Hunted(67)

The leaves falling all around them were not leaves after all, but feathers, feathers of red-gold fire. Yeva knew that if one of them touched her it would be too much, that just that tiny spark of heat would be enough to push her over the edge into the fire and she would burn. Her mind filled with the song she’d been searching for, and she felt magic in his pulse, and in the rhythm of his breath, and in her skin everywhere he touched her.

Then Solmir lifted his head and she saw his eyes, and they were gold, gold like the Firebird, gold like the feathers swirling around them in a blizzard of fire. His face wasn’t Solmir’s after all, but one she’d seen only once, and only by the faint light of a dying fire. But his eyes . . . those eyes were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.

“Beauty,” he whispered, tracing his fingertips along the contours of her face.

She woke gasping as if from a nightmare, but her body felt flushed and feverish and the pounding of her heart was not telling her to flee. Her thoughts flooded with regret, and for an instant she wished more than anything that she could return to that dream, for never in her life had she felt so awake.

Abruptly she realized three things: that she was sweating, that the window had blown open in the night, and that she was shivering. The heat and longing of the dream vanished and she groaned, sliding out of her bed and hurrying to the window. She was about to pull it closed when she heard something that made her stop.

It was still well before dawn, and the town was silent. She ought to hear only the noises of the night and the wind, but as she strained, she caught the faintest sound that made the fire of that dream sweep over her again.

She thought she heard distant music.





BEAST


  song

     fire

beauty . . .





TWENTY-ONE


GALINA HAD COME TO visit Yeva a few days after word had spread through the town that Tvertko’s youngest daughter had returned. She’d figured out the identity of the strange, wild-looking woman who’d accosted her in the street, and came full of apology and embarrassment that she hadn’t recognized Yeva at once. But after a few visits, Yeva had managed to convince her that the lack of recognition was hardly Galina’s fault. And since Galina was one of the few women around Yeva’s age who didn’t avoid her and her reputation like the plague, Yeva was glad for her company.

Aside from her sisters, who were all too eager to pretend nothing had changed, and Solmir, who responded to any mention of Yeva’s absence with visible distress, Galina was the only other person who didn’t turn every conversation into a stream of questions about the Beast. She’d talk about her new husband, a tailor on Market Street who had shyly designed a beautiful gown for her to wear at one of the baronessa’s parties. She’d talk about how exhausting and frustrating her pregnancy was, as she was currently suffering through an endless run of mornings where she could not eat a bite without throwing it back up again. She’d talk about the current fashions, and the other ladies, and who was leaving for the city and who was moving into the vacant house on the eastern edge of town, and whether there would be an early frost to damage the harvests.

Perhaps it was because she didn’t ask about the Beast that Yeva wound up speaking of him herself.

They were strolling through the marketplace, where the vendors were pressing their wares on passersby with renewed vigor, determined to sell as much of their stock as possible before winter shut the marketplace down for the year. Galina found that walking eased her nausea, and Yeva was all too glad to stretch legs that had been accustomed to long days of running through the woods.

“Yeva, is something the matter?” Galina’s voice was soft, a change from the laughter with which she’d been talking about her husband’s latest experiments with brocade.

Yeva lifted her gaze from the ground, where she’d been separating and categorizing the layers upon layers of footprints in the dried-mud street. “What? No, I’m merely feeling quiet today.” But when she saw Galina’s face, gentle and concerned and entirely without artifice or anything hidden, she sighed. “I’ve been dreaming about him.”

“Solmir?” Galina asked, eyebrows lifting.

Yeva shook her head. “The Beast.”

Galina was quiet, stride not even pausing. Yeva waited for the standard reassurances—oh, the nightmares will fade, you’ve been through such a trial, give it time and you will learn you’ve nothing to fear anymore—but Galina just asked, “What kind of dreams?”

Yeva felt her face warming despite the chill in the air and kept her eyes down. “They aren’t bad dreams. In fact, I . . . I like them. They’re nice dreams. They make me . . .” She stopped before she could finish the sentence, unwilling to utter the words she was about to say.

They make me miss him.

Galina nodded toward the square up ahead, and claiming weariness, suggested they sit on the rough-hewn fountain over the well. It wasn’t the most private of places, but just now nobody was fetching water, and the blur of activity about the town offered its own cloak of anonymity.

Yeva sat, feeling the cold stone seeping through her layers of skirts. She’d been thinking of the Beast’s valley more and more as winter approached, and though there’d been no frost yet, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to see the town blanketed in snow without longing for the forest and its music.