go home.

As if the thought of them had summoned their spirits, Yeva felt the absence of her family so keenly, so abruptly, that she bent over at the waist and rested her head on her balled fists. She wanted Asenka, and her warm smile, and the feel of the wool between Yeva’s fingers as Asenka knit. She wanted Lena’s energy and spirit, and even her scolding, and could not help but imagine what she would say of Yeva’s appearance if she could see her now, bloodstained and thin. She wanted Albe’s fumbling attempts at kindness, his endearing grin, his devotion to the family that had raised him from childhood. She even wanted Solmir—the simplicity of him, how easy it would be to go with him back to the town to be his wife and ride horses through the trees and have servants to draw her baths, and books, and her sisters, and her dogs, and a life without magic and mysteries, and in that instant she knew she could do it. She could live that life. And just now she wanted it more than anything else.

She left the high tower room. She descended the twisting spiral turret, and walked through the master bedroom suite and into the long corridor, and down the next staircase and into the foyer and down the wide marble steps onto the wide marble floor. She pushed against the broad doors until they opened enough to send her stumbling and gasping and blinking into the harsh glare of the sun and the snow. She went sliding and stumbling down the snow-covered slope until she stood at the mouth of the Beast’s cave, breathing hard, breath steaming the air, and sun-dazzled eyes conjuring wraiths out of the gloom to swim and twist beyond the edges of her vision.

“Beauty.” The voice came from the depths of the cave, low and soft, velvet bass that echoed in the same place deep within her that heard the music of the magic wood.

“Beast,” she answered, still breathing hard. “I must go.”

Silence. She could not see him, only darkness, but she knew he could see her silhouette against the daylight at the mouth of the cave. Then, softly, his voice came again. “I know.”

Yeva’s heart shrank. It would have been easier if he’d roared at her, if he’d knocked her to the ground, locked her up, given her reason to hate him again. It would have been easier if he’d been the Beast. She swallowed. “My family. They’re all alone. I have to go to them.”

“You do not have to explain.”

But I want to. Yeva stood, hands twisting in the fabric of her cloak, listening to Doe-Eyes pace around behind her, uncomfortable so close to the Beast’s den.

Some part of the shadows moved, and she saw his eyes, gleaming briefly with reflected sunlight—then he moved again and the glimpse was gone. “Will you give your word to return someday?” the Beast said, so softly Yeva could not be certain she hadn’t imagined it.

Yeva’s mouth opened, but all she could think of was the echo of the conversation they’d had long ago, when they first stood face-to-face. “I will give you my word I won’t try to kill you again.”

“You did not promise to come back,” the Beast said, and his voice was a lament, so shattered that Yeva almost began to weep again.

“No,” she whispered instead. “I didn’t.”

She closed her eyes and listened with her soul, and from deep within the hollow of the cave she heard the Beast’s song, the pulse of magic he’d taught her to hear. It was low and sweet, heavy with pain and age and the blurring of time. It held hints of things long forgotten, of stories and words and dreams and, most of all, desires.

The song wanted. It wanted in the way Yeva had always wanted, wanted not so much a thing as everything, something beyond naming, something more than, different, deeper. It was the want that kept her from saying yes to Solmir, though he offered her everything she could have named aloud; it was the want that brought her to the woods each day, the want that filled her dreams of some other life, something beyond what others desired; it was the want that screamed to the sky that she’d give everything, all of herself and all she’d ever be, to live one moment of that other life, the one she could not explain, not even to herself.

She closed her eyes and listened to the Beast’s heart.

And before she could begin to weep again, she turned and she ran.





BEAST


Beauty. We feel her running, the spark of her life in our senses speeding southward, but growing no less dim for distance. We feel her like a star in the thick darkness of our valley, but she draws near its edge.