Hunted(68)

Galina let her breath out in a rush as she sat, and watched people moving to and fro for a time before she spoke. “I have a cousin in Kiev,” she said finally, “who got married very young, because she wasn’t wealthy enough for a large dowry and her parents didn’t know if she’d ever get another offer like the one she’d received.”

Yeva wondered if Galina had forgotten about her dreams, and nodded.

“Her husband wasn’t a good man. He hit her when she didn’t do everything exactly to his liking—if the bread was burned, or if the house wasn’t spotless, or if he thought she’d looked too long at another man. He always hit her where it wouldn’t show, until one day he lost his temper and blackened her eye and her brother recognized what was happening. But when he prepared to deal with the husband, to bring the matter to the magistrate and get the marriage annulled, my cousin begged him not to. She defended her husband and said he only had a terrible temper, that he was so loving and so apologetic afterward, and that no other man could possibly make her feel so special, so loved. She said that without her he’d be lost, and that he needed her.”

Yeva listened in silence, her own thoughts troubled. She’d known other women who’d formed attachments to men who were cruel to them, though she’d never known any in such dire situations. She’d always thought them foolish, weak, lacking in the self-assurance to know they were better than the men whose backhanded compliments made them flush so. But perhaps they were simply in love. Perhaps their hearts had betrayed them, and not their courage.

Galina leaned back. “I tell you this because I wonder . . . I wonder if something like that has happened to you.”

Yeva bit back a quick reply, forcing herself to absorb the story, and closed her eyes. “He never hurt me. Well, he did once, but to be fair, I had shot him with an arrow and was about to kill him with an ax.”

Galina’s expression flickered, but she managed not to blanch too visibly. “Maybe not, but you were his prisoner. That’s a different kind of hurt, but hurt nonetheless.”

“And I wanted to kill him,” Yeva said, “when I was his prisoner. It was my whole reason for existing, surviving. I didn’t fall in love with him because he hurt me—the idea is absurd.”

Galina’s eyebrows shot up. “In love with him? Heavens, Yeva, that’s not what I meant at all. Who could even imagine such a thing?”

Yeva’s face burned hot. “I thought—I mean, you were talking about your cousin—”

Galina shook her head quickly. “Good lord, no.” Now she was watching Yeva closely, voice dropping despite the noise of the bustling streets. “You care about him.”

Yeva blinked hard, the words ringing in her ears, words she’d never dared say even to herself, even in the deepest, quietest parts of the night when she woke sweating and longing. “I—I feel for him,” she whispered. Her eyes burned at the admission, and she looked up, barely able to meet Galina’s eyes. “What does that make me?”

Though she tried to hide it, Galina’s expression held the tiniest glimmer of horror, and it made Yeva shrink. But Galina drew a breath and when she let it out, her reply came in a sigh: “Human.”

Yeva balled up her fists and ground them against her eyes, punishing them for their betrayal, making sure there’d be no more tears. “I hated him. I hated him more than anything, like I’ve never hated before. I didn’t know I could hate until I hated the Beast.”

“So what changed?”

Yeva had to pause to breathe until her voice steadied. “I found out he was a prisoner too,” she whispered. “And that he was as lonely as I had been.”

“Lonely?” Galina echoed. “But Yeva, he was the reason you were lonely, cooped up all alone in that old castle—”

“No,” Yeva interrupted. “I was lonely before. I was lonely in the cabin, with my sisters. I was lonely here, with the baronessa.”

Galina bit her lip, eyes dropping. Too late, Yeva realized she was saying that even her friendship with Galina in the past had left her lonely, but it was the truth, and she couldn’t take it back.

“I was always lonely, and I never knew it until I met the Beast. The real Beast, the one beneath the fangs and the claws and the rage. The one who reads, who listens to fairy stories, who comes alive in the forest, who hears music. . . .”

“Music?” Galina frowned.

Yeva started. “No, I just meant—I don’t know what I meant.”

“But Yeva . . . he held you prisoner. He threatened your family.”

“I know.” Yeva’s eyes crept up toward the hill, and though she couldn’t see her father’s house from here, she could imagine it just on the other side of the ridge. “And I took advantage of his trust and tried to kill him. We have both hurt each other.”

“What makes you think he wouldn’t have kept trying to hurt you if you hadn’t escaped?”

“Because I didn’t escape,” Yeva replied simply. “He let me go.”

Galina’s face was troubled. “Give it time,” she suggested softly. “You have your sisters, and me, and you have Solmir. Think of Solmir—you won’t be lonely here, Yeva. You’re surrounded by people who love you.”

Yeva knew she was right. She thought of Solmir, and of his warm eyes, and of the tremendous kindnesses he’d shown her family. She tried to ignore the bite in the air as she and Galina stood and began the walk back to her home. It smelled like snow.